my room with this view

DAY 2

Oh jet lag. The next morning I woke up at 2 am, eyes that wouldn't close, ready to start the day. 2am here corresponds to 3:30 in the afternoon at home, which makes no sense at all for a waking time.

What's that? 3:THIRTY?? Why yes, I am 10 AND A HALF HOURS ahead of CA time. What is this with the un-whole-y numbers, the platform for the Hogwarts Express? Maybe tomorrow morning we have flying carpet lessons.

(Actually I believe the time zone boundary more or less bisects the country, so they probably decided to straddle the time change rather than the time zone. Pure evil, obviously.)

For a while I tried to sleep. Then I read interesting things I had brought with me. Around 5:30 I opened the window to try and hear the call to prayer, which I think I did but at some distance. I was grateful to have the room to myself (my roomie wouldn't be arriving for a couple more days) so I could be restless. I snapped the picture of the Alborz mountains out my window. (The space-needle lookin thing you see towards the left is a telecommunications tower that is still being built, and will be one of the largest such things in the world.)

I eventually got dressed and packed just in time for breakfast, the same abundant spread. Except now that it wasn't so novel (after just one day I become a critic), I noticed the coffee was terrible (Nescafe), so I stuck to the tea. I figured they must know what they're doing with teas in this part of the world. Little did I realize.

More soon!