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.