Learning Farsi

           When I was a kid my mother always tried to teach me Farsi, the Persian language. When I was a baby she would read books to me in Farsi while I went to sleep. My first word was kooh, which meant “where” in Farsi, and she always speaks to me in Farsi in the household. I even partook in Farsi festivals where my brother and I joined other children who dressed up every week and learned dance routines.

When I was in 4^th grade my mom and 4 other Persian families, with kids around our age, got their kids together to start a Farsi class. I hated it because it was right after school on Friday and I just wanted to get home and relax. During the Farsi class we worked on reading and writing, every week we had homework to translate text. In class we would act out Persian plays where we each had our own roles, and since it was right after school on Fridays we would all have short attention spans. So there were many times where we forgot our cue and our teacher would get really mad. The rest of my memory from my Farsi class is limited, however I do remember that it was long boring hours. But at the time I didn’t value the importance of it.

After 5^th grade I stopped taking Farsi class because I went to middle school and ever since my Farsi speaking ability has declined. Although my Mom would always talk to me in Farsi every day I would always reply in English, and what I have noticed is that I have all these words in the back of my conscious but when I want to say something in Farsi I can never find the words for it. This is a big regret especially when I’m around my aunts and uncles from my mother’s side. I can always understand what they are saying, but because I cannot speak Farsi well, it makes it look like I don’t understand anything. As a result I feel like a lot of the times there’s a social disconnect between my family members from my mother’s side and me. I can still communicate with them in English but conversations in Farsi are much more genuine. Of course I know all the basics words but every other sentence there are a couple of words that are at the tip of my tongue but can never come out.

All in all, learning a language is hard. I know a lot of people who don’t speak fluent in their native language even though they’ve went to Chinese school or their parents have talked to them in a language around the household. Becoming familiar with a language is all about practicing and learning. As a result, words become engrained in your memory and in my case, I have the perfect scenario to practice by speaking back to my relatives and mother in Farsi. Becoming fluent in Farsi is something that I definitely want to learn before I get too old, and eventually pass down to my children.

100

Before I get into anything I would like to point out that by writing this I’m not trying to rant about how good I am in soccer, but more of a look into my side of the story. Recently I’ve scored my 100^th career varsity goal in soccer and I feel like it’s attracted a lot of attention, so I just wanted to share my awesome experience with Uni’s Soccer program and all fun moments leading up to my 100^th goal, hopefully with more to come.

                Before I came to Uni I knew they had a good soccer program, when I was in 7^th grade I was informed that they got 2^nd in state, and I was impressed. So during my Freshman year before tryouts, I didn’t really expect to be placed straight onto varsity and later on start. I remembered playing very well during tryouts, even chipping the 6ft tall Noah Blue at one point (Hehe), but I still thought I would probably split JV and Varsity. But even with that glorious moment in the back of my mind, there was one moment from that tryout which I vividly remember. On the last day of tryouts Louie Siegel comes up to me and tells me that one day I’ll break the goal scoring record, I ask what it is and he says “The number on your back” and coincidentally I’m wearing my club team’s practice jersey #99. That was the moment when I was informed of this goals scoring record which Patrick Wong held and why he didn’t score 100. Which, fun fact, he could have scored on a penalty kick in the state finals, but George Voulgaris took instead. I realized that I just had to break that 99, it was meant for the breaking, 100 was just so perfect and round.

                My Freshman Year I went on to break the area freshman scoring record with 16 goals yet unfortunately we were knocked out in the first round of playoffs undeservedly to STM. Sophomore Year was a big year for us because we had a great group of Senior guys including Panos who had a mutually beneficial relationship with me. We would always assist and score off of each other and I definitely miss playing with him. That year, mostly because of how good the team I had around me was, I had 23 goals 24 assists, and we had some very clutch moments throughout post season, beating STM, and coming from behind against Beecher to get 4^th in the state. For my Junior year, since we had went to state twice in the past 4 years, our school was bumped up to 2A, meaning that we would compete against schools with the population of central and Urbana. Although, it didn’t really matter to us since we usually beat teams regardless of school population. Junior year soccer was more about building team chemistry because we weren’t expecting to go far in post season, and since the best players on the team were Juniors, I learned how to become more of a leader. That year I scored 29 goals 11 assists. Coming into my senior year, I knew that one of my goals was to definitely try and beat the scoring record, I knew that I would have to score 32 goals (more than I ever had), which is about 1.5 goals per game. No easy task. But everyone I talked to, including myself, thought it was achievable. I got off to a really slow start this year, scoring 10 goals in 12 matches. I was doubting myself, but I had a week where I went off and scored 19 goals in 6 games, putting me back on track. This all lead up to just 2 days ago when I scored my 100^th goal.

To those who are curious about how I felt, I guess over the past 3 games I knew it was coming, and of course I was excited over it, I’m finally a part of Uni history, and in the sport that I love. However, throughout the season I was focusing more on making sure the team plays well, which is more important. So I have been trying not to force shots just to get my stats up. Currently I have 32 goals and 16 assists, and I think we have a very good shot at making state once again this year, we know we are the best team in the section, we just have to prove it.