I was scrolling through Facebook the other day, and as some readers know, I have a lot of Iranian friends and colleagues from my undergraduate days when I conducted research in Tehran and Esfahan. Well, one of them happened to post a deal that is simply too good to not share with you: a website dedicated to Iranian cinema has a special deal making all its films free for 90 days. Continue reading “Iranian Movie Night: ALL OF THE MOVIES!”
When you study Farsi as much as I have, you end up reading a lot of poetry. And I mean a lot.
But wait a minute, Farsi? Don’t they speak Kyrgyz in Kyrgyzstan? Yes, you’re right, but today, while I was musing on the theme of global citizenship, I kept finding myself drawn back to one of my favorite poems that I read during my four years studying Iranian culture, Farsi, and Persian poetry. I’m looking forward to adding some new information about Iran on Monday Bazaar in the future, and this is a good first step. Continue reading “Global Citizenship: An Iranian Perspective”
This year, some website somewhere decided to spy on us all to check and see which of our photos were our most liked on Instagram this past year. But, since the number of likes doesn’t always correlate to the best photos, I’ve decided to curate a list of what I think were by best shots that went up on my Instagram this year. Continue reading “My Favorite Photos Of 2015”
This week, I published a piece as a guest blogger on the importance of international education on the blog of my friend and former teacher, Vicki Weeks. Some readers who know me recall that in 2006, I had the chance to travel to rural China with my school’s Global Service Learning program, and I would never have had the chance to go if it weren’t for Vicki. Vicki was the director of that program, and she now helps schools across the United States build their international programs to help students experience life in different settings from where they grew up. Here’s the first two paragraphs, and you can read the rest over at Global Weeks.
I wasn’t particularly curious about the world growing up. Originally from small-town Alaska, I ate nothing but grilled cheese sandwiches and Hot Pockets, and my biggest life aspiration was probably to move to Seattle when I got older. That all changed when my family moved to a small town in France when I was 9 years old.
Enrolled in an international school, there were as many nations represented in my classes as there were students. Each person I met came to the school with a different culture, a different language, and a different story. This incredible diversity was all celebrated with an annual festival called the Kermesse, where students from each country would prepare food and art presentations. Through them, I unwittingly began my quest to better understand the world. Continue reading…
Be sure to check out the rest of the post at Vicki’s website, Global Weeks.
This is a piece of travel writing I wrote in 2013 about my experience traveling in Esfahan, Iran in the fall of 2012. Because of the way rights work with The Crimson, I can’t publish the entire text here, but here is the opening part:
There is something both timeless and eerily beautiful about arches in Safavid architecture. The elegant ogees appear in both two and three dimensions across the city of Esfahan, forming façades and domes, lining bazaars, and crisscrossing the Zayandeh Rud in the form of four stone pedestrian bridges.
Stepping onto a pedestrian bridge is always a thrill. I still remember when I first walked across the Weeks Bridge, looking at the cars on both Soldiers Field Road and Memorial Drive and thinking to myself, “I bet you wish you could use this bridge.” Where else in Boston can you see people dancing Argentine tango beneath the full moon in the spring, jumping into the river in the summer, cheering on the rowers in the fall, and quickly running across in a bundle of down in the winter?
Continue reading over at The Harvard Crimson!
