What I Did on My Summer Vacation (Part 2 in a Series of I Don't Know How Many Yet)

I know, I know. You're all anticipating the wedding photos, updates on the stubble, and other Iran-related material, but you must be subject to the same stuff I already sent in the order I sent it. Deal with it.

Originally emailed June 18, revamped July 28

Salaam all the people I love,

Hope this finds you well. Life in Iran is ticking by as expected. We've tasted boredom, only because all the fun available is G-rated or sweetened. We've also tasted pizza, which is peculiarly enough served without any sauce but with packets of ketchup. I think it's better without the sugary paste, but everyone else seems to be a fan of the modified pizza. Mack's been wowing audiences with his magic abilities... until their Iranian natures ruin the magic and start messing with his tricks.


And we've been enjoying demonstrating our mastery of the "bounce a matchstick on the carpet" trick that we learned on day one and that has been shown to us every day since then. Oh, I've also been painting flowers on toes and fingers with my Sally Hansen French Manicure kit and a bobby pin. Good times.

Today we went to Mack's mom's sister's house. Marzia and her husband, Hamid, have a house a lot like his grandparents, only more modern. We basically sat on the floor for six hours, breaking up the time in 15 minute increments to take in fruit or tea or ice cream or sunflower seeds or rice or tea or tea or tea. Hamid turned on the tv at one point and you should have seen my face light up when he flipped to the Croc Hunter movie. Then he changed the channel to some music video with a blonde Iranian acting all a floosie, and we went back to sitting on the floor and eating and drinking tea. Marzia and Hamid have two kids, Razia, who is a little chubby, shy, sweet 11 year old girl who stares at me like I am a movie star, and Amid, who, sorry for Seth, has agreed to marry Betsy. He's cute if you ignore the broken front tooth and the occasional bursts of BO. Everyone is incredibly sweet and the way I talk about them now really is a direct result of sitting on the floor for six consecutive hours.

I have rediscovered the thrill of the bing cherry, which Sarah first opened my eyes to during a road trip to somewhere. Cherries are everywhere here and man are they good. A couple nights ago we sat on the back porch (read marble slab coming off back of house into courtyard) and spit probably 100 cherry seeds into the 4' by 4' plot of dirt in the middle of the courtyard. Good times. Marzia gave me a ring today as a gift. Brides get gifts here. I'm still waiting for my 15 goats but until then, the ring is really sweet looking. Gold with a stone that I think is probably cubic zirconia, but it's sweet looking nonetheless.

Yesterday we went to meet with a hairdresser, which was totally bizarre. I had to look at an album to pick out a hairstyle I liked for our party and whoa. I told Mack's mom I ought to get something exotic, and i was being sarcastic in response to the ludacris eyeliner and purple eyeshadow and pink lipstick that a lot of girls here wear that make them look like dangerous kitty cats high on cotton candy. I think she took me seriously. Some of the make up on those girls was so thick they were white. And the woman who does the make up had about 1/4" on her face and the most fried hair I've ever seen. I just told Shahin to tell her I'd stop her if she did something I didn't like. It should be an experience. I think we also get to do Henna. Shahin's sister Fedeshtah knows how to do it, so she's going to do it for us. I'm excited for that because I've never seen it done in real life and never had it done to me.

We've been eating a lot of good food. Rice and soups and lamb and fruit and kababs. Last night we stopped at a park and ate falafel sandwiches and sambusa from a street vendor. He had a little fry pit and everything right there next to him. That was some amazing food. The falafel sandwiches were like a foot long with pickles and tomatoes and some parsley onion spread, but they were nothing compared to the sambusas. They were little fried triangles of goodness. Mack's mom said they were vegetarian, but I swear they had chicken in them. Whatever it was, it was delicious. Veggies, meat, whatever all fried in a little bread casing, and then you take the teddy bear shaped hot sauce dispenser to your picnic spot and coat every bite. Yum. Yum again. That and the orange (colored, not tasting) soup have been my favorite things to eat here so far, and seeing as how I haven't thought anything here was even mediocre, that's saying something.

We took a couple falafel sandwiches home for Momma Bazorge and Bobba Bazorge (Gma and Gpa), and BBZ refused to eat his. He started spouting off in the most hilarious way about how that food can't be trusted and how eating it coats your mouth with oil and has cat pee and dog poop in it. Turns out the man, who is 68 years oldish, has never in his life eaten in a restaurant. Never had fast food. Only eats what he has made for him at home. Well, once he got on his little rampage, he couldn't be stopped. I laughed so hard I drooled. I had no idea what he was saying, even though Shahin was trying to keep up with him and translate it, but his gesturing was so funny I couldn't contain myself.

Everyone was laughing so hard. He has the most amazing stories. Like he used to smuggle cigarettes from Iraq and Pakistan taped to his body while he trekked through water. Then, when he wanted to be a cab driver but he couldn't read and write to take the test, he went to the shah's palace and said, "I've got five daughters to feed. You can either give me the license or feed my daughters." Like a week later they changed the law so you could take a picture test and then just drive the car for the other part of your test.

At one point Tom got up to go have a smoke and on his way out he shook BBZ's hand, and he grabbed hold of it really tight. Well, that led to another story that was confirmed by MBZ. BBZ had an old Paykan car that had 8,000,000 (not a typo) kilometers on it (like 5,000,000 miles... not a typo) and he just got rid of it last year when the govt bought it from him because it was such a polluter. Shahin bought him a new car that he now covers even if it sits in its covered carport, but that's another story. Well, one time this motorcylce guy hit his Paykan and he got out and grabbed the guy by his britches and wouldn't let him go, even as he sat on his bike and tried to drive away. Finally the guy said, for the love of god man let me go. I'm sorry! and BBZ just raved about how strong he was. At which point it was revealed to us that he went to have back surgery six months ago unbeknownst to anyone until it was over. He said, I'll see you in a little while, and next thing they know he's had fused vertebrae surgery! He's so cute when he tells the story.

Laila summed him up best when she said, "He's a man on the top, with a round belly, but he has little kid legs." He does! His legs are so scrawny and bendy and it just makes when he's really bombastic even funnier. We've had the most fun just watching him tell stories we don't understand. He grabs my head a lot and pulls it over to kiss it when I sit on his little day bed. He's very sweet and funny and animated. I'm forgetting half of his hilariousness since I'm trying to think of it, but he is a character that I'm glad I got to meet. His favorite thing is watches. We were here less than a day when Mack traded his Fossil watch for BBZ's old man looking watch. He didn't like the metal wrist band so he took it up to the watch store to have a leather band put on it. Then today, when we were at Marzia's house, he pulled out another watch and wore two on one wrist. Apparently he hides watches at other people's houses.

(No idea what Marel's V-sign means, don't think she has any idea either.)

Tomorrow night we're going to Shiraz to spend the night (since we're foreigners we get to sleep in sin together in the same room, but for a minute we were worried we might have to get one of those temporary marriages that people get so they can sleep with whores) and then going to see Persepolis, which I am very excited about. I'll send out an update after that. Hope everyone is well. Love you!
Amber

PS. Sarah -- I'll be gone by the time you get to KY, but I hope you and Kristin and Will have lots of good stories to tell when we all get together again. I love you!

Movin' and Shakin'

There's a picture of me with my old friend Leslie Smith (and I think Mark Barmore, Ryan Babbit and Leiah are in the photo with me, but who knows) standing over a For Sale sign at our old house on Blossom Lane in Louisville sticking out our turkey lips and acting sad that the For Sale sign means it's time to go. That time it took us to Lake Charles, LA, so it turns out that was a little sadder than I expected. But even that armpit brought me two of the best friends I've ever had... Miss Elijah Do Good and Miss Lamy LeDoux Better. To mark the occasion of my first move, I had Mack grab this shot and wanted to share. Not as many neighborhood rats around me this time, but the animals are still represented by one of the best friends Lexington gave me.

What I Did on My Summer Vacation (Part 1 in a Series of I Don't Know How Many Yet)

Some of this may be redundant, but some of it may be fresh. All of it tells of my experience in Iran visiting Mack's precious family this summer. If parts seem familiar, it might still be worth a re-read, since I can't help but add other snippets when I have unlimited minutes on the internet. Alas...

Originally Written June 16, Embellished July 25

Hello everyone! We've safely arrived in Iran, after roughly 48 hours of intense travel and lots of irritating sleep. On our flight from London to Iran on Iran Air we had the pleasure of sitting right next to the toilet, which, unbeknownst to us, happens to serve the purpose of a cafe car on a train. I swear they were having parties in those stalls that I wasn't invited to. And we had little Iranian boys behind us dancing around and singing "Wild, Wild West" while they kicked and bumped our chairs. I was relieved when we landed... until we got to be picked to go in the little room near the passport window. Everything ended up going fine for us and we made it into the country alright, but the fingerprinted guy next to us who was returning to Iran after 20 years didn't seem as lucky. I heard the guard guy say what I interpreted to mean police followed by an obvious quickening in the other man's breathing. The airport in Tehran was bizarre. Women have separate security entrances, but luckily Mack's uncle Hamid was there to point them out to me or else I would have walked right up to men's. I thought it was a joke. The headscarf wearing is going alright. It's ridiculously hot here, and to think you have to put on a jacket and wrap your head is enough to convince you just to stay home and do Sudoku puzzles. Shahin can't sit still though, so luckily we're being pushed to take some adventures. Today we went to Esfahan, which is about 20 minutes from where we live. It was stunning.

We went to the Bazaar e Bazorg and looked at the coppersmiths making pots and then walked through the Shah's palace and admired the tile work, the view and the paintings of other cultures in the world that Persians encountered before 1600 when the palace was built.



Across from the palace was the Imam Mosque, which has an enormous, echoy dome and some of the most beautiful blue tile work you can imagine. It was pretty incredible to imagine these places in their heyday in the 1500-1600s.



Makes me feel pretty stupid for thinking ours is the most advanced civilization. Sure, we've got cars and computers and air conditioning but when was the last time we laid individual tiles by hand to decorate an enormous dome or put a swimming pool on the top floor of a castle with our bare hands? The palace was pretty cool, I think because of the insulating rocks used in building it and the cross breezes it gets.

We also met a young Iranian guy who is biking across the country for peace. He had pictures of the places he was traveling to and from hanging in the palace and Shahin talked to him about his adventures.

He had these awesome pics of a city that they are excavating that had been buried by sand and dirt. An entire city buried! And they're digging it up! Imagine! We haven't had time to lose anything in our baby country.

After making the rounds at Imam Square we walked along the river and explored the amazing bridges in Esfahan. They're so cool. We stopped for tea in a shop underneath the bridge and watched the local men smoking hookahs. They used to let you walk all the way across the river under the bridge on these little pillars that stuck out of the water, but it was fenced off for some reason. That didn't stop the Iranians though. They kicked off their shoes and waded right on across, climbed over the shoddy barbed wire near the tea house and went on their merry way. So, you can walk under the bridge, on top of the bridge on the street, or through the covered sidewalk on the side of the bridge. At one of the bridges we watched some local fishermen cast nets out and try to catch fish, and at another one, I walked under it and looked to the other end only to see about 40 platforms from one end to the other covered with people in black headscarves. It reminded me of sea lions on a pier, but they were people. I wanted to get a photo so bad, but I felt guilty that they reminded me of animals so I didn't.

It's really different in Iran than in the US, better in some ways and not in others. The people here are really educated and very friendly, but there is serious unemployment and underemployment. People with masters and phd degrees who work as airport security or taxi drivers.

The driving is insane... yeah, that is a two-lane highway, but those lines are just guidelines. If there's an inch to move forward, you can drive into it. And crossing the street is like playing frogger with yourself as the frog. We sleep and eat on the floor. They lay out a big tablecloth and we all sit around it and eat. The food is incredible and we have tea time with fruit a couple times a day. Then at night we lay out thin futon-like mattresses in one of the three rooms with nothing in it but our luggage and some enormous Persian rugs and go to sleep. Some people sleep out in the courtyard since it's so cool at night. After lunch we take naps, so that's been really helpful in helping me dodge jetlag. I was thinking I'd have a tougher go at sleeping on the floor, but I'm actually sleeping better and harder than when I have a bed. Today is Friday so it's like our Sunday and no one works really. We're going to a park to meet the rest of the family and have dinner. Blankets and rugs spread out in the grass, huge pots of food for everyone to eat from.

Marzia, Shahin, Me, The Other Shahin

Donia, Mehdi and Laila Raided the Rosebushes at the Park

Mack's family has been so nice. His grandpa told me all the good and bad things -- khube and khube nist -- to visit in Iran and how other countries can be categorized. For the record, the US and Bush are khele khube (very good) and Tehran is khube nist (not good, but I think he was talking about it in terms of visiting). For a while I thought he was talking about India because he kept saying Inja, but then I learned that that means here and not India, so that really cleared things up. The language has been pretty limiting, but Shahin is a great guide... and affordable too! I keep trying to spend money and no one will let me. They negotiate with the sales person for me, but then they say, this is a birthday present, or a wedding present, or, like today I got a gift for mom and dad, and "that can be a gift from momma bazork and bobba bazork (Shahin's parents... that means Grandma and Grandpa) to your parents. A taxi is 40 cents for 5 people to ride into town, and gas is 32 cents per gallon. Did I mention the food is incredible? I'm having an incredible time and feel so lucky I get to visit here. Better go to dinner now. Love to everyone and you've got to see the pictures when I get home. The don't do the place justice, but they are beautiful!
XOXOXO,
amber

7 Down, 2 To Go

This is way overdue (we're almost at 8 months, but in my defense, the pic was actually taken almost on schedule). Baby Ben is taking over Little Leiah's body. Before we moved to Cali, he was kicking her spleen and living somewhere on top of her stomach. Lots of other interesting things are happening too, but sometimes those are best left among sisters... or at least women. He she is, and somehow she's still managing NOT to explode.

Homeless to Home Free

Well, we made it back to the States 21 days ago, lingered at my mom and dad's and leigh and nash's so we didn't have to feel too homeless, said our goodbyes, collected our betsy and seth and, after 48 non-stop hours of driving across this enormous country, made it to Los Angeles, and more specifically Santa Monica. Our apartment was a little boughaz when we first came in, but a couple cans of paint and some window boxes and one art hanging session later, it's home. It's hot in the afternoons everywhere but in our bedroom, where we have a window a/c, but I'm finding I like the layer of sweaty grime that acts as a cooling agent. It makes me feel like I've worked out when all I've done is folded clothes and it makes me go outside and take walks when I'd otherwise favor the cooler inside. Apparently Santa Monica has had some blackouts (we've been oblivious to those) and LA is in the midst of one of the worst heatwaves ever (global warming, anyone?... the hottest we've gotten is 85 with an ocean breeze, but it's like 120 in the valley... stupid valley). We've been having fun getting to know our alley weirdos -- we've got the alley mayor, who leaves notes about venus' incessant (never) barking (she really hasn't barked once since we got here, and i'm not just saying that to brag) on our door every night we're gone for more than two hours, and the alley trash patrol, who moves trash from different bins into others and tries to take trash out of people's cars and out from under their projects. Oddly enough, she doesn't do a thing about the decaying body smell coming from a couple of the bins, so every now and then we get a sample from the air coming through the window. One day when she's not looking I'm going to dump bleach into those bins and try to kill the smell at least a little. Mack watched her try to throw someone's hat away that was sitting inside their car, when she was caught red handed and stopped with, "We like to throw our own hats away, thanks." Now those are the neighbors we need to meet. In addition to claiming our territory, I've been applying for jobs, so if any of you get a call, remember, I'm exceptional to work with, dependable, capable, delightful, talented, highly motivated, incredibly organized, and, if you're feeling generous, inspiring. I've got tons of stuff to blog, including pics from our amazing trip, so, to make up for the homeless and internetless absence, you will be inundated with a blog a day until i run out of things to say. in the meantime, here's where i go in the evenings. you can come too.

The Lap of Luxury

I'm vacationed out. Hopefully everyone I've been emailing about my trip isn't, because when I get home the blog is getting some of the email stuff repeated, but it''ll still be good to look at because I'll have pictures. Yes, visual proof. Since it's not time to go home for two more days, I'm just going to think about it.

These are the things I miss the most, in no particular order.

My mom and dad and seeing my dad in his new recliner having problem-solving thoughts, my pregnant sister and feeling my nephew in the making kick and swim, hearing Mack play piano in our house, Venus wagging her tail until she collapses when we walk in the door, Miss Kitty's hairy paws, Liz checking out my trash pile when she comes to visit in case I threw out something she doesn't need but will still take, long, hot walks with Leigh at the Arboretum while Avo refuses to pick up the pace, riding my scooter, making jokes about how much Betsy and Seth sleep, waiting tables at the Ketch and watching the drunk regulars think they are on a boat and are some special breed of pirate, reading books in the hammock, farrmers markets, MTV's Real World marathons on Sundays, doing laundry, updating the blog, calling people whose numbers I only know beacause they are programmed in my cell phone, playing volleyball, getting hour-long voicemails from Jen that are entire conversations and calling her back to leave her one, El Toro and afternoon margaritas, going out for a beer and some really garlicy appetizer with Ruble, hot chips, my Silky, my hair-straightener, my laptop, looking for a job and an apartment in LA, being able to drive somewhere if I want to, baby showers, weddings, pool parties, trips to Atlanta, birthdays.

Things I don't miss...

Local news, national news, news in the local newspaper, the fear that they infuse the news with, fashion magazines, our absurd, scandalous government, hearing about marines raping women and then killing their families, the "war"on drugs, the "war"on terrorism, beautiful people who never need a day in their sweats, working at the Ketch and watching the drunk regulars think they are on a boat and are some special breed of pirate, not having a job or a place to live, moving and packing, traffic, the unending tempatation to eat, fat people at Wal-mart in wheelchairs, enormous and ridiculous SUVs, parking lots that are too big and treeless to navigate by foot, that there's no where to take a walk without waging war with an automobile, never seeing any animals except cats and dogs, not getting a paycheck, junk mail for me, Mack, Shannon, Charles, Niki and Kelly Whitt (the woman I bought my house from) overflowing from the mailbnox, mowing the yard in the oppressive Kentucky summer heat, not being able to walk down brick alleys and admire the view at every turn, the excessive brightness at gas stations, buyin gas, the shameful architecture we pride ourselves on, how cheap America looks when you return to it after seeing countries that take pride in their aesthetic, complaining about America all the time.

I can't wait to get home, wherever that might be when I get there.