Wishing for Istanbul

Today is October 4, and there are 47 days until I leave for Istanbul. There is nothing I want more than to skip straight to November 20 and be in Turkey already. Now that fall is here, wanderlust has struck heavily again and I would much rather be living abroad somewhere than being here in Minnesota. Istanbul is never far from my thoughts - last week when flipping through a new Turkey guidebook, I was brought to tears by the thought of being there again (Mosques! Lagman! Hookah! Elma çay! Isik Cikmazi 26! Ortaköy! Adhan! Cheap clothes!). Then, I found a wonderful poem by Turkish poet Yahya Kemal Beyatli about Istanbul that made me miss it even more:

BİR BAŞKA TEPEDEN

  Sana dün bir tepeden baktım aziz İstanbul!

  Görmedim gezmediğim, sevmediğim hiçbir yer.

  Ömrüm oldukça, gönül tahtıma keyfince kurul!

  Sade bir semtini sevmek bile bir ömre değer.

  Nice revnaklı şehirler görülür dünyada,

  Lakin efsunlu güzellikleri sensin yaratan.

  Yaşamıştır derim, en hoş ve uzun rü'yada

  Sende çok yıl yaşayan, sende ölen, sende yatan.

English translation:

I looked at you from another hill, dear Istanbul!


I know you like back of my hand, and love you dearly.


Come, come and sit on my heart's throne as long as I live


Just to love a district of yours is worth a whole life.



There are many flourishing cities in the world.


But you're the only one who creates enchanting beauty.


I say, he who has lived happily, in the longest dream,


Is he who spent his life in you, died in you, and was buried in you.

My friends just moved back into my old apartment, a friend from Kyrgyzstan is currently living in Istanbul, and I've been planning a meetup with a Bulgarian friend, so there are reunions in Istanbul to look forward to as well. I'm also hoping to take day trips to Edirne and Pamukkle, places in Turkey I haven't been before.

It's been a while since I've been looking forward to the future rather than living in the moment, but the next months are going to be just that. It will be interesting to see if I love Istanbul as much in reality as I have this past year in memory and nostalgia. If so, I will definitely try to convince Aissa that he wants to live there so that we can move.

Changes in Beyoğlu

In Istanbul, I lived in the district of Beyoğlu. This is often known as the heart of European Istanbul, with tons of bars, outdoor cafes, shops and flocks of tourists. I lived very near to the 'dangerous' neighborhood of Tarlabaşı. Turks were often shocked to find out where I lived, because this is where the prostitutes, gypsies and transvestites lived, and therefore a place I shouldn't go. However, it was one of my favorite places in Istanbul. Its narrow streets were full of food sellers, beautiful decrepit buildings, women shouting to each other out the windows and kids playing soccer. During Ramadan, my neighborhood was one of the few that still had a man walk around drumming at 3 am, waking people up for pre-dawn breakfast. I took many wandering walks through the congested streets and never got tired of the sights. There was always something new to see - a woman walking a lamb on a leash, soccer fans waving scarves and singing team songs, women dumping dishwater out the windows and men praying in the corner of their convenience stores and women lowering baskets out their window to buy vegetables from street salesmen. Here is how wikipedia describes it: 

Historically, Tarlabaşı was home to a large Greek population; the neighbourhood's most prominent building is still a Greek Orthodox church from the 19th century. The city's oldest and largest Syriac Orthodox church is also found here. In the 1990s, large numbers of Kurdish immigrants from eastern Turkey moved into Tarlabaşı mixing in with the local Roma population. More recently, it has become the home to many migrants from neighbouring countries and Africa.

I was much happier living in a neighborhood like this than I would have been in one of the bohemian areas full of expats, international grocery stores and trendy restaurants. Now, following recent elections, government officials are working to beautify the city (an urban renewal project) and are evicting the poorer people from Tarlabaşı.


EurasiaNet has a few great articles on the subject: here, here and most recently here. This is a great blog in English about happenings in the neighborhood.  It will be a real loss to Turkish culture if Tarlabaşı's traditional buildings are torn down. There are enough places in Istanbul that are modern and Western. Officials should be working to preserve these old neighborhoods rather than destroying them.


In other sad Istanbul news, officials have been shutting down all outdoor seating in restaurants in bars. Istanbul Eats looks at how this has affected these locales here. One of the best parts about Istanbul in warm weather was the number of places with outdoor seating. The alleys off of İstiklal got narrower with tables, the Turkish men enticing you into their restaurant appeared more than ever and there was a wonderful atmosphere that filled these lively streets. The energy was infectious and I could have spent every night walking up and down these streets, people watching. It will not be the same if everyone sits inside. Will the Beyoğlu I see in November be the same one I fell in love with two years ago?

Tattoo ideas

I have been dreaming of a new tattoo for ages, and spent last night searching for pictures. These are some options, but I'm still so undecided! I just want them all...

Happy Marriage!

 My AFS friend Nick visited Istanbul for a week. He studied TESL at the University of Minnesota like I did and has a teaching internship in Berlin for the summer, so when he asked if he could shadow me one day at work of course I let him. In my last week of a long year at a private Turkish primary school, I figured he should see really naughty kids in action before he decides to be a teacher for the long haul.

I introduced him to my coworkers and my first class as "my friend Nick from America." The students immediately took this to mean that he was my lover/boyfriend/husband and spent the entire lesson writing us notes congratulating us on our wedding. Google Translate didn't give me anything useful (the horrible "I just learned how to write" penmanship didn't help)  but they say things along the lines of "Happy Wedding" and "I wish you a happy life together."  (The one ending with Hehhh... is especially intriguing!) I also broke the news to them that Friday is my last day of teaching, so they assumed that Nick had come to Istanbul to pick me up. They were sad to hear I was leaving and told Nick that he could go home but I had to stay. :)

In order to avoid the chaos of that first class, I told all subsequent classes that he was my brother. It was easily believed since we both are pale, skinny and blue-eyed (not to mention gorgeous and extremely fashionable) but I only realized afterwards that if the classes gossip about the stranger at school and find out that he is my brother AND my boyfriend, they will have a very skewed idea of what is socially acceptable in America. Let's hope their class teachers cleared things up before the went home and told their parents that Anna Teacher was marrying her brother! (Although, I might score some expensive wedding gifts before I leave...)

Funny

I have been looking for a while for a non-souveniry Istanbul t-shirt, and luckily for me, many of the Turkish clothing companies have had Turkey/Istanbul-themed shirts this season. Many were ugly, some were too glittery, and they were all too expensive. Until I found this one today:

5TL, flattering cut, beautiful Galata Tower, good colour, random words "Child dreams Istanbul" and, best of all, a cartoon PIG on the left! All in all a very good birthday present to myself.

Genocide?

I am really not a political-minded person, but living in Turkey one is surrounded by controversial and interesting political news. I hope I don't offend anyone with the following post... (and when I say 'Turks' I, of course, don't mean 'all Turks,' but rather 'many Turks')

Everyone knows the saying, 'A picture is worth a thousand words.' Life in Turkey has shown me that a word can be worth a lot too. April 24th, 2010 marked the 95th anniversary of the killing of hundreds of Armenians by Ottomans following World War I. Most people would call it a genocide but Turks refuse to acknowledge it as such. Instead, they see it an unfortunate after-effect of WWI where both Turks and Armenians slaughtered each other. Since 1915, there have been strained relations between Turkey and Armenia because of this, and other countries tread on eggshells about the issue unless they want to lose allies. The US House is currently trying to pass a non-binding resolution declaring the deaths in the post-WWI Ottoman Empire and genocide, but both Obama and Hilary Clinton have spoken against the resolution, saying it will just work to damage peace talks between the countries. Turkey has, of course, spoken out against this resolution saying it will weaken the close allegiance between the US and Turkey. The US can't afford to lose Turkey's friendship as its strategic location in the Middle East is very beneficial to the US.

I always turn to wikipedia first for all information and it was interesting to find that while the English headline for the page on this topic is Armenian Genocide, the Turkish title for the same page is Crimean Armenians. The Turkish page mentions that some historians view it as a deliberate government order calling for genocide of intellectual Armenians, but the Turkish official policy states that  the cause of death was war conditions, diseases, climate, local gangs and tribal attacks rather than a systematic state policy. They also make sure to draw attention to the fact that the Christian Armenians also massacred the Muslim Ottomans/Turks. The English page states that it was the first modern genocide and that it's the second most studied genocide after the Holocaust. There's an entire page about Turkey's denial of the genocide (unsurprisingly, this page does not have a Turkish language equivalent).

To commemorate the day, there were peaceful protests and counter-protests in multiple locations in Istanbul on Saturday and less-peaceful protests in Yerevan, Armenia. There, flags and pictures of Turkish leaders were burned. In Turkey, police were on hand to keep fights from breaking out.

In the English-language Turkish newspaper I get at work, Today's Zaman, two pages were devoted to articles about the Armenian issue and all four op-ed columnists chose to voice opinions on the issue as well. All clearly agree that it was indeed a genocide but are careful not to focus their piece on labeling the event and rather "let the sides share their stories without a language of accusation, to create empathy, understanding" and "work together toward learning, sharing and reconciling past agonies without categorical accusations of genocide." (İhsan Dağı, 1915 Beyond 'Genocide,' Today's Zaman 26.04.10)

I learned that every year the US president makes a speech on April 24th about the issue. As Obama was campaigning for president, he made it clear that if he were elected, he would call it a genocide. However, in his speech on Saturday this was not mentioned. Instead, he referred to it as 'Meds Yeghern,' Armenian for 'great tragedy.' He said, 

"On this solemn day of remembrance, we pause to recall that ninety-five years ago one of the worst atrocities of the 20th century began. In that dark moment of history, 1.5 million Armenians were massacred or marched to their death in the final days of the Ottoman Empire. Today is a day to reflect upon and draw lessons from these terrible events. I have consistently stated my own view of what occurred in 1915, and my view of that history has not changed. It is in all of our interest to see the achievement a full, frank and just acknowledgment of the facts. The Meds Yeghern is a devastating chapter in the history of the Armenian people, and we must keep its memory alive in honor of those who were murdered and so that we do not repeat the grave mistakes of the past.”

He also praised those Turks who helped save Armenians in 1915, but his middle-of-the-road approach doesn't appear to have satisfied Turks or Armenians. Armenians wish that he had stayed true to his word during campaign season and called it a genocide, while some Turks feel that his accusations could still be read between the lines and that saying "Meds Yeghern" is no different from calling it a genocide. You can read the whole article here.

It seems so childish to me for one word to have such a strong effect on an entire nation, but it might because I am not very patriotic or nationalistic. Imagine if the American government and its people refused to admit that slavery had happened and rather stubbornly carried on, year after year, stating that it was an unfortunate turn of events where blacks and whites both suffered equally. This is perhaps not the same thing, but the general idea is that nothing bad would come if/when we finally admitted that the facts were actually true. Nothing bad will happen to Turkey if they ever acknowledged the genocide as such. Germany has apologized for the Holocaust and no one thinks less of them.

On the other hand, how short-sighted of the Armenians to still need an apology. The dead are dead, those who killed the dead are now dead too. Armenians should understand that they themselves weren't harmed by anyone and also that the current leaders of Turkey were not the ones who killed their loved ones. Turkey should be willing to admit it to smooth world relationships, but Armenia should also be able to let go and move forward. Admitting it won't bring back the loved ones, while at the same time denying it won't make it go away. Forging forward with peace talks doesn't mean forgetting what happened, but wouldn't it be nice to normalize relations with a neighboring country, open a long-closed border, and stop dwelling on/being defensive about the past?

A Turkish Bath

The hamam, or Turkish bath, has been part of Turkish culture for years. (As always, you can read all about hamams on wikipedia here). Hamams are in every guide book as something that must be done in Turkey, and there are hamams in every neighborhood. Generally they are divided by genders and are visited naked, but to appeal more to tourists, co-ed hamams exist with special cover-ups provided to give modest foreigners the cover they need. Guide books recommend these tourist-friendly hamams over local ones, and these charge upwards of 35 Euros plus a tip for the masseus to visit. Usually a hamam experience includes the bath, a scrub and a massage.

My parents came to visit for a week and a half and my mom was very keen on getting a real Turkish bath experience. We searched online for a co-ed one so my parents could go together, but the one that sounded best, the Süleymaniye Hamam, was closed for renovations to prepare it for unveiling for the 2010 Istanbul Capital of Culture. She decided she'd just go alone since my dad wasn't so eager to go with a group of non-English-speaking men, and I found the closest one to my house, the Büyük Hamam in Kasimpasa, the neighborhood of Istanbul where I live. We had read some reviews online, and one woman wrote that she had a rather negative experience. Here's an excerpt:

I was told that this would be the best scrub ever, that it would be hard and my skin would feel softer and more invigorated than ever. Much to my chagrin, the scrubbing was light, the soap was the cheapest liquid, most obnoxious smelling Proctor & Gamble nastiness. I was reeling from being washed by a topless woman. And, yes, I was worried that I’d be taken advantage of. It was a very sexual thing for me. I was scared. When it was time for me to flip over, she just smacked my thigh. There was one moment when my clit was grazed and it just felt awkward. I wondered if they were going to wash my private parts, which, by the way, were left unrinsed.

My mom isn't swayed by negative reviews so we went anyways. My dad and I planned to wait for her in a cafe, but when we walked in the 6 Gypsy women convinced me that I should go too. We left my dad to wait for us in the nearby park.

The Büyük Hamam was designed in 1533 by Mimar Sinan, probably the busiest architect in Turkish history. It seems like every building in Istanbul was built by him! It was staggering to think of all the naked bodies that had lain on the same marble slab in the more than 500 years' of the hamam's existence. (If you look closely you can almost see butt imprints :) )

My mom and I were shown to a lockable changing room and were given a plaid cotton cloth to use as a cover-up. We disrobed and were led into a hot room, with marble stones and basins and small skylight windows to let natural light in. Here, one of the large Gypsy women filled one of the basins with hot water and gestured for us to sit down. She then tossed water on us using a plastic bowl. She mimed that this was how we were supposed to wet ourselves, and then demonstrated that we were to lie down on a big marble slab in the middle of the room. The slab was somehow heated from below, so it was toasty warm (almost too warm!) She left us to relax for a few minutes and then another Gypsy woman came in, clothed in just a lace pair of briefs and a faded floral headscarf. At first we thought it was just another hamam-goer, but she made it clear that she was the masseuse. Another woman, similarly dressed, soon followed who was to be my masseuse. They first used a Brillo-pad-esque washcloth glove to quite roughly scrape all the dead skin off. By the time she was finished, I looked like I was recovering from a horrible peeling sunburn. She then squeezed a huge dollop of shampoo onto my stomach and began the soap massage. She focused extra well on hands, neck and feet and it was quite funny to be covered in soap suds from head to toe. She then led us back to the marble basin and again tossed hot water on us.

Neither woman spoke any English beyond "very good" and "tip." My Turkish is surprisingly slightly conversational, so we were able to talk about our families- one woman said she needed a tip because she had 3 children, and I explained how I have one brother but he wasn't visiting Turkey because of university. The women brought us nice fluffy towels and the hamam time was finished. We were the only women there the whole time other than the 6 women who either all worked there or just enjoyed hanging out.

We got dressed again and were invited to drink tea with the women. I managed to converse in Turkish about a variety of things including why I'm in Turkey, what we think of Obama, why Turkish tea is better than American tea, and if we could take the masseuse to America to work there. The women were all very interested in chatting and it was great fun to see how much progress my Turkish has made, even against my will. (I haven't taken any Turkish lessons and had been actively trying NOT to learn Turkish because my Russian will suffer as a result. I learn it from my students regardless of what I want, and now I'm starting to grow interested in it. My Russian is fading anyway.)

Even though the idea of a hamam had never really interested me, it was a nice experience and the women were so nice that I'd like to go again. For a total of 37 TL each (including a generous tip for the masseuse), it was half the price of a tourist hamam with much more local flair, even though I thought we were still overcharged. Lying on a hot block of marble while getting my chest soaped up and my thigh smacked by a large naked Gypsy woman while hearing the call to prayer blaring from the mosque next door is an memory that can never be recreated in America.

Efendim?

Today in class my students were cutting and gluing toys and playground cut-outs into their books. Mostly left to their own devices, I had hoped that the students would be quiet for the lesson to give my head a much needed 40 minutes of silence. Of course this wasn't the case, and many of the students were talking or singing to their classmates or themselves. A boy, Necmettin, who sits closest to the teachers desk, kept trying to tell me what seemed to be a joke/pun. It went like this:

Telefbir, telefiki, telefüç, telefdört, telefbeş, telefaltı, telefyedi, telefsekiz, telefdokuz, TELEFON!

At first I didn't follow but when I finally got it, it was hilarious to me. Basically they took 'telef' and put all the numbers from 1-10 at the end. The number 10 in Turkish is 'on,' which completes the pun to give you the word telephone. Until that point I had no idea where Necmettin was going with the nonsensical words centred around the word(?) 'telef.'

Çok komik!

It doesn't work in English, but this is it translated:

Telefone, teleftwo, telefthree, teleffour, teleffive, telefsix, telefseven, telefeight, telefnine, teleften.

(Although now that I write it down, telefONE badly pronounced sounds like telephone... so it could work in English too!)


On a side note- after I wrote the above, I google translated "Çok komik!" just to make sure that it was spelled correctly/had the meaning I thought it had based on hearing my students say it all the time. It means 'very funny' but here is what google translate showed as the English translation-- hilarious!



Or should I say Lol!

Say Cheese!

Mike was bored at work today and passed the time creating new smileys. He made one so genius that the world should get to see it!

84))

It's a Turk. With sunglasses, a big nose, a mustache, and a goatee. If you don't see it, I'll explain further. The 8 is the sunglasses. The 4 is the nose and mustache. The 1st parenthesis is a sleazy smile, and the 2nd parenthesis is the goatee. Voila! If you ever thought you were lacking an emoticon to express a Turkish man, here you are! Your life is now significantly better :) (or should I say 84)).... )



(Turkish men, please don't take offense. Just harmless fun!)

Headscarf Politics

Living in Muslim countries for over a year and a half has made me very interested in Islam, especially women in Islam. To me, a scarf is something I wear when I'm cold. However, Islam has given a simple square of fabric magic powers to create controversy. Does the Koran call for women to cover themselves? How much should they cover? Legs? Arms? Hair? Face? What type and colour of fabric do they cover themselves with? At what age do they begin to cover their hair? Whose decision is it that a woman covers her hair? Should a politician be judged, based on whether his wife covers her hair? Should a female in politics be allowed to wear a headscarf? Should the law be able to decide if and when a woman must/should/can't cover her hair? What punishment is just when a woman is inappropriately covered or dressed? None of these questions have easy answers.

At work I get an English newspaper called Today's Zaman. It is a conservative and religious newspaper so it is great fun for me to read as a non-conservative and definitely non-religious person. Most of the time I skip the articles on Turkish politics because it's all pretty boring to me, but since yesterday was International Women's Day, there were lots of articles about the plight of Turkish women. I wanted to share a few to show the current controversy over headscarves in this country. Headscarves are a hot subject in Turkey these days. Read about it on wikipedia, that way I can just sum up. Women are banned from wearing headscarves in educational settings, so this includes teachers, professors and students. Many foreigners who write on this subject applaud Atatürk for banning them and making Turkey more secular. These two articles show the opposite viewpoint, which definitely sounds like a legitimate argument against the ban. Working with a dozen women who have to take their scarves off to teachI've often wanted to broach the subject and hear their opinions, but the language barrier makes that impossible.

Dogs, not covered women, allowed in military housing
What was your fault in being a woman?

Also check out my friend Liz's blog post about the headscarf controversy in Crimean Ukraine, where she is currently doing a Fulbright.



I couldn't find this article on the website but I just found this amusing and it certainly broke up the pages and pages of anti-US articles resulting from the Armenia resolution that the House of Representatives is trying to pass.


Court sentences pop singer to write out lines

A Turkish pop star has been sentenced to write out Turkey's lengthy national anthem along with a five page critique of it after a court found her guilty of casting ethnic slurs at a concert. Seven businessmen from the primarily Kurdish city of Diyarbakir, in the impoverished southeast which has been troubled for years by separatist violence, took pop star Demet Akalin to court over comments she said were an attempt to liven up her audience. "What? Are you all from Diyarbakir? Did you come from the mountains? I don't understand where you people can be from all of you sitting there staring like morons," she allegedly said at a concert in the Aegean resort city of Bodrum in 2008. A court found her guilty of breaking a law banning public insults based on regional differences, social class or sexuality. But media said on Sunday that Akalin liked the idea and that she had memorized the national anthem in her school years.
(from Today's Zaman, Tuesday, March 9, 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...

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!)...

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!

Rock and Roll

This year, Thanksgiving fell the same week as Ramadan, so we had 3 days off. Mike and I decided to leave Istanbul and go to Cappadocia, which is said by many to be the most beautiful place in Turkey.

We caught a night bus and arrived early in the morning. Göreme, the tourist center of Cappadocia is famous for its fairy chimneys, phallus- shaped rock formations that people in Cappadocia have hollowed out and used as shelter for thousands of years. Savvy businesspeople have turned some fairy chimneys into hotels, and Mike and I chose a cave hostel to stay in, even though it was dim and musty. There aren't many other chances in life to stay in a fairy chimney cave room.

We visited the UNESCO World Heritage Göreme Open Air Museum, which is a collection of cave monasteries and churches with some fading frescoes. We spent a few hours walking around the Open Air Museum and the surrounding rock formations.

One of Cappadocia's main tourist activities is a hot air balloon ride at dawn among the fairy chimneys. At 130 Euros a person it was way too expensive for us, but we woke up at sunrise and climbed the Göreme hill in time to watch the balloons take off. There was a main launch site with about 10 balloons but we saw some other balloons popping up from different places on the horizon, so it seemed to be a thriving business, even out of tourist season. It was freezing cold on the ground so I'm sure it was much colder up in the air, but we met a British tourist who said it was definitely worth it. Maybe when I'm a millionaire I'll make a stopover in Göreme and take a ride.



Neither Mike nor I are into package tours, but it's very difficult to see the sites of Cappadocia on your own. Transport is expensive to hire as things are spread out, so we signed up for a day tour. For 50 lira it was much cheaper than organizing it ourselves, and even though our tour guide had terrible English, we learned more from him than Lonely Planet would have told us. We stopped for a panoramic view of Göreme and then explored the underground city of Derinkuyu. It was built BC and was used by villagers as a hiding place from enemies. It went 8 stories underground and got a bit claustrophobic at times, but it was interesting to imagine living months and months without any sunlight- almost like winter in Lapland, but without beautiful snow.

We then made up for the lack of fresh air in Derinkuyu by walking a 2-kilometer length of Ihlara Valley, ending with a nice lunch. We stopped by Selime Monastery, the biggest rock monastery in Cappadocia, which is also famous for being the place where Luke Skywalker went in search of Ben Kenobi in the first (fourth) Star Wars movie. We quickly visited a geothermal lake nestled in the mountains that resembled Kyrgyzstan, especially the two donkeys. :) There were dogs guarding a herd of sheep, and they (the dogs) had collars with huge spikes to protect them from wolves. They never came close enough to get a photo of the weapons though.



We ended the tour in Pigeon Valley, where locals have built homes for pigeons in the valley's walls. They then collect the pigeon poo and use it as fertilizer. Pretty smart, huh?



One of the culinary specialities of the region was a pottery kebab, a mix of meat and vegetables cooked into a clay pot, which is then broken open and eaten. Unfortunately it looked a lot cooler than it tasted.



We spent most of the weekend in cafes drinking a lot of orange tea and hot chocolate and smoking hookahs. It was a relaxing break from work and city life.

sunset

Football Madness

Mike and I went to another Besiktas football (soccer) game over the weekend. They played one of their major rivals Fenerbahce, another Istanbul team who are currently ranked at the top of the league.

It was even more exciting than the Besiktas-Manchester United game a few months ago. Besiktas won 3-0 which was unexpected and wonderful. Check out these videos to see how pleased the fans were by the result of the game. Apparently, some fans were so high on the win that they beat a local street dog to death. You live in a city of 15+ million and you can't find a better way to let out your joy??


Here are some videos showing the world's loudest fans. The first video is the kick-off and the cheering build-up, and the other videos are the fans celebrating after the first and second goals were scored.

Olives, Nothing But Olives, Mountains of Olives...

This post title is from the song "Jerusalem" by Dan Bern. It's a very catchy song with silly lyrics, but these lyrics specifically sum up a weekend that Mike and I had a few weeks ago with our Turkish friends.

We went to Bursa, a city of 2 million on the coast of the Marmara Sea, 4 hours south of Istanbul. Our friends Baris and Baki, both originally from Bursa, recently bought a few pieces of land together around Bursa, and invited us along to check out their purchases.

We left Friday night with Baki, Baris, his wife Pinar, his 1-year-old son Bora, their friend Cayan, and Pinar's parents. We stayed with Baris's parents in a picturesque village inland from Bursa. They live in a big, beautiful house with a great garden. They grow a little bit of everything- they have apples, oranges, olives, grapes, figs, peaches, plums tomatoes, onions, peppers, carrots, and so on. Baris's mother is an amazing woman: she speaks Bulgarian, Russian, Turkish, and German, and almost all the food in her house is homemade, from her own fruits and vegetables. Speaking languages and being a good jar-er apparently rank highly on my list of what makes someone amazing. She made us Turkish breakfasts to die for and amazing home-cooked dinners. A few weeks in her house would lead to a gastric bypass surgery being necessary (but well-worth it!)

Mid-October is olive season, and Baris and Baki recently bought some land in an olive grove. Bursa province is known for its olives and its olive oil, and both are sold all over Turkey and exported around the world. We went to their land to "pick" olives, although we actually were just picking up fallen olives off the ground. The weather was hot and manual labor is not something that I do well, so a lot of the day was spent trying to look busy, while actually doing as little as possible. Cayan rescued us from picking more and took us down to the waterfront in the town of Zeytinbağı, where we drank tea and walked along the waterfront.

We then went to check out another piece of land Baris and Baki bought together, this time coastal property where they plan on building retirement homes. We got there just in time to see the sun set over the Marmara Sea. It's an amazing place for a retirement home- peaceful, beautiful, and green.

We visited a friend of Baris's, who has a huge apartment on the outskirts of Bursa. Since Mike and I live frugally, it's exciting and mind-blowing for us to be around with people with money. This family had everything and more- a big box of Cuban cigars, a $25,000 sound system, a 5-star-hotel-style bathroom, and their 8-year-old son had his own TV, video games, and complete music-making system. Mike and I took pictures of the Cuban cigars like teenage girls meeting the Jonas Brothers, and the friend offered Mike a cigar to take home, as if it were no big deal. Maybe someday we'll have millions of dollars too.

On Sunday, we drove to the top of Bursa's mountain to buy chestnuts. Baris said that the chestnuts that grow in the forest on that mountain are the best chestnuts in all of Turkey, so he had to buy some. We also stopped at a cafe situated under a 600-year-old giant tree, which is a great location for a tea house. The branches spread out so far from the tree that they had to be supported by metal poles.

We drove back to Istanbul Sunday night, after a relaxing and filling weekend. It was my first time to another place in Turkey, so it was great to see more of the country and also get out of the big city. I hope we get invited back!

Turkish Wedding

A few weekends ago, Mike and I went to our landlord's wedding. We skipped the civil ceremony because it would have been 15 minutes of legal Turkish and therefore not very interesting for us. We chose instead to just attend the wedding party, which took place at an upscale hotel in Sultanahmet, the historic and touristy part of Istanbul.

We had no idea what to buy as a gift, and didn't get much help from asking Turkish people. We were told money, gold, and glasswear from a famous Turkish glass company are all popular gift ideas. We went with the cheapest option and bought Taylan and his wife Eda a vase with an evil eye in it. Who knows if they like vases, but they can always re-gift it!

The wedding was catered with amazing buffet dinner- mashed potatoes, beans, kebab meat, meatballs, rice pilav, beef, stuffed grape leaves, lots of salads, grapes, plums, carrot and celery sticks, and an open bar with beer and raki.

There were hundreds of people there, and we only knew the bride and groom and 3 other people- our friends Baris, Pinar, and Baki. We luckily found them right away (Baris has a shaved head and that always stands out in a crowd) and spent the night with them.

There was a gypsy band for less than an hour and everyone danced like crazy, Turkish-style. That means arms out straight, parallel to the floor, and lots of clapping and finger-snapping. I'm definitely not very good at it.

Taylan and Eda arrived, walked all around the reception hall greeting everyone and having pictures and video taken, and then spent the rest of the night dancing. Music was interrupted for less than 3 minutes when a cake was wheeled in, cut by the wedding couple at the speed of light, and then whisked away. Cake was served to the guests, but it wasn't the same cake they'd cut. Then the music was back on and dancing resumed. If I'd blinked, I'd have missed the entire cake-cutting.

The hotel had a roof terrace, and we went up with Baris and Pinar to check out beautiful views of the Blue Mosque and Aya Sofya. Unfortunately it was raining, but I still managed to get a few nice pictures of the mosques lit up at night.

Our friends all left before midnight, and Mike and I left soon after. Like most weddings I've been to, it wasn't a "social event" really. You talked to the people you knew and no one else. We were glad that we knew other people there, otherwise we'd have been all alone in a corner somewhere.

The morning after the wedding Taylan and Eda left for 9 days in Bali and Singapore- what a good honeymoon trip!

All in all, there wasn't much Turkish culture to be seen in the wedding. Most of the traditions seemed to be the same as at American weddings. Now I need to find a village wedding to attend- that will have a lot of local, non-Western flavor I'm sure. It was definitely fun to be at Taylan's wedding, but I think Andy and Aigul's wedding in Kyrgyzstan will stick in my mind more as a "local" wedding- horse meat, non-alcoholic beer drinking contests, and bad karaoke!

School Days, School Days...

I have started "hanging out" with my students during the 10-minute break between classes. I sit outside and students come up to me to "talk." Since their English is still very basic, we have a lot of conversations like this:

"Hello teacher! Hello!"
"Hello!"
"What is your name?"
"My name is Anna."
"Teacher what is your name?"
"Anna..."
"What is your name?"

and so on. It beats sitting in the teachers' room by myself, bored out of my mind. Last week I had a quite useful conversation with students. A few girls sat next to me and on my lap and started touching my hair and my earrings and putting pine needles in my hand and tic tacs in my mouth. They pointed at random things and said the Turkish word, then asked "My name is...?" meaning, "what is this in English?" I learned a few Turkish words from them. Then they were able to ask me how old I was (and understood the numbers in English!)

Then, one girl hugged me really tight and said, "Mommy, yes" and smiled. Then she hugged me again and said, "Father, no" and made a really sad face. So even as 7-year-olds, they already realize that their dads never hug them and are unhappy about it.

Come on Turkish dads, hug your children! Learn something from the Teletubbies... BIIIIIG HUG!

Maps

I think my personal google maps is visible to everyone, so check out the link if you're interested and you can see my house and my two schools to get an idea of where I spend my time.

Back to School!

If there were no schools to take the children away from home part of the time, the insane asylums would be filled with mothers. ~Edgar W. Howe

(Note: if you have no interest in teaching, this is likely to be dry and boring. Sorry)

I started teaching again at the end of September. I arrived in Istanbul without a job already lined up because I'd heard that it was "a piece of piss" to get an English teaching job here. However, it took me more than 2 months to find a job that I actually wanted. I applied to dozens and dozens, didn't hear back from most, and the ones I heard back from were unappealing- 6 day work weeks, no weekends off, split shifts, classes until 22:00, etc. The job I finally accepted is split- 2 days a week at a pre-school, 3 days a week at a 1st grade, as I mentioned in my last post. In both cases, there is a Turkish-speaking English teacher for 4 lessons per week, and I am the "speaking" teacher for 2 lessons per class per week.

Both schools are private and expensive, so my students all come from rich families. There seem to be two types of rich people- the ones who are very Western and European, and the ones who are more Muslim and traditional. The families that send their kids to my school seem to be the more traditional ones- a vast majority of my co-workers and the mothers wear headscarves and dress traditionally- I bought long skirts but still feel like I stand out! At a parents' open house on Saturday, out of about 80 mothers, only 11 had their hair on view. It's so interesting to work in such a different atmosphere than my home life because I meet and interact with a group that I otherwise wouldn't. Central European-side Istanbul is very Western, so in my daily life in my neighborhood and in the center seeing hair is still the norm. However, once you get outside the center, many neighborhoods are traditional and headscarves are worn by most women. Atatürk decreed that headscarves are banned in all educational settings, so no teachers or students are allowed to wear headscarves. My co-workers take them off when they arrive at work, and put them on again before they leave. Some wear wigs during the day so that their hair still isn't seen, and Mike said that some of his students wear hats all the time. I wonder if the teachers are uncomfortable interacting with male teachers since it's probably the only time ever that men other than family see their hair. I'd like to have long discussions with Muslim women about the personal significance of the headscarf because it's so interesting to me.

At the pre-school, I teach 3 classes of 5-year-olds and 3 classes of 6-year-olds. The classes have 11 students, and the classrooms are all equipped in a Montessori way- colors, blocks, art supplies, pillows, fake kitchen, plastic toys, abacuses (abaci?), etc. The students split their time between sitting around a big table and sitting on mats in a circle on the floor. For the first month, I am sharing all the lessons with my co-teacher, Vahide. She does mostly classroom management while I teach. After this month, administration hopes that the students will have enough English and will be used to me so that I can manage the classroom on my own. Vahide will then have her own lessons at different times. Most of the students are great. Since it's their first exposure to English they are shy, but they have no problem repeating and singing along. Some kids clearly have learning disabilities and/or behavioral problems, but they are just allowed to do their own thing while the lessons are going on. I'm not sure what the best way is to deal with them... Anyways. For both grades there's an English book program with posters, pupil's books, stickers, songs, a puppet, flashcards, and interactive games. The book for 5th grade is an all-around bad book, so I've been supplementing the book with lots of coloring activities and other songs. There's not a lot of planning involved because the kids are happy with whatever they're doing, and they're easy to manage for the most part. Since Vahide is always around to discipline and translate when the kids don't understand, it's a very low-stress job so far. No one else at the school speaks English, so I'm mostly in my own world except when I'm around Vahide. But everyone is friendly and smiley and people always bring me tea and simit (Turkish sesame-seed bagels). Vahide and I are doing a lot of work making sure the parents know that their children are learning English (and getting their money's worth!). We set up an "English Corner" bulletin board where we post photos of the kids having fun in English class. We send out monthly letters to parents updating them on progress, and I even write a weekly blog post for the school's parents' website about all the exciting things we did the previous week. Hopefully the parents like all the work we're putting in!

At the primary school, I teach first graders, most of whom are in school for the first time ever. There are definite discipline problems, especially for me but also for their Turkish homeroom teachers. My co-teacher, Yasemin, teaches her own lessons so I am always alone in the classroom- no Vahide-clone to help me with classroom management :( There are 20 students in each class, and all the classes have a few bad eggs. There are small groups of boys who aren't interested in school at all and just like causing trouble. For some lessons the homeroom teachers stick around to make sure the kids are behaving, but it's even hard with the two of us- boys don't want to sit down and color, they want to throw things out the window. The first days were really hard for me because I wasn't prepared for them to be so naughty, but I've gotten used to it and am getting much better at managing them. We use a great book with a puppet named Freddie the Frog, and the kids really like Freddie. They like him so much they spend every minute of the lesson when my back is turned stealing Freddie off the desk and trying to pull his tongue out. Poor frog!

The hardest part in all of this is learning all the names! In total I have about 180 names to learn (plus all the teachers!), and they are the generation of Turks that go by their first AND middle name. Some examples of student names: Ibrahim Emre, Zeynep Sude, Elif Saadet, Mehtat Can, Burak Furkan, Hasan Ahmet, Ali Nihat, to name just a handful. In most cases it is not ok to just call them by one name. Even the ones without middle names are still a mouthful to pronounce- Necmettin, Neslihan, Dilemnur. Even when I remember their names they make fun of my pronunciation. The only way I can learn their names is to take pictures of them and study them at home- 2 lessons per week aren't enough to memorize names.


Even though I come home exhausted everyday with a sore throat from yelling and sore palms from hitting the desks to get their attention, it's a really great job. It's rewarding to see the students improving their English week-by-week, and I imagine that by the end of the year it will be amazing to see what progress they've made! I am learning new Turkish words everyday since the teachers and students speak very little English. So far I've got "be quiet" "children" and "teacher" down solid, now I just have to work on "sit down, shut up, stop throwing things at your partner, don't squirt your juice box all over the floor, stop playing tug-o-war with my puppet" and a few other necessary phrases. I work just 14 hours a week and earn about $1500, and get free breakfast and lunch at school. I do have an hour commute each way so that adds to the time, but I'm home by 4:30 and have all evening to hang out and relax and do nothing before the next day rolls around. And working part time at 2 schools makes the time pass faster. The first day at 1st grade every week feels like Monday, but it's actually WEDNESDAY! The students all seem to like me and always wave and shout hello when they see me in the hallways or the lunchroom and hug me a lot. It's hard to be angry at students when they give me a big hug and say "Hello Anna-Teacher!" I'm a sucker for lovey gestures...

I got a medicinal care package from my mom to prepare for a snotty, sneezy winter surrounded by children. I got cough drops, NyQuil, VapoRub, gummy bear vitamins (my fave!), Ibuprofen, and Sudafed. Hopefully that'll get me through flu season. Now all I need are care packages full of chocolate :)