Maladies, Royalty, and Turning Tricks

Sooo dad, grandma and I all have the stomache flu. Dad was throwing up all day 2 days ago, grandma was throwing up all yesterday, and now its my turn (I just puked so now I'll feel fine for another 20 mins, just enough time to write this). Needless to say Maryam is scared as hell that she's next.

Aside from that- Iran is still amazing. Yesterday we took cable cars up Mt Tochal and then played in the snow at the top of the mountain. It was incredible. We took plenty of pics and video so you'll all get to see them. I have affectionately called the Mountain Mt Bob Dylan, since the inhabitants surrounding the mountain speak with a bizarrely slow, semi off-key twang that sounds like they are literally dragging they're words on the ground as they're speaking. We also went to Bazaar Bozorg (quite literally big bazaar) and bought a bunch of presents! Maryam and I are getting really good at bartering now and have sometimes gotten better deals than dad has!

The great thing about Iranians is if they tell you something and you don't understand they literally won't give up on you- they'll keep explaining over and over until you get it, which has been really good for me especially when talking about specialized subjects like health care. The only bad thing is that a lot of them love to speak in english so they'll always respond in english when you speak in farsi. This is why I always talk to grandma's nurse at least 2 hours a day because she doesn't know any english. Persian is an amazing language. They literally don't even have 1/3rd as many words as we do in english so you would think some translation would be lost- but in fact its all about intonation. For example: "khoub" literally means good. But it can also mean: fun, happy, amusing, alright, ok, so, amazing, incredible, etc. I get annoyed that I can't express myself in more specific ways, but I'm picking up this art of intonation slowly.

We also went to Shahre Rey (The Royal City) which is a city thats been around for 7,000 years. The only people who live there now are poor people, but they have incredible structures there. We also visited the huge mosque there- but we weren't wearing true Islamic clothing (chador from head to toe) so they weren't going to let us in. Of course Kamran and Dad wouldn't have that so they talked the guards into letting us borrow some bed sheets and wearing them like chadors so we could enter the Royal City. We took some pictures, they are pretty amusing.

This week so party central. I mean literally we have a party to go to every night and since we didn't plan on bringing a lot of dress up clothes we just make up for it by wearing tons of make-up- which is actually the true persian style. You wouldn't believe how much make up, fake nails, and dyed hair girls our age have. I was just telling Maryam how honestly if you put one of these girls in America the majority of the population would think she was a prostitute. This is not an exaggeration. The reason is clear: the government represses women so much that they rebel by enhancing every part of themselves visible through the head scarf.

My big project for this vacation is that I'm making a gigantic video of everywhere we've been and all the activities we've done. I've done 2 minutes so far and that alone took me 3 hours- so we'll see how far this goes...

Ok time for another trip to the bathroom- I'll try and write again soon!