Celebrating Nowruz in style...on the beautiful island of Kish;)

Well, I spent a lovely two weeks celebrating Nowruz on Kish with Khanom Moghimi and her lovely family;) I learned to wake up everyone morning saying "ammmuuuuuuu" in response to the "emmmmmaaaaannnnn" that came to me from amu Khosro at the breakfast table, which turned into our greeting everytime we saw each other and made everyone burst into laughter. My farsi improved drastically, as I spoke entirely in Farsi, and was always listening to some conversation or other. And the kids had a really good command of english vocabulary, so whenever I ran into difficulties, they had the persian word for me. I was cracking jokes left and right in farsi, that's how good I got. And I learned some very important words, such as zed zed or zan zalil, which basically means someone who's "whipped." It was a lot of fun.

So a little bit about persian new year, or nowruz. It lasts thirteen days and dates back to ancient times (for more details, check out wikipedia). Iranians set up a "halft seen" or table with at least seven things that start with the letter s (in persian) on it. These include:

• sabzeh - wheat, barley or lentil sprouts growing in a dish - symbolizing rebirth
• samanu - a sweet pudding made from wheat germ - symbolizing affluence
• senjed - the dried fruit of the oleaster tree - symbolizing love
• sīr - garlic - symbolizing medicine
• sīb - apples - symbolizing beauty and health
• somaq - sumac berries - symbolizing (the color of) sunrise
• serkeh - vinegar - symbolizing age and patience

Often times these are also included:

• Sonbol - Hyacinth (plant)
• Sekkeh - Coins - representative of wealth
• traditional Iranian pastries such as baghlava, toot, naan-nokhodchi
• Aajeel - dried nuts, berries and raisins
• lit candles (enlightenment and happiness)
• a mirror (symbolizing cleanness and honesty)
• decorated eggs, sometimes one for each member of the family (fertility)
• a bowl of water with goldfish (life within life, and the sign of Pisces which the sun is leaving)
• rosewater, believed to have magical cleansing powers
• the national colours, for a patriotic touch
• a holy book

(complements of wiki)

In addition, this year I learned the tradition of making ashe reshte (a yummy thick noodle/green veggie soup) on the first day of nowruz. Everyone puts in the noodles, and while doing so you are supposed to say your wishes and hopes for the upcoming year. At the exact moment of the coming of the new year, Persians around the world (at the same time everywhere) gather around the halft seen together to celebrate. And, most importantly, parents give out new bills to the kids;)

As the signs everywhere made certain to reinforce, it is the "beautiful island of Kish." and with the lovely sandy beaches and crystal clear blue/green water, they are quite right. It is a beautiful island and if there weren't segregated beaches, tourists would probably flock there from all over. I had a blast with everyone...at one point, there were 17 people in house, 10 of which were kids around my age. and boy did we have a blast together. There was so much love and happiness, it had a quite healing affect and I really felt like I was back home with all of you around;) I made some really good friends and it's going to be very difficult to leave Iran now. Our days were on a very interesting schedule...woke up around 11 am, ate breakfast, if it was nice, we went to the beach for a few hours. went back home around 5 pm, cleaned up and had "lunch." Then we lounged around for a bit, sometimes watching lovely classic tv shows such as Kolah Germezi, and Marde 1001 Chehre, which were highly entertaining. Then around 9 pm we went to one of Kish's many shopping malls and walked around for awhile, sometimes doing a bit of shopping;) Then we either went back home around midnight to have dinner, or went to Mita Kish to eat some yummy pizza or cake/ice cream. Then around 3 am we would go for a run in their gated community, without a scarf and in t-shirt and capris. With the lovely breeze and cooler/rainy weather we got, it was quite lovely. Then we went to bed about 4 or 5 am and started over the next day. It was quite a relaxing time. I got quite used to waking up and seeing about 5 or 6 others sleeping next to me so that when I got back to Tehran and woke up alone, it was quite lonely.

The beach, as previously stated, was lovely. They even had masseurs from Thailand that gave cheap massages. They had huge blow up balls that you could get in and roll around in the water. I've never seen that many women (without any men) at a beach before. You can also go jet skiing or scuba diving in the persian gulf, but unfortunately the weather was a bit grey so we never got around to doing it. The island has changed quite a bit since the last time I was there, about 7 years ago. It is more developed and was quite busy for Nowruz, as everyone went to enjoy the weather. It didn't affect us much we were staying at their house, but it was evident when it came to the water and shopping malls. As they purify the water from the ocean and thus have a limited supply, and with all the people coming, we frequently ran out of water and had to be very frugal with our use. No one wanted to get stuck in the shower when the water cut, bc then they would have to finish off with a bottle of water stored in the bathroom. The shopping malls were packed at night, with everyone practically on the island there, walking around to be seen;) Our favorite shop was the candy store, where I got them hooked on gummy peach o's. One night we went and I got them some candies, and I asked them what they wanted. when I was going to also get some peach o's, they were like, "no, don't get those for us, unless you want them for yourself" and I decided to get them. As we walked out of the store, they tasted them and immediately fell in love. Every night after that, we went back in and got at least two small bags for us. The third time we went in, the shopkeeper, recognizing us, suggested that we buy a whole box to save money and the trip;) It was pretty funny, but didn't stop us from going back and getting more.

We also ate some delicious kabobs...probably some of the best I've ever eaten. The meat was so delicious and tender. We went to a few concerts (Reza Sadeghi, and Ehsun something) which were really fun, and notably, started at 12:30 am! I discovered polaki...a circular, thin, crispy sweet that is amazing with tea. We took a tour of the island's highlights on the "party bus" as we all fit in one huge van and were singing and dancing to the music between tourist sites.

also, now I can claim to have met some underground Persian musicians....two of the guys there were singers and let us listen to their music. funny enough, the other kids recognized some of the songs and didn't know that it was them. interesting what occurs under such governments...

After arriving back in tehran, I received an interesting text message...."hello, what is your name?" to which I replied, "what is yours?" Here's the response: "Amir, 25 years!" lol, I had a good laugh on that one, to which I replied, "Eman, 23 years" and needless to say, there was no further contact (Eman is a guys name in Iran:) I was tempted to reply with "what, you're not interested anymore?" but I refrained. Went to the relatively new and beautiful Azadi cinema and watched the movie Superstar....I was pleasantly surprised that I understood most of the movie (probably about 95%) compared to about 30% of the movie I saw in Iran last year at the cinema...I guess somethings working;)

Anyhoo, leaving tomorrow for France, so should be exciting;) hope yall are well.