New teacher and Persian dinner

Monday July 5
Dan and I went to the bazar and talked about theology/philosophy at 11 and picked up some dried fruit and nuts to take to Atepha’s house at 4. She had invited all the Flagship kids over to her apartment to cook Iranian food and hang out for the evening. It was a really nice time- we talked mostly in Persian, at least when she could hear us, and then in English for the time when we were in a different room then her, just like being at school! We made salad shirazi, fruit salad, moustakhiar, spagetti and chicken “sandwiches” which were made of pita like bread rolled up with shredded chicken inside. It was really nice to have some Persian food, it was soo good and strangely comforting at the same time.
We also met the new teacher who came over from the States to take one of our classes and a few classes from the other programs. Atepha was just overloaded with all of the classes that she had so they asked for another teacher to come over and help her out with her workload. We were all afraid that we were going to get a worse teacher, because Atepha is really awesome and we like her a lot, but the new teacher turned out to be Meisam, the man who did all of our OPI tests back in February before we came here. I’m really glad that we got to hang out with him outside of class and before he started teaching us because I got comfortable around him. When I first learned that he was the guy coming to be the new teacher, the same guy that did our OPIs, I immediately thought it was going to be really awkward just because my OPI was so uncomfortable over the phone. And I sounded like a complete idiot. That of course didn’t help either. But he came to dinner and we talked to him and he is actually a really awesome guy so I’m excited to have class with him tomorrow morning.

Tuesday July 6
Back to class today after our second long weekend in a row. Atepha pushed back our homework while we were at her house last night so that everyone could go smoke hooka after dinner. One of the benefits of hanging out with your teachers outside of school…!
Today was our long day of class again, four hours of straight Farsi and Tajik. This shouldn’t be particularly difficult but I think that since we had another long weekend it was harder because we weren’t used to being in class. I was also really tired from getting up early so I was practically falling asleep during the second hour of Tajik.

Wednesday July 7
For lunch we went to Deli Darbar, the less expensive Indian restaurant on Rudaki again. I was afraid to try anything else so I got the same thing as last time, the spinach vegetarian dish with cheese. This time I got garlic bread and rice to go with it and then ice cream for dessert. So good! It was one of the more expensive lunches I have had here. And by expensive I mean it was almost 10 dollars instead of less than 5. It is awesome how inexpensive living here is but also slightly sad at the same time. But the country is definitely growing, the economy getting bigger and stronger, etc. Talking to Jake who was here as a student about 4 or 5 years ago, he said the differences between now and back then are amazing. I think that would be really cool- to move somewhere not very advanced, a country just getting started, and then live there for a while to watch it grow. And because Jake is an American, he is tied to Tajikistan because this is where his job is, but not permanently so. He has another home back in the States. I think that I could maybe do something like that, be a RD in another country, if I had my family here (like his wife lives here with him) but I don’t think I could do some thing like that on my own. Two months is going to be long enough for me. I’m definitely going to be ready to go home.

Thursday July 8
Emlyn’s birthday is today, he is one of the guys in the Eurasia program who is going to be staying the full 8 weeks with us while the kids from Cali are going home after 6 weeks. Jake got another cake from the Turkish restaurant, Merve, and brought it in to the office so we all gathered around, sang happy birthday in Farsi, and then divided up the cake.
Today also marks the one month mark. As of 3:30 this morning, we have been here for exactly one month. One month and change left to go! Everyone told me how fast the time would go. I didn’t exactly believe them but their predictions have come true. Time has flown by and will hopefully continue to do so.
Atepha was sick today so she couldn’t correct our speeches for tomorrow for us. Mine is going to be pretty rough lol. She is gong to visit another class instead of teaching ours tomorrow so we have to record our speeches while we read them outloud and then send them to her as an mp3 file. That will be interesting to say the least.
I rescued a dove today. It flew into this little sunroom at the main office through a small window and then couldn’t get back out so I picked it up and held it out the window. Silly dove. This one and another one were trying to build a nest in the window so it probably fell inside and then got stuck.