Day 5 - Tehran, Iran
The late night flight to Tehran was filled with much apprehension - one
member of our team in particular. To show that God has a sense of humor,
when we checked in for our flight at the Istanbul airport, all of the
luggage was accidentally listed under her name! The Iranians we met on
the flight were very pleasant. A number of them could speak English.
The one beside me asked me how Jimmy Carter was. He seemed to have a good
opinion of the former president and even had one of his books. They were
from northeast Iran and thought fairly highly of the USA. We were also
blessed with the Iranian handball team onboard. All young, typical
teenagers. In fact, apart from their language (which I couldn't
understand), they acted just like American teenagers. They were
especially cutting up in the passport line at the Tehran airport. I asked
the lady (who had sat with me on the flight) what they were giggling
about, and she said they were teasing each other about the shrouded girls
in the passport booths who were "checking them out" but trying not to show
it. I had to crack a smile.
There were three different lines at the passport booths. We all spread
out across the lines. Two lines had young women officers (in typical
black shrouds), the other one a male uniformed officer. Greg was first up
in the line (with the male officer). He quickly got escorted away to
another room. My nervousness level shot up an order of magnitude. After
a few minutes he came out and went on to the baggage claim. When I got up
there the women in the booth (same booth, two lines on each side) seemed
startled to see an American passport. After some discussion amongst
themselves, she stamped it, and I was allowed to move on. After we all
claimed our baggage we discretely moved through customs checks. Not a
single piece of luggage was inspected. He asked me where I was from. I
said America, and he just waved me on through (in English too). We made
it to the bus in a state of blissful amazement. The hotel was the nicest
we'd stayed in the whole trip so far. The AC worked (YAY!), but we didn't
get a lot of sleep as it was already 4:30am and we had to be somewhere at
11am. But the view from our hotel room was great:
It was interesting that they had a mullah (Islamic leader/pastor)
convention in town. Many of them were staying at our hotel. The
travel/touring company we were with arranged and handled everything the
entire trip. We had two tour guides who went with us everywhere. They
really watched out for us and took care of tickets, meals, check-ins,
transportation, you name it. I had a milkshake at the hotel for
breakfast. I would have one at every hotel in Iran for some reason.
We all had our first meal in Iran at a local restaurant, serving a wide
variety of dishes and salad bar.
After lunch, our first stop of the day - we went to the crown jewels museum and the carpet
museum. We walked around a local park near the hotel. Some kids playing
badminton were very friendly to us (and spoke English). Everyone we met
seemed excited that Americans had come to visit them and were extremely
friendly. Here Chris and Scott play badminton with some boys in the park.
We stopped in the park to reflect and pray.
Late that evening we, flew on to Shiraz.
Next: Day 6 - Shiraz, Iran
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