Fun with Qum Baby

I took Qum Baby to a soft play centre that's opened up recently. It's located on falake safaye. Can't miss it, there's a man wearing a bear costume outside and handing out leaflets. 

The place isn't very stroller friendly. It's in the basement and no where  really to store them, but I managed to fold mine up and stash it under the shoe rack (umbrella strollers rock!) and said a little prayer to keep it safe.

It's 5000 tomans for an hour, which is about £1. There's a ball ball, lots of slides and ride on cars, play kitchen and other toys. 

Qum Baby took a while to get into it, maybe since he'd just woken up from a nap, but he did love it towards the end of the hour. It's perfect for 1-3 year olds but older kids may find it a bit babyish. They had some craft activities and face painting too. Mostly mums there with their kids... A father did come but he didn't stick around. He did look a bit awkward being the only male over the age of 5 there. 

The Baking Store

Qum Baby is keeping me very busy these days so i haven't had much of a chance to blog. Oh and I only have vpn on my phone which also makes it hard to blog as Blogspot is blocked here. Qum Baby usually goes to grab my phone everytime I take it out (he usually wins LOL) so that's another reason I've been on social media a lot less these last few months.

I've had lots of ideas for blog posts, but haven't had a chance to type them out... So here we go.

I thought I'd dedicate a few posts to shopping in Qum. A lot of people tell me they read my blog before moving out here... So these posts are for you! I hope they help.

There's a baking store in Dore shahr between kuche 23 & 25. It's quite a small shop. Open from 10am to 2.30pm and then again from 5pm to 11pm. Next door is a party supplies store which has some nice stuff too.

The store stocks everything for your baking needs and most of it is made in Iran - food colours, sprinkles, baking tins etc

They also have imported goods too, as well as things like cream of tartar (Iranian made) and chocolate chips which were both previously unavailable in Iran. (Side note- the local shireeni bakery sells me the chocolate chips for cost price, which works out cheaper than this store)

Another thing to note is that there is another baking store near falak e jihad (near Imam Khumayni madressa). I haven't been there personally but some of the sisters say it's a bit cheaper than the Dore shahr shop but not as fancy. For me personally, I'm in Dore shahr anyway most days so it doesn't make sense for me to go to the other store.

I've taken some pictures of the store... Hope he gives me a discount for advertising his store!! 

Muharram in Qum

I hate spending the month of Ramadan in Qum. It's really dull here. But I love spending the month of Muharram here.

There's just something about spending this time in a shia country that I haven't seen replicated anywhere else. From the flags in the streets and houses, the sabeel stands handing out drinks and tabaruk, the mini processions and latmiya in the streets, the reenactments of the story of Karbala.... This list goes on. It actually feels like the streets are mourning for Imam Husayn.

During this time, there are often young men offering to spray paint a 'ya Husayn' slogan on car windshields. 

Here are some pics from around the city:

Wedding Anniversary

Eeeekkkk I've just realised that it's been forever since I've blogged. 

It's a New academic year and we are back in Qum for more adventures. It's been a busy summer. Qum Baby met his great grandparents in Canada, a few weddings, lots of biryani and desserts and a trip to Mashhad for the wiladat of Imam Redha (yes it was packed, but a great experience!)

Today is the wedding anniversary of Imam Ali and Sayyidda Fatemah. I usually get a couple of emails about historical events which is great right now as I'm not in Hawza so it's very easy to lose track of dates and events. 

One of the emails gave a detailed description of the proposal and the wedding. It also outlined the things that were bought for the couple to start their married life. I've copied it from the original

Email:

- Two mattresses made of Egyptian canvas. (One stuffed with fiber and the other with sheep wool).

- A leather mat.

- A pillow made of skin, filled with palm tree fiber.

- A Khaibarion cloak.

- An animal skin for water.

- Some jugs and jars also for water.

- A pitcher painted with tar.

- A thin curtain made of wool.

- A shirt costing seven (7) dirhams.

- A veil costing four (4) dirhams.

- Black plush cloak.

- A bed embellished with ,ribbon.

- Four cushions made of skin imported from Ta ‘ef stuffed with a good smelling plant.

- A mat from Hajar.

- A hand-mill.

- A special copper container used for dyestuff

- A pestle for grinding coffee.

- A (water) skin.

A few things struck me about this. 

• how minimalist this list is. Every year, I go back home and bring back suitcases filled with ingredients and kitchen tools and toiletries. How much do I really need? I've seriously re-evaluated my list of things that I bring back from back home and am making more of an effort to buy things from here rather than rely on parcels from back home. 

•a coffee grinder? Not sure if they were drinking coffee back then! LOL I'm sure it was more for grinding the wheat than coffee.

A teacher of mine last year also told us that a large amount of money was also spent on perfume. She pointed out that Sayyida Fatemah smelt of jannah and there was no need for her to use perfume. But more likely that it was to highlight the importance of perfume and smelling good and cleanliness. It's said that the Holy Prophet used to spend more money on perfume than on food.

Clinic visit part 2

Log of our visit to the clinic

8.02 arrival at clinic

8.10 clinic staff arrive

8.12 card put in queue

8.14 start to read Quran and Qum Baby falls asleep

8.25 man arrives in excruciating pain and needs iv drip. Nurse shouts at him for coming alone?! Weird

8.36 catch up on emails

8.50 friends come in with their kids for vaccinations- yaaay for the company

8.45-10am a lady wearing a turquoise scarf hovers outside the room waiting for her turn even though 10 other people came before her

9.06 the lady whose card is in front of mine in the queue has gone in. Decide to hover by the door of the clinic as it should be my turn next.

9.30 our name is called

Have to tell turquoise scarf lady 3 times to move out of the way so we can go inside

It wasn't too bad. Usual questions about feeding, how many dirty nappies a day etc and a height/weight/head circumference check. Qum Baby doing quite well alhamd!

The only complicated thing was that they wanted mine, The Husbands and Qum Baby's dates of birth in the Iranian calender, which I had worked out before hand. We were given the usual advice about feeding and not using a pacifier blah blah

By 10.00 we were done and Turquoise scarf lady still hovering at door

The set up was quite strange for us westerners who are used to a bit of privacy during medicals. There are 3 nurses/midwives/health visitors sitting behind a table, seeing 3 people at the same time. The nurse at the end does the pregnancy consultations while the other 2 deal with the babies (weighing, vaccines etc) So if a lady comes for a midwife appointment, she lays down on the bed for the heart beat check while 2 other ladies are in the same room having their babies checked out too! But I guess that's the way things are done here. And they spend half their time telling the ladies who are hovering at the door to go and sit down and wait their turn (you have to put your card in the box when you arrive so they know who came first)

The nurse didn't make a fuss when we told her we weren't getting vaccinations in Iran. It's not that we are anti-vaccines, rather we we told that there are a couple of extra vaccines given in the uk that are not given in Iran, so we consulted with the practice nurse at the local surgery in the UK and she came up with a vaccination schedule for us that fitted in with our travel plans :)

So now we have to go back in a couple of weeks for weighing again, but at least we have registered at the clinic so it should be straight forward.

Iranian clinics

So we arrived in Qum over a month ago and since then I've been trying to get Qum Baby registered at the local clinic for check ups and weighing.

But straight forward it has not been.

So I was told the clinic is open from 8-12, so shortly after landing in Qum, we went to the clinic at 10am. I was told to go to another hospital to buy the vaccination card and come back the following day at 8am. 

I went to buy the vaccination card but the problem is that neither of us is awake and/or human at 8am and the second issue was that the nowrooz holidays were starting and everyone who lives here knows that Iran doesn't function during the first 2 weeks of the new year.

So we waited till after the holidays were done.

On our second trip to the clinic- at 9am post holidays, I went in to join the queue and again was told: "unless you come at 8am, don't come. We can't register you" So I mentioned that my friends had come at 10am to register and they were registered so what's the problem. Anyway so it was a battle not really worth fighting.

On our third visit to the clinic, I got there at 8.10am! Promptly put my card in the queue and waited and waited and waited. So she forgot to tell me that even if I came at 8am, I wouldn't be seen till 12. And not only that, they didn't actually start seeing people until 8.30!

Seems like once you have a child, you spend your life waiting and visiting clinics. Do the mums here not have cooking and cleaning and laundry to do??? I must be doing something wrong!!

So after waiting 2 hours, I went in and took my card out of the queue and went home. 

Made me really appreciate the sure start children's centres we have in the UK. I think the most I've waited is 15 mins got my turn. And not only that, you're not limited to one clinic. As long as you have the baby's red book, you can go to any clinic in the area.

Not only that, but there seems to be an awful lot of unnecessary testing going on.  Hearing tests at birth, 3 months, 9 months, 18 months and 30 months as well as regular eye tests from 6 months! 

So we're going to try to register again tomorrow. I will be taking a book and a LOT of toys to keep the little one entertained while we wait our turn.

Wish me luck!

Picture of the day

I had to LOL when I saw my neighbour's shoes!

PMS!!! Thought I'm sure it probably stands for something else here!

Supermarket food

When we first moved to Qum back in 2008, the convenience food wasn't very good. There was pasta sauce in a can that tasted so bad, that nearly all the western students here learnt how to make pasta sauce from scratch.

We couldn't even buy fruit yoghurts! 

Over the last few years, things have really improved. We even find tiramisu here now! And it actually tastes quite good!

Taxi conversations

Taxi drivers are the same everywhere in the world. They know everything about everything!

So I had some errands to do the other day and the easiest thing was to get a taxi and ask them to wait for me at each destination for a few mins while I did my jobs.

So I called the local taxi agency ('adjaans' in Farsi) and here's how the conversation went:

Driver: prices have gone up 20%

Me: what to do? I have work to do and my only option is a taxi

Driver: we thank God

Me (thinking): yes I'm sure your wife is thanking God for your increased income

Thankfully the ride only cost me 9000tomans (£2ish)

Qum Baby's First Trip to the Haram

Qum Girl is back! And this time there's a Qum Baby too!

So it's been forever since I last blogged. But thanks to the girl in the awesome chador http://thegirlintheawesomechador.blogspot.co.uk/?m=1

I've discovered the blogger app! So no more excuses. And plus with 3G coming to Qum (yup the rest of the world is 4G'ing and Qum is just getting to grips with 3G) there really is no excuse.

So I was in London all these months, growing a little bubba! We're both back in Qum now and looking forward to some new adventures.

Iranians love kids! I had put some little denim bootees on Qum Baby for our first Thursday night haram/dua Kumayl visit. No big deal right? Except the Iranians that were sitting near us acted as if they were the best thing since sliced bread. They even sneaked in some photos while I was praying 😬

I should have said something after I finished but that would have been admitting that I was not focused on my prayers.

The other thing is that you cannot go 5 steps in Qum with some fancy western bit of baby gear without someone asking 'chand giriftee?' (How much did you get it for) very annoying! Even our buggy/travel system has been attracting attention. We've been putting Baby in the car seat and attaching it to the buggy frame. Very normal in the UK. Not so normal here. 

Watch this space for more Qum Girl & Baby adventures!

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.

Jabal Qasiyoon

 

One of the 'must do' tourist things according to all the guidebooks is a trip to Jabal Qasiyoon. We'd aim to get there just a little before sunset, so we could see the amazing views of the city from the mountain.

There are tonnes of cafes and restaurants at the top of the mountain, most of them totally overpriced according to local standerds. We'd usually plan a trip to the mountain to coincide with friends/relatives visiting!La fontane became our favourite:

We only tried the crepes. I'm sure the tiramyssu was delicious, despite the dodgy spelling!

Special offer? Perhaps not!

I bought this fabric softner while in Syria, thinking I was getting a good deal. I misread it for '+10%'

Only the day before leaving, I actually looked closely :-(

It's been a while...

I know it has been AGES since I last blogged! They've even changed the whole blogspot layout while I've been gone!

It's been a busy few months. As well as exams and the usual 'before I leave for the summer' busyiness, we've also been packing and shipping up our things to Iran! That's right! The Husband and I are moving back to Qum :-))

I'm planning to use a bit of my free time (in between catching up with friends and weddings and working) to load up some of the Syria pics that I didn't get a chance to while I was there.

As the situation in Syria worsens, I ask you all in this Holy Month of Ramadhan to remember all the people in your duas.

We do fun stuff at Hawza too!

There's an office in our Hawza (religious school) dedicated to culture! Their job is to organise non-academic stuff (e.g. we're doing a module on basic first aid/nursing skills this term) as well as competitions. Most of the competitions are hard! They involve reading a book and doing an exam... but since it takes me an average of 5 hours a night just to decipher my course books (learning the stuff takes another 5 hours!), the last thing I want to do is take on extra work!

So I was over the moon when they decided to hold a cooking competition- finally something I could take part in! I made a fake oreo cheesecake, but couldn't find the right kind of cheese, so it wasn't my best effort. On the day of the competition, they laid out all the food on tables and everyone helped themselves... it was a mad rush (so sadly no pics!).Results came out 3 weeks later at the mother's day celebrations! All the teachers who took part got a prize, as well as 6 students (all of them were Syrian!). There was some consolation in that I had helped one of the winners assemble her dessert!

There was also an arts and crafts competition. I managed to get some pics:

New (ish) supermarket in Sayyidda Zaynab

(I took this pic a while back and forgot to upload)

A new supermarket opened up in Sayyidda Zaynab over the summer. It's called 'A&T' and like all Middle Eastern things started off really good. Now, 7 months down the line, it's starting to go downhill. Sometimes we have to ask the employees for basics like salt and flour and they don't have any?! But the upside is that they have a good (ish) selection of freezer things and its clean (er) than shopping in most of the other cockroach infested stores.

The joys of the third world.