Stalking the Moon

Ramadhan Kareem to everyone :). I hope everyone’s having a great Ramadhan (less fry, more fruits and veggies). With Ramadhan (not around the corner anymore) and all the moon hype and speculation that happens during this month, I decided it would be the perfect time to conduct my moon study. So every night before Maghrib, me and my siblings watch the moon from the backyard, or rather, as we like to call it, stalk the moon. We missed the new moon because it was too cloudy (Friday night) but we caught the second moon and stalked the third moon till it set behind the trees and was no longer visible. By the fourth night, I was the only one that cared to watch it, everyone else was too busy eating! No, wait, it was actually pretty cloudy during Maghrib so we couldn’t see it, but I did see it around 9 o’clock. Looked like a manicured nail. Not mine…

Nevertheless, I decided to keep a daily journal on the moon and my observations.

Night 2, Day 1:

Appeared around 8 o’clock and set at around 8:45. It was the first day of Ramadhan… well, we didn’t really stalk it much because we were too busy eating? Again… haha.

Night 3, Day 2:

The moon appeared at around 7:40-50 between the north and the west which means… northwest? Something like that. It looked like a banana with the peel on. We just stood there staring at it in awe. As time passed by, it moved towards the west. We thought we saw it flicker, grow fatter, get thinner, and disappear and appear all together. It could have hidden behind a cloud for a moment, we weren’t too sure. At around 9 o’clock, it hid behind the jungle off into the distance. It if wasn’t for that jungle, I’m sure we’d still be able to see it past 9.

Night 4, Day 3:

It was a cloudy day. We didn’t get to see it appear or set… But I did see it through my bedroom window for a second and resumed doing whatever it was I was doing.

I know how much we love eating unhealthy foods all through out Ramadhan and complain about heartburn, sleepyness, inability to get anything productive done, lazyness, and such symptoms every day because of all the fats and fry and oil and sugar we consume. We also end up gaining a ton of extra weight by the end of the month. Try to make this Ramadhan healthier. NO FRY. If you want samoosa and kabab that badly, bake ’em! You absolutely CAN have Ramadhan without that stuff! I mean, you’ll have a BETTER Ramadhan without all that stuff.

Being desi, my mom insisted on making fry. “At least for you kids, you have no fat… I won’t eat it.” So I took over the duty of making iftaar (she does catering and gets tired by iftaar time). Turns out I’ve inherited my mom’s cooking genes :).

And now, I’ll leave you with an awesome journal for Ramadhan (which I haven’t even tried out myself): www.heartwheeljournal.com.