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Last week . children were making mosaic on the wall . each room has one theme like forest, sky, water, etc. so they  were making on theme of sky . children were making mosaic out of broken glasses ,river stones . they were painting  glasses with different colours and sticking on the wall beautifully  .I think it will be good well coming for the festival .because October is the full with lots of beautiful festival . As well as the facillator were also focusing on telling childrens lot of storys on festivals. to create imagin pictures in the children mind .

I phoned the Iran consulate; British passport holders can’t even get a visa on arrival flying to Tehran ( it though perhaps I could overland it to Istanbul, then just fly to Tehran before continuing over land). So that means I’d have to over land it to Istanbul, then the closest airport I could fly to from there would be Islamabad, Faisalabad or Lahore, which are all virtually on the India border. Ie: pointless. The (most) interesting bit was going to be Turkey through to Pakistan, and I’d be missing that completely. So, I’m leaving on a jet plane // Don’t know when I be back again, but my Indian visa is up until September 4th next year so it is until at least then.

Yesterday the Iranian Consulate told me that I wouldn’t be getting a visa, which makes me sad. I’ve written emails to the consulate in London and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Tehran appealing the decision, but it is probably a bit of a long shot. So last night I was, fairly frantically, trying to figure out another way of getting there. I looked into traveling though Armenia and Azerbaijan, then flying into Iran ( you can get a 7 day visa on arrival if you fly), but even that has some double currently cast over it. This afternoon I was so despirate I even looked at traveling over land through Saudia Arabia or Iraq, but all research into that made it look pretty unlikely I’d get a visa. And that I might get shot/kidnaped.

As of right now, I don’t know where I’ll be this time next week, or how I’ll have gotten there, so I need to figure it out. It grates me to say it, but with a bit more time (4-6 weeks) I could probably have another go at getting an Iranian visa, but I’ve already put off leaving, and my 12 month Indian visa has been ticking since September, only 11 months left on it now. I’m also aware that if I chickened out and flew, I’d be there with Becka and it would be helpful to me and Sunny to get there earlier. It grates me that I’m defining this experience in the perspective of available time; UK society puts a great onus on time, but I think there is room to change my perspective, and hope that that of people close around me can distort to accommodate that! As they might look at it in certain parts of Africa,’When will Ed leave? When he is ready to leave and has all the visas, of course!’ And not a moment before.