i am a bad blogger

Since I last blogged, I have moved to a new level of professionalism in my EFL "career." That is, I can now plan a lesson in five minutes, and basically blag my way through any lesson simply through my charming personality. So I guess you could say I'm a bad blogger, but a better blagger. (This is the kind of humor that flies with foreign language students; I seem to have found my niche).

The weekend was a wicked joint "big 30" blowout with Tilly. All the classic tunes were there, and a great time was had by all, followed by the Sunday of 12 bottles of champagne. What a frivolous and beautiful day, the pinnacle of which was when three middle-aged dudes walked by the pub and sparked a spontaneous cry of approval from our crammed picnic table (crammed with drunk idiots that is). The guys didn't seem to mind, they just gave a little smile and strutted on.

August provided an amazing break in New York, trawling through City, Upstate, and really really Upstate. It was a dream of shopping, riding bikes, swimming in a lake, canoeing, hiking, running through sprinklers in the back yard, BBQ's and babies. I went totally American and experienced a fierce pull towards NYC, all that good pizza, all them crazies, big tough Latina taxi drivers. You gotta love it. Can we cue Gonzo from the Muppet Movie please... Close to my soul, and yet so far away. I'm going to go back there someday.

FYI, That's the New York State coat of Arms. And, I just learned that the State Fossil of NYS is the sea scorpion. If you needed another reason to love it.

I'm back in London

Not quite two weeks back in the big smoke and Trabzon already feels like a distant memory. It's amazing how quickly I reverted back to London life. The five minute stroll to my office in Turkey has been usurped by running for the bus, my glasses of tea are now paper cups with plastic lids, my hours of leisure time are now reduced to the weekend, my olives and cheese have become eggs and beans. I am teaching more for less money, and summertime ended the day I left Trabzon. Through the drizzly film of the 243's windows each morning, cinematically soundtracked by my I-Pod; (I'm currently on a bluegrass binge), I observe rowdy youths, showcase crazies, armies of workers, and battered-looking hipsters who have clearly not been to bed. I am back in a land where construction sites are carefully sealed off from the public and traffic rules are obeyed. In Turkey I got used to navigating moving bulldozers in the middle of pedestrianized streets, and habitually checking for scooters on the sidewalk. Now I find myself back in the banal safety of England. Grey church steeples are matched by a gloomy sky and pub signs swing and creak in gusts of wind. There's a lot of things they don't have in Turkey: chavs for example, or decent graffiti. You wouldn't think I would have missed such things, or laugh when my umbrella gets pulled inside out by the wind. But I did, and I do; it's nice to be back.

self-inflicted

Gosh it's been a while since I blogged. As my time in Turkey draws to a close, (six days to go), I've been plagued by this nagging feeling that I should write a post that will elegantly encapsulate my experiences here on the Eastern reaches of the Black Sea coast. But I can't. The thing is, so many little things have happened, which I want to remember and launch into the blogospehere for all eternity. The said theoretical eternity may bring up complex metaphysical questions, but suffice it too say that I should have written about them as they came along, instead of leaving them all to the last minute. Isn't that always the way with me.

Tonight I had dinner with some new friends. They are an old couple who teach in the same department at the university- urban planning - and throughout dinner their smiles and carefully measured words, and appealingly open-ended questions- "What is America like?" - made me want to volunteer to be their adopted granddaughter. The Professor invited me to dinner to say thank you for editing some papers for him. I must admit I expected it to be a boring duty-driven evening, but it turned out to be very pleasant. A little glimpse of them, a little promise of an unlikely friendship, and then the kind of slightly awkward goodbye that comes from the unspoken fact that we will not see each other again, nor keep in touch, nor even make empty gestures about keeping in touch. The Professor's wife held my hand warmly, and fretted about it being cold. (The Turks have a deep-seated fear of catching cold - drafts and chills of all forms are carefully avoided - to the point that people will not open windows more than a crack on a suffocatingly hot bus). I told her I was fine, and she told me to go straight in and warm up. Such a lovely caring nature is typical of the Turks; I will miss being treated so well when I get back to England- where affection appears to be shown through insults. Right?

Last weekend I went to Sinop with a colleague, her daughter, her mother, her aunt, and a bunch of pensioners on a packed and rowdy bus. It was, as I expected, both interesting and trying. (At several points I was made to dance in the aisle of the moving bus, and at one point a microphone was proffered with the instruction to sing "a foreign song.") These Black Sea Turks are so enthusiastic and fun-loving it's amazing - they get up to all kinds of embarrassing and crazy antics, and without alcohol! I don't really relish group tours but I didn't want to miss the chance to see more of the Black Sea. Sinop is one of the longest continually inhabited cities on the coast, about half-way between Istanbul and Trabzon. And there were a lot of strange sights to behold. We toured the famous Sinop prison, which was not that interesting to me and rather scary. But what made it worthwhile was the surrounding fortifications, walls built by the Seljuk Turks incorporating Greek ruins. You could literally see classical pillars sliced up like carrots and laid into the walls. No one seemed that interested in this part, but I was haunted by the sense of so much history built on top of and cannibalizing itself through the ages. You get that feeling a lot in Turkey.

In Trabzon, in fact, I am eerily conscious of the weight of its history, which remains for the most part invisible. This is an ancient settlement, and yet almost everything, apart from a handful of mosques and a caravansary, looks to have been built in the past fifty years. Trabzon is truthfully not very attractive. Fighting for ground between the mountains and the Black Sea, the architecture is almost all of the 1960's-style block variety. But I am haunted by the idea that it was a different place 100 years ago, different not only in the appearance of its buildings, but with different people and a different culture. Until the aftermath of WWI and the formation of the Turkish Republic, this whole region was a Pontic Greek stronghold - descendants of Byzantine Greeks who never left- and now, due to deeply contested historic events, read "relocations" and "population exchanges", almost all of them are gone. The thing that makes the history of this region so haunting is that no one talks about it. The people around here don't seem to want to reflect on the past. Many old buildings were destroyed to make way for six and seven-story apartment blocks, which seem out-of-place in a city of about 200,000. The main area of town has some half-dead Ottoman wooden houses whose days appear to be numbered, and, out of sight, hidden, there remain some crumbling ruins of Byzantine churches, Greek villas, and Orthodox monasteries, which almost none of the locals know or care about, which aren't mentioned in any tour guides, and which I, annoyingly, haven't been that successful in finding. I've read that one of the monasteries in the hills above the city is currently in use as a barn, but if you ask the farmer nicely, he might remove the hay and let you see the frescoes.

In any case, I have that predictable feeling that I haven't made the best use of my time here, that there's more to see that I've missed. So I'll be spending Saturday visiting mosques that used to be churches that may have been temples before that, and gulping down the last glasses for who knows how long, of fragrant black tea grown not fifty miles away.

heroic goats save the South

Another reason to celebrate my favorite animal...

blog envy

I'm not very satisfied with my blog. Other people's blogs seem, well, cooler. So, in aid of this, I am now going to compose the coolest post ever. Here goes.

First off, you will note this very nice picture, which was done by Rex Hackelberg, and up-and-coming cartoonist whom John Kricfalusi (Ren and Stimpy creator and my recently-elected hero) has taken under his wing. John credits this kid with keeping real cartoony stuff in his heart, and not going for the souless modern Disney-style stuff. I have to agree with John. If you check out John's blog you will see a world of delightful cartoony stuff and the reflections of a man who truly loves cartoons. In fact it's become my favorite thing to read and look at in the past few weeks. I even flirted with the idea of pursuing cartoons as a possible research field. How cool would a PhD in the cultural analysis of cartoons be? But after link-hopping from John K's site, I realized that the world is full of cartoon buffs and though I love cartoons a lot, I KNOW NOTHING.

Anyway- and I hope you are enjoying this extra-cool post- I just thought I would point out one thing about this kid's illustration. Now, don't get me wrong, I think his illustration is lovely, but...



it was even cooler when Chip and Dale were in it.

I will leave you with one more delight culled off John K's website.

I love this.

Now, you make ask, does putting pieces of other blogs which are cool onto my blog make my blog cool?

Yes.

acting with no expectations

Living in Turkey is proving to be an extended lesson in Taoist wisdom. Tao, which to me is a slightly warmer version of Zen, advises above all acceptance, flexibility, and a union with the way things are, rather than trying to force them into what we would like them to be.

This is not my natural way of being but I’ve been practicing for a few years. Before I became a Taoist, however, I am and have always been a person of lists. I like to start a job and complete it, and cross it off. It makes me feel industrious and efficient. But Turkey makes a mockery of my routine. The process of crossing an item off the list has become akin to waiting for an unbearably slow internet connection to stream media content. You watch the bar. You press play. You press pause. You watch the bar. You read "buffering" over and over. You press play and get some incoherent garble. You press pause. You wait.

See, getting something done here doesn't begin with the direct statement of intent of whatever you would like to achieve. It starts with formulas of greeting and welcome, and generally moves on to a glass of tea. The overall atmosphere is not “Let’s get things done” but “Let’s talk about this for a long while, come to no fixed conclusion, and maybe we can talk again some other time.”

I have been trying to book flights for a weekend trip to Istanbul all week. I go to the company's web site and it won't accept my credit card. I know my card is ok, I've used it before with the same company for an online purchase, but for some reason, it just won't work. I mentioned this to a colleague, who advised me that sometimes it doesn’t work, and I should just keep trying. So I did, but to no avail.

I decided to call the airline, which says it's open 24/7, on the English section of its website. I called and was welcomed by a recording, and prompted "For English, press 9." I pressed 9, got a 15 second dose of muzak, was told (in Turkish) to wait, and then looped back to the beginning. I was welcomed, told "for English, press 9," treated to another snippet of a different dead-tune, told to wait, and back to the start again. I tried a variety of responses, ie. pushing different buttons, not pushing any buttons, to escape this mini-samsara, but to no avail.

The next day at work I asked my colleague to call for me. She got through to a real person, explained the situation, and made a reservation for me. The next step, I was told, was to go to a local agent for the airline in order to pay for and collect my ticket. Using your credit or debit card outside of a large company’s internet payment facility requires the physical manifestation of you and the card. Alternatively, under duress, (which I have applied in previous similar situations) they might ask you to fax a copy of your card (which is always illegible), or email a scanned copy of your credit card (great idea!).

So, it happens that last evening I went to see a performance by a Georgian theatre group. The play, which was a quite abstract treatment of “conflict,” and which didn’t seem to impress the audience much, probably due to some very ambiguous scenes of women with headscarves covering their entire heads and faces, ended at about 9.30pm. I mentioned to my friend that I needed to go to a travel agent sometime. Oh, she said, there’s one nearby, let’s go! At 9.30 on a Friday night? you ask. But, yes, the office was open for business. There are no set office hours around here. Shops open and close when they feel like it. If you’re wondering if a certain shop is open, go and check. At last, I thought, the cultural differences are working in my favour!

But it was not to be. After a lot of discussion and explanation, the agent managed to book a reservation for me. I presented my card, but the airline still for some reason would not accept payment. I offered to pay in cash. The agent tried to use the company credit card to book the ticket online, but his card didn’t work either. We all had a good chat about how there must be a problem, we can’t understand it, what bad luck, God knows why this is happening. And I was invited to come back to the office tomorrow to try again. I went home and called my bank, who confirmed that there’s no problem with my card or account, and no record of me trying to use my card.

Incidentally, while I was on hold with my bank, I was waiting for over five minutes, reading an article on the internet, and somehow ended up in a deadzone. After a lot of really great recorded advice about extra services I’m definitely going to try, there was now only silence. Had I been disconnected? I wondered. I tentatively pressed a button. “Recording stopped!” I was told. “To log into your voicemail, press 82.” I don’t know where I was, but I didn’t feel I belonged there. I felt that, like the characters in Being John Malkovich, I had somehow entered some secret zone in the back alleys of corporate infrastructure. So I hung up.

Anyway, I guess I’ll go back to the travel agent later, maybe have a glass of tea, and if the flight to Istanbul comes to me, I will accept it. If not, I will release it. My heart is open as the sky.

excuses excuses

A lot of things have happened. I haven't updated in a while, and you may have been thinking that I proven to be one more person who starts a blog, and then abandons it when the novelty wears off, contributing to the vast net-fill of junked sites. Well, no! I've just been a little busy that's all.

1. My boyfriend came to visit and we trawled about town and took some day trips to nearby lakes, mountains, and a monastery carved into a mountain. We became minor celebrities wherever we went. See I can pass for a Turk (Turks come from various ethnic stocks due to the historical diversity of the region and the empires; some look Eastern European, some look Asiatic, some look Middle-Eastern), but he cannot. Everywhere we went children stared- actually everyone stared. After the initial shock passed, we were treated to a barrage of questions, smiles and general astonishment at our existence. I have to say I felt a little bit like there wasn't room in this town for the both of us. Now he's gone I'm the most interesting foreigner again. Yeah.

2. I went to see a Macedonian modern dance performance. It's part of a "theatre" festival hosting groups from various bordering countries. No details of the different performances are offered in the program; you just turn up and hope for the best. Seems like I got lucky. These Macedonians weren't actors but proper dancers. The production featured well-chosen costumes, fresh micro-beat and clicky music, and the artful use of a camera to project an aerial view of the dancers behind them. It was refreshing to have some non-Turkish input. Diversity is what I miss most about London. It's nice here but it's something of a mono-cultural deal.

3. I went to my friend's house and she cooked enough food for five people. We had borek (feta cheese pastries), a yogurt with carrot and garlic dip, green beans with olive oil and rice, orange cake, semolina pudding, apple-filled cookies, and glass after glass of tea. The Turks are some of the most hospitable people I've met. If you have a way in, ie. you know one person, all of their friends are instantly your friends, and they kiss you on the cheek (if you are of the same sex) and treat you like an old pal the first time they meet you. There are no separate words for colleague, classmate, flatmate- all the people you associate with who are not in a position of authority or dependence to you, are called friends. And friends get looked after. I have never seen anyone eat or drink anything, even gum, without offering it to the people around them. Even a candy bar will be broken into pieces and shared among five people if need be. The important thing is that everyone is included. My students are all so nice to each other- there is little of the cliquiness of American high school and college culture here. There aren't loads of competing "types;" there is just one perceived type: Turkish.

4. I accidently erased all the music off my I-Pod this evening. And I've realized first-hand what the A in apple really stands for. If you don't have an I-Pod the following is probably a ticket to the depths of dullness, but I just gotta complain about this or I won't be able to go to sleep for the knot of regret in my stomach, which has lately replaced the numbness of denial. See, I opened up I-Tunes and it presented me with an option to automatically update my I-Pod with my I-Tunes library. Without thinking too much about it, it sounded like a good idea, so I said ok. Then, without further warning, it erased everything that was on my I-Pod that wasn't in my library- like 90% of my music. Design flaw you might think. But I'm pretty sure it's a deliberate design trap. People like me, who have (had) perfected their I-Pod, filled it up with all their favorite music, spent countless hours creating playlists and labeling and ordering all the tracks, make Apple no further profit. But poor suckers like me who so easily and without a warning message lose all their music have to start over again. I guess Apple is hoping I will replace my lost music at the I-Tunes music store. Well they can fuck off. And another thing. I have done a little research and found that the newest version of I-Tunes doesn't allow for the automatic update option to be switched off. This ensures two things - that you can't use third-party software like I-pod Rip to get music off your I-Pod and onto a computer where you can share it, and that you risk wiping your I-pod every time you plug it into a computer that doesn't have all the music on it that you have on your I-pod. Well, luckily out of sheer laziness I never updated to version 7, and I never will. So in making one error, I became aware of a second more grave error in time to avoid it. I guess the moral of the story is don't fool around with stuff if you don't actually know what you're doing. But I always operate like that, and even though it leads me to do careless things sometimes, it still feels like a good approach for some reason. I like fooling around with stuff.

5. My computer knows it's in Turkey. Ok, it's probably more accurate to say that some web sites, like google and blogger, know when I open them from Turkey. But I get pleasure from personifying my computer. It makes me feel almost as it there's more than one American in this town. Actually my computer seems more British. Probably because I bought her at PC World. Right. Well I better go to bed. But I just want to add that although blogger knows that I am in Turkey, it doesn't know that I don't speak Turkish very well, so it's just a big pain in the ass when I want to update my blog and everything is in Turkish. Get it right blogger. I'm on my guard with all you blood-sucking, money-grubbing, music-eating companies from now on.

There. That ought to placate the yahbiquette-starved masses for a while.

why i love easter

easter is the time for crazed fuzzy chicks and pink marshmallow bunnies. pagan celebration of spring meets late capital consumerism in orgy of sweet artificial color. yes.

i'm not sure i should be writing this

Yesterday was Nevruz. Or Newroz. Depending on your ethno-cultural-political standpoint. It's "the w problem," a small reminder of the larger "Kurdish problem" in Turkey. Here we had an outdoor concert to celebrate Nevruz. The Turkish flag was prominently displayed behind the stage, where Black Sea music was followed by a grungy rock band. It didn't mean much to me until some background reading gave me the context of the holiday. An ancient pagan festival of spring celebrated all over the region- Iran, Georgia, Central Asia, and other countries- it was banned in Turkey until a few years ago, because the Kurds were celebrating it as an expression of their separate cultural identity and political goals. So now it's a Turkish holiday! Problem solved. You can read about it on the Turkish Ministry of Culture website, with the Turkish spelling Nevruz, where many different spellings and origins for the holiday are mentioned, except the Kurdish ones. Or you can read about it from the Kurdish point of view if you google their spelling "newroz." There seem to be lots of interesting stories to be learned in Turkey. What's most interesting is an estimated 30% of the Turkish population are ethnic Kurds and I haven't met ANY that I know of. Seems like it's the kind of thing you keep to yourself. What baffles me is that all over the world, governments are not able to identify the basic mechanics of cause and effect. Oppression of an impulse intensifies and gives strength to that impulse. Don't they get it? If they had just let the Kurds have their own cultural identity within Turkey all this time there wouldn't be a "Kurdish problem" now. And why is everyone so obsessed with having their own state anyway? They'd still disagree. We'd have to keep breaking into smaller and smaller states to maintain this ideal of purity and sameness these nationalist impulses are built on, until eventually each person becomes a nation of one. And even then, trying to remain hardline can have disastrous results.

undeniable

This band is cool, this album rocks, and how cool is this album cover? If you don't think they are cool, well, I don't understand you.

virtual people

Perusing the internet is much like what I imagine it must be like to trawl a great river on the banks of a wise old city, you find all kinds of garbage. And you also get a chance to gawk at the detritus of lives of people you will never meet. Take this character I recently came across. So much time. So much enthusiasm. And such a mysterious voice in the ether- just who is this guy writing for? If you are a gamer who doesn't know how to make hot chocolate, or are too lazy to read directions for a simple board game, or perhaps a precocious toddler who wants to know exactly how to pour juice into a cup, this might be what you're looking for:

http://www.associatedcontent.com/user/14602/shawn_grover.html

Looking over it more carefully I now realize that this guy has secreted a kernel of humor under his majestic cloak of geekdom. Thus that ineffable quality of geek-cool is born.

black sea enlightenment

I have learned a lot from my students in the past week or so, and, being the generous soul that I am, I'm sharing some of these wise trinkets with you. Did you know...

I, yes me, am America.

"We know the so-called Armenian genocide never happened." So, no need to talk about that anymore.

In Turkish, as in English, the word for "bill" is also a name.

Please be aware that certain TV programs, especially chat shows and soap operas, can corrupt your morals!

And, to close on a positive note: "Love and peace are the enemy of war, and if we all love each other there will be no more war."

And this is the way darkness and light, humor and despair, play upon the dreamy waters of the Black Sea.

tea for twelve

I recently attended a dinner party at the home of one of my colleagues. It was different from any dinner party I've ever been to before, and not only because everyone was speaking Turkish and I only had the most general sense of what was going on. For most of the evening, I focused intently on the words and gestures and reactions from people, and kept a running commentary in my mind, along the lines of someone's ill. what a shame, is it someone i know? probably not. is it serious? i have no idea.... something about a film. iran. ok... and? why does she keep saying banana? maybe it's not banana.

The evening began for me as all the guests set off in a cavalcade, children pressing their faces to back windows and waving, adults in the front smiling and waving back, to our hostess' house on the other side of town.

We arrived and left our shoes outside the door. You can always see when your neighbors have guests in Turkey, because there's a pile of shoes by the front door. Or sometimes only a single pair of men's dress shoes with a pointy, slight curled toe, which for some reason I always imagine becoming animate and tapping up to me, heel-toe, heel-toe. Creepy.

Anyway, we were welcomed in, kissed, given slippers, and seated in the living room. I realized that I was the only one wearing jeans, then excused myself to myself, thinking hammily, hey I'm American. Most of the women had made an effort; some had makeup, some had straightened their hair, except for one of the wives, who covers her hair and was dressed simply. The mothers were called at one point to round up their children, and serve them, and settle them in the kitchen, while the table was laid for the adults in the dining room. I stayed in the living room with the men. Being neither a mother, nor a man, I felt vaguely uncategorizable.

Dinner was served once the children were secured. It consisted of various platters: cheese pastries, walnut bread, fruit cake, lentil-cakes, zucchini with yogurt, sweet carrot balls, and glasses of hot tea. Everyone ate slowly and chattered away, while the hostess barely ate but urged more food on all of us and refilled our tea-glasses ceaselessly. After we'd finished, we stayed at the table drinking more cups of tea, talking (or listening), and eating baklava. Later the hostess brought out a remarkable paste she uses as a cleaning product, explaining its benefits to the women of the table, and passing it around for everyone to smell. Yes, it's true.

Some got up to smoke off the balcony. Conversation never faltered for a moment. People joked and laughed, and I smiled, having not a clue what was so funny. Occasionally someone offered to translate a little snippet of the conversation for me. After we had had a chance to digest a bit, a huge bowl of fruit appeared, and everyone set to peeling and cutting apples, oranges, and kiwis on little plates with little knives. The children had finished their meal and were causing a general ruckus by this time. After the fruit, the hostess offered us each a few drops of refreshing lemon cologne for our hands. I was exhausted from so much food and focused listening. Around midnight, the head of the department announced, well friends, it's late, let's go. So we all got up and filed out.

I got a ride home with the head of department and his family, who are all painfully quiet and unfailingly polite, and somehow always leave me without a thing to say. It's his wife who covers her head; they're a conservative family. The children are very quiet and well-behaved. So we drove in silence, and as the car rolled up and down the hills around the city, the radio incongruously tuned to a house station- "Saturday night disco!"- I felt that truly refreshing sensation of finding yourself an incongruous object in your surroundings, of finding the terrain of your own life unfamiliar and inexplicable. I love it when that happens.

decade of my birth

Sometimes I can't really connect with the fact that I was alive in the seventies. Ok, only for the last couple years. And I was obviously too small to engage with the realities of 1970's America very deeply. But still.

It seems to me that everything was somehow more authentic then. It seems like that was the real America. I mean, we had the method actors, De Niro and Kaitel and Streep, we had Coppola and Scorcese at their peaks. Sure they're all still around, but when I look at Meet the Fockers, hell, when I look at Charlie Sheen... it's hard not to think that those were the good old days.

Vietnam was there, I mean the war, the cause. The dawn of health food in California was a joke for a Woody Allen film. The TV was big and convex. There were woods all around my suburban town, enough for my uncle to have a salt lick for deer in his backyard. The bad economy. The population explosion. Crime-ridden NYC. Lines for gasoline. And big cars! Why does all that sound so great? And not just great, but somehow more durable and tangible than anything I can say about life now?

As for London, I guess London was full of wooden buses and buck teeth, bad plumbing and bad food. Jellied eels and the like. Right? I don't have the references for the UK that I have for America. Obviously. I mean I have a skeletal framework. But basically London didn't exist before 1997 as far as I'm concerned. When I arrived there, on my twentieth birthday, I expected it to be like Ab Fab. That's why I was there darling.

I wonder if my kids will look at old pictures and laugh at my haircuts, as I did. ("That was the style!" my mom insisted.) I wonder if they will be disappointed that I haven't done some of the things or been in some of the "scenes" that they will later come to associate with the nineties and the first decade of the 21st century, just as I never forgave my parents for living in upstate New York in 1969 and not going to Woodstock.

I wonder how long this retrolicious, all the past is for sale, hey remember when, I love 19childhood-memory-of-our-target-market thing will go on? I feel like buying up everything about the seventies before they run out of stock. I feel like connecting with the reality of the decade of my birth- which is clearly impossible, and exactly what some man in a board room came up with, smoking and laughing evilly, circa 1986.

what’s happening to me?

There’s quite a lot of variables you see. Let’s look for a moment at the constellation that is now. I'm listening to a song which is stylistically locused in 1970’s America, but it might just be a very convincing pastiche. Browsing the web I find a page for the Catholic school I attended from ages 5 – 12. The uniforms are the same and two of my teachers are still there, as is the school nurse, who must be in her sixties by now. I look at the map on the wall, and realize how far away I am from the world that made me. I scan the school calendar- “Saturday February 10, ziti dinner!” And even more heartbreaking- “Friday February 9, set up for ziti dinner.” So many layers of nostalgia, like the most sorrowful filo pastry in the world. I guess that would be a burnt one, or one with a not-so-tasty filling.

It's hard to define that suburban American world, which I left ten years ago now, on what sometimes feels like an extended vacation from my real life. Impossibly cozy and mildly oppressive. There's a certain brand of feel-good philosophy which is ceaselessly forwarded like a garbled e-greeting-card, willfully upbeat. It's the kind of world where, when faced with difficult news on the television, one only smiles gently and says “I just don’t like to believe that things like that really happen.”

There’s my laptop, which I have named and personified, and feel attached to. I feel like she (Periwinkle) is an individual, that she is different from other Compaq Presarios, and if something (god forbid) should happen to her, I would not only feel a distressing sense of disconnection to the world, but I would not be able to replace her. She’s different because she’s mine.

There is the kitchenette in the corner of my apartment in the East of Turkey. In an apartment building erected 50 or 60 years ago, it has the feel of an even older apartment in the States. One that an old person has been living in for an awfully long time, without making any changes. I like to think that, like Neal Cassidy in the beginning of On the Road, I’m living in a “cold water flat.” Of course there is a hot shower, but the other taps are indeed cold water only. And my shower at the moment is cold, too. I’ve run out of gas and I’ve forgotten to order another canister. Ok... I didn’t forget. It’s just I don’t know how to say canister in Turkish, and I don’t want to sound like a fool.

I did call the water company. I’m an old hand at that, since I was in Istanbul. Most people in Turkey order these big containers of water for their homes, about the size that go in water coolers in offices. But here, instead of a stand, you have a handy pump which you stick into the cooler, like a straw for a really big, really thirsty person. Of course it’s nearly impossible to gage the amount of pressure needed to fill a small glass of water without overflowing. But it's become a kind of game.

I called them up and delivered my lines: “Good evening. I’d like one container of water please.” The man here replied just as they do in Istanbul- “Buyurun,” which means lots of things, like “go ahead,” or “help yourself,” or “can I help you?” I gave him my four digit code. I'm pretty sure I said all this correctly. And yet because of the speed, maybe because of the accent, the man stopped me and said “new teacher?”

“Yes,” I said. There was a silence, words in the background, and then a new voice on the phone.

“Hello. Gutten’tag.”

“Hello,” I said.

“Specken zie deutsche?”

“No.”

Silence.

“My number,” I said slowly, “is 6 4 2 7.”

“2?”

“6…..4…..2…..7”

Then I listened while the two men I had given my number to compared notes in the background. Satisfied with the non-falsifiability of their results, the second man got back on the phone.

“Ok!” he said.

“Ok!” I said.

What pleasure every mundane yet successful transaction of life can bring! I’m not feeling waves of melancholoy anymore; maybe it’s the upbeat nature of the song I’m listening to now, or the knowledge that I’m about to launch this little reflection onto my blog, where everyone can read my thoughts, and I can feel validated. God Bless My Blog. And you my friends. And you strangers; or should I say "friends I haven't met yet"? I’m off now. I’ll be tucking myself in bed to reflect on my dog-eared copy of "Chicken Soup for the Soul."

yah spring term!

Today is the first day of the new term. I've spent the last two weeks reflecting on methodology , creative ideas for presenting material, content, and assessment. I've cut and cut again the texts on my syllabuses, and I still think it's too much. The funny thing about the literature students I'm teaching is they don't seem to like reading much. I have come up with a lot of ideas to cajole, trick, tempt, and force them into engaging with literature, and I was looking forward to trying them out.

My approach for the first class of the term- this morning, Monday, 8am- was to use a clip from "Apocalypse Now" as a lead-in to Conrad's "Heart of Darkness," which was the loose basis for the film. In TEFL terms, this is known as "generating interest." My mistake last term was to assume that an interest in literature is already present in my students' hearts and minds. But a few weeks was enough to alert me that this is not the case.

In secondary education in Turkey, students and teachers dwell in the dark shadow of a standard university entrance exam of massive significance. Students must choose the subject questions they will answer on the exam, which generally means the ones they can get the highest scores in. Students list the universities they would like to attend, and the subjects they would like to study; this is based on what is presumed feasible for them, with lots of direction from their secondary school teachers and parents. If students have the potential to score high enough to study the prestigious subjects like science and engineering, you can be sure this is where their future lies. Incidentally, English and Literature subjects are at the low end of the scale.

Test results determine where they go and what they study. Thus, questions like "Why did you choose to come to this university?" or "Why did you choose to study this subject?" usually generate the standard reply, "Because my test scores were enough to come here."

Add to this the "mixed" nature of the degree program at this university- a heady blend of linguistics, teaching methodology, language skills, and literature, plus a moderate dose of Turkish history, and you get my students, who just want to pass the degree so they can be teachers, and seem to resent the intrusion of dense texts like "Heart of Darkness" in their already heavy hearts.

But these reflections have all been spurred on by the unexpected denoument of this, my first class of the term. I set up the projector, arranged my notes, and was feeling positive. I looked out over the empty seats in front of me, just arranged in neat rows, like a freshly-dug seed bed. I cued the film clip. I had a sip of water. I looked over my notes again. And the students did not come. I sat in the empty classroom for half an hour, going over possible explanations in my mind. I decided they had mutinied.

I questioned one of my colleagues, who assured me that this is normal. Students have gone to their home towns for the month-long winter break. And they usually don't come back until Tuesday. Another example of what is proving to be a common theme to life in Turkey- you get information when it comes up- why would you need it before?

stories from Cairo

So I recently went to Cairo and it was amazing. Because I have what I generally refer to as "a 35mm camera" (a description of which some have questioned the aptness of, but nevermind), and I don't know of any scanners I can use, sadly I can't post any photos right now, maybe in future. But I have some stories...

Cairo Story 1:

I was in a taxi with three other women, on the way to an American diplomat's house, to attend a reception in the evening after a day of conferences at the American University. The taxi driver didn't speak English, but due to my very little grasp of Arabic, I was nominated speaker of the car. I gave him the address, he nodded, and we set off. We learned that a taxi ride in Cairo really takes the word "ride" seriously- as the man in charge of the Scrambler at the travelling fair says: "Hold on tight!" Cars weave in and out of traffic; lanes are fluid and seem to play with the gaps, fissures, and problematic attempts at boundaries which characterize the text that is the road. Horns are used liberally and with great fervor.

At some point, the driver seemed to ask for the address again. I told him the address; someone else showed him the paper, which was written in English and therefore of no use to him. He pulled off to the side of the road and, without a word, got out of the car.

We looked at each other, and occasionally surveyed the shops and little alleys which fanned out in the direction our driver had gone walking.

After about five minutes, a man came up to our car and peered in the window.

"The driver?" he asked. I guess he could tell we weren't locals.

"We don't know," we said. The man looked at us, looked at the car, then opened the driver's side door, reached in and put the car in neutral. Then he proceeded to move the car forward, steering the wheel to the right. "Uh..." we all said to each other. "What's he doing?" "I don't know!" "Wait, wait!" I said to the man. "No problem! Thank you!" The man shrugged, put the car back in park and walked off.

After a few more minutes, our driver returned with three men. One of them eyed us through the crack in the window and said "Hello, where you going?" We carefully explained the address, and named a landmark.

"Oh!" he said loudly, with a big smile. "I know. Big house for Americans?"

"Yes," we whispered.

So we went on our way, and had a pleasant evening eating American food, which is shipped all over the world to those in the foreign service. I mean everything, including lettuce. The diplomat's apartment was furnished with Middle-eastern carpets, wall-hangings, cushions, etc. And yet the life of the diplomat and family, in the middle of the Egyptian megalopolis was so... American. Interesting window into a strange world, but I much preferred the taxi ride.

helpful phrases for women

Greetings my friends and family and strange roving members of the public.

As I'm sure I'm not the only woman out there who sometimes feels herself at a loss of what to say, I am posting this helpful guide I recently came across:

"The following exclamations all have approximately the same meaning. They are generally used by women and express surprise, astonishment, fear, or consternation.

Heavens! Heaven forbid!
Goodness! My goodness!
Good heavens! For goodness sake!
Heaven help us! For goodness sakes!
For heaven's sake! Mercy!
For heaven's sakes! Mercy me!
Land sakes!

Other exclamations frequently used by women:

My! (said in surprise or admiration)
Oh, my! (said in surprise, admiration, or a worried fashion)
My, my! (said in surprise or in a worried fashion)
My word! (said in surprise or astonishment)
Well, I never! (said in amazement)
Eeek! (said when the speaker is frightened by a mouse or is in a similar frightening predicament)
Oh dear! (said in worry or consternation) "

From: Dobson, Julia. Effective Techniques for English Conversation Groups. OELP: Washington, DC, 2005.

At least now I know what to do in those awkward pauses.