Shiraz and Persepolis: The city older than Jesus

Salam Salam, Khoobi?? The wedding is over and we are all ready to relax and chill in Shiraz! (Especially Kathyjoon and her family who were working tirelessly to plan the wedding). As my mom mentioned in the post below, we found a professional basketball team here! My mom is the best at being proactive and going up to anyone at anytime and finding out where to go and hwo to see what we want to see. I was really excited to finally see a basektball game here and actually get to shoot a little bit. The point guard on the tema from Tehran was really nice. Gave us his # and called us to tell us where the game was. I'll def. keep in touch with him and who knows maybe I can play ball here in Iran one day?! I can fulfill my lifelong dream of being a pro bball player! Even if its not that much money I'd still be a dream coem true.
The number of friendly encounters we've had here are now too many to count. People here really are the most frienly we've ever met! So hosiptable and genuinely kind. Our taxi driver for the bball game was really nice, gave us an whole tour, helped us find the gym and told us how much he loves americans. He even stayed with us the entire time at the game and gave us a mini tour of the city after. A total of 2 hours! When he dropped us off he didn't even want to take our money, but we insisted, and he said just give what ever we want and didn't even count it. There were countless other friendly encounters, pretty much everywhere we go people want to take pictures with us and strike up friendly conversations.



During our 2nd day in Shiraz we had a very very nice tour guide who was a nice young women and spoke great english. We went to several gardens in Shiraz and a few small palaces and the Hafez tomb (The most famous poet of Iran and the world who lived in the 1200's). Every household in Iran has a Hafez book of poetry.


I must make this quick as we are leaving for the airport in 3 minutes. So today we went to Persepolis, the 2500 year old palaces and city of the ancient kings of Persia. I must say, Persepolis blew ancient Greece out of the water! No contest. It was jaw dropping to see the beautiful columns, engravings, statues of Lions and massive palaces! And to think that these were created over 2500 years ago simply blew me away! Propbably the most amazing piece of history I've ever experienced. You have to come see this for yourself to truly appreciate the beauty and genius of it all. I imagined being a civilian in 500 B.C. and thinking wow, this Darius guy really does deserve to be King for this! We also saw the tombs of the great kings which were just as remarkable. Built hundreds of feet up the steep cliff side. Hundreds of feet tall columns and artistic carvings and cuniform writing. Unbelieveable that they created this so long ago, even before Jesus was even thought of!