Like a Whirling Dervish

Yesterday was cancelled!

I was suffering…

It was all due to a lack of that nectar from heaven.

I got a little blogging done, then at 10am, as arranged, my student arrived to pick me up and take me to Universidade Rural (Federal University in the country) so that we could check his presentation for an upcoming trip to China. Well, it certainly is a well named university, it’s waaaaay out in the rural.

Long drive, about an hour an a half. He took me by a way that I had never been before so, I saw another part of Rio.

Tilápia, edible apparently

We arrived and the university is lovely, green, fresh air, courtyard with pond full of fish (tilápia, which is a kind of perch) and I lamented that I had brought my camera. I have already planned to do that next Friday when we repeat the exercise.

Lixo decided to chase a butterfly around the sitting room while I was napping. I didn’t hear a thing. It wasn’t until I woke to find the floor covered in dirt and my samambaia (fern) on its side that I knew of the mayhem caused by my feline.

A whirling dervish, whirling, it’s what dervishes do

No it’s started to rain again, putting paid to any chance of having an outside class in the praça when my students arrive in 15 minutes, which means I have to run around the house like a whirling dervish and do some housework, or be suitably ashamed.

Do you know about whirling dervishes? From a western point of view dervishes are often associated with evil. They are, however, a devotion to Allah, from Turkey about the 13th century.

It is believed that Rumi heard the dhikr,  “There is no god but Allah (The God)”, spoken by the apprentices beating the gold, and was so filled with happiness that he stretched out both of his arms and started spinning in a circle. With that, the practice of Sama and the dervishes of the Mevlevi Order were born. – Wikipedia

Here’s some whirling dervishes.