Ramadan thoughts - four days in

In many ways, Ramadan is both more difficult and easier than we expected. 

Easier parts: 

The actual fasting. Going without food is pretty easy for the first twelve hours. The final couple hours are the hardest. 

Flipping our entire schedules. Conveniently, everyone in town does it, so it would actually be harder to stay on our old schedule. 

More difficult parts:

Water. Dang the water is difficult. What do we normally do when we wake up? Drink water. What can we not do now? Drink water. 

Remembering to fast. Once we get halfway through the day, one of us will think "oh. I'm kind of hungry/thirsty. I'll go get something." Then we walk into the kitchen and remember we can't and have to turn around and walk out. 

Preparing for fasting without sneaking a nibble. The last hour before sundown is used to prepare everything for the fast breaking, which means you're surrounded by food during the part of the day when you're hungriest/thirstiest. 

All in all, we're still really happy we're fasting. It's not exactly what you might call "fun," but it's a new experience. 

Everyone in the community is both shocked and entertained that we're fasting, and we keep getting asked about it (just to confirm). Tonight, right next to our house, we ran into a group of eight women who have been hanging out there every night of Ramadan. Upon hearing that we have fasted for all four days, we actually got a round of applause and they all yelled "very good!" and "bravo!" It's so great. 

Here's another food update:

Here's what's left of the kilo of dates that we bought. It's the first food that everyone eats to break fast at sundown. 

This is sllou. It's ground up almonds, peanuts (maybe?), sesame seeds, fennel, coriander, and a bunch of other stuff. As far as we can tell, it's always homemade and every family has a different recipe. We've probably eaten like three pounds of it. I want to call that an exaggeration, but I don't think it is.