Now one thing I find difficult to get used to are prayer times and what is happening 5 times a day. The most useful iPhone app is iPray and they show all the prayer times for every day of the year, because every day is different:
On 31 May, in Riyadh (it differs from location to location), the first prayer was at 3.34, the second around lunch time, at 11.51, then 15.15, 18.38, and finally 20.08. In mosques (like the one below which I took the picture of whilst sitting in the cab on one of the motorways around Riyadh) the muezzin (something like the Islamic version of a priest) is praying publicly, and from the minarets (the steeples of the mosque) big speaker-phones are broadcasting it. Prayer times last for 30 minutes. And within those 30 minutes every Muslim should pray. I have seen those prayers to be very short, they only last a few minutes and are undertaken on little carpets directing towards Makkah, the birthplace of Prophet Mohammed, God bless him! During those 30 minutes the whole country shuts down - restaurants and shops close, in fact, everything closes and one must wait 30 minutes till everything kicks in again. Personally, I find it very fascinating, even though, admittedly, I find it rather tough, as coincidentally, prayer times happen mostly at times when I am most hungry and supermarkets and restaurants are closed; but one gets used to it. I need to say, during these few weeks in the Middle East I have learned so much. I find it all pretty fascinating.
And look what I found in Bahrain's National Museum - an explanation of the prayer times....
In case it is too small - below the bigger version:
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