bedra took me to get my hair cut which involved 45 full minutes of blow drying the life out of my hair (see below, with nargile.) cutting hair is apparently a very masculine profession in turkey and many turkish women get their hair professionally styled weekly. i avoided washing my hair for as long as possible after the cut, but it's now back to its wavy frizzy mess.
both my first round of grad classes and my second teaching course ended. teaching got significantly easier the second time around. here's me with one of my speaking skills classes to give an idea of how old my students are (mostly between 17 and 22.) i teach small groups - typically between 5 and 7 students at a time.
i also accepted invitations to go out with two of my classes - one to a traditional restaurant with live musicians and lots of raki + dancing (where several of the students got hopelessly drunk for the first time and i had to shuttle them back to campus mother-duck-style) and the other to a bowling alley where even my limited bowling skills still put the boys to shame. for the next course i've been switched to a new teaching unit (now teaching "pre-intermediate" english as opposed to "intermediate") so i'll have to gauge a new level of english speaking and adjust my teaching/speaking accordingly.
i attended lectures by greek prime minister costas karamanlis and professor walter russell mead, applied to grad school for an MA in geography (only at UBC and U Toronto, so wish me luck. . .) and took a weekend trip to istanbul where i spent most of my time eating fish and watching the sunrise/set. at 2:15 tonight i'm taking an overnight bus back to istanbul to catch a flight to cairo with my friend michelle. . . we'll be there for a week.
brie (in march) and john (in april) are officially coming to visit - i hope my brother, rachelle, and others make it too. . .more after egypt!
