I've been so busy lately that I can hardly get the time to go online and catch up with my friends. I've been meaning to read Norm's blog entries, but still haven't got a chance. I'm sorry Norm! I'll make it up to you! The problem is, my classes are way too many right now and on top of that, I have the halloween party to worry about. It's crazy and I love it!
Last night, just before I went to bed, I took a look at Hamed's entry about Google Trends and the shocking results he'd got about the city of Qom. I did a search for "Chris de Burgh" just now and got a big surprise. Why? Check out the picture above!

I've been puttting a lot of time into discovering all the functions of Sara's cell phone! For one thing, I bought a 1GB memory card so that we could install more programs and transfer more songs onto the cell phone. The other thing I did last night was buying a Nokia CD which contains everything from themes and ringtones to games and applications. I converted and copied more than 300 songs onto the cell phone and thanks to the small size of Nokia sound files, they ocuupied only half the capacity of the memory card. This morning, I had time to go through the applications on the CD and install a few useful ones. Among them are Oxford Advance and Pocket dictionaries, Oxford dictionary of Idioms and Oxford French and Italian dictionaries. I also installed an English to Persian dictionary. I was fascinated by the number of words they contained and the long definitions they provided. They're so cool! I also installed a map of Tehran on the cell phone. From now on, Sara will in a way be carrying several thick dictionaries and a map! I did something else too which made Sara very (norman pause! norm knows what it is!) very happy! I converted the Friends episodes I had on CDs to Nokia video files, 3gp files, and realized they each took no more than 25 MB! Sara will be able to watch friends on her way back home tonight! LOL!

Yesterday, Hamed and I had such a great time together. We drove around the city and took pictures of whatever caught our attention. His camera is a Sony 7.2 Megapixel with a 12X optical zoom and it... ROCKS! After having taken many photos of interesting and sometimes weird objects (like the back of a Cadillac for Norm to enjoy! LOL!), we drove home and tried our hands at Horror Photography! You can see me as a vampire in a picture Ham posted on his blog. And here is another picture which is my favourite! Don't look at the picture for too long, or something bad might happen to you! LOL!

It was another one of those ten hour teaching days today and I'm pretty worn out right now. I had my last IELTS class with Sasan this afternoon. He had a long list of words to check with me and said he'd be reviewing them on the plane. He will be staying in Turkey for a few days where he will be taking his test. I wish him a lot of luck.
We went over to Mohsen and Akram's the other night. They have recently got an appartment in Poonak. It's a very nice appartment and is well-decorated too. We spoke about their neighbourhood and their appartment and found out that we had opposite ideas on everything. While I like the Poonak area and all the shopping centers in it, including Boostan and Tirajeh, they said they actually "hated" the area and had never really been to any of the shopping centers! I suggested we could exchange places if they really wanted to! LOL! The other thing we talked about was the pilotting course Mohsen is taking in Kerman. He said he had one more year to finish the training and would start his career right after. He also played a DVD for us of his so called "solo" flight, which is, as he said, one of the many tests they have to take before they become official pilots.
Last night, was the Eid-al-Fitr. Sara and I visited our parents' and grandparents' and met all the people who were there too. While I was talking to my grandparents, my phone rang. I couldn't believe it was Norm from America! He said he'd got concerned, cause he hadn't heard nor read from me for many days. I told him everything was ok and that the reason I couldn't get online lately was that I'd been very busy with classes. It was funny how everyone in there was wondering who I was talking in English to! Who could that be?
I'd been wanting to buy Sara a new cellphone for some time now; so I thought the Eid would be a good excuse. After some research, I bought her a Nokia N70. I managed to give her a surprise by getting it off the backseat and unexpectedly handing it to her while driving. She was so excited about it at first! But last night, I found myself much more intersted in the device! I stayed up until late discovering the menus and feeling kind of guilty about doing it before she did! I don't know if cell phones are more of a "boy" thing! Although she likes her new cellphone a lot, she's definately not as interested in it as I am! I told Ham about Sara's new cell phone. He sent her a message saying: "Instruction Manual: As a new cell phone, you should know how to handle me properly. You can take nude pictures of people using the infra-red technology! Just point and shoot! Enjoy the new gadget! Mokhles-e shoma, Agha-ye Sazandeh!" We had a great laugh over Ham's message!
There are two things right now that I'm quite stressed about. One is the halloween party which I still haven't done much about and am hoping to be able to do something about tomorrow when I have fewer classes. The other thing that worries me is why Hamed is "again" not showing interest in seeing me! LOL! Did I tell you he's been feeding on blood lately? People keep telling me he looks different. But he seems OK to me!

I was looking through the pictures in my e-mail when I came across this very special one. It was taken four years ago on the day I was leaving for Morocco. These are my very special friends who came to Mehrabad airport to see me off. I'm so looking for ward to the halloween party when we'll all get together again!
From left to right:
Hossein S, Ehsan M, Mohsen R, Hamed Y

Our lives have sure gone different ways. Hossein is teaching Persian literature at a school right now, Ehsan is starting his own computer business, Mohsen is comlpeteing his pilotting course and will soon be a pilot and Hamed Y is doing his military.

Good luck guys!

I sent invitation e-cards to my friends for the halloween party. I am so glad most of them have already said they're gonna make it. Ham, who is in the north right now, called me today from the Caspian coast asking me about the party. I could hear the waves in the background. He said he knew a store in Isfahan that was famous for having all sorts of props. He said the store was one of a kind. Norm too liked the idea. I had a very nice chat with him a while ago. He saw my invitation cards and said he liked them. He also sent an e-card wishing us a very scary halloween. It's a flash card that says you can see who you really are in this mirror; when you click on the mirror, you get the image on top of this entry! Ha Ha! He said halloweens were pretty wild in the U.S. and gave me some very useful tips. One thing he said that really surprised me was that people in the U.S. wore costumes to work for the day!
Today, I started work in a new institute. Everything about it was wonderful. For one thing, the classes were well-equipped. The teachers have computers on their desks connected to a projector overhead. Since I had the same type of classes in Dubai, I was quite familiar with the equipment . The other great thing was that the students were very smart. They're mostly university students doing their Master's or PhD courses. They immediately learned everything I said and I didn't have to explain anything a second time. One of them was a walking dictionary! LOL! He knew words I had rarely ever heard before. Like "parsimonious" meaning stingy! Pardonez-moi monsieur? I think they enjoyed the class as much as I did. I have very nice colleagues too. They mostly come from the same educational background that I do. The only problem is the length of the classes. I'm teaching crash-courses that take only 16 session a level. In other words, we go through one whole unit of the Intechange book in a single day. The classes are four hours long with a fifteen minute break in the middle. I had two classes there plus one other class at another institute which adds up to a record of 10 hours of teaching! Sara can't believe I'm writing a blog entry after such an exhausting day!

My father-in-law was released from the hospital today and we're so excited about it. He had a minor stroke a week ago and was taken to a clinic and then to the hospital. According to what the doctor said, the affected area was the cerebellum. After the stroke, he was unable to move his left hand and foot. After several physiotherapy sessions, he has slightly improved now and can stand on his feet and walk with the help of another person. Now that he's home, we encourage him to grasp objects with his left hand and ask him to do things like change TV channels with a remote. He's so determined to get better that he does everything we suggest. We were just thinking that maybe the tasks were too hard and the objects too heavy. so we have come up with an easier task, playing cards! It's funny that a game like "canesta" which everybody considers useless is now being a help!