Dinner with Iranian Neighbours

Last night, I had a dinner with Vahid and Sara. I cooked chickpea soup, potato meal, and pasta with onion sauce. We talked about different issues.

1. We discovered new common words between iranian and turkish languages like sandalye (chair), taze (fresh), chorba (shorba), meyve (fruit), portakal (orange). I told them the story behind the naming of portakal, linked to the portuguese city porto.

2. They mentioned about a professor from Carnegie Mellon, who will die of pancreatic cancer. Today, Sara sent me the link to his last lecture, and strongly advised me to watch it. I have found his weblog on the internet too.
Sara and Vahid told me last night that he said that his mother was saying to people "Look, this is my son. He is a doctor. But not of the kind who can help people."

3. Towards the end of our chats, they said a few times that they wanted to leave and it was already late, but we went on chatting. Then they said : "Is it the same in Turkey. Guests say that they will just leave, but go on chatting? " I said: "exactly!" :).

They liked the taste of paprika paste very much. Sara was saying: "I wonder what would you eat and cook if you did not have paprika paste" since I had added it into all meals I cooked for dinner.

They also talked about the still-continuing effects of Irak-Iran war on the health of people.