who's the new kid?

so i've been trying to figure out which of the smattering of islamic centers near my house will be "my" islamic center-- the islamic center of the little town i'm in, the other islamic center of the little town i'm in, the islamic center of the little part of the city i'm in, or the islamic center of the city i'm in...

the little town one is very near my house, but there's no building just yet-- people are praying in a conference room in a little motel down the street on little plastic liners, which is fine, but when i got there i was the only woman there for the longest time and kept self-consciously scooting further and further to the back of the room until i was jostling the little plastic potted plant in the corner. (i would've hid behind it if i could.) a nice man brought me a rug to pray on and put another one next to it and pretty soon another woman came in to pray-- i could have hugged her and cried in relief-- but we remained the only two there. being new, i already feel so self-conscious-- i'm sure i'm doing something (if not everything) wrong and spend most of my time trying not to do anything at all and hoping that no one will notice i'm there at all.

the little part of the city one is about five miles away. it's where i took Shahada and will always be special to me. it's where a nice lady fixed my scarf for me and taught me how to say the Shahada in Arabic and gave me a copy of the Quran and her cell phone number. um, i've never been back.

the other islamic center of the little town i'm in has its own building; it's painted like it has arches and has its name in big letters on the walls. i've driven over there a couple of times at my best guess as to prayer time and have never seen the doors open or anyone nearby.

but the islamic center for my city has a sunday course, so i drove over there. still haven't figured out where you're supposed to park, but there's a big building and the doors are open when i get there, and the talks are interesting and practical and geared for english-speaking newcomers. last week, one of the men (kind of out of nowhere) asked how to perform salat when you're still kind of learning salat (very, very relevant for me, as i've still got parts that i haven't memorized phonetically) and the speaker sort of dropped everything and told us to just do what we could, substitute "subhan'Allah" for the parts we forgot, and just keep going. the next speaker tried to hit the highlights of the Prophet's (peace be upon him) life in the hour she'd been given and did great job. (not having been brought up on these stories, i have to learn them.) when we prayed, a nice lady shooed me up next to her and i sort of forgot about whether i was embarassing anyone and it was just like being at home, just me and God and only the usual distractions pestering me while i prayed.