A Trip to the "Wild"

November 08, 2006  7:00

Everybody in class was excited about our trip to the Muslim mosque. Well, I'm neither excited nor interested because I'm sure I'd see things that I do not want to see. The exciting thing about this trip is that we're going on a car pool. My friend, Joyce, will be driving us to the mosque. I'm curious on how she drives, since she'd only had her driving lessons last summer. Ah yes, our professor will be driving his car too.

Our trip is scheduled at 14:00.


Same day 14:00

"Where are the others?" Our professor asked as he came to our assembly place at the Brother Andrew Hall lobby. "Sir, we do not know. The others do not seem to know that we'll be meeting here." I said. Well, we had no choice but to sit in the car and wait for the others to come.

*tick* *tick* *tick*

15 minutes had passed...
Still, there are some of my classmates who had not yet arrived. Joyce is becoming more and more impatient with each passing second. Even the others in the car are starting to complain, including me. Sitting in Joyce's car are Ira, Lareina, Jessica, and I.

Another 15 minutes had passed...
Finally, our professor started his car engine and we were on our way to the mosque. Since its rush hour, there was quite heavy traffic, with our professor's car ahead consistently changing lanes and stopping to wait for the others' cars to catch up.

After 10-15 minutes, we finally arrived at the mosque.
The surrounding was terrible...like an abondoned marketplace with fierceful looking people everywhere :S So this is how a Muslim place looks like...dirty and scary. Its a total stranger place to me. I've never been to anywhere place like that and I didn't even know that Manila has a place like  that. Oh my God! All the people in there were looking at us like they've seen aliens emerging from the UFOs. To tell the truth, I'm really scared. Never had I had this bad a feeling before. I feel so insecure, I feel that something bad might just happen to all of us there; maybe its because the impression I had on Muslims---scary, violent, aggressive, and wild that gave me such wild imaginations :D

The speaker welcomed us and started telling us about the Islamic religion. He started telling us stories about Allah and the prophets. O...K... I was like "Whatever...I don't care a thing about what you say. Jesus is not just a prophet, He's the one and only God." Everything the speaker told us sounded so ridiculous. When the time for their mass came at 15:00,we were allowed to stand outside the mosque and watch them pray inside the room.

I noticed something, no women inside the prayer room. The women were off-limits, even the women visitors. DISCRIMINATION!!! Oh well...the Muslims are well-known for that. But when one of my classmates asked the speaker about the women being not allowed in the prayer room, his answer was shocking and ridiculous at the same time. He said it is because that the Muslim women are regarded as jewels, once they break, the men can never put it back together again. Come one, who would believe that kind of cock-and-bull story? /:) He also said that there is a secluded place for the women to pray. What the hell? What a stupid excuse!

Damn it! I'm getting really really bored and irritated, especially when this talkative classmate of mine who keeps asking nonsense questions that might even offend the Muslims. In the end, all of our classmates were asking her to stop, thats when she stopped. Thank goodness, we were finally able to leave that hellish place. 

Now, we have to face the problem of the possibility of getting lost on our way home because our "caring" professor left us in the mosque and returned to the university himself :S Anyway, thanks to the strangers that we asked, we managed to find our way back.

Whew! That was one tideous day. I was already very very sleepy when I got home. Got to slept early at 23:00 after I finished doing some reading for my English research class. I also got to chat with my ever-so-hard-to-catch Swedish online friend on msn haha Lucky me! 


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So that's it for today. See ya guys next time! Bye :D