"Iran: Yesterday and Today"

I really enjoyed watching Rick Steve's documentary, "Iran: Yesterday and Today." I think there is so much to discover about any given country or culture, and without having the opportunity to actually travel there and see and experience it yourself, it's usually pretty hard to fully grasp what it is like. This documentary on Iran, however, gave me a really good look into the culture, atmosphere, history, and landscape of the country, and I really learned a lot about a country I previously knew very little about.

A few things really stood out to me as I watched:

• In Tehran, there were intersections without any traffic signals. Imagine-- no stop signs or stop lights or yeild signs... just free for all! It looked like a crazy, jumbled mess of cars to me, but I guess it works for them!
• Subway moves over ONE MILLION people per day!
• They have motorcycle taxis-- how cool!... but scary too!
• At the University of Iran, both men and women are allowed to attend, but everything is segregated-- right down to having a separate men's cafe and women's cafe.
• In Abyaneh, they have "boy" and "girl" door knockers on each door, so the resident knows whether to expect a male or female when they answer the door.
• The architecture and landscape of these Iranian cities was INCREDIBLE, and I was particularly impressed with the mosks in Esfahan. I would LOVE to go check these out some day!

Aside from those interesting facts and observations, the biggest thing that I payed attention to throughout the documentary was how the Iranian people viewed America, America's government, and America's people.

First, I was not surprised to learn that most people in the country are bilingual, speak English, and are well informed about the West. As far as I know, it seems like most cultures are far more "worldly" than we are here in America, and Iran seems to be no exception to this.

Within the first ten or so minutes of the documentary, Rick Steve mentioned that the Iranian people "loved Americans." Frankly, I was a little surprised to hear this and found myself quite skeptical of the comment, wondering if perhaps that was a biased statement or if there was some selective film editing to show mostly positive opinions about the U.S. The documentary continued on, and proceeded to show murals throughout Tehran saying things like "Down with the USA" or showing images that depicted the United States as some evil, unwanted force. Yet despite the substantial number of negative images seen on the murals, most of the people Rick Steve interviewed seemed to have mostly positive things to say about America. One woman seemed to put it into perspective quite nicely, saying, "Government has a lot of war with each other, because they have benefits. But there is no war between people."