The next year, the school moved across Tehran to a site on Khiabane Zhaleh, Kucheh Mareez Khaneh (Hospital Drive), near Jaleh Street. The new school had been an old Presbyterian missionary hospital. Farah Diba, who became Queen of Iran, had been born there. Used as a military hospital during World War II, it was eventually returned to the missionaries to be used as the school campus. The large, shady compound had several buildings, a church, walking paths, and a pond teeming with tadpoles.

The new school facilities were a big improvement, but there was a downside. It was located at the end of a dead-end street in a dangerous part of the city where unrest and riots were particularly common. My parents worried. Good thing they never knew that some of us occasionally slipped off campus and into the Tehran streets to shop. Our mission was to buy colored erasers, which we needed for our collections of eraser shavings!

I ventured into theater that year. I thought the story of Cinderella would make a great play and found other kids at school who thought so too. Of course, not all of them were sure who Cinderella was, but that didn't stop us. We set about writing the script, selecting the actors, designing the set and costumes and holding rehearsals. I found that I could easily get all of us out of class to work on this by being somewhat honest and saying we had to work on "the play." Each teacher assumed we were involved in a school-sponsored theater production. We had an exciting, productive time for a couple of weeks until my teacher, Mrs. Stephanides, and others, found our absences from class excessive. They began to check into who was in charge of the play and were so surprised to discover that it was me! The play was not a school-sponsored event and of course, there was no adult supervision. Needless to say, the show did not go on.

In America that fall, Eisenhower was running for president. Soon, a gang of American boys started "terrorizing" us on the school grounds. Concealing themselves in the bushes, they would jump out, grab unsuspecting passers-by and threaten to beat them up unless they responded correctly to the question, "Do you like Ike?" When they captured me, I took a wild guess and said I liked Ike. That must have been the right answer because I was released unharmed, though shaken. "Who the heck was Ike?" I wondered.

Fourth grade was the first time I can remember having a "boyfriend." I latched onto Stefan, who was from one of the Soviet countries and was several years older than I was. I think it was a rather one-sided relationship but he tolerated my constant presence well. I stuck to him like glue on the campus while he and his friends hung out or played soccer. I remember him as being tall, (well, I was only nine years old!), dark, and handsome, with a great accent. My real motive might have been to gain a protector from those scary "Do you like Ike?" terrorists.

One of the highlights of the school year was Parents Day, which was held in the spring, just before the end of school. We performed for the parents and other guests, singing in different languages and dancing national folk dances, wearing country-specific costumes. Each class represented a country, and so we learned unfamiliar songs, dances, and national dress.

In the spring of third grade, my class was in the Russian group for Parents Day. We sang "Ochi Chernye" (Dark Eyes) and danced a Russian folk dance. I can still sing that song in Russian. The event was held outside in the school compound. We rarely had to worry about being "rained out" in Tehran.

I left the Community School behind after fourth grade when my family returned to the United States. Americans were flooding into Iran then, their numbers eventually reaching 70,000. The American Embassy asked the Community School to take responsibility for the education of all American children in the city, but the new principal suggested that it might be time for the Embassy to start its own school. The year we left Iran, the new school for Americans opened. I am so grateful I was there before that happened!

The Community School prospered and grew, continuing to serve both international and Iranian children in Tehran for many more years until the Islamic Revolution forced its closure. The last class graduated in the spring of 1980. Those who attended the school never forgot the experience and, although former students are living all over the world, they have a reunion every two years to renew friendships and remember those school days in Tehran. Of course, the reunion is not held in Tehran but that is the goal for sometime in the future.

During the two years after we left Iran, I attended four different U.S. schools. Near the end of sixth grade, we left the U.S. again, this time heading to Helsinki, Finland, where Daddy began a two-year tour of duty. That fall, my sister Carol and I enrolled in the English School, a private Catholic School. As in Iran, the tuition was paid by the Embassy but transportation was not provided. Finland was, and still is, one of the safest places on earth. Kids walked or used public transportation to go to and from school and it was always a peaceful commute.

More often than not, we moved mid-year, and invariably I missed some key concept in one subject or another. I spent a lot of time trying to "catch-up." I learned to live with that feeling of always being an outsider, of continually making and losing relationships and of expecting all things to come to an end. Connections have been elusive ever since (my sister, my brother and I are all divorced). But I'm convinced my sense of adventure, the attraction to danger that I occasionally indulge in, and my penchant for traveling off the beaten track, all come from these experiences.

Attending a private Presbyterian school in Islamic Iran, a Catholic school in Lutheran Finland , plus six U.S. public schools, all before eighth grade, made for one mixed up kid with large gaps in learning. For example, my math is terrible. Really terrible. But thanks to the Tehran Community School, I can spell hieroglyphics!

I apparently was somewhere else when Americans my age were learning American history. I probably don't know enough to pass the test given U.S. immigrants applying for citizenship. Instead, I learned about Persia's history; its ancient capitol, Persepolis and about the great Persian kings, Darius and Cyrus. I learned to speak enough Persian and Finnish to be misunderstood. I know the story of the great Finnish military hero, Mannerheim, and the music of Finland's famous composer, Jean Sibelius. I know a little about the Finnish national epic, "Kalavala", and a lot about their lovable storybook characters, the Moomintrolls. I have a sort of Catholic/Anglican/Presbyterian understanding of the Christian faith and a pretty good grasp of the origin and history of Islam. I have seen the crushing poverty of the third world, lived in a country where life hadn't changed in hundreds, if not thousands, of years, and where transgressions of the law could result in brutal public punishments. I never witnessed a beheading, thank God, but I remember hearing that they were carried out in Tehran when we lived there. I have had wonderful friends from other cultures and faiths. I have ridden camels, eaten unidentifiable foods, gone swimming in the Caspian Sea, looked out from behind a chador (the head-to-toe veil worn by Iranian women.), given money to beggars, and run from rioters. None of this would have happened if I had spent those years in one town, one neighborhood, and one school. I consider myself lucky to have had such an exciting, unique and useful education.