Happy Eid!

Greetings everyone. Last night I slept about 12 hours to recover from two days of Eid celebrations, which wouldn't have been quite so tiring except that it required being "on" whenever we visited relatives. Eid just means holiday, and it's a big holiday after the month of Ramazan, when everyone is fasting. The morning after the last day of Ramazan we wake up really really early and start the preparations. At about 6 am, we were already setting out the table cloth on the ground and putting the pillows out for any guests. By seven am, the cakes and all the sweets were already carefully arranged on the table cloths. Early in the morning, around 8 or so, all the men went to the mosque, with their own prayer rugs, to say the Eid prayers. In Iran, the women also go. Here, women do not attend the mosques. When they return from the service, they bring people with them to eat bowls of soup and samosas by 9 am. It was remarkable to once again be cooking such heavy foods that early in the morning. Besides for laying out the sweets, I had to help make the samosas - half of which were pumpkin/squash and the other half were meat. Needless to say, some of the samosas were shaped less than perfectly, but I was starting to get the hang of it. I had to also chop the onions for the samosas which was a good task, because I finally got a little practice at chopping onions all into the same shape, rather than the haphazard way my American self normally does it. The Tajik women were very excited about the prospect of my bringing Tajik style samosa cooking to Iran and the U.S. This will never happen, as making the dough properly would require another two years of practice, I imagine. Because I was cooking, I was told to wait for food until about 11, when I had the soup and samosas - and after 3 months I finally convinced them to stop dropping chunks of meat into my soup. By Noon, I was told to get dressed because it was time to travel all around Dushanbe and visit countless houses, with the relatives. It was soo tiring, because we would just plop down at someone's house, the host father would command me (as a joke, but I still had to do it) to eat 4 very untasty pistacchios and then after several prayers for the benefit of the hosts and the house we would leave. This happened about 6 times. I honestly, besides for 2 locations, don't know where I was. Everyone was soo happy though, and many people gave me presents. Giving presents is not the custom, but I believe they wanted to be nice. I gave a gift to the host parents for Eid - a nice photo album with many pictures from last summer and this current visit. They were so thrilled!- and were showing it to everyone and talking about it for days. The father actually patted me on the head as a sign of gratitude. In any case, the day after Eid all the women gathered at the grandma's house, and I had to hear about 10 times in 2 hours that I need to get married soon or else! I just smiled and ate my pomegranate, after eating two lunches before that. I can't understand why the mother gave me soup and salad for lunch half an hour before eating fried rice.
Christine is currently recording a rap song with a guy named Shekar (in English sugar). I'm anxiously awaiting the outcome of their day spent in the dusty recording studio.
In other news, I have been trying to get my Master's degree completed. I finally got Dr. Barzegar to read the entire thesis, and tell the school that it's flawless, when Dr. Gharavi got word that I had a new advisor assigned to read the paper. I have just emailed him, but the bureaucracy of getting this Iranian Master's degree two years after classes have ended is amazing. It will be nothing short of a miracle if I get the degree, especially as there are now two committee members reading my paper who have never met me.
In other news, I have had the department of social sciences at the Kazakstan Institute of Management, Economics, and Politics accept my application finally - and I will be going in the Spring to teach US government, politics, terrorism and security, and consitutitonal law. This is only after they lost my reference letters twice and corresponded with me about 50 times in order to clarify the status of my file. I tried so hard to get Julia in with me, but even after they asked me to refer them to another qualified candidate, they kept dropping the ball. Until Later.