What to Expect When You're Expecting...

Expectations.

When moving to another country, one may have an overly romanticized notion of what the experience will entail. This imaginary utopia of richly colored culture may develop as a result of watching far too many episodes of House Hunters with couples expecting a truly authentic home and garden on their exotic new island.  HOWEVER, the reality can be far from the expectation. Here are some examples...

The view from your windows:

Interior fixtures with character:

The dolphin is a nice touch though.

Detailed interior architecture:

Lovely outdoor space:

The authentic Iranian food you'll cook up:

I'll write a post about this disaster later.

The Iranian mirror:

You may imagine yourself fitting in with the beautiful, fair and slender Iranian women, only to realize you're still the same short brown (but adorable) gal you've always been. Ha. Just saying.

Of course all those beautiful views and things ARE part of the mosaic of Iran, but if you’re not rolling in the dough, you’ll settle for the charm of small things, plain and all.

Now one thing about Iran not only will meet your expectation, the reality will far exceed it! The shrine of Lady Masumeh (p) in Qom:

Alhamdulillah.

All reality photos (except for Lilo) are mine.
All expectation photos found on internet, mainly here. 

The View

Here's the view from our apartment's balcony. Although it's not much to look at, I'm glad we have it. The sky is wide and the air is fresh! Though the buildings and landscaping are drab, the light of the sky always changes, obviously, which is nice to see. I haven't seen many clouds yet, nor any birds--but I have heard some twittering when I go out to hang the wet washed clothes to dry (we have a washing machine but no dryer). It can get rather dusty when the wind blows, so we may need to put up a curtain. 

Looking down we can see a pretty little garden. I don't know who maintains it, but it's a sweet lil thing.

Here is the view of our front door, from the outside of the department. Ours is in the corner there, next to the elevator. We're above the parking garage, and there's 5 floors to the apartment building. I can hear kids and adults outside talking during the day (which I like), but other than that it is quiet except for the occasional random sounds that come with living in apartments. There's a white retractable gate in front of each apartment door that can be locked and unlocked only from the outside, for extra security if you're out for a long time (I guess?).

Here we take the stairwell down to get to our car.

Don't worry, Mom. I tell the kids to hold either our hand or the rail and to watch out for water on the steps. Here you can see at the bottom of the steps is the elevator door.

Here is inside the parking garage for those who have an indoor space (not us). 

Here's our Iranian car. It's a stick shift, which I don't know how to drive. But I doubt I'd want to drive in Iran anyway (more on that later). This car is a lot smaller than the Honda Odyssey mini-van that we owned for so long in the states (and which we sadly had to sell before we moved here), but 

this car is great to have so we do not have to take the bus or a taxi like so many others who live here need to do. My kids in the back tried to let the windows down and didn't know how to do that with a manual window handle, haha. Now they're experts at it. 

That's all for now. 

Alhamdulillah (All Praise be to God).