This weekend the Festival of Eid al-Adha is celebrated by Muslims here in Dhaka, and worldwide, to commemorate the willingness of Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac as an act of obedience to God.
Eid al-Adha is the latter of the two Eid festivals here, as the first  one is much like our Christmas and is preceded by the 40 days of Ramadan.
The festival will last three days or more, and occurs the day after the pilgrims conduction Hajj (the annual pilgrimage to Mecca), descend from Mount Arafat.

Tradition
All Muslims are expected to wear their finest clothing while performing the Eid prayer, which occurs in a large congregation or  mosque.  Then there is a sacrifice performed on the best household or bought animal that is most likely sheep and goats, but the rich can afford camels, cows and horses.
The sacrifices are done in the streets throughout Dhaka and there is blood drained out everywhere.  Being that it is not rain season, the blood stays on the street for weeks.  I know it is hard for you to picture this, and I will post some censored photos after this weekend.
The meat from the animals is chopped up and distributed to everyone,  it is common to see people walking down the street with their hands and bags covered in blood as they pick up and distribute sacrificed meat.

I can't say that I am really excited about this since the number of goats and sheep tied to trees in front of houses is increasing and they are very cute... I will be sure to post my thoughts on it after the event!

Until then, report writing continues....

On a light note!  My roommate has discovered Strawberry syrrup at the grocery store... it tastes a bit funny and is highly diluted... but we decided that when we were done reports we would have a celebration of our own which will include "italian sodas" since we have also discovered small cans of soda water....

Just felt like sharing!  I was pretty excited.  :)   I am freezing today... it's only + 25C out....

In Christ,

Corinne