6 more days left until the due date, but the chances of that happening is very slim, especially because i am carrying a 'boy' and they are lazy by nature and prefer to stay in the womb as long as possible, so although its 6 days, technically it can be a further 2 weeks after the 6 days aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

one of the comments from the previous blog entry was about teaching and being pregnant, well hamdullilah I've started my maternity leave (not really kicked in that its maternity leave cause the whole country is of on Christmas holidays) but prior to that it was ok, i was managing, to be honest i preferred working to staying at home and waiting.

i wont lie, i would have preferred an extra 2 hours sleep in the morning especially towards the end as lack of sleep, insomnia, heart burn, general aches and pains meant that i had slept very little.

but amazingly i didn't actually take time off, i did catch stupid flu in the last week before the holidays so i went home early, but other than that i managed pretty well.

now I'm waiting and it feels like watching paint dry, time is going slooooooooooooooooooooowlllllllyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy.

i thought the hard part of pregnancy was the labour part, evidently that's just the end product of pain, i did not expect to be in this much pain and i have 5 weeks left!!!!!!!!!

with every passing moment I'm more conscious of my mother and all she has done for me and my brothers starting with carrying me for 9 months subhanallah.

its true what they say that you really don't know the value of parents until you become one, may Allah give them a long life full of health, wealth and happiness (ameen).

so as well as appreciating the parents more and more, I'm more and more getting impatient and cant wait to have it over and done with (inshallah).

so far its been a journey of nausea, extreme tiredness and hatred of coffee all in the early stages, then came the honey moon period as people call it where you 'love' the feeling of being pregnant, and your so full of energy etc... etc... etc... (no idea where they get this from) and finally the i sound and feel like an elephant stage, if you thought your nose could never grow to the size of a melon - get pregnant and boy will it grow and grow....

i would say i was pretty lucky hamdullilah as i had a vomit free pregnancy and no serious issues like some ladies, but by month 7 the pains kicked in and it seriously gets so bad that i cant stay stood up and nearly collapse from it.

every one keeps saying 'not long to go now' but at the moment every day feels like 10 days.

gotta keep telling myself it will be worth it in the end inshallah.

perks are i don't feel the bitter cold like every one else, i have my own central heating inside ;)

I'm really sick and tired of the state of the Muslims, its the simple things that annoy me and makes me think if we cant get the small things right then how in the world are we even going to fix our major problems?????????

whats triggered this off, well its always been at the back of my mind this rant but this eid its brought it out to the forefront.

what are the Muslims thinking of when they celebrate eid 2 days after the day of Arafat???????

walahi it does not make any sense to me...

no explanation will make sense....

here in Manchester we have a group of people (many actually) who will be celebrating eid al adha on Wednesday, WHY?????

the day of Arafat is today, then logically Eid is tomorrow, get with it people...

when i ask people why are the clelbrating on Wednesday, the answer is 'I'm following my

mosque'.

well then what is up with these 'imams' who are telling there congregation to celebrate 2 days after the day of Arafat?

I've come to a conclusion, if its anything like what that man 'gaddafi' did last year i think, where he closed the mosques and forced people to celebrate eid on the day that 'he' decides (my hat of to the Libyans that still prayed in the fields and what not) then matter is a power thing...

enforcing your power on the people because you CAN and so WILL to make a point, to test them etc..

this is not just world leaders, theses are some of the Imams in the mosques.

the issue could be a political one, you have something against Saudi and want to make a point by not following them again cough cough Gaddafi as an example...

also it could be a matter of trust, (now this one i slightly understand) Saudi have got it wrong in the past (many times in fact) and some people are sick of the ahem ahem mis-calculation of the Saudis and so refuse to follow them.

even so once the day of Arafat is decided then you can do anything about it, its not like you can have a day of arafat when you want, also even if it is wrong its not us who will get the sin of celebrating it on the wrong day, it will be those who decided what day it will be celebrated.

so the point is stop getting on my nerves and lets get our act together, I'm seriously thinking of contacting all these 'imams' and letting them know what i think..

on a final note, Eid Mubarak every one, Kul 3am wantum bikhair, hope you and your families really enjoy yourselves and dont over do it with the meat ;)

so i cant have a coffee with the baby??????????

how cute are they...

today i asked a student why she had not given me her homework like every one else.

her answer was: Miss i didn't realise i had to hand it in!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

i asked her for the definition of homework, she replied 'i think it when you get given work to do at home and then hand in to the teacher'

duuuuuuuuuuuhhhh.

well its already the 16th day of Ramadan, how fast is it going? subhanallah.

due to my pregnancy Ive not been able to fast which seems soooooooo weird, and obviously feels like my Ramadan is lacking something which it is lol.

anyway, this Ramadan I'm spending it with my little brother thabet, my husbands in Libya and my parents are in Umrah (so wish i was with them).

I'm really proud of my brother, every day without fail, he has his initial iftar at the local masjid (which is at our doorstep literally) he prays maghreb and then comes home for his dinner with me.

he then helps me clear up and will go on the computer until isha time, gets ready and goes to the masjid to pray isha and taraweeh, he has done this every day so far, and was telling me that he loves it mashallah.

yesterday he came home early from taraweeh, looking really upset and as though he has had a fright, i asked him what was wrong and he said one of the men attacked him!!!!!

you can imagine my concern, what happened was apparently a ginger bearded man (my brothers description, i explained that it was probably dyed with henna) always hassles the children, telling them of, shouting at them etc... now my brother is no longer a child in the sense that he runs around the mosque, giggling, fighting and being a child, hes 16 so he understands the etiquette's of mosque manners, this man saw thabet doing tasbeeh and the prayer had already started so he shouted at him to get up and pray.

now apparently all this man does is watch people so thabet in anger said to him 'i will pray, what about you?'

(i did tell thabet that he should not have said that as he needs to take into consideration the mans age and respect him for that at least).

the man became angry with what thabet said, and so pushed him extremely hard so that thabet fell hard against the wall, he then began to hit him, punch, grabbed him, took him outside and strangled thabet before being stopped by the other men.

as you can imagine my brother was really shaken, and i was soooooooo angry, how dare this henna bearded man do this to my brother or anyone else (apparently its a daily occurrence for other kids).

i put on my hijab gear and went to the mosque, (this mosque is a men only mosque, no women allowed, i may have blogged about it in the past, any non-Muslim readers reading this, please be aware that this no-women policy has nothing what so ever to do with Islam, its a mentality gone wrong).

i stood outside, respecting there laws, plus many Libyan men pray in this mosque so i had to bear in mind the fact that i didn't want to be the most talked about female in Manchester by barging into a mosque, so i respectfully waited until my brother brought a mosque committee member outside to speak to me.

lets just say i was diplomatic, polite but extremely to the point and my words without sounding threatening, where actually threatening if that makes sense lol.

the man confirmed that thabet was and has been and is a well behaved member of the congregation and that the henna bearded man usually goes for the disruptive children, this of course angered me more and i reminded him about the prophets dealing with children and how his grandsons used to play on his back when he was in sujud in the mosque and the blessed prophet would stay in sujood until his grandsons had stopped playing, and he never once told them off or attacked children but instead encouraged them to pray in the mosque and use its facilities, so how dare this man abuse the children's trust in mosques and Islam, how dare he?

i warned him that this might not be the end of complaints as my dad is sure to do something about this when he gets back inshallah.

it has already been 3 weeks since we broke up for the summer, my god time flys!!!!

what have i been doing i hear you shout, well not much, i moved back into my bedroom at my parents house, my husbands gone to libya for Ramadan and im staying in the UK, initially i was meant to go with him but as it happens im 5 months preganant and thought it best i stay where its much cooler as with the heat of libya i can see myself going mad as i already have central heating on in me at the moment, so the trip has been postponed till after ive had the munchkin inshallah ;).

i have been browsing the net looking at prices for prams and baby things, believe it or not the pram i had in mind costs around 5oo pounds!!! thats like a deposit on a car... so i searched on ebay for the type i want, found it made an offer much cheaper and won woooohoooo (dont u just luv ebay)

i had to collect it myself, it was near carlisle, so i thought kill a bird with 2 stones and make a day visit out of it.

so here are a few snapshots:love old style cars...
weird replica of a famous gargoyle
carlisle cathedral

some one dedicated this seating to a passed loved one

gargoyles....

inside the cathedral where many tombs, the statues where very life like

nothing exciting to report, yesterday was the last day of school, summer holidays have officially began ;))))))

not that I'm going anywhere this year ;(

i will probably get to know parts of Britain, really amazing places we have here.

ok, so to what i was going to blog about, recently a friend of mine came into work looking really upset, when i asked what the problem was, it turned out that her daughters primary school where causing her a headache.

basically her daughter came home upset because every time she ate her lunch a dinner lady would approach her and tell her off for eating with her right hand and make her instead eat with her left hand, when the girl complained to a teacher the teacher replied 'all children in this primary school eat with there left hands'.

she didn't help the child just re-enforced what the dinner lady said. now apparently this has been going on for some time, and finally the girl told her mother.

my friend rang the school to speak to some one regarding this thinking that there will be a simple and easy solution and explanation, that maybe her daughter was exaggerating or something.

she found that the school was adamant on eating with the left hand, be it using cutlery or eating sandwiches with the hand etc... they where rude and they said things like ' this is a British school, we teach British etiquette's, something your daughter must learn'

they where digging a hole for themselves.

British etiquette's???? don't they know that Britain is made up of many different cultures, different backgrounds, being British has nothing to do with the above, being English maybe but that's different, the funny thing is the primary school is made up of 40% ethnic minorities.

my friend decided to write a letter of complaint, she received a reply a week later, and the reply was brilliant in that she has now a case against them and it will win as no judge will accept it. it was oozing racism and discrimination, they said things like if you don't like it then take your daughter to a faith school, British schools do not bring religion into the education or the establishment (what??? since when was Britain a secular country). and they said something equivalent to if your in Britain then you need to learn British ways???.

well my friend is not one to back off, so they are in for a ride.....

during the May holiday, i went to Bosnia with my husband and parents, we flew to Italy where my dad rented a car and we drove through Italy, Slovenia, Croatia and finally arrived in Bosnia.

every one in my family have been to Bosnia numerous times including my husband, i on the other hand never had the opportunity and every one has been raving about how beautiful it is and how the people are amazing, i always thought that they where exaggerating as i never imagined Bosnia to be like they describe it, but i was pleasantly surprised. its a country that is full of natural beauty subhanallah and i swear whilst you are there you cant help but utter words such as subhnallah, mashallah, Allah akbar as you really do become a witness to the greatness of Allah's creation.

as usual here are some photo samples:

any one care to jump?

water mills, never seen the like of...

martyrs graveyard

Bosnian coffee, they eat the sugar cube and sip the coffee...

wudu area in a mosque in Sarajevo

the rules of the mosque in animated form :0)

minaret from the restaurant.

we prayed isha prayer in this mosque, it was full of roses from the outside, so beautiful mashallah.

i love people watching, we went to a local cafe and whilst my mum and dad shopped in the market, i sat and watched the world go by and took shots of people :)

love the fruit and veggies, they taste real lol

this house played a big role during the war, an old lady owns the house and she allowed for the Bosnians to dig a tunnel from her home to just after the airport as the Serbs had surrounded the city and placed snipers and refused to let any one leave, this tunnel helped many escape.

map of how it looked then

the tunnel...

some of the buildings are still damaged due to the war

king fahad mosque, as the name indicates, Saudi donated the money to build this mosque.

ice cream, summer fruit, wafers, sauce, cream , mmmmmmmm delicious

this is a derelict factory that was used by the united nations, 30,000 Bosnians came to find refuge here, the UN declared the area a 'safe zone' only to hand the men and boys between the ages of 12-60 to the Serbs who literally massacred them.

the men and boys where buried in mass graves, and no one new where the mass graves where, and they are still uncovering them today, in some of the graves, personal items where found on some of the bodies, like the above glasses and case as well as:

a napkin

school books ;(

and a quran.

we then went to the srebrenica cemetery where the bodies that are found in the mass graves, are given a proper funeral with a proper burial, the anniversary is the 11th July, and every year they add more graves of bodies they have found in mass graves, this year they will add 750 graves to the cemetery.

so far 8372 are buried.

whilst we where there, it rained for a good 4-5 days, the clouds where stuck in between the mountains.

meat any one?

we made a friend with a horse that my mum named mardeeyah

the local mosque we prayed in

grilled fish, my dad is the only person who eats fish

at breakfast we where joined by a little friend

we went to a taqeeyah, which is like a Sufi retreat and its also where the source of the river comes from, its meant to be one of the wonders of Europe as no one knows exactly where the source of the river comes from.

one of the rooms had graves.Bosnians are not famous for tea, so at this place they had tea and i jumped at the chance to drink the good old stuff, the Turkish delight was one of the best I've had in a long time.

i love these swirling dervishes, I'm going to try and find a swirling dervish in every country i go to.we went to mostar city where its famous for this bridge

the Croatians bombed mostar city including the bridge, the UN helped to re-build it, probably felt guilty for there hand in the massacre.
anglo this one is for you, i made friends with a Bosnian turtle ;)