Apologies

I know I haven't updated for ages. There are lots of things to update about - our Thanksgiving trip to Cappadocia, our Christmas trip to Safranbolu, and our New Year's trip to Berlin, but I just can't be arsed. I'm trying to get the motivation but it isn't working very well. For now you'll have to do with my facebook albums. Enjoy!

Happy 2010!

Kyrgyz Memories

It has been almost 6 months since I left Central Asia, so I've had a lot of time to process my thoughts and put on some rose-coloured glasses. If being nostalgic was a resume-worthy skill, I would have employers tripping over each other to hire me, but unfortunately it's not. Life in Central Asia was not always easy and at the end of May I was ready to get the heck out of there, but I had some amazing experiences too.

Things I miss:

Frequent weekend trips away to small villages with beautiful scenery and traditional ways of life
Lagman and plov, staple foods of Central Asia, when done well (the greasy/fatty/bony versions don't make this list)
Old men in hats, be it a kalpak or an Uzbek skull cap
The gritty sound of Kyrgyz coming from round babushkas with a full set of gold teeth
Being able to cheaply buy everything under the sun at Osh Bazar
Having students with conversational English to chat with
The starry night sky over Lake Issyk-Kul
Soviet cars
Eating on a tapchan
Yurts
Buying tea by the pot for less than a dollar
Flat-rate taxis
Speaking Russian
Being connected to local culture
4-day work weeks and 14:30 starts
A 30-second commute to work
Soviet blocks
Outdoor activities/festivals like Ulak-tartysh (dead sheep/goat polo) and eagle hunting
Crisp fall weather with the smell of wood/charcoal stove smoke in the air
Donkeys, donkeys, and more donkeys
Knowing that everything I saw, did, or ate was interesting and exotic to people back home who had no knowledge Kyrgyzstan


Now, this doesn't mean I'm going to pack up and head back to Bishkek on the next plane, but I have been able to look beyond the negative memories that stuck firmly in my mind last spring as reasons for wanting to leave. I think I can finally keep the good times close to my heart without forgetting the bad memories and creating a perfect nostalgic Kyrgyzstan. I hope to return to Central Asia one day, but I'll make sure it's not to Bishkek in winter.

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 :)

Not your usual walk home

I started work at the end of September at a private school on the Asian side of Istanbul. I work 2 days a week at a kindergarten/nursery school, and 3 days in a primary school down the road as a 1st grade English teacher. At both schools, there is a Turkish English teacher, and I am a "speaking" teacher which just means that I'm there so the parents feel like they're getting something real for the tons of money they're paying for their children to be in an expensive school. More on the school in a later blog- there's a lot to say about my new job! My daily commute from home involves a 15 minute walk, a 25 minute bus ride, and a further 5 minute walk, and then of course the same in reverse on the way home.

Tuesday was Istanbul's Independence Day, so all schoolchildren had the day off. I still had to go into work at the kindergarten, but only for a few hours and just to make some worksheets and a big colorful poster with animal photos. I left work before noon, so was glad to have all afternoon off to faff about and watch lots of CSI:Miami on surfthechannel.com.

My bus ends in Taksim Square, the heart of modern Istanbul, but on Tuesday for some reason it stopped a few minutes away and let us all off in front of the Hyatt Hotel. The Hyatt was completely surrounded by police barricades, and on every street corner on the way into Taksim Square there were hundreds of policemen in full riot gear and gas masks. I had no idea what was going on, and the only thing I could imagine was that it was some sort of parade in honor of Istanbul's Independence Day. The park near Taksim Square looked like a policemen picnic, with cops loitering around in groups. They all looked like they were waiting for something, but there was nothing out of the ordinary going on. When I got into Taksim Square, it was EMPTY. This isn't strange if you've never been there, but just imagine Times Square empty mid-afternoon. All the roads had been closed and there were no buses and taxis, and the metro entrance had no people going in or coming out. Usually I walk home down Tarlabasi Bulvari, the main transportation street in the area and the most direct way home, but I wanted to stop at a language center, and walking down Istiklal, the main pedestrian and shopping street was a faster way to the language center. It looked like Istiklal, was closed, so I walked down Tarlabasi with the intent to turn off for the center further on down. There were more policemen and barricades up at all the intersections, and there was a police tank with armed guards all around it.

I realized that Istiklal was open, so I turned off Tarlabasi and Istiklal was almost empty, which only happens on a Sunday morning. There were lots of people with professional looking cameras running down the road, so of course I kept walking to see what they were going to take pictures of. All the shops that are usually full of shoppers all had their metal shutters almost fully closed. The windows at McDonald's and the Turkish bank were smashed, and at that point I REALLY started to wonder what was going on. As I got further down the road, I saw a police tank turning down an alley, and then thought I had gone far enough because I was getting closer to the "action," whatever that was. In a parallel alley, I saw lots of people running and then some smoke bombs being thrown, and started to feel a little scared. I kept walking home down Tarlabasi, but then smoke bombs flew out from an alley and a ton of people in makeshift scarf masks came running out into the street, and all the pedestrians in the area turned and ran towards me. I followed them, because what else do you do when a crowd is running away from something? People were ducking into all the open shops, and I followed in a trio of young-looking Turks hoping they spoke enough English to explain to me what was going on. They ran into a chai restaurant, and I followed them. We got inside just before the protestors turned onto our street and policemen followed in gasmasks. We hid under the bar, and I quickly found out that none of the 3 of them spoke any English. I got that it was an IMF protest, but it wasn't until much later that I learned that they were protesting the 2009 IMF/World Bank summit meetings, which were October 6th and 7th here in Istanbul.

The Turks I was with seemed really scared and also very worried about me. They kept saying "no fear" and "no panic" but I wasn't worried at all. In fact, I found it pretty silly that we were actually hiding in the first place, it's not as though the protesters were going to come in and look for us. Being off the street meant being out of danger, so I just enjoyed watching the "show." We saw some men who had been caught by the cops, and they had 2 cops restraining each protester, with one policeman following with a billy sticks. The protesters I saw were mostly middle-aged, overweight men. A few times smoke bombs went off right outside the cafe, and the staff had to quickly close all the windows. As soon as the danger passed, they opened up all the windows again and continued sitting on the sill, watching outside and commentating on the action. If only I spoke Turkish!

Up until yesterday, Mike and I were sharing one cell phone, and he had taken it for the day. I wanted to call him and warn him about the trouble, so I asked the gut in the trio if I could borrow his phone. I thought he'd understood me since we mimed back and forth and it looked like he understood I wanted him to lend his phone to me. But he got up and found a piece of paper and wrote down his email address for me. His girlfriend must have thought it strange that I was hitting on her boyfriend in front of her in the middle of a riot of sorts. And I never got to call Mike and warn him, but he made it home safely. The protests had finished by the time he was on his way home that he missed all the fun.

The staff at the restaurant finally thought it was safe enough to let us out (after about 40 minutes) and I was glad to be getting on my way home. The boy tried to get me to go walking with him and the two girls, but since we had a language barrier I really didn't want to waste my time. He finally got it that I wanted us to go our separate ways, but he still walked me to the intersection and cheek-kissed me goodbye. I didn't see any more protestors on my way home, but there were more and more policemen arriving, and I saw a police van with all the windows smashed. I was looking forward to reading about the protest online and blogging about it when I got home, but our internet was down and stayed down for 2 days. It's finally back up and running, which is why you're hearing about my adventure a few days after the fact.


I didn't take any pictures myself, although I wish I had. I was so confused about what was going on that I wasn't thinking right, and it probably is frowned upon to photograph anything that could be seen as police brutality. You can read more about the protests here and see pictures and a video here.

Stay tuned for blog posts about our visa run to Bulgaria and more information about my new teaching job!


PS. The new picture on my blog is the view from the teacher's room at my primary school job. Cool, huh?

The Perfect Craigslist Personal Ad

I spend a lot of lazy days at home on the internet, and often read craigslist istanbul to see what weirdos I share my city with. Craigslist personal ads are usually just inappropriate pictures with ridiculous pick-up lines, but when I saw the posting title "Hank Rearden is looking for Dagny - 28 (Ankara)," I thought that I'd found my husband. (For those of you who don't know, Hank Rearden and Dagny are characters from my favorite book, Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand).

Here is the man's full-text posting.

"Many guys dont want what I want. Any female must talk fluently what the hell she is talking about. Must be smart. Must be strong. Must deserve what she wants. I am a person of reason so I'm looking for same. Integrity, consistency, honesty are must. Sense of humor mostly comes with them. Appearence is important for me as long as one has the characteristics written here. Beauty is necessity but if you are not attractive -(beauty and attractiveness are different issues. For example: Adriana Lima, Megan Fox are beautiful women but not attractive for me. I prefer Gisele Bündchen, Rachel McAdams, Sienna Miller, Saffran Burrows;)) -it doesnt make sense at all. To hell, I'm not only looking for somebody to have sex. I must enjoy spending time with her.

Whatever, you must be single in every sense. No widows, no married and etc. If you have a boyfriend, dump him first before answer this. Age range between 20-28. Older than it is not ok. Younger is too young for me.

Send your picture please.I hate headshots. Find something spontaneous. Dont expect me to answer without it.

In case that I dont answer you even if you send your picture: You must know I am so pathetic that I cannot say "I am sorry, I didnt like you".


Lastly, keep it that way if you think I am an asshole.


Ps: I'm not like Hank Rearden but he's my role model. "

Turkish men don't seem to be the kind of people who A) read Ayn Rand and B)Of course the last thing I need is to meet strange men on the internet , but I thought his posting deserved a response. So I wrote to him, just telling him how much his posting "spoke" to me as someone who wishes to become a character from Atlas Shrugged and I asked if he could let me know if he got a date out as a result of the post, just to know if there are other girls with weird fantasies like me. I wished him luck in his search for his Dagny, and got a nice response back. If only he were really Hank Rearden...