'My First Day' Episode 4

This is KPBS Midday Edition. I'm Maureen Cavanaugh kpbs is exploring new ways to create stories you want to listen to stories that originate right here in San Diego. Mohammed Farazian has lived in San Diego for 14 years. He moved up from his native Iran . Here is an excerpt of his story from the kpbs podcast my first day. I arrived in San Diego it was a foggy day and it was really scary and depressing. Little did I know that as soon as 8:00 is going to be sunnier. San Diego is the capital of the United States. I missed the orientation. I had to catch up on everything just to enroll for classes with my advisor. An important thing was to find a place to live. Every person I talked to in a vacancy found would be gone because of my late arrival. I spend a good portion finding a place to live. I found only one place. There was a family and they were subleasing one of the rooms. I met them about 4:00 p.m.. They open the door and I saw that there were six cats and one huge dog. I heard the dog barking when we were walking in front of the house. It was a big challenge. I never lived with pants with so many in a tiny condo. I never experience living with six cats and a dog under one roof. The time I was growing up it wasn't very common to have pets. So at the beginning I said no all find another place but I had to come back because I couldn't find another place. They said you can stay here for a couple of days and see if you can get along with the dog. The first morning that I woke up I woke up and everybody was gone. I noticed I'm going to walk out of the door and there is a big dog outside and i don't know what to do. I had one bad memory when I was a kid. I was playing at the home and I was chased by a bunch of stray dogs. It was a security guard or somebody that was walking and found me. He rescued me. I have that bad image from my childhood that the dogs were chasing me. I don't know what would've happened if the security guard was not around. That has stayed with me for years. I tried to be cool. I walked out into the kitchen and the dog followed me into the kitchen. I started to have my breakfast and he was just looking at me and gazing at me. I felt maybe I should feed him he is hungry. I fed him some bread and he loved it and I kept repeating that in he was taking that bread. So it went on for couple of days and one day I was talking to someone and they said I've been feeding chance bread in the morning when I'm having my breakfast, is a fine? She said no, it's not good for his stomach. So they gave him a doggie treats and the feeding continued but different food. Over time, we made a good friendship. It was very interesting that I could get along with that. I was living at the house and really sad that I will not see the dog or -- I told them I will come here and see chance and they said sure. I went a couple of times. That was interesting for the first couple days in San Diego.