Narges

My summer officially starts tonight! I finished the last project presentation, then there was the department's commencement ceremony. Later in the evening my best friend and I came to my house for a while. Yes, it was a very great day!

I don't know if it is natural or not, but my drawing talents show up in bursts. There's a time that I suddenly feel a strong urge to draw. If I draw then, my drawing comes out really really amazing. But if I do something else that urge goes back to sleep and then the drawing gets totally awful. It's not good. Like this, you really can't "plan" for drawing for half an hour everyday. Who knows when that urge is gonna show up? There has to be a solution. I need practice and I need to be in my element when I'm practicing.

Someone who finds the flaw in following sentence will get the cookie!

If there was no meta-logical explanation for the existence of existence, I wouldn't be existing right now.

I will try to update more for a while. Let's see if I can keep it up a little.

Last night I went to my friend's house to watch a movie together. We watched Juno. I really liked it! It was a simple interesting story with a great cast. It connected so well with the audience. Yeah, I really liked it. I recommend it to everybody.

My friends are going to Niagara falls in a few weeks. Unfortunately I can't go with them, because they are all Americans and they actually want to go to Toronto afterwards. But I have visa issues if I get out. :/

We talked about people who find a place for their siblings here in the US. My friends asked me about my brothers and whether I will help in getting them to some good university. I said my brothers are both so awesome that they don't need my help in getting into great places. That's really true. Of course, as a big and the only sister, you are always there for them, worry about them, support them... but in truth, I already know how cool they both are, and I am sure they have a very bright future without anyone's help. Wherever they go, it is that place that should feel lucky to have them. Honestly, my older brother is an ultra-genius. My younger brother is an extremely hard working genius. I am only waiting for them to rock the world with their inventions. :) God, it's so good to be a proud sister! I hope I will also become a proud wife and a proud mother someday!

OK, gotta go now.

Hello again! God I am surprised I have survived this far! The past month, for me, was crazy. I had so many tough exams and projects and assignments. I lost track of the number of times I damned myself for choosing so many tough courses this semester, or even choosing CMU! But hurray! I survived :D

So, what's going on out there? Here, I'm enjoying some course-free leisure-time research.
This year was such an eye-opener for me. I had never taken so many courses in this field. I have realized that before CMU I didn't know my field at all. A field that I saw as a single white beam before is now a rainbow. And each color feels different. I'm happy I didn't blindly choose the PhD back there. In fact, I am now understanding what PhD really means. It means you'll be someone that all important people in your field will recognize. Now can I be a good PhD student? Good question!

By the way, Pittsburgh which had failed to impress me back then is slowly settling in a nice warm corner in my heart. It's not as cool as some big cities that I have seen so far. Philly was so fun. D.C. was so cool. But you know, Pittsburgh these days is a piece of heaven. So peaceful, so green, so clean, so dreamy! My new favorite activity is to walk to school everyday. I did walk to school everyday all winter too, but now, each morning one new flower has bloomed, and trees look different every day! My house window opens toward a small grassy hill, a big deserted tennis court, several rows of trees, and some houses that I barely see from behind those trees. I keep the window open these days. Birds sing, there's a nice breeze, I have a squirrel friend, and there are two cats who like to run in that court. And I can feel that there are a bunch of humans living out there, even if I don't see them. Could my house be in a better place on earth? I don't think so.

On a totally different topic, my neighbors' kids make so much noise these days. I can't take it anymore. I am not sure if I should express my discomfort to them, or I should simply contact the manager and avoid direct confrontation. I understand that kids have so much energy and the houses are small, but load noises every single day for 6 month just outside my door in a public apartment corridor?

Journey to Washington D.C. was unforgettable :)
We hit the road at 9am, planning to get there for lunch, visiting the cherry trees in the evening, and coming back at 9pm.

The road from Pittsburgh to D.C. was very similar to the road to Philadelphia (in my view, at least!). The trees were still bare. We listened to Weird Al Yankovic and laughed a lot! Washington D.C. soon made its presence known by the traffic. Even out of the city! But maybe there has been an accident or something. One of the guys who had iPhone found a Persian restaurant nearby and so I got my first official persian Kabob (yum!) meal in the US. There are many Iranians in the D.C! I wish Pittsburgh one tenth as many. Ah well,

It was already 3 o'clock when we felt full and happy and ready to leave the restaurant :D The weather was great. Sunny sky after a couple of rainy days. My friend's uncle and aunt lived in one of the suburbs and they were so generous to offer to drop us at the subway station. If we had to drive to the cherry place we would have to face that huge traffic.

Washington suburbs are phenomenal! Or maybe it was that time of the spring, the sunny sky and good friends that made them look so so so awesome. My friend's uncle and aunt lived in the most beautiful street I had ever seen. Hundreds of fully bloomed cherry trees on both side of the street! No wonder the houses are so expensive there :)

The subway was my first subway experience out of Iran too. In Iran, the subway is relatively new, so the stations are clean and light and pretty. Washington's subway which is much much older than Iranian subway was extremely gloomy and dark and kind of scary. I don't think I would like to try that after 8pm by myself, ever. heh! But of course, accompanied by a friend who had grown up there, I didn't feel gloomy at all :D

We managed to get to the center of the festival right on time. 4:30. Sun still high in the sky, with many cute kites up flying and kids running around, pink and white blossomed trees shining by the river ... It definitely was beautiful. We walked around a lot, visited some buildings and memorials, and by 7 we were totally content and happy. We went back by subway, and my friend's aunt and uncle were waiting for us with two cars. We were going to another persian restaurant for dinner :D

After that huge lunch, there's no wonder that I couldn't really finish half of my super delicious dinner kabob. I got a box and brought it back home with me though, so no loss! I got to know my friend's uncle a little. He was an old navy man. Quite funny and friendly. Anyone who ways Americans aren't warm people is 100% wrong. This family was as warm and friendly as my closest relative could ever be in Iran :)

Yep, it was time to head back. My friend and his wife decided to stay at their uncle's house, but other people including me were less fortunate and more worried about their studies and research, and resisted the urges :D I got to my lovely bed at 1:30, barely persuaded myself to go brush the teeth, and was asleep by 1:35!

That journey turned that day to the most wonderful Saturday of my life!

Today I finally truly felt the spring! God, life is so beautiful in spring. :)

I think that instead of summers, schools should be off in winters. Spring and summer, with the lovely sun in the sky, green trees, singing birds, and those wonderfully long days are heavenly enough to give you energy to work 10 times harder and still see the smile of the life.

I never realized that winter had shadowed my feeling so much. It was only after this evening that I saw wow, I used to love the world this much!

As always, in this weather, when the whole nature is reborn around us, absolutely nothing can be enough to make me and you lose our hope and drive! Don't tell me I repeat myself every year around this time! I know!! But what can I say? I'm totally in love with spring.

Happy nature's birthday! Happy spring!

I've been thinking of attending Washington's Cherry Blossom festival, which starts this weekend and lasts for 3 weeks... Best time for me and my friends seem to be this weekend (March 29th) but I'm a little worried that maybe the trees won't be in full bloom by next week.

Anyone knows whether the trees will be their pink awesome breath taking selves by next week, or should we delay our journey for one week?

Edit:
This is what the Cherry trees look like now:

(Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/uvagolfer/2357285188/in/set-72157604225658971/)
I guess by weekend they do blossom fully, right?

Spring break is about to be over.

After all the comments and stuff, I ended up going to Philadelphia with my friends instead :D

That was an awesome trip. We took off at 6am on Saturday. We were 8 people with 2 cars. With a one hour breakfast break and several consequent nature call breaks, at the end we got to dear Philly at 2 something. Wow! To the downtown traffic! :D It was so like Tehran: Crowded, full of fancy shops, and full of people! I couldn't believe how I missed crowds while I stayed at Pittsburgh calm suburbs. Anyway, we got something to eat, went to the old city district, walked and looked around, got stuck in cars due to scary wind (storm) every now and then, and went to check in our hotel at 6 something. After that we went to the famous south street to eat the famous Philly cheese-steak. If you ask me, it was tasty, tricky to eat neatly, and quite fun.

The next day was sunny, we slept till 9:30, gathered our stuff, checked out and went to the famous Independence park. I learned quite a lot about American history (but don't try to quiz me!), forgot half of it an hour afterward, and found the whole experience of creating the American government really amazing. I mean, a lot of people coming from the already civilized countries to a huge place, with many opportunities open for them to create the government that they have always wanted. (ehem, I think today those sparkles are getting a little dusty, but anyhow).

It something like starting everything all over again, on a totally white paper. It is a different kind of history. This kind of interestingness definitely makes up for the lack of at least one digit in the American history calendar.

We were taken by a very pleasant surprise too, soon after getting out of Independence park. The Saint Patrick's day's parade! Wooow I LOVED the parade. Big cities show their true spark at these occasions. One huge street which I don't know its name was completely full of green groups with curly hair :) You couldn't see the end of the parade. One by one, each groups passed in front of us, with its own nice music, and nice dance. Only our load objecting stomachs finally persuaded us to leave for lunch. Otherwise we would have stayed and watched under the bright sun and clear sky for many many hours...

Lunck was delicious and very inexpensive. We went to a UPenn restaurant somewhere and with $7 entry, we got to eat everything we wished, until one epsilon under chocking region :D I even had to leave my delicious pizza half eaten. A real tragedy, indeed!

Then we went to Philadelphia museum of Arts. We got there pretty late, so we got kicked out before we could see one room through, and that's it! Feeling proud of ourselves for having such a great journey in such a short amount of time, we headed back to Pittsburgh. Heh! I was home at 11:30, and asleep in my lovely bed at 1am.

One extra good thing about the journey: It cost me so little, compared to the journey I had planned for myself. I hope these people want to go to Washington some time soon too :D

Hmmm, So who do you think will be the next American president?

The favorite part of most of my conversations with new people is when they ask about my nationality, usually after a couple of minutes when we have talked a bit about some stuff. I usually try to be very warm and friendly, and always smiling. Smile is something that makes both sides' days. It's really magical! And I care about my cloths a lot, and all in all, I make sure to present the exact opposite image that the media usually shows of an Iranian.

Anyway, it's incredibly interesting to see their reaction when they find out where I am from. Some people get really surprised, and that's when I feel really good inside, knowing that I'm probably the first real, breathing Iranian they have met and that they will probably think of Iran and Iranian people from a little different angel.

By the way, there was an interesting competition last week, about a non profit social enterprise idea and business plan. I had an awesome idea, so I found someone else who knew about business planning to team up with me, and we submitted our work. I hope we win. Or at least someone sees the idea and tries it. It focuses on interaction and collaboration between young students of different countries. I'm really proud of it.

You know, I am completely in control of my life now, and I am consciously making the choices and living the life that I have always wanted to. Following others and depending on others to make things right is now OVER. No matter where I go or what I do. And guess what.
I'm still as optimist as ever :)

About ten days ago we, all of the department students, went to Seven Springs ski resort just 1 hour away from Pittsburgh.

Surprisingly, I have never skied before in my life. (I say surprisingly because if you see this, and this, you can see that Tehran is has a huge mountain chain on the north side, and has several snowy ski resorts right above the city). Anyway, it seems that I needed to move to the other side of the earth to master enough resolution to go ski! It was fun, to say the least :)

I think I fell down a hundred times, and all my body joints and muscles (even my arms and fingers) were terribly sore for a few days. Don't mention my butt! The bruises on my shins are still kind of yellow too, after several days. But I still had enough fun that I will join more ski trips as soon as I see an affordable one.

Something funny happened too. My friend and I practiced for several hours, and then thought that we were now ski champions. We decided to mount the lifts, and go to the peak! It kind of looked scary, so I first said no. Then I was persuaded to go, and then my friend started having second thoughts and I persuaded him to come, and finally we decided to just try it.

Lift was most dangerous experience of my day! No seat belts or ANY kind of safety measure, 20 feet above the ground! And not only that, the skis were so damn heavy they were pulling me down by themselves! Anyway, the peak never looked safer when I was sitting (literally clinging to the rods on the back of my seat, that is!) in that lift. Getting of was okay. At least I didn't fall. My friend wasn't as lucky.

It's funny how you sometimes make a stupid decision and then you can't get out of it. Well, looking down from the peak reminded me again that I still wasn't as good at actually stopping my sliding. And the several times we fell down because of lack of stopping skills proved that sad fact. So we ended up having to do the embarrassing task of putting our skis over our shoulders and walking all the way down. And in what? Those horrid ski boots!

Aaah my mom couldn't stop laughing at this story when I told her the next day. It seems that the embarrassing, tiring, failed adventure, and the fact that I was perfectly fine afterward was just too amusing for her. I kind of can't get the grin out of my face when I think of that day.

A nice memory, for sure!

You know what? I'm getting hold of my plan.

I will visit northeastern cities (Washington and maybe Buffalo) using the train. A shorter distance is less likely to be distorted too much by delays. But I will do that in summer when trees grew some leaves. I think I can take a couple of days off some time in mid-summer, and then I will first go to Washington, visit all landmarks and museums, and then head over to see the Niagara Falls. They just need a summer weather to be totally awesome.

I have been looking at the Grand Canyon travel guide for a couple of hours. That seems a better choice for a spring break, and that place is something you even want to visit more than once in your life. I read that there's a Colorado River discovery tour (a half a day tour), and there are some hotels in the Grand Canyon Park itself so I can see around and walk around a lot for a few days.

Do you have any comments on this new idea?
(I know I keep coming up with new ideas, but be sure. I WILL see all of these places, sooner or later, so your suggestions are not in vain)

Using your information I found a vvvvveeeeeerrrrrrrrryyyyyy interesting thing. I can't contain my excitement!

Amtrak has a program called Rail Pass or something like that. Have you ever heard of or tried such a thing?

It seems that we can explore a large area (west/northeast/east/etc.) by train for 7 to 30 days for a very nice price.

Does that mean that the train will just move through the wild nature all around the US and we can watch everything and get off at the cities and explore them for a few days/hours?

If this is indeed what it means, then I'm sooooo in love with that plan! I wouldn't need hotels for half of the nights and I would see different natural climates and if I plan ahead I can plan to stay one/two nights in each nice city that I will pass through.

Is that what a Rail Pass program is?

Hmm, in case you are wondering, I still haven't decided where I want to go. I went to many wiki travel pages and looked up cities that you guys suggested. They all sound fun! I'm specially inclined to visit the nation's capital. The only think that tags my mind a little away is the thought that maybe summer the south would be too hot for a visit.

Do you know if trains are comfortable/safe enough? What places the railroads usually pass through? If I can see a little bit of a different nature from a train's window then I think I will choose it over the plain!

:>

I have a pile of homework and I'm so sleepy. Guess I'd better go.
Talk to you later.

Thank you for your suggestions!
I'm not sure how much I want to spend, but I'll probably be able to spare $170/180 for a very cheap flight, and $170/180 for 2/3 nights in a cheap hotel.
I wonder if that would seriously limit my ambitiousness? :D

Today I was at a gathering for women at CMU, and there was a girl there who had obviously spent hours making her hair look incredible. She was kind of very tall and very shy. I sent a lot of warm smiles her way through the meeting. We had to kind of talk for a moment about ourselves and the girl had the strangest voice. She sounded infinitely timid, and her voice was unbelievably high pitched.

After the meeting when my friend and I were heading back to our building she told me that that girl had actually been a *guy* a few years ago. That was the first time I had met someone who had changed his gender. It was interesting!

We cheerfully and giggle-fully concluded that being a girl must be so great that guys want to become girls and so we felt incredible all the way back to our office. And after that we reasonably concluded that both genders have their own goodness, and that we would probably feel incredible even if we were a guy. But we still agreed that being a girl is so fun and cool. We went to statistical machine learning class afterwards.

By the way, we have a week of spring break in mid march, and I am kind of tempted to go to a short journey somewhere. Where would you suggest?
(If northern states are still cold in mid march I prefer to go to southern ones, and leave the former for the summer)

Dear friends,

I know that it has been like forever since I have last updated this journal. I feel so guilty about it. If you have gotten disappointed and already stopped reading this, I perfectly understand. It's not like I don't deserve it.

If it's gonna help, let me at least give you one excuse.

I have been going through a very intense character transformation for the past year. I think the character that is coming out is taking a solid shape these days (specially after my 24th birthday), and I'm as interested in knowing the new me, as you probably are.
Right now, it is time for action. I have been a dreamer for the past years (something I am very happy about), and now (over the past few months), I have been given the opportunity to make them, and at the same time, have become aware that I'm no longer a little girl. I don't know which of these two changes has been the main reason for this big change that I am going through, (I would say both has been extremely important factors), but all I know that planting the seeds is over. It's now time to work hard to turn the sprouts into fruitful strong trees. Thats what my life is going to be for the next years.

People here in CMU are amazingly encouraging about many things that I had dreamed about for years. I could not have felt any more grateful to be in CMU. I still believe that even though I got an A for all my courses, I'm still not particularly deserving to be here more than many people who has not gotten the chance. But you know what? I'm here now, and I will definitely use this opportunity to make my trees as strong and worthwhile as possible.

My adviser and I talked a lot about that project that I had been dreaming to do, (which I had actually started to work on, every Friday evening) and he mentioned many new things about it, and is pushing me to do it so much that we have actually started writing a proposal on it.
He is my new idol, by the way. He is so smart and so kind and so fun and so eager to do something to help people in some way. I just feel infinitely honored to spend my time being his student.

You know, someone out there, somewhere, is paving a great road for me. Safe, beautiful, and straight to the bright horizons of my dreams. Again, I don't feel deserving of this. But all I know is that I want to walk it as far as possible until the last moment of my life.

As I told you, now that the road is paved, and the destination is clear, I don't want to do anything except walking down the road, with determined steps. That's why you have seen less of me here. Nothing new is happening. Except that I've started walking down the road that I have been imagining all my life. Everything is as I had dreamed, so all I can write about now is my joy and gratefulness. And I'm sure as patient as you are, you still have a limited capacity for my repetitive thank you god letters :)

I do not know why all my life, between two choices, I always go for the more difficult one! :/
Really, there has always been choices between normal and challenging situations, and I have always chosen the challenging one. I am nearly sure that everyone in my place would definitely choose something else at some point. You see, I could always stay in Iran, get my PhD slowly, get a great job at somewhere. But guess what? I left everything behind for a better education. Yeah, I know I chose *right* over easy, and I do NOT regret that, and I am sure that I never will. In fact, there are many people who would choose like that... But these people will definitely choose NOT to go back to iran. That's when I once again feel that again I am going to choose right over easy.

Choosing to leave my whole life behind was the worst experience I ever ever had. I think I can never ever feel that scared, anxious and emotional and terrible again. But once I got on the plain it was over. So I can understand how some people decide to stay away from their family. Life is definitely *easier* here, specially for someone with education degree from a great university. But knowing myself, I can already picture myself making my life unnecessarily difficult. Why do I keep doing that?! duh, whatever..

Now some serious stuff.
One of the most important forces that can improve a country is a sense of confidence. I am pretty sure that everyone on the earth can change things for the better if they want to. This feeling is not present in many countries. There are many iranians who think they can never achieve great things just because of the current state of their country. Even worse is the situation with some poor african countries. I think a very important and basic step before any education is the psychological persuasion of people and students that they can rock the world if they want to. That's something I like about being a teacher. The most important thing to teaching is to give that confidence and motivation to students. Well, to students in societies that need this, that is.

Also, this is a known fact that when you move beyond individual human beings, in the level of countries, right now, morality is just a veil to cover selfish actions. It doesn't really exist. All that will matter in that level is national benefits, and in most cases benefits of a particular party within a country. That means that people should not wait for someone from power from another country to help them. Those who help receive their pay tenfold. (as an irrelevant example, you think china sometimes helps iran with their atomic issues out of charity? Nope, in return our market has become full of cheap chinese goods, our local industries in many areas have been totally destroyed in the past couple of years, and many people have lost their jobs. And the government doesn't seem to be able to do anything... Or take Russia. after every meeting, a new contract regarding the Caspian sea seems to be signed between iran and russia, and oddly enough, iranian portion in fishing industry, gas extractions, etc. seems to shrink every time...) It is natural though. In levels of million people, theft and trickery are perfectly legal. So anyway, if there's going to be ANY change, it will have to be done by the people themselves.
I guess this should be read by those iranians who are waiting for america to kick mullahs out for them.

Another thing is that earth is like a single body. When somewhere in it starts to rot, the infection will eventually kill the whole body. Poverty and illiteracy are source of many corruptions, and if I want a better future I must cure these illnesses. How many people are there who exercise their arms and foot everyday, but leave their teeth to decay? A wise person takes care of all parts of their bodies equally. This, is the main reason that I must choose right over easy and go to iran. If we need a better world we need to cure its illnesses, and when powerful leaders neglect to care, it will become our duty to help get the decay out.

Finally, how much do you know about world vision? I have seen its ads in many reliable sites so I think they're pretty reliable. I give a very small amount of donation to them every month. I think you all do donate somehow, somewhere, but if you don't then this place is definitely a good choice. It's just so painful to hear that there are children in the world, not really too far from here, (earth is soooooo smaller than we think!) who actually die from *hunger*! Is there anyone among us who really doesn't get their daily food for granted? And there's also educational donations that can *change* many children's life and possibly a nation's life forever. Just one kid with a passion to improve his life and his family's life is enough to give meaning to all these donations. Anyway, I think these causes are really worthy.

Well, talked a lot didn't I? :D
See you later!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0OOhd6R2EiY

Source: http://milad-elite.deviantart.com/art/Galaxy-53631387
Location: The ceiling of Shah mosque portal, photoed from bellow straight up, Isfahan, Iran.
I already have the printed poster in my room. I so love this city!

Hey guys! thanks for your helpful comments. They made me feel much better now. I think some comments need individual replies. Sorry, it has been unbelievably busy these days. You know, this time I don't wanna write anything in my blog. Instead, I would like to ask YOU a question.

What is your dream?

I promise not to judge anyone by their replies. I just think that writing about our dreams make them more reachable, and so I ask you to try this in here, if you like, please. You could also write about it in your own blog and just pass me a link to it.

Aaah I have to get back to my research. And then there's a sink full of dirty dishes for me to wash, and I have to take a bath as well.. Aaah indeed!

Hopefully you have some time to make me happy with letting your dreams fly around here! :)