Teacher’s Day in Iran

Hello Everyone,

I would like to share one of the nicest experiences that I have in my life with you guys, which it goes back to when I was studying at school in Iran. In the culture that I grew up with teachers have special status in the society and everybody, children to elders, constantly respect them. Also, due to the teachers’ educational and cultural level, they always are considered as a top class people in my country. In addition, the Persian religion, which is mostly Islam, keeps reminding the people residing in this country to have a special respect for the teachers and as a matter of fact, this is written in our holy book, Quran. In order to appreciate teachers and instructors, government of Iran decided to choose a specific day, May 02, in the name of teachers. Everyone all around Iran celebrate this event and it is concidered as a national holiday. All students from elementary school till university would give their teachers gifts as a remembrance and these gifts could be thank you letters or bunch of flowers. Most importantly, the whole purposes of giving gifts to the teacher are all about showing students’ appreciation and expressing their respects to their teachers. In our tradition, the teaching career is been called one of the prophets’ duties and whoever choose this job is following an honorable career. I personally think that this kind of mentality and public behavior in order to appreciate the teachers are very positive and generous. It would be nice if we could have such an event in Canada to celebrate the teachers’ day. I strongly believe that being a teacher is a very difficult and stressful job. However, at the same time it could be very interesting and fun. I wish the best for all the teachers in the world especially our instructors in EAP program, who are helping us to learn the English language as best as possible.

THANK YOU ALL.
Ghazal.

Christmass Shopping & Cold Weather

Hi everybody,

This evening I was kind of upset and home sick so I decided to go out and do some Christmas shopping, which is always exciting and interesting. Surprisingly, the prices are still a bit high for students like us and I think we should wait till boxing week if any of you have plans to do a big shopping. However, I needed to purchase something other than that I would go crazy. Ha Ha Ha... Let me tell you another funny story about my poppy. He was trained to go out once at 7:30am every morning and one more time at 6pm in the evening. Considering the Calgary's weather, which is getting colder and colder everyday this kind of schedule (early in the mornings and late in the evenings) does not work for him due to his size and ability to stand in cold weather. The other day, right after the first snow I opened the backyard door for him and it usually takes him about 7 to 10 minutes to come back inside. I was waiting for him for almost 20 minutes then I became worried about him. I went out side and I saw him shaking with no movement. He was looking at me but he was not able to actually move and walk to me. Therefore, I ran and brought him inside. He was almost half frozen and I was almost going to kill my own poppy due to lack of experience. Any way I am changing his routine at the moment, which is a very difficult job to do and it requires a lot of patient. God helps me...

Cheers,
Ghazal.

Educational Trip with Scott

Hi everybody,
Tomorrow we all are going to visit the art museum, Glenbow Museum, located in down town Calgary in order to discover more about Canadian artists especially, Emily Carr who is one of the most famous female artists in Canada. Hopefully, everyone is going to have a wonderful time at the Glenbow museum and enjoy this educational trip with our instructor, Mr. Scott Douglas and other students in EAP III. As everyone remember, Scot made us to sign an agreement that we are not going to sue the University of Calgary, which was kind of funny and interesting. This would simply show that some student have sued the university before for millions of dollars. The other subject that I really want to talk about is being on time for tomorrow. Scott asked us to be there at 11am sharp, which it means he does not want us to be late and being us late, makes him very disappointed. This attitude from Scott is completely acceptable because we should probably meet each other at the door first and pay for our tickets and then perhaps Scott is going to give us some instructions about what we are going to do as an activity. So let’s all be on time and make him really happy and proud. Just a reminder tickets are $11.00 at the door of the museum due to Scott’s negotiation with their office department and please bring exact change because nobody actually can help you with that.
Ha Ha Ha Ha ….
See you all on Friday @ 11am SHARP

Dec, 21, 2012

Hello Everyone,

I was watching TV the other day and there was an advertise of documentary program on Discovery channel called "The End of The World". I became very curios to watch this program and I actually did. It was very interesting and unbelievably sad. The program was very strong and made a lot of influences on me. The scientists and researchers could bring variety of different evidences in order to support their beliefs. For instance, they talked about Mayan's calendar, which is one of the most significant calendars in history of humans for over 5000 years. Mayans for such a long time believed that on Dec, 21, 2012 there is going to be a huge change in whole world including the Earth due to the situation of the Stars, Sun, Moon, and the Earth. Amazingly, this calendar is made by Mayans around 5000 years ago and they could calculate all these years with their calendar. This historical reality would clearly show how strong and sufficient is this calendar. In history, Mayans are called one the most civilized people on the Earth not only at their own time but even at this time. They were the first people who built pyramids way more advanced than the pyramids in Egypt. The other evidence that scientists used in this program to support their ideas were the very famous Chinese book called “I Ching”, which talks about Dec, 21, 2012 as the end of the world exactly same as Mayans. The third evidence that they used on this program was the Michel de Nostradamus’s book, which is very famous in most nations regarding the future events and history shows that a lot of events that he brought in his book actually happened. For example, world war I, world war II, and September, 11, 2002. The last evidence that is more based on scientific reasons was Global Warming, which most of the people in the world are familiar with it. However, it seems that people in reality are not willing to take an action to solve this problem and it is becoming worst everyday. After watching this program, I suddenly started thinking with myself that even if the world does not end by this date it would end one day and more importantly my life will end one day. Nobody stays alive forever. Therefore, I should take the most and best advantages of my life and try to become successful and useful for my family, friends, and other people in the world. I wish everybody the best and hopefully, everybody start thinking about some of the facts that are existed and they can not be avoid.

Good Luck,
Ghazal.