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Saeid Zeiaei and his wife Hadija Faraji became U.S. citizens last year. They have two young children born in the United States.


Even though all four members are American citizens now, and they are embracing American culture, the family continues to preserve their Iranian heritage, too. 

Zeiaei ended up in West Virginia because his parents had friends there. That made his dad feel better about sending him so far away. Zeiaei says what little the Iranian media says about Americans isn't good, and when he got here, he discovered the misperceptions cut both ways.

Fellow students would ask if his dad had an oil field. They figured that was the only way he could afford to go to school in the U.S.

"Or they were asking, like, do you guys, everyone have a car there, because every time we saw a movie, they portrayed people either walking bare feet in desert or everything's in chaos. And that's the only impression they got from that country."

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