Iran in the perspective of non-IraniansThe experience of non-Iranian students of Ferdowsi University of Mashhad

The expansion of the recruitment of non-Iranian students in recent years has led to an increase in foreign interactions with Iranians. Research on the experiences and perceptions of non-Iranian students can lead to more self-awareness of Iranians. As a preliminary step, this article aims to report the experience and perception of some non-Iranian students studying in Iran. The method of current research is ethnography and the interview technique was used in data collection and the step-by-step coding technique was used in data analysis. The data is mainly the result of interviews with 28 non-Iranian students of Ferdowsi University of Mashhad in the summer of 2015. The result of extracting the messages in the interviews and assigning basic concepts to them is about 200 basic concepts and 7 major categories. Inspired by Gurvitch, major categories, ecology and morphology, clothing and appearance, interaction, social norms, morals and social values, and "deficiencies" were determined. Students made observations and made inferences, and the more observable a topic was, or the simpler and more accessible the inference was, the more it was reported.