This week, we visited an Afghan restaurant to learn more about Afghan cuisine and culture. I was very interested to see the similarities between Afghan and Iranian food. They were similar enough to remind me of my mom’s cooking and make me miss home a lot! I had a lamb kebab with rice, and kebab with rice is one of the staples of Iranian cuisine. I even had one of my favorite drinks, doogh, which is a carbonated yoghurt drink.
In class, we learned the words for the different colors, days of the week, and numbers. We also read and wrote a short paragraph about a girl named Shila and her day, practicing our translation skills. We translated an Afghan poem about going to school for the first time as well.
I was able to converse with our waitress, and order my food in Farsi, so I was pretty pleased with my accomplishments there. I learned how to count to 100 this week, which had been one of my goals for a long time, so I was also happy about that. I also learned how to say all of the days of the week, which are actually pretty simple (Saturday is "shanbeh," and every day after that is just a number with "shanbe" attached. Sunday is "yekshanbe", Monday is "doshanbe," and so on. Only Friday is irregular, it's the Arabic term "jom'eh). Mirwais also taught us colors. I was surprised to see the different between the colors my mother had taught me and the terms used in Afghanistan. Iranians say "ghermez" for red, while Afghans use the word "serkh". "Soorati" means pink in the Iranian dialect, while "golabi" is pink in the Afghan dialect (interestingly, "golabi" means pear in the Iranian dialect). So overall, I think I met my learning goals from last week pretty well.
I also uploaded an artifact, where I use greetings, introductions, and farewells. The dialogue translates as, "Hello. How are you? I'm well. My name is Layla Samandi. What's your name? It's nice to meet you. Goodbye." Although without another person, this would be a typical first meeting with someone. I was slightly annoyed with myself for forgetting to include something like good morning ("sobh bekheir"), which would be typical in Iran to add, but otherwise I am pretty happy with my first Voki.
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