Sports an integral part of raising ildr

To Hende Abufarie, there is no one in the world like Magic Johnson. ' 'After I first saw him in a Lakers game, I watched any game he played in. I'd like to meet him. When he was sick, I prayed for him. I hope my son can be like him," she said. Abufarie used to pay basketball herself. Her son, Ala, already six feet tall at 14 years old, plays basketball for Edison High School in Huntington Beach. With her son's dreams of college basketball and the NBA, her desire for him to play like the legendary Lakers is not just pa rental puffery. i :) For Abufarie, involvement in sports is part of her strategy for successfully bringing up five children in America. "My mom taught me to follow sports. If kids are busy with snorts, they never have time to think of doing anything bad. It keeps them focused and busy with one thing they love," she said. Hende and her husband, Ahmad, came to the United States from Jordan IS years ago. Abufarie's four sons and one daughter were all born here. Like most first-generation Americans, they have absorbed American culture while retain. They respect our culture and other cultures too," she said. The children speak fluent Arabic and English. They learned Spanish from their babysitter. The children are active in the Garden Grove mosque and have successfully negotiated the social minefield of religious holidays. "On Christmas and Hanukkah, we give our friends gifts and on our holidays, they give us gifts," she said. "We have very nice neighbors of all cultures. We support each other and trust each other." When the Abufaries fast in the daytime during the month of Ramadan, the ninth month in the Muslim year during which the faithful (except for travelers, die sick, nursing mothers or soldiers on the march) may not eat or drink from dawn to sunset, the children's non-Muslim friends are supportive. The store sells pendants with special meanings for Arabs. They import religious pendants such as Allah written in Arabic and gold crucifixes. The Abufaries also sell gold pendants shaped like green almonds, a popular treat in the Middle East, and pendants shaped like eyes with blue irises, a symbol that folklore says will ward off jealousy.