10

yesss i finnished the book. A lot happened in the last 165 pages or how ever many it was. Amal has finally made friends with her next door neighbor crabby greek lady. I used to have a crabby lady next door so I could relate. Amal never liked her and finally got to know her better. She learned a lot about the old lady and visits her often. Adam had a birthday party (typical one with drinking and everything) and he invited Amal. He was searching for her all night and when he finally met up with her he finally showed his feelings and tried to kiss her. It's against Amal's religion to have intimte relations before marrage. Which I think is really stupid...she can't even kiss someone unless he's her future husband. She's sixteen for God's sake. I mean ALLAH's sake. K bad Muslim joke. Anyways, after she rejected him it was awkard and he didn't really understand her religion and no longer wanted to like he did before. Which pissed me off. But they became friends again, just not as close. Leila had her seventeenth birthday and Amal and Yasmeen take her out for a surprise dinner. Leila's brother and his girlfriend spot them there and she gets in huge trouble and Amal freaks out and gets really mad at Leila's brother "Sam" that he's out smoking and drinking and with sluts while Leila's mother is only focusing on her intellegent daughter whom she wants married ASAP. Leila ran away and her mother finally realized that she's her only daughter and she shouldn't be so hard on her. Ya think? Another event was when Amal, Eileen, and Simone ditched school and went to the beach and around town. Luckily Mr. Pearce didn't put them to too much punishment and he decited not to tell Amal's parents. Him and all of the other teachers keep noticing the discrimination towards Amal because of her being Muslim and he wants her to see the counselor and stuff. Amal pretty much one the debate for her team and that was pretty exciting. She showed everyone that she could do it and ignored her outer appearance, which felt good to her. In the end Simone and Josh become a couple, Leila's mom is better, and Amal feels true to herself. Overall it was a pretty good book and I would suggest it to most girls.

9

So... I'm on page 195 and I need to get a move on if I'm going to finnish 165 pages by friday. Not to worry, I will.
I thought this was rediculous: (page 139)
"Hey, girls, is my hair OK?"
"Yes, Yasmeen."
"Any frizz?"
"No, Yasmeen."
"Is it straight?"
"We can smell the iron aid from here, Yasmeen."
"You would too- I spent two hours on the ironing board last night," she says.
"How about my scarf?" I ask.
"It's fine," Leila says.
"Is the front curve, OK? I mean, are there any dents in the shape? Is it too tight? Are my cheeks squashed up so my face looks fat?" I take a mirror out and scrutinize my veil.
"It's perfect," Yasmeen says. "Quit panicking."
"You have hair static."
"What? Where? Give me the mirror!"

REDICULOUS! How can these girls obsess over their looks SO much?!
Things are getting better between Amal and Adam. Their friendship is growing and he is getting a lot more comfortable with her hijab and talking to her about it. So far, I've leared a TON about the Muslim religion and culture and also life in Australia. I guess that Muslims belive in Jesus... sort of. They belive that he was one of the mightiest prophets of god, and that he preformed miracles with God's permission.

Amal is still really worried about what people are thinking about her hijab. One lady on the bus in the morning was really nice to her and complimented her on her "lovely shawl" and Amal was really touched. The lady on the bus talked about how she used to be envious of the girls who wore the shawls because of the pretty colors of them and how they always brought exotic food to lunch and her and her friends only had boring turkey sandwiches. This was a totally different side to seeing the Muslim cluture than previously in the book. On the bus the bus driver glared at Amal and turned up the radio when they were talking about the problems with all of the Muslims. I thought that was very rude of him. The nice bus lady friend yelled at him and told him to turn it down though :)

Lately Uncle Joe has been introducing his family to a lot of his friends and aquantences. He always is raving about how "broad-minded" his family is for socializing with people who are outside the Arabic community. (pg 185) "We live in Australia. So we should assimilate and act like Austrailians. How can we be accepted and fit in if we are still thinking about Palestine and speaking in Arabic? Multiculturalism is a joke. We need to mix more. Make friends outside our own community. Look at my family. We're not stuckin Palestinian or Egyptian or Turkish ghettos. WE're part of the wider community. Our friends, our colleagues, they're all average Austrailans."

8

Now I've read up to page 134. A lot of what I read was about Amal and Simone talking to Josh and Adam. Amal likes Adam and hopes he likes her, too. Josh likes Simone and she also likes him back. They conciter those two boys in their "group" now because the guys SOMETIMES sit by them at lunch and talk to them and things like that. Amal is all self consous about everything when Adam is around because she wants to make a good impression for herself. On page 124 she describes the things that are running through her head after the bell rings:
"1. Is Adam going to join us? Is Adam going to join us? Is Adam going to join us? What is the purpose of living if Adam isn't going to join us?
2. Do I have time to put some lip gloss o, curl my eyelashes, and make it to the football field, and if I do the aforementioned, do I risk him alreadying having gone to the field, not seeing me there, and walking off?
3. What if I'm eating my sandwich and he happens to join us right at the moment I'm taking a huge chunk out of it? What if there's food stuck in my teeth?"
AMAL IS OBSESSIVE!
She luckily gets to have a deep conversation with Adam at the end though. It was mostly about his family life (his mom left him when he was seven and now he's living with his dad and Charlene) and Amal listens and they have good conversation. Amal and Adam are both only children and seem to have things in common with their parents.

7

I'm on page 121 now. I think that this is a very boring part of the book. Amal is talking about her family life and all that stuff. Her aunt, uncle, and cousins. Her aunt and uncle are a lot different than her immediate family because they are really strange and aren't religious at all. They also bleach their hair and all that good stuff. Her cousins seem really annoying... I got annoyed just reading about them. Amal seems to like her cousin Samantha, though. I think that she sounds like she thinks she is cool. She always is smoking, talking about her boyfriend, and sneaking around to be with him when her parents think she is somewhere else. After the family chapter, Amal was with her friends Yasmeen and her Aunt Cassandra and Uncle Tariq. Cassandra and Tariq aren't really related to her, though. In Arabic culture most adults who are family friends are addressed as aunts and uncles. I'm thinking its one of those cases where someone just has that guy who they call uncle and always have, but he's not. Everyone has one of those. The last part of the book I have read so far was about Amal washing her feet to do her "wuduh" before prayer during lunch in the girls' bathroom. That sounds really strange to me. Tia (the mean girl) and Rita Mason (she's mean too) walk into the bathroom and Amal tries to ignore them. They asked what she was doing and she asked "what does it look like?". The girls were being big snots to eachother and it was dumb. If I were Amal I would have been nice to the girl and not pretended I was too cool for her while I was praying. The book is still good but I don't really like this part. THE END.

6

I'm on page100 now...wooo. I found some important quotes:

"I've predicted all the smartass comments people can throw at me. Diaper-head, towel-head, camel jockey, and all the rest. Yeah, I'm scared. OK, there, happy? I'm petrified. I walked into my classroom and I wanted to throw up from how nervous I was. But this decision, it's coming from my heart. I can't explain or rationalize it. Ok, I'm doing it because I belive it's my duty and and defines me as a Muslim female but it's not as...I don't know how to put it...it's more than just that."-pg 52

(I thought that quote told a lot about how Amal is feeling about her hijab and even though she seems confident with her decision to wear it, she is petrified of what people will think of her.)

"'Everyone's so skinny. Look at those three girls standing over there. They look likethey've had a good binge day. Three peas and half a chili pepper.' She fiddles self-consciously with her top, pulling it down and adjusting her pants."-pg 84

(I thought that this quote showed a lot about how Amal and her friends Eileen and Simone see other girls and how badly they must feel about themselves to lack that much confidence. I feel bad for them because I'm sure they have nothing to be ashamed of.)

After a few days of bravely wearing her hijab to school she finally got some comments from classmates insted of just stares. They asked her what was the deal with the thing on her head, if she could swim, shower, etc. She gives smart comments such as "I'm going bald, I'm on the advanced hair plan." I thought those were funny.

tHATS MY sTORY.

5

hello..so yeah I read more of my book today...here's what went down:
Amal wore her hijab to the mall when she went with her mom to get cloth for new hijabs because she has decited to go along with her plan of wearin it full-time. When she was there, she got a lot of stares and looks and some comments, which she is hurt by, but can still handle it. In the food court, she saw some other women with hijabs on and she suddenly felt a strong connection to them. She felt really pure and true to her religion and they all smiled at eachother when she walked by, which made her feel really good about herself. When Amal was praying with her family in the morning when she was wearing her hijab she felt a new sense of her religion and felt really spiritual and calm.
Tia Tamos, Claire Foster, and Rita Mason all gave Amal crap when she first wore her hijab to school on the first day of the new semester. They would give her up-downs and snicker to one another. Amal was hurt by that, but I think that she felt worse when her crush, Adam, wouldnt even awknowledge her at school. She talked about how Adam is all sporty and pretty popular and how cute he was, despite of his slight unibrow and zits or something. Which is gross, but whatever floats her boat. I guess that everyone at her school knows that Adam wants to be a doctor when he grows up, so that means that he has to do good in all of his classes.
There was a lot of controvercy with her principal and letting Amal wear her hijab to school. Her new school she attends is very strict about uniform and equality between students and Amal's religion attire didn't fit into her school. She is the only one who wears it (how brave would you have to be to do that) and it was a big problem for a while. I thought that was really stupid because it's a part of a student's religion not a threat to the school. I thougtht that the principal was really rude to question if she could wear it or not. That's good that she let her, though.
K DONE.

4

Hey. So I read more today and I'm now on page twenty nine. From what I read, I learned a lot more about the main character. I guess she is very fashionable, loves to shop,and speaks some Arabic words with her family. When she was younger she used to think her name was "Yaamal" because her parents say "ya" in front of her name, like "Oh Amal...". I thought that was weird haha. Some of Amal's friends were introduced and she is very nervous about what people will think when she decides to wear the hijab. The main event in what I read today was when she told her parents that she was thinking about wearing the hijab full-time. She expected them to be very proud of her and be happy that she is becoming more religious. Their reaction shocked her and made her very defensive. Amal's parents told her that they were worried that she wouldn't fit into her new school with it on. It kind of made me mad that they said that because I think parents should always be supportive of their child no matter what.
Love.