What a night.

Pretty interesting night.   My new friend Suzanne from .u.k invited me to go along to dinner at a placed she really liked and 

meet some other new .  Only one came along, Xavier from Switzerland .  They were the age of my 

kids and we had a great time sharing travel experiences.  Both agreed their mothers would never 

do anything like this and we shared things we want tell our parents and kids till we get back home.

I ate lamb for my first time ever.it was really good.  All was authentic, Arab foods.  Then we went 

to a place I found earlier today and they found yesterday and they have live music and dance lessons 

for Arab dances.  It was really fun and great company, food and entertainment.  Got back to the 

room and all got ready to settle in.  One of the girls was in the shower and I followed her in, and 

immediately noticed a terrible odor no not that... I thought she had smoked something or used some

 chemicals to clean with, I could hardly breath and my eyes were watering and burning.  My throat felt 

Like I had swallowed peppers.  I got out as quick as I could and found everyone else coughing 

and complaining of the same symptoms.  My first thought was where's Syria from here.  We looked 

out the window and found people running towards us with, hats, shirts, handbags, all sorts of things 

over their mouths.    Some actually had those white things like you use when mowing or sawing to 

cover nose or mouth.  I guess a fast thinking hardware store had them.  Anyway, we found out 

at the desk that it was over zealous citizens celebrating Eid.  Oi looked it up, and get this.  It is the 

Muslim celebration of sacrifice, remembering when Ibrahim ( Abraham to us) took his son Ishmael 

up the mountain To sacrifice him.  God had come to Ibrahim and Ishmael and gotten their agreement 

that this was to happen.  So when the time came, god provided a sacrifice, and as a reward for his 

faithfulness,  God gave Abraham another son Isaac.  You may recognize this as the distorted version of a similar 

story in the Bible when Abraham followed God and took his son Isaac to the mountain for sacrifice 

and God saved Isaac and provided another sacrifice.  The Muslims celebrate by killing a lamb and 

giving to the poor.  My throat is better so I'm going to sleep.