Thursday, November 20, 2008

Today's class

We had the most hilarious class today. We were role playing doctor-patient situations. The book gives a cough-sneezing-cold example. After a few goes at this, the teacher told us to pick another illness. One of the Arab students and myself were picked. The conversation went something like this (in Farsi):

Arab: What uncomfort you have? Che naarahati dareed?
Me: My stomach hurts. Dilam dard me konad
Arab: Do you have a cough?
Me: No my stomach hurts
Arab: Are you sneezing?
Me: No, my stomach hurts (By this point I'm wondering if she's even listening to me!?)
Arab: Do you have a cold?
Me: No, my stomach hurts!!!!

The teacher intervened and taught us some words related to stomach illnesses! Remember that the teacher can only speak Farsi! So she's trying to explain vomitting, diarrhoa and constipation with concepts (e.g. vomiting = food exiting the mouth!). My friends and I just burst out giggling. The teacher thought we were laughing because we didn't understand, so she starts giving an even more detailed explanation, which does nothing to stop the giggles. The rest of the class then join in with 'helping us' to try and understand the new words! One of the girls said something like: once a month my child has poo that is watery. Except instead of using the word 'aab' which means water, she used 'aabi' which means blue! Scary mental image of a child with blue diarrhoea!!

I don't think we'll be forgetting today's new words!!

School Pics

The walkways within the campus all have names too... Khayaban e Ihsan means Avenue of Goodness. There's also an Avenue of Knowledge and Avenue of Sincerity!!



The corridors were decorated for the birth anniversary of Imam Redha. My classroom is the first door on the left!

The transcript for Dua e Ahad that we read every morning before class.


Corridors decorated for the birth anniversary of Imam Redha


The buildings are named after famous Muslim scholars. The Farsi Department is in the Murtaza Mutahari Building


The library also has a large room in the basement which is used for celebrations and commemorations


Looking out from the Farsi department into the courtyard

Monday, November 17, 2008

School

Every morning, I attend Farsi classes at Jamiatuz Zahra. Jamia means university and Zahra is the name of the daughter of the Holy Prophet of Islam. The campus is HUGE! There are dormitories, classes, day care facilites for the children of staff and students, library, a high school, bookshops, tuck shops....... the list is endless! The campus is still being developed, with a sports centre (with swimming pool) next on the list! The campus is about 5 years old. Apparently, the spot where the university is used to be a park, so the inhabitants of Qum were not too pleased when the park was flattened to make way for the university!

Every morning, the school bus comes to the main road near our house to pick me up. The driver is a little grumpy and he constantly whinges about me - I didn't know that shutting doors with a tiny bit of force is considered extremely rude here. Luckily I have a group of friends who make sure I am not the last one on or off the bus!

The bus arrives at school at 8am and the day starts with a recitation of Dua Ahad on the loud speakers. Each lesson starts at ten past the hour (e.g. 8:10, 9:10, 10:10) and ends on the hour, giving a 10min break between classes. My classes run from 8:10 to 12 noon.

The farsi course is split into 7 books - the introductory book (which contains about 300 nouns to learn!) which is followed by Books 1 to 6. I'm currently on Book 2, which is the grammer book.

Each book has a mid book test and an end of book test, and those who fail the end of book test are asked to repeat the book, or join a less advanced class. The tests are also accompanied by dictation tests. All tests here are marked out of 20.

The teaching session is split into 2: The first 2 hours are devoted to the Books (called Katbi lessons) and the last 2 hours are conversation classes (called Shafahi lessons). The reason for this is that spoken Farsi is quite different from written Farsi - for example, if you think of Katbi Farsi as being a bit like Shakespeare's English - if you go into a shop and use words like 'thee', 'where art thou?' people would laugh at you, but they would still understand you. Some of the conversation classes take place in the "labratoire" which is a really basic language lab! Shelves and cupboards surround the classes and are filled with some of the tackiest toys and props that I have ever seen. However, the Farsi Dept is quite proud of this room and they keep it locked between lessons! The room is quite useful in some ways as it gives the teacher something to focus on. The other day, we looked at the tools shelf (spanners, hammers, screw drivers etc) and before that, the animals and sea life shelves!

One of the hardest things about learning Farsi in Iran is that the teacher does not speak a word of any English, Arabic, French..... nothing! only Farsi! Sometimes its hard to understand what the teacher wants you to do, but luckily, I have a few English speaking classmates who help each other out.

Our class is a bit like the United Nations - there's students from India, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Tanzania, UK, Indonesia and even Uroguy! Farsi is really the only language most of us have in common.

We have 2 teachers, one for the book and one for the conversation classes. Our book teacher is a gem. She is a Farsi teacher by profession. Her teaching methods are good and she helps out the weaker members of the class with extra tutorials. The conversation teacher on the other hand is a public speaking and Qur'an teacher. Her expectations of us are a little too high sometimes and sometimes she picks on me a little too much. I am ALWAYS called to the front to read out my work and she has actually told me to my face that sometimes I don't try hard enough in class! :-( Although its probably good for us in the long run. Some of our friends in other classes told us that when they were at our stage, they could barely put a sentence together and here we are conjugating verbs and writing full page matans (passages) and role playing simple situations (directions, buying clothes etc)

Class finishes at 12, after which its a quick dash to say the afternoon prayers, then jumping on the bus to go home.

Coming from the West, I find the standard of teaching very different to what I am used to. The Iranian way is to 'finish the book' and do the test. There is also a lot of emphasis on 'jumle saazis' or making sentences. Almost every lesson we are expected to make sentences from the 30-40+ new words that we have come across that lesson.

Sorry...

I got a bit carried away last time I posted - so excited to finally have high speed internet!

The first picture is of the entrance to the exhibition, which is the zeer zamin (basement) of the Holy Shrine. The second picture is an exhibition with couplets of poetry celebrating the life of Lady Masuma.

I'm not sure why the other pics didn't upload, so I'll try again in a few days!

Sunday, November 16, 2008

Monday, November 10, 2008

Roze Karamat

The days between the birth anniversaries of Lady Masumah (who is buried here in Qum) and her brother, Imam Redha (the 8th Imam of the shias) are known as "Roze Karamat". The streets are decorated with banners, flags and lights and people are generally in a good mood! When we went to buy rugs last week, I told the salesman that I wanted a good discount because it was Roze Karamat, but he wasn't giving in!

At school today, lessons stopped for an hour to allow everyone to get together for a lecture, sing song and most importantly - the shireeni (sweet pastries)! The Farsi section usually has separate gatherings from the rest of the schools, as our lectures tend to be in simple Farsi. Having said that, my Farsi is still not good enough to understand lectures, so I spent much of the hour catching up with homework!

The mosque complex where Lady Masumah is buried had an art exhibition during Rose Karamat. I dragged TH there last Thursday. While most things here are below the standard that I'm used to, the same CANNOT be said for the art work! Even TH (who hates art exhibitions) was impressed. Most of the pictures were based on the Prophet's family. Some of the exhibitors were demonstrating their skills by working on new pieces in front of live audiences. I've attached a few pics, although I apologise, I was the only one taking pics, so I didn't take too many (didn't want to stand out as a tourist). and I'm still not sure if its acceptable to take pictures of strangers.

(sorry... tried to up load pics, but the upload keeps cutting out due to the slow dial up :-( will upload them as soon as we get high speed internet!)

Sunday, November 2, 2008

Today...

The weather here has really taken a turn for the worse. It rains constantly (not that I'm complaining - it reminds me of home!). But I'm learning the hard way that long skirts and dresses are NOT suitable for this weather. I came home today absolutely drenched!

Today, I was enjoining a hot cup of tea in one of the admin offices of the university where I'm studying Farsi - a privilege not shared by other students! As I was making my way back to class, one of my fellow students came and said that classes for the day had finished and could we share a taxi home. It was slightly annoying, as we had only had an hour of class, as opposed to the usual 4, but when you're balancing work, school and a home, every extra hour is a bonus.

Today has some special significance in the Modern Iranian calender (something to do with the revolution?!) So instead of classes, they were taking people to the Shrine of Lady Masuma. I decided to come home and prepare my class as I'm teaching later on today.

About 3 weeks ago, I had a phone call from one of the bozorgies (big people) of the post graduate centre at Jamiatuz Zahra (Jamia means university, Zahra is the daughter of the Holy Prophet of Islam - this is the place where I learn Farsi). They had recently started an English programme for their MA and PhD students to enable them to go to the West and be able to give lectures in English. They had run out of teachers and asked if I (as a native speaker) could come and help them out. I jumped at the chance!

My class has 8 students from Iran, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. 5 of them are postgraduates and 3 of them work in the university. (n.b. one of them is the VERY scary head of the dormitories!) It's the first time I'm teaching adults, but its really good fun. The students are eager to learn and they help me with my Farsi too! The books we follow are very politically correct and sometimes a bit American, but I'm hoping to supplement the book with role plays, CDs and kids cartoons. If anyone has any teaching tips for me, please post them!

I teach 3 afternoons a week, and because I'm a teacher, they send a car to pick me up from my house :-)))))

Saturday, November 1, 2008

Internet Saga...

Apologies for the long gap between posts. We're having an on-going internet saga right now!

High speed internet is on our 'must have' list - dial-up is so 1990s!

Getting internet here is like most other things (a huge headache). Firstly, you have to be Iranian in order to get a phone line. Our phone line was in some unknown person's name. Interestingly even the telephone company did not have his name, so The Husband (TH) rode up an enormous phone bill calling friends abroad! TH's friend had a spare phone line at his office which he offered to give to us so that in the future, if we have any problems with the phone line, he can sort it out for us.

So eventually the Mukhabirat (the phone people) get their act together and transfer the new number to our house. Once the new line was in place. TH's friend - who is also the representative for the internet company realised that our new phone line is not ADSL compatible! (n.b. I never knew there was such a thing, but this is Iran!)

He told us that our only option was to find a neighbour with an ADSL compatible phone number and offer to swop! LOL

Eventually, we discovered that the Indian family in the basement had an internet-friendly phone number, so TH called the electrician and got him to connect our new number properly and also patch one phone socket with the neighbour's number. How he managed to explain that in Farsi I will never know! It took the poor electrician 3 trips in order to finish the work! Well, it was poor me too, as I had to clear up the mess he left behind each time too! Also, it was 3 days without internet and a phone line!

So now, we're just trying to located the owner of the neighbour's phone line so he can write us a letter allowing us to get high speed internet!

Anyways, lots of other things have also happened since I last posted (started school, started teaching, made more friends!) and hopefully I'll write about them all soon. Have some pictures to upload too... but you'll have to wait until we get high speed internet before I can post those!!