Thursday, February 25, 2010
Happy Birthday, Mohammed!
Today seemed like a normal day at school until I saw all the classroom teachers putting together gift bags full of candy and dried dates. I asked what it was for and I was told they were gifts to celebrate the prophet Mohammed's birthday, which is/was/would have been today. Nothing special is done to celebrate this day other than to exchange small gifts with friends and to pray at home, but I don't know if it involves more prayer than any other day. From one of my coworkers I got a pen, 4 dried dates, and a 2 chocolates and from another coworker I got a rose with a note attached that said, "Bizi Aldatan, Bizden Değildir." Google Translate says this means "Fooled us who is not us" but my coworker translated it as "He who deceives is not of our religion." (Turkish speakers, do you have another translation?) Basically it means that honesty is very important in Islam, which I can totally see practiced by all the wonderful women I work with. However, it does make me wonder what religion some Turkish taxi drivers and shoe shiners are...
Thursday, February 18, 2010
Where else would "camels" be the most frequently-occurring word?
Today I was reading FinnStyle's Marimekko blog and found a link to a website called Wordle, where you can visually see which words are used most in a certain text/article/website. You can choose the number of words that appear, the colours, fonts and the layout. I did it for my blog and had so much fun that I made two:
I think this is just words from the posts that appear on my blog's main page (not archived posts). I can't figure out how to get it to include all the posts going back to 2007. Turkey and Bulgaria (and camels and CouchSurfer names) appear too often for it to be the entire blog. But still very interesting (and pretty!)...
I think this is just words from the posts that appear on my blog's main page (not archived posts). I can't figure out how to get it to include all the posts going back to 2007. Turkey and Bulgaria (and camels and CouchSurfer names) appear too often for it to be the entire blog. But still very interesting (and pretty!)...
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
The Best Homework Ever
In Kyrgyzstan it was hard to find students with imagination so many homework assignments about their lives were quite dull. Once I gave a homework assignment to an Upper-Intermediate class to write sentences using new vocabulary we'd learned. This particular class was mostly teenagers but I had one middle-aged Kyrgyz woman whose seriousness always brought about heated debates with other students. She handed in this homework assignment and this successfully helped me convince the office staff that she wasn't really high Upper-Intermediate material. This hung on my wall all year in Bishkek and I also carried her assignment from Kyrgyzstan through Central Asia and Turkey, where it has since been sitting on my bookshelf getting a laugh out of me every time it catches my eye. I can't even figure out if she googled the words and wrote an excerpt of the first sentence she found containing said words or if she used a dictionary and translated from Russian or Kyrgyz or if she did something entirely different- but I can guarantee that these definitions are not her own mind's creation. See for yourself- what level would you place her in?
Click for the larger picture.
(the missing section for 'militia' reads "against a criminal")
Click for the larger picture.
(the missing section for 'militia' reads "against a criminal")
Thursday, February 11, 2010
Deve Güreşi
Deve Güreşi (Camel Wrestling) is a very popular sport all over Turkey. It is most common in the Western part by the Mediterranean and is "in "season" in winter because its mating season. Wrestlers are specifically bred for the sport and are larger and more aggressive than normal camels. The sport is taken very seriously and owners name their camels after famous Turkish and international celebrities and dress them up in intricate saddles, harnesses, bridles and headscarves.
In the wild, male camels fight to the death over a female, but in the sport there are ropers on hand to separate the camels if things get out of hand. There are ancient rules that govern the fighting styles and judges watch over the matches to make sure camels are using acceptable techniques. Biting isn't allowed and camels must use their necks to either force their opponent from the ring or knock them down.
The biggest camel wrestling festival takes place in Selçuk at the end of January, but it happened the week before my semester holiday so I got over the disappointment and planned my vacation without camel wrestling. Mike and I were in Bodrum having tea with our CouchSurfing host and the topic came up. He called around and found out that there was a festival in Bodrum the same weekend, so Mike and I were overjoyed at getting a chance to see the festival after all.
The day of the festival we found a mini-bus headed to the festival and soon discovered that it was a hugely popular local gathering. Many people wore orange checkered scarves with the name of a specific camel they supported on it, and men were selling similar scarves for 5 lira. Some men had brought instruments and were performing Turkish songs and stands were set up selling camel sausages, sandwiches, raki, beer and drinks. People had brought chairs and were picnicing on the hill around the outdoor arena. I'm not sure the camels enjoyed walking by the racks of their slaughtered brothers, but DAMN do camel sausages taste good.
There were dozens of camels walking around with their owners leading them. There was an open field near the arena and the camels were stationed here waiting for their turn to wrestle. Since everything was in Turkish we didn't follow anything that was going on, but it seemed like the camels were going to the ring one at a time to be checked. Then after many camels had walked back and forth, a match finally began. There were men in green shirts who were Asian-crouching a distance away from the camels but ready to jump in if necessary and separate them with ropes. There was no whistle or anything to begin the match, the camels were simply brought close to each other and began fighting. They each used their neck to try to pin the other camel's head to the ground and then used their body weight to try to flip them over. A lot of the time it looked more like dancing than wrestling, but I caught a bit of this exciting match on video.
Camels foam at the mouth like rabid dogs. They also drool everywhere and we saw one unfortunate man catch a giant gob of camel saliva right in the face.
When camels are stood in place they use a strange-looking stance that always looks like they're going to pee (imagine a bunch of men lined up at the urinals). I don't know if this is a natural camel stance or the way wrestling camels are trained to stand.
Mike and I were the only tourists there and it was a really lively local atmosphere. Camel wrestling is an exciting spectacle to see as a tourist and is what Kyrgyzstan should turn its eagle festival into (see my blog post for more about that).
It started pouring so we left the camel festival after just a few hours but we were happy with what we'd seen. If you're ever in Turkey in winter, make deve güreşi top of your list of things to see!
In the wild, male camels fight to the death over a female, but in the sport there are ropers on hand to separate the camels if things get out of hand. There are ancient rules that govern the fighting styles and judges watch over the matches to make sure camels are using acceptable techniques. Biting isn't allowed and camels must use their necks to either force their opponent from the ring or knock them down.
The biggest camel wrestling festival takes place in Selçuk at the end of January, but it happened the week before my semester holiday so I got over the disappointment and planned my vacation without camel wrestling. Mike and I were in Bodrum having tea with our CouchSurfing host and the topic came up. He called around and found out that there was a festival in Bodrum the same weekend, so Mike and I were overjoyed at getting a chance to see the festival after all.
The day of the festival we found a mini-bus headed to the festival and soon discovered that it was a hugely popular local gathering. Many people wore orange checkered scarves with the name of a specific camel they supported on it, and men were selling similar scarves for 5 lira. Some men had brought instruments and were performing Turkish songs and stands were set up selling camel sausages, sandwiches, raki, beer and drinks. People had brought chairs and were picnicing on the hill around the outdoor arena. I'm not sure the camels enjoyed walking by the racks of their slaughtered brothers, but DAMN do camel sausages taste good.
There were dozens of camels walking around with their owners leading them. There was an open field near the arena and the camels were stationed here waiting for their turn to wrestle. Since everything was in Turkish we didn't follow anything that was going on, but it seemed like the camels were going to the ring one at a time to be checked. Then after many camels had walked back and forth, a match finally began. There were men in green shirts who were Asian-crouching a distance away from the camels but ready to jump in if necessary and separate them with ropes. There was no whistle or anything to begin the match, the camels were simply brought close to each other and began fighting. They each used their neck to try to pin the other camel's head to the ground and then used their body weight to try to flip them over. A lot of the time it looked more like dancing than wrestling, but I caught a bit of this exciting match on video.
Camels foam at the mouth like rabid dogs. They also drool everywhere and we saw one unfortunate man catch a giant gob of camel saliva right in the face.
When camels are stood in place they use a strange-looking stance that always looks like they're going to pee (imagine a bunch of men lined up at the urinals). I don't know if this is a natural camel stance or the way wrestling camels are trained to stand.
Mike and I were the only tourists there and it was a really lively local atmosphere. Camel wrestling is an exciting spectacle to see as a tourist and is what Kyrgyzstan should turn its eagle festival into (see my blog post for more about that).
It started pouring so we left the camel festival after just a few hours but we were happy with what we'd seen. If you're ever in Turkey in winter, make deve güreşi top of your list of things to see!
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