Today is the beginning of Ramadan. This will be my first year trying. Ok... last year I kinda tried but I was living alone. Therefore, I didn’t make it one single day completely through 🤣
Now, since I’m married, I can try together with my wife. She‘s seasoned so she helps me.
For those of you who don’t understand what Ramadan is, here’s the rundown in a nutshell. It’s fasting. No eating from sunrise until the sundown. And it’s different for every city. For example, I live in Frankfurt. The sun goes down in Frankfurt tonight at 8:22PM and rises again at 4:58AM. These are the times we are allowed to eat. Other locations are different times of course because of sunrise and sunset. During the day, I’m not so hungry. That hunger feeling does come but it disappears and reappears then disappears again. It’s very strange. Thirst basically stays. But I was as thirsty as I thought I would be.
Starting sundown, when it’s finally time to eat, I guess maybe I dug in too fast! Because my stomach was immediately full after a few bites, but I still felt hungry. So, I took a break and then start eating again... but SLOWLY this time.
Before sunrise, we eat again. Problem is, I’m not really hungry. So I’ll try to eat things that stay in the stomach like oatmeal and bread. Drink some milk and eat a banana. This should stay in my stomach until sundown or at least it should help.
But something happened today, though. At work, my colleagues ordered pizza and all ate together upstairs in the break room. That didn’t bother me at al. I stayed downstairs on my phone. After lunch, I took emptied the garbage and the empty pizza boxes were in there. Well, the aroma of the pizza got me kinda hungry and I started thinking, “This is probably what a homeless hungry person feels like.” You see, I was (almost) LOOKING for a slice of pizza. Not that I was going to eat it. Definitely not! BUT just the fact that I was hungry and I smelled pizza in the trash can and I was thinking ”Is there any pizza in there?” made me realize this is also what Ramadan is about. To feel how it is to be hungry and have nothing. Maybe it’s to sympathize when we see a homeless or hungry person on the streets?
Anyway, no matter how you put it, Ramadan may be difficult, but at the en of the day, you fe proud you accomplished something this difficult. And celebrating it WITH someone makes it so much more joyful.
Ok... only 29 more days to go! Will I survive this?
(this blog was created on Tuesday, April 13th & completed on Wednesday, April 14th.)
