what the.....weekend

So we have a basic routine for our weekend in our family. On Fridays after prayers we head downtown and window shop, buy bootleg movies/music, and just enjoy our day without the congestion of cars and people. And on Saturday we head down to our local farmers market and stock up on fresh produce.

I love this place! You can find all kinds of yummy fruits and veggies that are in season and at great prices. It is interesting to shop here because there are so many stands with not only fruit and veggies but a section with fresh meat and a section with eggs/cheese, and I even saw a stand that sold dead fish in a bucket... Yeah that was disgusting I don't think many people purchase the fish, but God help those who do... Anyways it is always fun going to the market, from every corner there are people shouting out prices "dinar kilo bendora" (one dinar ($1.50usd) for a kilogram of tomato" and another 2 stands away yelling about onion, or carrots or sage. It is also SO REFRESHING to see so much green. Jordan lacks water, big time, so it is nice to come here and see  all of the color. Espically the green!

It is also a common practice that you 'taste then purchase' you see, it is wrong to cheat someone, so if someone tells you "the watermelon is sweet" you say back (bad translation) "on your knife" meaning they crack open the melon and you taste it to make sure before you buy it. This is a common practice.
Yusuf has picked up this habit now and every time we go he finds something he likes, like a pear, banana, apple etc. and he asks if he can taste it... well you know a farmer cannot resist cute kids so they cut it open and he tastes it and then we purchase based on the sweetness.

 Here the weekend is Friday and Saturday.  Because as you may or may not know in an Islamic country the holy day is Friday, so Friday is like Saturday and Saturday is like Sunday... at least in comparison to the States.

I am still getting used to this system. It is weird transition but the only way I can explain it is that it feels like there are 3 Mondays for me, awful isn't it. Let me elaborate...
Friday here feels like a Sunday back home. Everyone goes to prayers and everything is closed, so it feel like Sunday to me. So when I go to bed I feel like the next day will be Monday (1), like a work day back home, but really it is Saturday, the end of the week. So after I get over that realization when I wake up Saturday morning I realize it is the end of the week and Saturday is really like Sunday (back home) so then my Sunday here really feels like Monday (2). Now if that isn't bad enough, there is the real Monday (3) which is just a normal work day here, but because this whole different weekend schedule here still gets me I still feel the Monday blues like I did back home....Are you confused yet???