Last week millions celebrated Nowruz - the Persian New Year. As a unit, my guides often mark celebrations from around the world, however in my 8 years there, we have never celebrated Nowruz!
With the advent of 'zoom' guiding because of the pandemic...2021 (or more like 1400) was the year I could take the chance and finally run an evening on Nowruz.
To prepare I attended Georgetown University's webinar with Prof. Touraj Darayaee entitled 'Nowruz, the Iranian New Year, from Myth to History'. This was so interesting and helped me greatly in creating this meeting. I also read around the subject so I would be able to do Nowruz justice.
So, onto the meeting! I began with a short powerpoint presentation to give our members some context, after all, they may not have come across it before!
We began with an activity marking Charharshanbe Suri. Now, risk assessments meant I couldn't legally have the guides jumping over mini bonfires in their own homes (who would've thought?!) so we improvised. I had them get an empty washing up bowl or bucket and jump over that. We had a competition - 'who can jump over the 'bonfire' the most in one minute!'. They seemed to have fun as they LOVE anything involving competition.
I then showed them a video about the Haft Sin table before asking them to decorate their own eggs. We had an amazing range of designs and they enjoyed being able to let their creative side free. Whilst they did this, I read from Shahnameh about the first Nowruz and showed some other YouTube videos about the holiday.
I was so happy and honoured to be able to show the guides a celebration they hadn't come into contact with before - here's to celebrating many more.
Happy Nowruz!