Kathy to Hilary, November 20, 1971 cont., Tehran, Iran More....
So you’re more of a slug than a snail now! (no offence--you know how dearly beloved they are to me) I wish that I could say as much. As I get worse, you seem to be getting better. [no, I don’t understand this either.] To complain: I have absolutely no friends at school. Sometimes I wish I had a simpatico friend to talk with. I’m the only American in the Senior High--all the other Americans are really Iranian or Venezuelan citizens.
Bucket says she's a Caspian, not an American. 
Still, it’s the ideas that count, not the nationality. But there are very few extremes at Iranzamin. Students from the Iranian schools memorize instead of THINK. I don’t know what we learned to do, but it wasn’t THINK either. I thought that my reasoning facilities were faulty and all I could do was memorize, but I seem to be capable of some independent thought. But the classes are HARD here. Even so, I managed 3 A’s and 4 B’s. Do you sometimes you’re given an A even though you haven’t worked for it? Well, here the A’s and B’s were hard earned.
The weather has been beautiful. It rains pretty often. That keeps me from eating outside at school, which I love to do even in the cold. The library is very tiny but there still are books--the British Council is nice too. I was going to do my history termpaper on Shelley and Byron and the romantics, but I decided I knew too much about them to write a decent paper. So it’s Bismarck and the unification of Germany. Dull.
I wonder how the 2,500 celebration was received in the US? Any news of it there? Since I got 9 days off, I won’t forget it soon! Do you know, I don’t feel very American anymore. A citizen of the world before anything. Nationalism is dumb. If I were in a spaceship that crashed in the ocean, and someone said they’d take me home, I wouldn’t know where to go. Whatever land is nearest. Bucket claims she’s a Caspian. There’s no accounting for Buckets.
5:08:45 AM 
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