Hanging Out with a Nobel Prize Winner

I mentioned earlier that I am taking a class this semester with the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize winner, Shirin Ebadi, who is a human rights advocate and lawyer in Iran. She has been teaching a class here to liberal arts grad students and to law students regarding Islamic Law in Iran for the past two weeks. Our last class is tomorrow (it's only a two week pass or fail course), but it's really been a great experience. She is a tough woman (ie: not a lot of smiles or jokes) but she has a powerful message... which is basically that Islam has been totally misinterpreted by ignorant men to put down women and children. One of her quotes today was that the combination of religion and ideology in the hands of a government is equal to a gun. The woman really makes sense. If you want to read more about her, here is a link to her biography: http://nobelprize.org/peace/laureates/2003/ebadi-bio.html.

Here I am today photographed with her outside of the U of A Law School! She is pretty short...


So tomorrow, I am driving up to Phoenix after my Arabic mid-term exam in the morning. I am going to visit my mom's cousin, Ardith, who has lived there for a few decades. She's making me a "well-needed home-cooked meal" (her words) and then we are going hiking on Saturday morning. Not bad for a woman over the age of 70! She seems very cool... and I am looking forward to spending some quality time with her.

Well, I have to go study for Arabic now, pack my bag for tomorrow night, and then watch Johnny Weir kick some ass on the Olympic ice.

Toodles, Kit