Life Goes On In Tehran, a photo blog dedicated to showing people around the world that no matter what political conflict is currently occurring, people in Iran are LIVING their everyday lives.

MISSION: To show that regardless of what any president would have you imagine, despite what any media outlet would have you believe, life goes on in Tehran and elsewhere in Iran.

The photo blog was created by a former Los Angeles resident that moved to Tehran.  The photos reflect what he sees everyday in Tehran and other areas of Iran.  His inspiration for taking the photos was to reduce the fear his friends and family had about Iran and show that Tehran is just like any other city in the world.  A normal place where people live their everyday lives, even though mainstreem western media would have you believe otherwise. This is a great site with beautiful photos of Tehran.  I will be visiting often.

Rosetta Stone, the company that NASA and the US State Department use to learn foreign languages, also has a program for learning Farsi.  The complete set comes in three different levels. Level 1 teaches you basic vocabulary and sentence structure.  Level 2 will help you with basic conversation such as ordering a meal, or giving directions. The final level builds on the first two levels by expanding further into advanced conversation.  The complete set is quite pricey, but you can also purchase them separately if you only need to learn the basics.

Of course, like learning any other language, the best way to learn Farsi is to speak it all the time.  However, if you didn’t get much exposure to Farsi because you were born or grew-up outside of Iran and you want to strengthen your Farsi, then this is a great tool do it with.

Radio Javan has released a new iphone app that allows you to listen to Persian radio using your iPhone.  This is a great app and we’re very excited about it. It has a great feature that allows you to view the name of the song and artist of the last 10 songs.  You can download the app from the app store from your iPhone or iTunes.

It lets you stream the radio (128k mp3 stream) where-ever you are, using either 3G or WiFi. While you’re listening, you’ll see the artist photo and song information update, just like on the main website.

Ok, Persian food is good. Really good.  And although some of the dishes don’t look appetizing, they really are great tasting.  We’ve searched the net for sites that offer the best Persian food recipes, and we have picked our favorites.

RecipeZaar - A great site that offers great recipes from around the world.  Currently they offer 213 Iranian/Persian food recipes.

IranMania -  This is also another great site that offers a wide range of Persian recipes.

So if you want to try something new in your kitchen, head over to one of these great sites and give one of their recipes a try.

Oriental rug site Rug Rag, has detailed instructions on how to hang your Persian rugs on your walls.  They list out the different methods of hang your rugs, depending on the kind of rug you own.

At the carpet store, you may find rugs hung up with hangers or heavy duty clips….  There are techniques to hanging rugs which are more elegant than the commonly seen ”arm racks” at your local Oriental Rug store.

There are three common ways to display a carpet depending on the application.  Carefully assess what characteristics your rug has: flimsy, heavy, stiff, or floppy and light.

So if you are in the market for a new rug, or your bringing one back from your next trip to Iran, you may want to consider hanging it as wall art.

We here at Hamechee love our Persian food.  And we can confidently state that most Persians would rate Adas Polo as one of the top 10 Iranian dishes.  If you are like us and are dying to try some home-made Adas Polo, then head over to eVitamins.com and give this recipe a try. Nooshe Jan!

Persians have been enjoying tea for a very long time.  We love the breakfast tea, the mid-day tea, the after lunch tea, and the after dinner tea, which is usually served at mehmoonies (dinner parties).  We really do love our tea.  And a new study printed in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition shows that not only does tea provide antioxidants, but it also hydrates your body. Take that water!

“Drinking tea is actually better for you than drinking water. Water is essentially replacing fluid. Tea replaces fluids and contains antioxidants so it’s got two things going for it.”

This is great news for Persians around the world.

radiodarvish.com allows you to listen to your favorite traditional Persian music online.  All you need is an mp3 player like iTunes.  They even have a link to their play list so you can get the name of the artist and song that you just heard. Enjoy!

According to this wikipedia article, in 2005 there were about 700,000 Iranian blogs out of the estimated 100 million worldwide. We’re not sure if this numbers are still holds today, however blogsbyiranians.com has a directory of blogs written by Iranians both from inside and outside of Iran. We’re not on their list yet, but we’re hoping to make the cut soon.

Behnevis.com has a cool free web app that allows you to convert Farsi text written in the Latin alphabet (Pinglish, like salam) to Farsi script.  This tool can be really useful when it comes to sending emails to friends and family in Iran.

To use the tool go to the editor and write anything you want in Pinglish.  For example you can write “Chettori?” and the the app will give you: چتری؟

You can then copy and paste what you have written to your email.  Find out more by visiting Behnevis.com.