New Blog!

What have I become? A girl who spends all her time blogging? Good heavens, I'm turning into Jane!

This blog is really meant to document my travel experiences and the recent knitting posts seem a bit out of place. So I decided to make a separate knitting blog, that many of you probably won't read since really, who cares about knitting except grandmothers! No, I jest. I know many of you seem to enjoy seeing my knitting creations. Anyway. I'm moving knitting-related posts from here to Memories are knit with love. Find them there and check back soon for more!

Maybe Steve Jobs Wants One Too?

My dad is a computer "nerd" and even though his work requires him to use PCs, he has always loved Apple products. He is an iPhone user, has a new iMac desktop, and is already dreaming about reasons he "needs" an iPad. After seeing pictures of the hats I've been making recently, he requested an Apple-themed hat. He originally mentioned the retro, multi-coloured Apple logo:

Making this would have required buying 6 different balls of yarn, only to use just a few inches of each. This didn't seem practical for a thrifty person like me, so I thought of other things I could do with an Apple picture. I came up with the dorky idea of making it an iHat. I then wanted to experiment with writing words in yarn and after seeing a Simpsons episode about a Mapple myPod using the slogan "Think differently," I checked up on Apple slogans and found that "Think different" was a 90s slogan used for various Apple Macintoshes.

It took ages to draw up a pattern that included the words positioned correctly, and it's harder than you think to turn the image from the back of a laptop into a lookalike pattern on graph paper. Sheets of paper later, I had an apple with a bite missing, 'iHat' in a font that looked like the one Apple uses, and the words 'Think different' spaced across the back of the hat on alternating lines so they matched up when knit in the round. 

If you made it through that boring and wordy explanation of yet another knitting process, here's your reward! Pictures of the completed hat, that my dad chooses to roll up slightly and as a result looks like just Turkish men with their non-ear-covering headwear.

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!)...

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")

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!