iran
i had a dream that i was on a train winding through beautiful rocky countryside, steep mountain valleys and cliffs. we stopped in a small town and i got off the train. i entered a little shop belonging to an artist who made sculpture art and ceramics. his work was very colorful, but all the pieces were oddly miniature. the artist and his wife came over to greet me. they spoke in farsi (therefore i was in iran) and somehow i discovered that i knew farsi as well. in my dream, i was conscious that i didn't actually know farsi, so the dream took place with farsi-like sounds and subtitles like a foreign film. (eventually i just switched to speaking german and called it farsi -- the foreign language part of my brain was tired of faking.) i told the husband and wife that i had traveled to this town because it was where my grandmother was born and raised. they offered for me to stay with them. i had dinner with them out on the back patio and i met their three children, two boys around my age and a high-school age girl. the girl was impressed that i had learned farsi fluently in school and i said that the school system in the US doesn't discriminate against girls like in iran. she said, "yes, my teachers all assume that i am stupid, so they don't teach me as rigorously." i liked the family very much and they offered for me to stay for a week, but i wasn't sure whether they actually wanted me to stay and were just offering due to cultural niceties. i decided to move on and caught the next train out.