An Empty Plate

At the end of Ramadan there is a holiday here called Eid ul Fitr, which roughly translated means "holiday to break the fast".  But it is a joyous occasion and people are celebrating all over the place and it lasts for three days. ( I don't know why we don't catch on to some of these other holidays in other countries that go for a couple days?)  Anyhow, one of the things that they do here is give sweets to each other.  (In some ways there are similarities to Christmas for us, the giving of sweets, people buy new clothes and wear them to visit family and friends).  

The first day of the Eid, we went for a walk and almost every car that passed us you could see the people dressed in their best.  Men in nice new suits and women in nice new clothes, colorful head scarves and so on.  We really felt like strangers in a foreign land looking into a bubble, especially since we have moved to a new area and don't know anyone yet.  Although two of our neighbors did come and bring us a plate of sweets.  That was very nice!  The one man, Mike has spoken with on a couple of occasions and he has come and sat with him on our porch and talked and the other man, I think Mike met for the first time then.  

So, the tradition or culture here when you have received a plate of something here is to return the plate with something on it.  It would be considered rude to just give the clean plate back.  So what a perfect occasion to make some chocolate chip cookies.  We brought the one plate back with some cookies on it, but we don't know where the other man lives.  So, two days have gone by now and we are not really sure how to find the man, other then to knock on every door in the building, but then when it's the wrong door how do we explain, "oh sorry, these cookies are not for you"(in our broken arabic...)  In the meantime, my sweet tooth has gotten the best of me and so I have started to eat the cookies.  Oops....I guess I will just have to make some more.  Those are starting to get stale anyway.  :-)  Hopefully we will find him soon, before I make another batch and have to eat those too.