We've finally set our schedule for our first trip outside Tehran. We're going to take a 2 day trip to Kashan (Kaa-shaan), which is south of Tehran. We leave the day after tomorrow. There are a TON of ancient ruins there from the Sassanid period, and my cousin, who has her masters degree in restoration of ancient structures and ancient history is going to be our tour guide! I'm so stoked. She has totally become my new best friend and all I do is sit around and pick her brain. I'm going to take my camera and hopefully will be able to put up pictures since my cousin (not the one who's going to take us around Kashan) has DSL at her house.
Today, as we were out driving, I kept seeing green banners and people with green tied around their wrists and necks. After a while, I decided to ask about them. It turns out the leading leftist candidate (Mousavi) has adopted this color as his own and his supporters wear it around to show support. One of my other cousins says the price of green fabric has gone up because of it! Isn't that funny? It's also peculiar that for the other candidates, I've maybe seen one or two posters, but Mousavi is EVERYWHERE.
&hugs,
Mona
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Thursday, May 28, 2009
Hi all,
Sorry I haven't updated in a while. The past few days haven't really been particularly fascinating. I went out rug shopping with my cousin, which was entertaining if nothing else for the loud discussion/haggling that went on after we selected which one to purchase. I was discussing with my cousin on the way back and she flat out laughed at me when she asked me if they haggle in America and I told her that for day to day things we don't.
That got me thinking about America so I had a poptart to feel better.
Besides that, we mostly stay at home and people come for didani, or visiting. Last night, when my dad's cousin came to see us, his son mentioned an ice cream place by the name of Coldstone. Naturally, Sara and I (Misha was sleeping) freaked out and decided the next day we HAD to go. Today, after dinner, which by the way was served at 10pm, we went out to find Coldstones. We found it, and from the outside, it looked like a Coldstone, it smelled like a Coldstone, the cups were the same as a Coldstone, but much to our dismay, it was not a real Coldstones. The ice cream was weird (more like a gelato) and they didn't have cookie dough, which was a total downer.
Iranians, I have decided, are really good at copying things. I shouldn't say good. They try really hard, but then they have things like disco balls outside a kabob stand, or a t-shirt says "Valea Girl", which I think should say "Valley Girl" which I don't even think they would wear if they understood what it said or what it meant. Everyone here takes English in high school, but it doesn't really seem to have done much good. Nobody understands us when we speak English.
A lot of people here are also preoccupied with appearance. A lot of women wear makeup and have very poofy bangs under their loosely tied scarves and a lot of guys wax their chests and put a lot of gel in their hair. Very euro and metro looking. Men and women only see each other on the street or outside somewhere else. I mean, base on this, I guess they only have appearance to judge others on. A faulty system if you ask me, but given the way things work here where people of opposite genders can't even touch each other, go figure.
Phil and anyone else who is politic-y, you'd be excited to know that even here they have Gallup polls that are published. As the election is coming up in about 15-6 days, they've started releasing them every couple days or so. It's so similar to America the way things are going with the election. The villages and less educated people want four more years of the same crap, while those who are educated want the other candidate. The only difference here is the opponent to Ahmadinejad is a socialist. All the young people and college age people LOVE MirHossein Moussavi, who is the socialist. He, much like Obama, has really mobilized the young people base. He's got people wearing his color (green) on armbands and people have stickers and placards and pictures on their cars . It made me reminisce. I was telling some people about how I worked for Obama and they said, "Why aren't you out on the street right now campaigning?" I said, "Because I tried really hard to get into college and I'm not about to throw that away and possibly get thrown in prison."
I also got some books for my project that I want to do. Unfortunately, they aren't books written by Iranians. They are all books that were translated from other languages into Farsi, which throws my plan through a loop. No problems, though. I talked to one of my cousins and she's going to help me track down the books that I actually want. We shall see what happens. I'm here for another 54 days or so. I have high hopes.
&hugs,
Mona
Sorry I haven't updated in a while. The past few days haven't really been particularly fascinating. I went out rug shopping with my cousin, which was entertaining if nothing else for the loud discussion/haggling that went on after we selected which one to purchase. I was discussing with my cousin on the way back and she flat out laughed at me when she asked me if they haggle in America and I told her that for day to day things we don't.
That got me thinking about America so I had a poptart to feel better.
Besides that, we mostly stay at home and people come for didani, or visiting. Last night, when my dad's cousin came to see us, his son mentioned an ice cream place by the name of Coldstone. Naturally, Sara and I (Misha was sleeping) freaked out and decided the next day we HAD to go. Today, after dinner, which by the way was served at 10pm, we went out to find Coldstones. We found it, and from the outside, it looked like a Coldstone, it smelled like a Coldstone, the cups were the same as a Coldstone, but much to our dismay, it was not a real Coldstones. The ice cream was weird (more like a gelato) and they didn't have cookie dough, which was a total downer.
Iranians, I have decided, are really good at copying things. I shouldn't say good. They try really hard, but then they have things like disco balls outside a kabob stand, or a t-shirt says "Valea Girl", which I think should say "Valley Girl" which I don't even think they would wear if they understood what it said or what it meant. Everyone here takes English in high school, but it doesn't really seem to have done much good. Nobody understands us when we speak English.
A lot of people here are also preoccupied with appearance. A lot of women wear makeup and have very poofy bangs under their loosely tied scarves and a lot of guys wax their chests and put a lot of gel in their hair. Very euro and metro looking. Men and women only see each other on the street or outside somewhere else. I mean, base on this, I guess they only have appearance to judge others on. A faulty system if you ask me, but given the way things work here where people of opposite genders can't even touch each other, go figure.
Phil and anyone else who is politic-y, you'd be excited to know that even here they have Gallup polls that are published. As the election is coming up in about 15-6 days, they've started releasing them every couple days or so. It's so similar to America the way things are going with the election. The villages and less educated people want four more years of the same crap, while those who are educated want the other candidate. The only difference here is the opponent to Ahmadinejad is a socialist. All the young people and college age people LOVE MirHossein Moussavi, who is the socialist. He, much like Obama, has really mobilized the young people base. He's got people wearing his color (green) on armbands and people have stickers and placards and pictures on their cars . It made me reminisce. I was telling some people about how I worked for Obama and they said, "Why aren't you out on the street right now campaigning?" I said, "Because I tried really hard to get into college and I'm not about to throw that away and possibly get thrown in prison."
I also got some books for my project that I want to do. Unfortunately, they aren't books written by Iranians. They are all books that were translated from other languages into Farsi, which throws my plan through a loop. No problems, though. I talked to one of my cousins and she's going to help me track down the books that I actually want. We shall see what happens. I'm here for another 54 days or so. I have high hopes.
&hugs,
Mona
Sunday, May 24, 2009
The longest day...ever.
Ah, safely in Iran. All ten fingers, all ten toes. Yay!
My travels up to this point have been quite exciting, actually. We almost missed the cutoff for checking our ten suitcases at O'Hare because we were packing suitcases till literally 5 minutes before we left, but we made it just fine. Flight went off without any problems, (Lufthansa is great, I highly recommend), but when we landed, again the Ghadiri procrastination gene reared it's ugly head. As we left so close to school ending, none of us had a chance to really do good research about Germany and Frankfurt and the surrounding area. We always schedule an 8-12 hour layover in whatever country we travel through to get to Iran so we can go wander around and have some fun. My mom had a student this past semester from Germany, and her student recommended that instead of staying in Frankfurt, we should travel to Heidelberg, which is an hour and a half train ride south of Frankfurt. It was a good recommendation, but we had some issues with figuring out tickets and such. This is where Sara saved the day. Her four years of German were basically the only reason we didn't end up getting stuck in the airport. Yes, people in Germany can speak English, but not all of them, and not all of them very well. It wasn't like in Holland or Switzerland where everyone we talked to basically spoke English. Anyways, we got on the train to Heidelberg at around 7:50am to begin our ziptour of Heidelberg.
I really loved the architecture of the houses we passed as we were on the train. There were TONS of solar panels on a good number of houses as we were passing them in the countryside. I also did not expect most of the houses to have terracotta shingles—I have no idea why I expected them to have roofs more similar to ones in the US. Anyways, I'm getting sidetracked. We arrived in Heidelberg around 9:30. I should point out at this time, none of us had really slept on the 8 hour plane ride from Chicago, and it was the wee hours of the morning at this point in our journey. We realized on the train that we were pulling our first family all-nighter. Made me miss Grinnell. What this family all-nighter meant was a grumpy family for part of the morning, but in the long run, it paid off because my sleep schedule now that I'm in Iran is all fixed already. Internet here is dialup for now so I am not going to even try to upload pictures. Heidelberg, however, is beautiful. The castle is really awesome and old and ruin-y and has a BILLION stairs to get up to it because we didn't want to pay the 5 euro for a round trip ride up, and the Alstadt (old city) is quite picturesque. Sara had a ball in Bismarkplatz because all the parties had fliers out so of course she had to go and talk to each one and get all their pamphlets. She then proceeded to geek out over everyone. I have no recollection regarding our return train to Frankfurt because I passed out for most of the ride. What I do remember was people watching on the train. I was watching this mother and three children, and I was listening to the language they were speak and they were speaking Kurdish! It was really cool.
Now to the Iran part. I zonked out on the plane there to Tehran and we flew into the new airport, surprisingly named Imam Khomeini International Airport, arriving at 1:30am. It was really nice. A significant contingent of our family met us at the airport and the second we walked out of customs I was swathed in hugs and kisses and flowers. Everyone was so excited to see me, so my ego is currently nicely fluffed. I promptly fell asleep when I crawled into bed around 3:30ish. My first full day in Iran, I had fresh Iranian bread with cream and peanut butter and I never want to eat American food that's not peanutbutter ever again. Misha and I went out with my uncle and cousin shopping to their sort of equivalent of a Dominicks but is everywhere like walmart and bought the ugliest trash can ever it has what we have dubbed "the Snamster" because its like this ugly squirrel thing that looks more like a hamster and with a snail shell behind it. By the time we were back a small army of people had congregated here to say hello. I love it here. It's just amazing. I had a conversation with my cousin about ancient cultures and anthropology and totally geeked out. All the worry I had about my Farsi skills horribly lacking, and here I am talking about anthropological theory with my cousin. It was just stellar. I love Iran. The food, the people, the traffic and pollution not so much, but I am so happy I'm here.
I'll attempt to update about things sometime in the next couple days. Love you all dearly.
&hugs,
Mona
My travels up to this point have been quite exciting, actually. We almost missed the cutoff for checking our ten suitcases at O'Hare because we were packing suitcases till literally 5 minutes before we left, but we made it just fine. Flight went off without any problems, (Lufthansa is great, I highly recommend), but when we landed, again the Ghadiri procrastination gene reared it's ugly head. As we left so close to school ending, none of us had a chance to really do good research about Germany and Frankfurt and the surrounding area. We always schedule an 8-12 hour layover in whatever country we travel through to get to Iran so we can go wander around and have some fun. My mom had a student this past semester from Germany, and her student recommended that instead of staying in Frankfurt, we should travel to Heidelberg, which is an hour and a half train ride south of Frankfurt. It was a good recommendation, but we had some issues with figuring out tickets and such. This is where Sara saved the day. Her four years of German were basically the only reason we didn't end up getting stuck in the airport. Yes, people in Germany can speak English, but not all of them, and not all of them very well. It wasn't like in Holland or Switzerland where everyone we talked to basically spoke English. Anyways, we got on the train to Heidelberg at around 7:50am to begin our ziptour of Heidelberg.
I really loved the architecture of the houses we passed as we were on the train. There were TONS of solar panels on a good number of houses as we were passing them in the countryside. I also did not expect most of the houses to have terracotta shingles—I have no idea why I expected them to have roofs more similar to ones in the US. Anyways, I'm getting sidetracked. We arrived in Heidelberg around 9:30. I should point out at this time, none of us had really slept on the 8 hour plane ride from Chicago, and it was the wee hours of the morning at this point in our journey. We realized on the train that we were pulling our first family all-nighter. Made me miss Grinnell. What this family all-nighter meant was a grumpy family for part of the morning, but in the long run, it paid off because my sleep schedule now that I'm in Iran is all fixed already. Internet here is dialup for now so I am not going to even try to upload pictures. Heidelberg, however, is beautiful. The castle is really awesome and old and ruin-y and has a BILLION stairs to get up to it because we didn't want to pay the 5 euro for a round trip ride up, and the Alstadt (old city) is quite picturesque. Sara had a ball in Bismarkplatz because all the parties had fliers out so of course she had to go and talk to each one and get all their pamphlets. She then proceeded to geek out over everyone. I have no recollection regarding our return train to Frankfurt because I passed out for most of the ride. What I do remember was people watching on the train. I was watching this mother and three children, and I was listening to the language they were speak and they were speaking Kurdish! It was really cool.
Now to the Iran part. I zonked out on the plane there to Tehran and we flew into the new airport, surprisingly named Imam Khomeini International Airport, arriving at 1:30am. It was really nice. A significant contingent of our family met us at the airport and the second we walked out of customs I was swathed in hugs and kisses and flowers. Everyone was so excited to see me, so my ego is currently nicely fluffed. I promptly fell asleep when I crawled into bed around 3:30ish. My first full day in Iran, I had fresh Iranian bread with cream and peanut butter and I never want to eat American food that's not peanutbutter ever again. Misha and I went out with my uncle and cousin shopping to their sort of equivalent of a Dominicks but is everywhere like walmart and bought the ugliest trash can ever it has what we have dubbed "the Snamster" because its like this ugly squirrel thing that looks more like a hamster and with a snail shell behind it. By the time we were back a small army of people had congregated here to say hello. I love it here. It's just amazing. I had a conversation with my cousin about ancient cultures and anthropology and totally geeked out. All the worry I had about my Farsi skills horribly lacking, and here I am talking about anthropological theory with my cousin. It was just stellar. I love Iran. The food, the people, the traffic and pollution not so much, but I am so happy I'm here.
I'll attempt to update about things sometime in the next couple days. Love you all dearly.
&hugs,
Mona
Thursday, May 21, 2009
Today's the Day
*deep breaths*
It's semi-aggravating explaining every single time that I'm going to Iran that no, I will not get murdered or thrown in prison. No, no one will beat me. No, there won't be bombs going off when I get there.
People have such strange misconceptions about places they don't know.
On a slightly happier note,
I'm ready for adventure. I'm ready to see my extended family. I'm ready for something (semi)fresh.
I'll miss you all! Here's hoping for a blog update by Sunday or Monday at the latest. Hopefully I'll have internet access set up by then and can alert you all to my survival.
Goodbye American TV, pop culture, music, facebook, TFLN, FML, and last but not least, [plans].
&hugs,
Mona
It's semi-aggravating explaining every single time that I'm going to Iran that no, I will not get murdered or thrown in prison. No, no one will beat me. No, there won't be bombs going off when I get there.
People have such strange misconceptions about places they don't know.
On a slightly happier note,
I'm ready for adventure. I'm ready to see my extended family. I'm ready for something (semi)fresh.
I'll miss you all! Here's hoping for a blog update by Sunday or Monday at the latest. Hopefully I'll have internet access set up by then and can alert you all to my survival.
Goodbye American TV, pop culture, music, facebook, TFLN, FML, and last but not least, [plans].
&hugs,
Mona
Sunday, May 17, 2009
My first post
I've decided that I'm going to be keeping a blog while I'm abroad in Iran this summer. I don't know how often I'll be able to update, but I'm going to do my darndest to keep you all in the loop as I make my way around Iran, spending time with family, and collecting data for my research. My flight is on Friday the 22nd of May, so from now until then I will be frantically doing laundry and scrambling to get everything I need that I can't get in Iran (i.e. pants that fit and peanut butter) and attempting to see all my home friends before I go.
&hugs,
Mona
&hugs,
Mona
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