One discourse community that I participate in is one about cooking. It’s an Instagram group chat of a few people from a few different states over the United States. We all discuss our passion for cooking and baking and what got us all into cooking in the first place. We share different recipes from our cultures. I’m not advanced in my Palestinian culture’s food, so I share a few recipes to the group chat from my mother’s cooking. They loved my mom’s recipe for making authentic grape leaves. I’m considered a beginner cook, so I usually stick to less complicated foods. However, a few people are advanced and make delicious-looking food. One woman is from China, and she has made soup dumplings called Xiao Long Bao in Mandarin. It seems pretty challenging, but I’ve been thinking about giving it a go. We all show images of the food we make, even if it’s a simple meal of sunny-side-up eggs and toast. 

One other discourse community that I participate in is one of the people who speak about different shows and movies they’ve watched and what they rate the show or movie out of 5 and if they recommend it or not. This group chat is on Twitter and is one of the main reasons I’ve gotten into watching so many different shows. I didn’t enjoy watching shows that consisted of long episodes and seasons for years. But, now it excites me to find a good long show. I’ve watched shows like Breaking Bad, Blacklist, Criminal Minds, and many more because of this group chat.

One last discourse community I participate in is a weekly 3-hour class of Islamic studies. This DC community includes my sister, cousin, a few friends, and my aunt, our teacher. My aunt has been teaching us for about seven years now. She teaches us the history of Islam and the importance of keeping Islam in our hearts to be kind to others and ourselves and close to God. Our classes include learning about different stories that are included in the Quran. We also have been taught stories about the Prophets of Islam, the ones sent by God to bring the message of Islam to the world. We also work on memorizing chapters called ‘surah’ in Arabic.