A Sweet Ride From South Riding to an Ooh La La Life
Sunday, October 24, 4 pm – 7 pm Come Chill with Us and Enjoy BBQ & Bluegrass! Join us behind the ‘Brick House’ at Oak Spring Farm for the tastiest BBQ from the legendary Shaffer’s BBQ and the iconic Bluegrass Band,
The Seldom Scene while watching the sunset behind the mountains! After all, isn’t the preservation of that spectacular landscape what it is all about?
$65.00 per person Includes 1 BBQ ticket and 2 drink tickets Limited Ticketing available For Tickets and Information please call (540) 687-8441 or go online to www.landtrustva.org No tickets will be sold at the gate. Please join Land Trust of Virginia in celebration of Virginia’s open spaces, natural resources, and cultural heritage.
Raamin Samiyi followed his dreams to make perfect pastry in Paris.
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By Kelly Querin
n a recent trip to France, I met Raamin Samiyi while dining with friends at a tucked-away Michelin-starred Paris restaurant. We struck up a conversation with the young man in the kitchen and discovered this pastry chef ’s background was as exceptional as the cuisine.
And a Virginian, as well, who grew up in South Riding in Loudoun County but said he had always been obsessed with all things French. “By the time I was 14, I was begging my parents to let me study abroad and to take French as my language in school,” he recalled. His loving, but practical parents from Iran and Azerbaijan told Samiyi that learning Spanish would be more useful. And studying abroad was not an option. This dutiful son majored in neuroscience and minored in classical piano at George Mason University. But the siren call of France still beckoned, and he applied to a program to teach English in French-speaking countries. He was accepted and soon assigned to a small village in the Jura region of eastern France. With all its history, romance and sheer beauty, Samiyi found France to be all he had ever imagined. Still, in order to stay, continuing his education was the only route. He was accepted to study science at The Sorbonne in Paris, graduating with a master’s degree in pharmacology. The end of school also meant goodbye Paris and hello New York to a real-world job. For Samiyi, life in New York paled in comparison to France.
Proceeds raised from Sunset in the Field will support Land Trust of Virginia’s mission.
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“I had a job in a field I was prepared for, but my soul was dying,” he recalled. After checking the box of “a real job,” he started going door to door with applications for creative industry jobs and soon received a call back for a second interview from a bakery.
Go Green Middleburg | Fall 2021
