Sara and I watched Juno just now. It was so cute! I liked the photography, Ellen Page's acting and the soundtracks. I should be thanking Damien for letting me borrow it. Peace bro!

I had Masters' Konkoor yesterday morning. I kinda blew it since some of the questions were wrong and I got so mad I lost track of time and didn't get to do the last twenty tests! Next year again!

Sara and I went over to Hamed's place last night. His brother, Mohamad was there too. We watched a few episodes of Friends and then Mohamad taught us poker and we spent the rest of the day (and night) playing poker.

I had interviews all day today. It's a new evaluation process at the place where I work. The students first give an oral exam and then go for the written one. I thought it'd be easy and fun. But it turned out to be extremely hard, but still fun! You can't imagine how beat I am right now after 4 hours of Konkoor, 6 hours of poker and almost 8 hours of interview! Somebody kill me pleeeeeease!

The class party last night rocked. Everybody brought some kind of food and drink. There was macaroni salad, mexican corn, potato chips and a lot more. I put James Blunt on for background music. We were eating, speaking, playing games, telling jokes and taking pictures for almost four hours! Close to the end of the class, two of my colleagues sent their students in too! And that's when things got really wild! At the end of the class, my students gave me a quality book of Khayam's quatrains. It contains the Persian text and the Fitzgerald translation plus fascinating Persian miniature paintings. My students have signed the first page of the book. It's the most valuable gift I've ever been given.

It was a wonderful day today at Farhikhtegan. For one thing, I told my students about the end-of-term party. They were "booking" excited about it and helped brainstorm some cool ideas on the board. I also used the ideas Sara and Ali Sheikholeslami had suggested in my previous entry and now, we know exactly what we're gonna do. There's gonna be food and drink, music, conversation and lots of games! Oh, and jokes too! I'm so looking forward to Wednesday when it's all gonna happen. The other cool thing about today was that I sang! In my class! We were talking about favorite singers and when the conversation lead to my favorite singer, Bryan Adams, (love'im!) they asked me if I could sing one of his songs to them. I sang them "heaven" and got a big applaud in the end! And no at all! Well, I've won a Hammy Grammy afterall! That should count for something, shouldn't it?
The picture on today's entry is taken from the music video of Katie Melua's if you were a sailboat. I love that song!

I'm thinknig of organizing an end-of-term party for my Intro class at Farhikhtegan. They're a cool bunch of students who've been amazingly hard-working throughout the term and I think we all deserve to celebrate what we've accomplished. I've never had a class party before and had to rack my brains to come up with ideas. I've got a few ideas here; I'd appreciate it if you guys let me know what you think of them and maybe give me some more.
. Food and drink (students will be walking around the class, eating, drinking and speaking to one another in English)
. A list of topics (work, family, sports, etc.) and possible questions for each topic to help the students make conversation
. Background music (I'm not sure what will work best)
. Jokes (in English obviously! I'll be telling the students to prepare them beforehand and perhaps set up a joke-telling competition like the one in Big Ham's party! I owe this one to Big Ham! )
That's basically all I've come up with. Once again, I'd love to get your opinion/help. Thanks everyone!
By the way, the movie "premonition" starring Sandra Bullock (I hate that girl! ) is on screen at Cinema Farhang. Sara and I got to watch it a couple of nights ago. I would call it a mediocre movie, but the sound/picture quality is amazing. Don't miss it if you're interested!

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 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!

Sasan, a student I have been working with for months now, seems so ready to take the IELTS. He’s a very smart and open-minded person and our classes together have always been filled with long debates. We were having a class yesterday evening when the subject of “government corruption” came up and got him started on a very interesting theory he holds. Sasan thinks that in our country, values have always been attributed to religion. He gave me an example on this: “If fifty years ago, you asked a westerner why it was wrong to lie, he would explain to you the harm it would do to the individual and to the society; if you asked an Iranian, he would say: It’s a big sin. It leads you to hell.” The problem is, Sasan thinks, religion is fading in our society and with it, fade social values. He thinks this has led to growing Nihilism among people and therefore, lack of morality. Please post your comments.

The picture on today’s entry, I took a week ago. The building on the right is the newly-constructed “International Tower of Tehran” and the one on the left is one of the three ASP towers.

Me and Sara have had a great time over the last couple of days watching Friends Season 6 on a DVD we got from our friend, Safaneh and we already regret the fact that we rushed to watch all the episodes and have no more new ones! :( But well, who cares, the real friends are out there! :) Hamed, my private student and really cool friend, was so sad today because he missed our friend Ehsan who left for Canada only this morning. He could NOT concentrate on the lesson and seemed to be wondering the whole time which country Ehsan was flying over! In the end, he figured it must be Cyprus! Safaneh seems to be missing her uncle who also left for canada two days ago. Her latest blog entry was like the saddest I've ever seen! I guess people are leaving to start the fall semester there. Good luck guys! ;)
I have figured a new way of giving assignments in my general English classes. What I would do before was to ask my students to do the exercises in their workbooks plus perhaps a few chapters from a story book. Later, I learned it would be very effective if I also assigned them to give a short talk which would require them to use the new grammar point or the new vocabulary. Lately however, I've come up with a whole new idea. Instead of telling them to prepare for a "talk", I tell them to prepare for possible question and answers. Here's an example. Suppose I'm teaching my students Greetings and Introductions. This would be their homework: "I will ask you next session about you and your friends' names, ages, jobs, etc. You have learned how to answer those questions. You should be FULLY PREPARED to answer whatever question comes up. I want you to be TOTALLY FLUENT at this. You can prepare yourselves by making sentences in your heads, creating possible questions and then answering them, or practicing questions and answers with a friend." By doing so, I am giving them the responsibility of reviewing and practicing in their own time and in their own way. So, next time I'm working on the past tense, I'm not going to ask them to give a "talk" explaining what they did last weekend (which would be too limited and therefore quite easy), but I would ask them to prepare for all sort of questions ranging from their immediate past to early childhood to past events in history. Please post your comments on this idea and/or take this poll. Thanks! :)

It's been a while I've been thinking of getting an ADSL connection. Yesterday, I went to the local telecommunications center and inquired about it. I learned that a 128kbps connection would cost me just below 30,000 toomans per month. I thought I might wanna put it off for later. Interstingly enough, last night, I came across a blog entry on Ham's page which was entitled: "A Simple Trick to Boost Your Dial-up Speed by 100%!". I followed the instructions and got a much faster connection. I wonder how it works! :D Thanks Ham!
Yesterday, I left home earlier than usual to buy a new IELTS sample tests book for my student, Sasan. I thought it would be a good chance to take pictures for my friend, Norm and so, I took the camera with me. I didn't have the time to get off the car, take a shot and get back in; so, I took most of the pictures while driving! I must've scared the hell out of those pedestrians! :D Norm was so grateful about the pictures and has put one of them on his today's blog entry. He says he thinks Tehran looks very much like many of the big cities scattered throughout the United States. Norm is so lucky to live in a quiet neighbourhood rather than Tehran or Washington!

Last night, I was cyber-chatting my ameican e-pal, Norm, about the songs we liked and I thought he might like to hear an Iranian song. So I started looking through the folders on my computer hoping to find a good song. But because I almost never listen to Iranian songs, I saw that I only had a few crappy ones including a Kamran & Hooman album. I recluctantly sent "dooset daram, kheili ziad" over to Norm and told him what the words meant. After he listened to the song, he wondered: Are they practicing different ways of saying "I love you"?!
:D

Today, I got the shock of my life when I saw my private student's old pictures on his laptop. He's a really cool boy called Hamed and he's undeniably in good shape. He had told me before that he had put on a lot of weight; but I had no idea what he'd meant by "a lot" until I saw the pictures he'd taken five years ago. I could not believe it was the same person. The difference was amazing! When I asked him how he'd managed to gain so much weight, I was shocked even more. He said he used to fill up the fridge every afternoon and then empty it the very next day!
:o