A very warm welcome

Time does fly, it has been more than a month since my last blog update, the day before we took the plane to Iran. We are here now, we have a little house, a little garden, and these weeks have been fast, exciting and most of all, incredibly warm. We celebrated several birthdays including my own, we celebrated Chaharshanbeh soori and today, it is the first day of the New Year 1400! Time for more celebrations, and for an update!

Let me guide you through some experiences of these past weeks. Of course, there is so much that happened that I am not writing about, and so many experiences, feelings and surprises that will unfortunately never make it to this blog simply due to constraints in words and time. In a nutshell it is, then.

Upon our arrival around a month ago, a Welcome Party was planned by our family. They had decorated our house with lights and balloons (when we looked through the window it was as if the police was inside!) and they brought a sheep to our garden to be slaughtered. Not exactly what many would see as romantic, but it is a tradition that has its roots in the story of Abraham and Isaac, which is a story shared by Jews, Christians and Muslims alike. The flowing blood of the sheep is thought to guard the newlyweds from evil and bad luck in their lives together. Of course, the meat is eaten! But half of the sheep is donated to families in Tehran who cannot afford to buy meat. After that, we danced and ate and exchanged gifts until everyone went home and we spent our first night in our lovely home.

The next few weeks were overly busy and fun. We spent a great deal of time in Imam Hossein square in Tehran, which harbours a ton of second hand furniture shops where we gathered most of our furniture for our house.We also picked up a vintage Vespa, a cat and a TON of antique textiles on the way, but that’s a story for another time. In the mean time, I have faced many many questions on when I want children and why ‘now’ is not my answer. Although, at the same time I have had so much encouragement from (new and old) friends around me to simply live life here as I want it to and take every opportunity to discover something new. In fact, I was even asked to come and work in the carpet bazaar! And honestly, I am very tempted to go and do so 😀 Carpet design is one of the things I really want to learn this year.

Which brings me to a reference I made in my last blog entry….

Truly, new things are happening. Ehsan and I have set up our office space (home office, aw yea!) and collected some money to kick start our business sooner rather than later. Right now, I also use it to teach English and Dutch online to get some extra income, and it’s honestly so fun! Additionally, I am soon starting my intensive Farsi classes to really get to an advanced level both in speaking and writing and I have started a course in interior design to complement our work here! Things are HAPPENING I am telling you.

Today is also Nowruz, the ancient New Year with Zoroastrian roots now celebrated in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Azerbaijan and Turkey among others. The bazaars are closed for 2 weeks straight. Most people have returned to their home villages (yes, despite covid) and Tehran has become empty! It is a blessing to be able to experience the start of spring here once again, after 2 years of being elsewhere. Maybe we’ll make a little trip to the south of Iran, maybe we’ll stay right here at home to do the traditional cleaning rituals. Who knows! In the next post, I will be expanding on the Nowruz traditions and how we have celebrated it all.

For now, hope you all have a healthy New Year 1400, and that it may be filled with good family relationships and kind spirits.