Update...

Sorry guys! Need to get into the habit of blogging a bit more regularly... I have so many pics and anecdotes to post up! Believe me, life in Qum is just as busy as life in London!

Good news is that after 6 months of hard slog, tears and tantrums, I have FINALLY FINISHED FARSI!!!!!!!!! Technically, we didn't finish the second half of the last book (It's all boring poetry that no one understands anyway). Long story, but the summary is that after one finishes Farsi, they move onto the next level - called Tamhidiyya - which is basic Islamic Studies. Anyone who has been through the Madressa (Sunday School) System would whizz through this. The aim is to improve our Farsi, introduce us to religious textbook language and get everyone's basic knowledge upto the same level. After we were due to finish Farsi, there wouldn't have been enough time or teachers to start a new batch of students on the Tamhiddiyya course, so the head of department decided to allow us to wrap up as many exams as we could and join the class that was a week ahead of us! Good news for us!!

My classes still run 6 days a week, 4 hours a day. I'm studying Islamic History (Life of the Holy Prophet), Akhlaq (Manners and etiquettes), Qur'an (How to recite properly) and Raveshe Tahseel (Study skills). The rest of the class is studying Akham (Islamic Laws), which I've dropped this term, due to teaching commitments. (I promised I would study the book myself and sit the exam at a later date)

We're really blessed to have an amazing set of teachers. The Akhlaq teacher used to be a Farsi teacher, so she speaks slowly and the History teacher teaches us in the form of Q&A - the questions being potential exam questions. The Qur'an teacher, on the other hand, is a bit of a dragon. Most of the class skips her lesson. She almost reduced a student to tears today! The class is an easy class and the homework is easy, so I'm staying put for a bit.

The study skills teacher is funny. She's all over the place- practically dancing on the stage in front of us as she teaches! The Iranian method of teaching is to work through the book from beginning to end. This teacher skips from lesson 1 to lesson 10, then goes through lesson 5. After 6 months of the Iranian ways, I'm finding it hard to cope with this kind of randomness!

I thought that after finishing Farsi, I might get a bit of respite/get my social life back. Unfortunately, I'm still having to put in a couple hours for every teaching hour to understand the text books and write up my notes! Whereas Farsi was all about cramming words and phrases, at least this is a bit more interesting and applicable to life.

2 noteworthy incidents from today that I have to relate:

1. Remember a post from a while back about the black chador that we all have to wear? Today, as I was exiting the bus, my chador got stuck on a nail on the step of the bus. Without realising, I carried on walking. Thought the person behind me was stepping on my chador and was about to turn around and shout at them when I realised what had happened! I dread to think what would have happened if I had carried on walking :-(

2. Lesson 3 from our Akhlaq book was all about cheerfullness and good words etc. World looks brighter from behind a smile and all that. The next lesson was about helping people and being there for them. Before we started lesson 4, our teacher asked us how we can help people. So we mentioned all the usual methods - give money, food, teach them etc. She asked us if we were not able to help physically, what else could we do. So one of the students replied with "give them a smile". We all started cracking up - even the teacher! Between her laughing, she tried to explain that if someone's relative has died and we go to console them with a smile, they are not going to be too impressed!