Muslim Study Abroad: From Tropical to Four-Seasons Muslim Minority Country

<p>While I don&rsquo;t consider myself a perfectly practising Muslim, I do strive to uphold certain pillars of faith, such as the five daily prayers.</p> <p>Growing up in a Muslim-majority country, I got used to having prayer spaces practically on every building floor &mdash; talk about convenience. However, when I studied abroad, I was in for a surprise as it became quite challenging to keep up with prayer times and find a suitable place to pray. After a few months, I started adapting to the new situation. Let me share the experiences and solutions I discovered along the way.</p> <h1>Prayer times largely vary by season.</h1> <p>Prayer times undergo significant changes with the seasons, which might seem obvious to some, but it was quite a revelation for me coming from a place with perpetual summer.</p> <p>For example, in New York, Maghrib prayer times change dramatically between summer and winter. In the summer, it&rsquo;s fashionably late, around 8:30 PM or even later. But in the winter, it&rsquo;s an early bird, showing up at 4:30 PM to 5:30 PM. Back home, for more than a few decades, I am getting used to having Magbribh consistently around 6 pm-ish. Can you imagine the difference?</p> <h2><strong>Solutions</strong></h2> <p>As for solutions, I found it handy to place a widget on my lock screen to keep track of prayer times, and I rely on the&nbsp;<a href="https://quranmajeed.com/" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">QuranMajeed</a>&nbsp;app for this purpose.</p> <p><a href="https://medium.com/@ninda-write/muslim-study-abroad-from-tropical-to-four-seasons-muslim-minority-country-50abb30dcc0e"><strong>Click Here</strong></a></p>