Tulsa Mosque

Yesterday evening, I met with three of the other four Oklahoma teachers traveling with me to Indonesia. Jeanne Hart, a middle school math teacher in Tulsa had arranged for the educational director of Tulsa's Islamic Society (aka "mosque") to guide us in a cultural study of Islamic customs; the director had four college students from Indonesia join us to help make sure the conversation was relevant and useful for our upcoming trip with the Teachers for Global Classrooms program.

WOW, what an enjoyable gathering this was. We had a great conversation that flowed so freely that the meeting I had assumed would be about an hour in length actually lasted over two and a half hours. And then the four of us teachers visited outside the mosque for another half hour about other trip logistics.

This was my first time inside of a mosque and, while we didn't actually tour the complex, this visit has helped to ease any potential anxiety that I might have for the Ramadan timeframe visit to Indonesia. Wow! Another remote road has been roamed and I'm still in Oklahoma.

Another "perk" of this specific blog posting is that it is my first experiment using my Blogger app on my iPhone. Let's see how well it ends up looking.