Friends All Around

Camera time, everybody! So, here's my young, old friend, sweet Assal. I have known her since the day she was born in Berkeley. She is beautiful, kind, considerate, and generous of the heart. She is also a very good writer, a poet, and a very funny girl all around. She has taught me so much. Many of you know her from her kind and insightful comments in my blogs. I saw her and her beautiful mother, Sheida, at a baby shower this past Saturday. We had a grand old time! I was walking fast down the street yesterday afternoon to run an errand and return to work. I heard someone say "Salam" in Farsi. I turned around. A young man was looking at me. I had never met him before. He said: "Shoma Nazy Kaviani hasteed?" (Are you Nazy Kaviani?). Perplexed, I said "Yes." He introduced himself as Mehdi, a young graduate student in Electrical Engineering at Berkeley. How the heck did he recognize me?!! He said he reads my blogs! Can you imagine the surprise?!! Of course such meetings had happened to me before, but usually at functions and lectures and such, never when I was running down the street like a lunatic! Of course, the minute I got over my surprise, I had to pull my camera out and snap a photo of my brand new friend, Mehdi. Here we are everybody, meet Mehdi. Hint: he must be super smart to be going to Berkeley! And so, I went to my last Persian Literature class of this summer last night. It's always wonderful when July rolls in and I am treated to Dr. Zari Taheri's classes. And it's always sad when the classes end. I love this highly educated and most wonderful human being, my teacher. I'm going to miss her so much. She says she has to stay in Japan for two more years to work on a very special Persian literature research project. Bad for us and good for the Japanese! And speaking of Dr. Taheri's class, I took my friend, Marjan, to last week's class with me. Marjan is a brilliant young blogger who used to live in Southern California. She has just moved up here to attend UC Davis this Fall. She is travelling now. I hope she has a good time wherever she is. So, that was all I could fit in one post! I have some other pictures to share with you, but they will need their own separate posts. I hope you all have a great Friday. I'll write again tomorrow.

P.S. I have started replying to some of your kind comments. I hope I can go back to my routine. I miss it too much!