Please make sure you are sitting down.

I've decided to become one of those awkward people at the pub who say 'I'll just have a coke' when everyone else is sinking jugs of Pale.

Yeah, I've decided to formally, totally and irreversibly stop drinking.

It's a mixture of things that's led me to this, but that's the way it is.

Iran is already teaching me things not related to work. One thing I've found is that life continues without booze.

So there you go.

Well, you get what you wish for.

I got myself a riot on my front steps. Right now.

Today is the 18th of Tir in the Persian calendar. 10 years ago today, there was a student uprising, mainly at the boys dorms (from memory). These boys dorms happen to be down the road from where I live, in the girl's dorms.

From what I'm told by locals, every year on the 18th of Tir there is some sort of demonstration. Couple that with recent events, and I'm not surprised to see what I'm seeing.

Angry crowds? check.
Nasty looking plain clothes men on motorbikes? check.
Sudden apperance by masses of police in riot gear? check.
Young men arrested and taken god-knows-where? check.
Dispersion of crowds down alleys? check.

I'm back in my room now, because there's no way on this earth that the guards would let me out of the dorm compound right now to see anything else.

There's this ambient noise that's everywhere, it can only be described as 'crowd'. Allahu Akbar (God is Greater), and Marg Bar Diktator (Death to the Dictator) blend into noise, intermixed with car horns and the occaisional 'blip' of a police siren. The smell of burning is tossed over the crowd and eeks into my room.

My workmate (my MCVPX) is stuck in the office, about 2 minutes walk away from here, in the direction of the fighting. Security has locked the building. He says he can see things on fire in the street, lots of people, but not much else.

Soapbox

Women's Rights

Ok. Before I left, everyone asked me 'aren't you worried about women's rights over there?'. Even the many travellers I meet talk about 'repression' and the fact that women have no rights here.

Bullshit.

Through and through.

I know I am a foreigner here, and I don't see what happens in individual people's homes, but honestly? I have never felt safer or more respected.

Yes, I wear hijab. No, it's not a problem - in fact I like it.

There are women's carriages at the beginning and end of every train, so we can sit seperately from men if we want to. I never have - I ride in the regular carriages, because (so far), I travel with men. If the train is crowded, one of the guys I'm with will block my body with his so I don't get pushed up against by strangers.

There is taxi etiquette that basically ensures a woman won't be squished between two men in the back seat. I sit in the passenger side or by a door, always. Even the buses have a separate space for women to travel. Again, this prevents contact with strange men.

The men are respectful, polite, and offer help when I'm lost. Otherwise, they leave me alone. There's no leering, there's no drunken 'hello beautiful', no staring at my chest. Men respect women here.

Women can work, study, drive - anything they want.

I've never had a problem.

So you can stick your stereotypes whereever you like, because they don't work here.

My term has begun. I'm not sure if it's truly sunk in yet. I mean, we make a lot of jokes, we've discussed, mind-mapped, argued and cried over planning, we've transitioned til we're blue in the face, but I don't know if my brain recognises what I've just taken on.

I WANT so badly to get this right.

Another thing I haven't considered - how long a year is.

Something else that occurred to me - how short a year is.