Being taught Farsi in Iran provides a unique opportunity to find out more about Iranian way of life. Between our practice sessions we exchange views about Dutch and Iranian way of life. It seems that people value friendship, family and religion over business. Therefore interaction between people may seem inefficient from a dutch guy's point of view. Woman play an active role in society: My teacher has a day job in the marketing department of a textile factory and holds a Bsc in Industrial Engineering. She told me an anekdote that Nike had to adopt a different marketing strategy for Iran since the image of a "macho" man practicing sports does not agree with the Iranian man ?!
A few years ago I had a lot of prejudices about Iran. Our media depicts Iran as an enemy of the west, supporting terrorism and trying to build an atomic bomb. On TV I remember seeing images of people protesting against the west and burning flags. I consider this the "hard outer shell". I used to think traveling to Iran should be risky.
When you enter Iran the warmth and friendliness of the people is hard to match with the image created by the media. Iranian people are real easy to talk to and when I explain them I am trying to learn Farsi they respond enthusiastically. For the moment I am puzzled.
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