No comment, I need yours though!

I found this on my email tonight:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

كل عام وانتم بخير

Dear Brothers & Sisters:

The Libyan Association of the Northwest announces its عيد ألاضحى gathering اعاده الله علينا بالخير والصحة والسعادة ... please plan on attending our festivities on Saturday, December 13th, 2008.

Location:
******** ******* ******
***** ******* **
*******, *******

Time: 5:30 to 10:00 P.M.

Brother ******* is sponsoring food & beverage in celebration of his marriage to sister ******* , may Allah bless their union... members of the community may bring حلويات عيد (Eid Sweets) to share with everyone.

Entertainment activity is planned for the children

We would like to take this opportunity to invite all of our Libyan brothers/sisters and their spouses in the Northwest to come & celebrate with us. If you know of someone who has no access to e-mail, please consider this note an invite to them as well.

LANW would like to recognize brother ******** ******* for his efforts through the years in support of community activities. We wish him and family all the best as they take up residence on the east coast – God speed.

Our hope is to have a year full of activities for our community, the more members we have ... the more successful our planned activities will be. Please note that such success can only be attained through our combined efforts … it starts with paying membership dues on Saturday Dec. 13th, 2008. Membership fee is a modest amount that has remained the same for a good number of years while facilities rental fees have steadily increased as well as food cost.
For members who have yet to pay, please bring your checkbook along … this is a worthy cause.

The Steering Committee intends to share budget information with all members on a regular basis … that will include; money collected, expenditures, and account balance.

Kindly respond to this note if you are planning to join us so that we may plan better.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I wanna know if I am over sensitive, or Is there something weird in this email which supposed to be an invitation.

English Language

Ooh! This English language ...

Although I am supposed to be in a pretty good level by now, I still have an embarrassing trouble with articles. I HATE ARTICLES. I use all the tricks to beat this weakness, but it just didn't work. Sometimes it is totally illogic.

My teacher told me, it is all about countable and non-countable nouns, if u master them, the problem of articles will just vanish. Okay man, but how on earth can I master the count and non-count nouns when Food and People are countable, and Evidence and Advice are uncountable :(

Peoples, Foods ... but not Evidences, and Advises!!! Can we count fishes???!!

This whole thing doesn't make any sense to me ...

Any English teacher out there ... HELP!!!

...

Okay enough crazy English, let's move to another happy subject, I'd like to congratulate one of my friends who got engaged lately, and as most of the girls do, she got a little frightened from the whole idea of marriage after her engagement, she is that kind of girl who is full of ambition, and totally dependent on herself, and achieved a lot in her professional life, she is not afraid of losing this, this is not the issue, she is just doubting if she have made the right choice, which is in my opinion is a totally normal feeling. There is no way to know if he is the right choice. Even if the couples had known each other since childhood, there will always be a risk, and the challenge is to take that risk. So be strong my friend and go on. I will take this opportunity and dedicate this song for you my friend, and I invite everybody else let's share this rhythm and enjoy.

Clean wash!

Miss you all

I post this story today for two reasons (I am trying to apply what they teach us in the pre Toefl class, which is giving reasons for anything ... Oops! so this is the third reason for my post today in addition to the following two), okey the first reason is that I miss hanging the laundry outside to dry on a line ... do u think they are going to sue me if I do it here? Our condominium is on the main street, imagine how I'll be considered a destroyer to the beauty of the neighborhood? Anyway the weather is rainy all the time here, so I am just dreaming.

The second reason is that I want to share the wisdom of this story to reach out for many people, specially my new acquaintances (including the new "me"!), who actually don't read my blog, but never mind , this is just the first step for me to do something, to take the initiaves and write it down, then will teach it for myself and for the others, practically of course, because there is no roles for the words in my life, apart from being written here in this blog.

dear readers enjoy the story:

Clean Wash

A young couple moves into a new neighborhood. The next morning while they are eating breakfast, the young woman sees her neighbor hanging the wash outside."That laundry is not very clean," she said. "She doesn't know how to wash correctly. Perhaps she needs better laundry soap."Her husband looked on, but remained silent. Every time her neighbor would hang her wash to dry, the young woman would make the same comments. About one month later, the woman was surprised to see a nice clean wash on the line and said to her husband: "Look, she has learned how to wash correctly. I wonder who taught her this."The husband said, "I got up early this morning and cleaned our windows."And so it is with life. What we see when watching others depends on the purity of the window through which we look.

~Author Unknown~

'Life is a journey..not a destination...'

I received these pictures by email. I understand that the idea of this kind of emails might be hackneying for some of you, but for me they always act as a source of enlightenment.

also I am right now, and in this particular period of my life, I feel exactly the same like the cute snail in these picturs so I thought it worths sharing .

:)

When someone tells you that you can't do something ...

.

Look around ...

Consider all options ...

Then go for it !



Use all the things Allah gave you !






Be creative !





In the end, you will succeed and prove them wrong !

Isn't she cute ???!

.
Always remember

...

..

.
'Nothing is impossible, if your heart is willing'

.

.

Eid Mubarek

Eid Mubarek
Happy Eid for all of you
.
Many things was different in this Ramadan, as it was my first Ramadan on this land.
somethings were harder for me to practice in foreign land which was expected, but others were easier for me to practice here which surprised me !!
One of the things which was very easy to do here compared with what I have in my country is:
Making Baklawa
Yea, it is very easy here ... For me the most difficult part of it is making the thin sheets out of a dough, but I found here that this thin sheets are available ready as a Phyllo dough ( sometimes called Fillo dough ) , and they are of very good quality, I mean the sheets are very thin and are excellent for making baklawa, just open the package and unroll the sheets, then do the rest of the steps, it will take you only 15 mins or less to make a wounderful, unresistable, sweet, crispy Baklawa.

.

Enjoy Eid and don't eat a lot of Baklawa, it is not good for your health :)

Ramadan Karem

dear brothers, family, friemds, bloggers, readers , and all the muslim in the world, RAMADAN MUBAREK

for the first time in my life, me with my parent in one side, and my brothers with the rest of the family on the other side, fast on different schedules.

Ramadan started in Libya, but not here in my area in the united states, I know it always happen all around the islamic world, but it has different impact when it touch you closely on your close family level, it feel strange and weird, when I took my breakfast on the morning today, I felt as if I am commiting a sin !!!

the picture show the islamic center in our area.

finding this center has a short story, when we landed here I tried to look for some Masjed in the neighborhood, of course by using the help of my best friend here the internet, more specificlly, google map, and it gave me some adresses and the right buses to take me there, I registered some notes and started looking with my father for some of these adresses, and unfortunately, the google map let me down this time, when I tried the first nearest two addrsses, the Masjed wasn't there, one of them was actually a church ( although I write a mosque or islamic center in my research ), and the other was very small, unidentified unclean masjed, that was a little depressing.

As I told you before I used the google map from the first few days, to look for everything, and succeded to reach all the places, coz there is good public transportation in this city, with buses you can reach where ever you want.

Till today I didn't use Taxi at all, and didn't get lost, not yet, sure it will happen , but not yet.

back to my point, with google map, and the use of bus when it is needed, I reached the grocery store, the bank, the university, and nearly every where from the first try, but to the Masjed, I failed in my first try, but then I contacted a cyber friend (KA ) here in the state, and he was kind enough to direct me to this islamic center which appear in the picture (which was taken by my mobile cam), and so my second try was successful, and we found ourselves in one of the biggest islamic center in the area , I felt so proud to see this clear islamic symbol on this land, thank you KA.

that was in my first 10 days, then when I started school, I met some Libyan student, and discovered another islamic center, which will be more near to our new place, which we will move to by the middle of September.

That was my story, for ramadan first, till next time, take care, and

Ramadan Karem

scratches about my trip.

ahhhhh ... finally I am updating, I always wanted to update, but I don't know, I think there is no baraka in time here at all !!!

many funny things happen to anyone who travel to a new place for the first time, I will share some of mine here in this post and in the upcoming posts, but hay people don't make fun of me, I am sure everyone have his share.

Our trip was fine, I was afraid that troubles will arise coz I used the KLM airline, but luckily everything went smooth, and even I can say perfect, we had transit at Amsterdam, and we spent one night in the airport, at a Hotel, which was actualy a luxury stay.

the airport is huge and very well organized, and unexpectedly I didn't got lost in it, I used to get lost in huge places,there were signs every where to direct you.
when I get off the first plane to Schiphol airport, I noticed that most the passengers was heading to fine touch screens, and doing something on the screen, and then leave it, I wondered what they are doing, but I didn't give that much attention, my target was to find the Hotel, coz the reservation we made will be cancelled within an hour, and after I found it, we put our luggage, and went out to discover the place, and I approached that screen, I start to follow the instructions and end up chosing a seat in the next plane, and of course the best seats was already taken, it is good that I could find three seats next to each other, so we will not be scattered in the next long flight, WHY NO BODY TOLD ME ABOUT THIS, THEN I AM A GOOD READED, WHY THAT WASN'T MENTIONED ON THE KLM WEBSITE ??? but Allah was there for me, & inspired me to check the screen out of curiosity, in the right time.

I couldn't imagine that, we would have been in scattered seats if I had not approached that fine touch computer screen in the right time.

the long flight went smooth, I enjoyed the collection of the movies, the music and the games on the private screen , I didn't finish the story I borrowed from my deary missclass, didn't have enough time to finish it actually.

I had some good naps, the food choices was okey, the service in general was nice, and we landed safely.

we finished with the officer at the port of entry, which took some time, but not too long, the officer was funny, he was kind of in hurry coz we landed at lunch time, but he treated us well.

after we finish we collect our luggage ( which was in perfect condition, and nothing lost, although they weren't locked, as the rule prevent us from locking it as we are travelling to the united state ) and we entered the state , I thought it will so bad coz no one is actually waiting for us there, I do have some friends there but they are not close one , then I didn't want to bother anyone, and tried my best from Libya home to make it easier, therfore I had reserved a place at a hotel, and reserved even the car which will take us to the hotel, it is a kind of Taxi but not the regular Taxi, it is a shared ride van from the Shuttle express, I recommend it for any one want a ride, to or from the airport in the united state ( don't know if it is available in all the states ) ,and things went as I arranged, we find the van waiting for us, and it took us to our hotel, and things wasn't bad at all, the other thing which I though will happen , but it didn't is the cultural shock, there was no cultural shock, or there might be one, but in a reverse way, will try to talk about that in my upcoming posts.

just one more thing before I leave, I would like to mention that all those arrangment were accomplished with the help of one new friend of mine, who I want to introduce for all of you.

THE INTERNET

"he" is my closest friend these days, without him I would have definitely get lost.