Helina Blogs

The smile on their faces is priceless Photo credit goes to my mom, Ferwerdin Barzinji :) Hello my loyal blog readers.  There was quite of traffic in our way to massif today.  You know what that means?  Well it is March and people are already out picnicking and enjoying the beautiful spring here at my end.  Springs here in Kurdistan are a totally beauty.  I just love everything about it; the greenery, the wild flowers, the beautiful weather, the vegetables and fruits, the beautiful colors of fabrics that you see on ladies as you drive around picnic areas in Kurdistan.  I am here stuck in the traffic and all that runs in my head is the second I get on my blog to fill you guys in with these beautiful feelings. What caught my attention the most as we are waiting for the traffic to proceed was this super cute young boy carrying bunches of the famous Nergis flower in his hand. I wish you could see the beautiful smile on his face as soon as I chose to ...

Photo credit goes to Allen Kakony

C heese made in Animal skin, is that even possible? Yes!  If you don't believe me, you can see it for yourself in the famous Qaisari Bazar in Hawler. To make the process a bit easier for you, I have asked the shop owners if they could please allow me to take some photos of the sheep skin with the cheese in it.  They not only agreed but took the initiative to set the blocks of cheese so neat for my pictures.  This is what is so called the "Peneri Pesti".  A bit pricy but so worth having it for breakfast almost everyday.  This cheese is what makes my day every friday having breakfast with the family.  Pest  means sheep’s skin or simply, skin in Kurdish.  The cheese made with sheep and cow and some times, goat milk takes its name from the method of its production. The milk curd is let to rest in animal skin during its preparation.  The cities of Erzincan and Izmir are among of the key Kurdish cities famous for their skin cheese.  Most com...

This blog is special because it will be about a very special city, a city too close to my heart.  So today, instead of marking papers or preparing a lecture, I choose to blog about a city that bears the scars from decades of war and economic sanction.  It’s the proud home of the Citadel and the Minaret. Its my birth town in the early eighties. It’s the city of Hawler or Erbil in Arabic. Hawler is where old meets new, a blend of history, mosaic mosques, bazaars, rollercoasters, an appeal to both the young and old generation. The citadel is one of the oldest contiguously inhabited settlements in the world. With its modern shopping malls and verdant parks, Hawler is becoming the welcome break for Iraqis who are still plagued by bombings more than eight years after the U.S.-led invasion that led to the overthrew of Saddam Hussein. If you ask any Hawleri to describe the same Hawler 20 years ago, they would start off with Sami's Park which took an extra year or two to open its ...

"If one says 'Red' – the name of color – and there are fifty people listening, it can be expected that there will be fifty reds in their minds. And one can be sure that all these reds will be very different." -- Josef Albers Hard to believe but until now, I have never owned a pair of red shoes. Maybe I thought they might be too loud or might attract attention to my feet. Tiny feet might look adorable in red shoes. However, I wasn’t born to have tiny feet, so I never, ever even considered owning a pair.  As a matter of fact, I had not discovered the seductive allure of red shoes.  Now, that I have bought my first pair, I realized how I like them….but the day I bought the red shoes, I had never planned to buy any shoes, let alone red ones, but sometimes fate takes a hand. It happened like this…like all my wonderful purchases….no intention of buying anything!  I only parked in front of the store because I wanted to go to another establishment across the street. The s...

Hello everyone, It saddens me that we have not reconnected in little over a month. I have loads to fill you guys in with.  First of all I got selected by the Vice President of the University to direct the postgraduate studies at my University under his supervision.  Also the university granted me a beautiful house so I have been busy moving my stuff.   The freshmen or the freshies, which I like to call them by, have finally started classes.  I am their academic adviser so I am hearing exciting stories from each and everyone of them. They have so much to share.  I like to commit this blog to my first year dental students, also known as the ducks or the freshies.  I remember when I first started college, I really did not know what to expect in my first day of school.  I remember I was assigned an old sister, where she was to guide me and be there for me whenever I had a concern about a school related matter.  As for Kurdistan, the story is a ...