Iranians and their fruit

There's a market (bazar) here that moves around the city and has a different location every day of the week. On Tuesdays it comes to my area, so we call it the sehshambe bazar or Tuesday market. You can find absolutely anything there- carpets, clothes, dishes, makeup, fruits, veggies.... It's a great place to go when you first arrive in Qum as the prices are a little cheaper than shops.

The only irritating thing is that you can't pick your own fruits and veggies. So inevitably I come home with a couple of rotting tomatoes or an apple or two that's really gross inside.

The other irritating thing is that in Iran, they must use less preservatives or something as the fruit and veg goes bad very quick. So you have to buy exactly what you need for the week to reduce wastage. BUT when you go to the sehshambe bazar and ask the guy for 1.5kg of tomatoes/onions/apples, he's like 'you don't want 3kg?'
So annoying, it's like if I wanted 3kg, I would have asked you for 3kg!

But you often see Iranians buying 4/5kg of one type of fruit. So typically at sehshambe bazar, you'll see a husband/wife/kids/stroller all jam packed with a lot of fruits and veggies and I always thought that was a bit strange. How can one family go through so much in one week?

Recently a group of us westerners were talking about this - it started from the fact that bananas are now really expensive. So a friend of mine asked her Iranian friend- why don't you just buy a kilo of fruit and have one each, rather than buying so much. So it turns out that Iranians actually eat that much fruit in one sitting! They'll go to someone's house and instead of being given tea and cakes/biscuits, they'll be given tea and fruit and a knife. So turns out they are really healthy people. And the Iranian friend actually laughed at my friend's suggestion of being less fruit. 1kg of fruit turns out is one persons portion per day!

Internet

So it's been ages since I last blogged. In my defence though, the Iranians have blocked every useful website that exists (Facebook, blogspot, whatsapp...)

They obviously don't appreciate my need to stay in touch with the rest of the world. Lol

Thanks to my personal IT support (aka The Husband) I'm now able to keep in touch with the outside world using a VPN account. So I will try my hardest to keep the blog updated (even though I hate typing long stuff on my phone!)

On a side note- it's really LOL when someone messages me on whatsapp to say 'I whatsapp'd my daughter/cousin/sister who's in Iran but they haven't replied. Is it because there's no Internet in Iran?'
Me: no, most hotels have wifi. It's because whatsapp is blocked here
10 mins later (sometimes longer!)
Them: umm so how are you using whatsapp?
Me: VPN account

Back to School!

I started school 2 weeks ago. I was a week late joining due to my greatness at procrastination, but anyone who's been to Hawza anywhere in the world knows that week 1 is really disorganised as most of the teachers are double booked and/or not prepared to teach, plus the queues in the bookshop were so long that the teachers were a bit half hearted in the first week. (Its hard to say - do exercise 3&4 from page 25 when no one has the book! lol)

My timetable isn't so bad. I have 5 days a week, 4 hours a day. (Plus about 8 hours at home trying to memorise and translate!)

 

I have sarf 1 every day (which I've done in Syria), Fiqh 2 (which I did in Iran when I was last living here), Tajweed (which I also did in Syria), the history of civilisation (sounds a bit weird, but its actually quite interesting and plus I have a really good teacher), Akhlaq (which I am struggling with), History of the first 5 Imams and Uloomul Quran (which I also did in Syria, but am sitting the class mainly to improve my Farsi)

Most of my teachers are really good except the sarf one who constantly mixes up the past and present tense in Arabic. Not so helpful for the girls who are new to the subject.

Because I left Jamiatuz Zahra 3 years ago (I only took a one year permission to leave), they made me sit 2 exams and go through the interview process again. One wasn't so bad, but the other was really really hard and so I'm too scared to find out the results. OK so it would have been easier had I actually studied, but it was a little optimistic on the part of the head of department who expected me to study  cram 50 lessons in one week.

The interview was half an hour or so... a bit rushed at the end as it was nearly time for the bus to go home! The lady asked me what I like to do in my spare time - so like any wannabe hawza student - I replied 'reading'. I should have known this would lead to further questions, and I couldn't really tell her that reading to me is 'the shopaholic series' so I told her I love reading books about self building. (Not really a lie as I had just read 'Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus'). I then had to summarise 'Who moved my cheese' for her in Farsi! I think she thought I was mad. Oh well.

Back in Qum

Qum Girl is back in Qum. Finally!

A lot has happened since I last blogged.... holiday in the Maldives, Sri Lanka & Dubai with the folks. Followed by waiting for an Iran visa. For a LOOOONNNNGGG time. (But then again we knew that Iranians are not very fast at doing anything). Arriving in Qum and then going off to Iraq for Arbaeen before I even had a chance to start setting up the house!

Hopefully I'll start blogging again more regularly now that I'm a bit more settled.