*hey van kedi, kedi from van!*

2 months ago (oops!!!) i spent my final week-long break from work (april 17 - 27ish) with both my dear friend laura and one of my close friends from home - john f. - who came to visit after a six month stint in afghanistan and iraq. our trip started out by flying from ankara to trabzon and taking buses along the following path through eastern turkey (you can click on the blue bubbles for info):

View Larger Map

then finishing with a flight from van to istanbul and, two days later, a bus back to ankara where john flew back to washington and laura and i returned to our "BUSELogic" lives.

here are some highlights (mostly taken by john) including wildflowers in the port city of trabzon:

and the black sea!



and the nearby sumela monastery in the mountains:

an amazingly scenic bus ride through north eastern turkey:

seljuk architecture in erzurum:

the fields of abandoned ruins at ani, former armenian capital - one of the more beautiful and interesting scenes i've seen:

views of mt. ararat where noah's ark supposedly landed:

ishak pasha palace outisde doğubeyazıt:

the armenian church on akdamar island, lake van:

driving around van/getting lost in a dedicated quest to find the famous van kitties with one blue, one yellow-ish eye!



after while we saw some hope. . .



and then the real thing, albeit in a CAGE and not swimming around.

then a traditional van breakfast. . .



before wandering around istanbul. here is the underground basilica cistern (with creepy classical music piped through!)



and lamps in the grand bazaar.

جمهورية مصر العربية

my friend michelle and i originally intended to head to syria for our week's vacation in mid-february (over a month ago! oops.) however, when the visa turned out to be more of a hassle than we'd expected and a cheap flight to cairo turned up, we decided on egypt. michelle studied arabic in college and wanted to go to an arabic-speaking country - unfortunately, the dialect difference turned out to be a big problem - but egypt it was.
("egypt" in hieroglyphics)

so on february 9th we left snowy bilkent, ankara. . .



. . .for warm, dusty cairo. (notice the pyramids in the distance.)



for the first two nights we stayed with my friend dan from semester at sea who is currently teaching english in the suburb of 6 october. our first-day attempt to get to cairo on a minibus accidentally took us to the sphinx (much smaller than i expected) plopped down immediately next to three pyramids and the sprawling town of giza (not out in the desert at all like my imagined geography had me think.) we paid a chunk of money to climb up inside the biggest pyramid, which involved crawling up a claustrophobic, diagonal coffin-shaped space - squeezing past people going both up and down - only to arrive at a small, musty stone room with nothing inside. the pyramids were certainly different than i'd expected, but seeing such an iconic landmark up close (and the accompanying horrific tourism machine clunking along with it) was still an interesting experience.



dan took us to a great lebanese restaurant in 6 october for falafel, hummus, baba ganouj, nargile (called shisha in egypt) and great seats to watch the televised african cup football match - egypt vs. cameroon - which egypt won 1 - 0. this resulted in CHAOS across the city: male-dominated mayhem in the streets, chanting, singing, and dancing, and impromptu torches made by lighting hairspray cans on fire.



we spent the next few days in cairo going to the egyptian museum (with an amazing mummy collection), eating stuffed pigeons, wandering around Islamic cairo and the Khan al-Khalili bazaar, and having the best shisha & coffee ever at naguib mahfouz's favorite coffee shop (Fishawi.) cairo shocked me: despite the traffic and pollution, i found it much more manageable and pleasant than people/guidebooks suggested.



to my delight, cairo actually reveled itself through rose-colored glasses: valentines day was approaching and stores went all out with pink lights, flowers, and gifts (particularly lingerie stores - an interesting contrast with the mostly covered female population.) michelle and i celebrated by buying each other bags of relatively fancy chocolate which turned out to be awful - coming from me, that's saying a lot. my heart was elsewhere. . .



later, michelle and i took an overnight train to luxor. even though we splurged for the tourist sleeper car, michelle got sick from the food and hung out in our hostel room for the first day. i rented two bicycles (both which immediately got flat tires) and consequently got invited up to an apartment with some curious pre-teen kids. we had a "chip and dance party" (their idea) and i got headscarf-ed and my nails painted. this was fun until i announced i had to leave and an entire apartment full of children (new faces had mysteriously and exponentially arrived) started wailing and following me down the street with my (equally mysteriously repaired) bicycle.





over the next two days we took a falluca boat trip on the nile, hung out with some brits living in syria and americans living in israel, smoked shisha much stronger (and better) than in turkey, and saw a few beautiful moons/sunsets.



despite a dull questioning in the back of my mind regarding the ethics of visiting tombs, we went on a tour of the valley of the kings (and queens) and saw some beautiful paintings and hieroglyphics. photos weren't allowed in the tombs, but below are some shots from a nearby temple.





in the evening, we visited the extremely impressive luxor temple bathed in beautiful sunset-light and relaxed for a while. we unknowingly missed the karnak temple (!!) but by that time were so worn out we had no problem wandering back to the hostel and trying some cups of beans/pasta/meat as suggested by our friend paul.





back in cairo, we went to the beautiful and relaxing coptic neighborhood where we visited some museums and churches and, later, hung out in the bookstores of a foreigner/upscale neighborhood called Zamalek for a while.





two things overriding all other experiences were watching the tourism machine of egypt function (for me, at least, an amazing, depressing, and difficult system to see) and being one half of a young, white, unaccompanied female duo. even though we were pretty well covered up and remained as inconspicuous as possible, michelle and i had some serious issues with harassment from men. it was never a dangerous feeling - more of a nagging, omnipresent sense of objectification - but it really bothered me. i've never really felt like a piece of meat on display before egypt. there was mild harassment in parts of india, tanzania, and brazil, but nothing like what we experienced in egypt. i wonder if this has anything to do with it. . .

finally it was back to turkey, where i spent the rest of the weekend hanging around in the snow/sleet/slush of istanbul with my friend iman before taking an overnight bus to ankara.



right now i'm deep into the third (out of four) course i'm teaching. because the level i'm teaching is lower and includes more repeat students, it's much more difficult than past courses . i'm unfortunately also working more hours this semester; combined with some scheduling problems and worn-out-ness, i'm no longer taking graduate or turkish classes. work is getting increasingly frustrating, but luckily i've spent every other weekend in istanbul - this weekend i have plans to rent a car & visit gallipoli. brie visited & we had a great time. . .john is coming in 3 weeks. . .mallory and jared are coming mid-may. . .and rachelle is most likely coming in june! other than anticipating visitors i'm mostly waiting to hear from grad schools. . .

. . .but it is spring, and that's a great thing. here's my first haft sin table to celebrate nowruz:





happy new year.

it's been a while since i've posted but in 24 hours i'll be in cairo - so here's a whirl through the past month of my life:

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!

happy leap year.

since new years i've pretty much been a recluse in my room, finishing up two term papers for my grad classes and scrambling to get two last-minute applications to MA programs in geography together. (wish me luck.) i'm loving the queen's gambit by walter tevis. . .getting invited to eat fancy food in a bunch of people's apartments. . .crossing my fingers for obama. . .and, as usual, hanging around laura a bunch. she gave me the most amazingly-wrapped gift: a beautiful print she did - now up on my wall - which came rolled in a hand-colored map of eugene:



and outside my window this month: snow!



this is "lojman 106" where i live. as you can see there is NOTHING near it . . .except lots of mud currently hidden by the snow.



and these are a few views from atop the ankara kale (fort/castle) at sunset.









“Travel (like walking) is a substitute for the legends that used to open up space to something different.”
- Michel de Certeau, from The Practice of Everyday Life

ich bin ein berliner.

when americans ask about my travel experiences, a common response is: but you've never been to europe. it's true that i've traveled in a round-about way compared to most americans; turkey seems incredibly developed and comfortable compared to most places i've been. yet other than a vague desire to experience the romance of paris (and see berlin after wings of desire) i've never really thought about visiting europe until arriving in turkey. now my heart is totally set on madrid and prague and helsinki etcccc. someday!!! - but with a winter break, cheap(ish) tickets to germany, and a friend with a german-history-major who'd never been to berlin, a trip to germany sounded nice. i ended up remembering german words i didn't even know i'd learned and falling head over heels in love with berlin.



brian and i flew ankara ---> munich ---> berlin (only missing one flight!) and met up with megan the next day. we stayed in a hip yet relatively cheap hostel near the tv tower and started off with a highly recommended free walking tour of the major outdoor historical sights (the brandenburg gate, the pretty amazing memorial to the murdered jews of europe, checkpoint charlie etc. etc.) i dragged brian to the berlin state library where a scene in wings of desire was filmed - however, without a library card, we were left to the purgatory of the lobby. we spent a lot of time at museums on museum island and beyond; the architecture of the jewish museum was especially impressive. much to brian and megan's dismay, i spent way too long at the hamburger bahnhof museum for modern & contemporary art awing at bill viola's "he weeps for you" and ceal floyer's "working title (digging)" (not to mention paul mccarthy's "santa chocolate shop" - faint of heart, beware.) when i found them waiting in the lobby as i was barely half-way finished, we decided to split up and meet later for döner kebab (way better in germany than turkey and fun to surprise vendors with bits of turkish) and (accidental) dancing at a gay bar covered wall-to-wall in HOT PINK FUR and christmas lights. i half-seriously considered a convenience-marriage proposal in exchange for an EU passport.

cold and tired but happy to be in a city with both burritos and indian food, we ate, drank beer (and absinthe - not particularly amazing), wandered, and relaxed as i bugged brian to translate and explain everything. checking out various sections of the berlin wall was interesting & only added to the amazingness+confusion of the history crumbling everywhere in berlin.



other highlights included a pair of foxes darting around in the snow of a construction site, the silliness of a giant snow tubing hill built right by the sony center, 10 euro tickets to a performance of handel's messiah in the incredible berlin philharmonic hall, and hipster girls-in-skirts rolling by on old bicycles every few minutes. we also stopped by the beautifully chaotic christmas market near our hostel almost every night to gorge on chocolate-covered apples, bratwurst, mulled wine, and the occasional cup of (disgusting but hot) grog. imagine christmas lights, a maze of handicraft stalls, a mix of steaming/greasy and colorful/sugary food, crowds of frazzled families and giddy teenagers, carnival rides, and buskers playing christmas carols on giant-cranked-music-boxes and the rims of water-filled glasses. a flash:



then: a contrast. megan and i visited the remains of the sachsenhausen concentration camp, a 30 min. train ride from berlin in the town (literally) of oranienburg. we left later than we'd planned & arrived as the sun was setting somewhere behind a thick, menacing gray sky. as it got dark we were the only visitors and still a long walk away from the entrance, quickly turning a haunting, somber experience into a distressing and borderline-terrifying one. walking through a fully-furnished prison and barrack alone with megan in the pitch black was more than i could handle. it was truly the landscape of death. i didn't take any photographs there, but imagine this (stolen from the internet) at dusk with the bleakness of fog and flurries:



that's "work will set you free."

the whole thing was surreal and more difficult than i'd expected. i spent the following day (dec. 24th) nursing a hurt foot (from awful boots) alone on the s-baun ring. . .circling around. . .trying to process things.

we actually managed a nice christmas eve despite being far away from our families: some wine at the hostel, a super-fancy meal at a very euro restaurant where we accidentally ordered refills of our giant glasses of beer instead of the DESSERT MENU (but went with it + a banana split all the same), and a tipsy midnight church service at a big lutheran cathedral called the berliner dome. although the service was in german, a children's choir sang haunting, angelic songs that transcended language - it was beautiful. you can see the dome here from a christmas market:



inside:



and our christmas eve self-portrait here:



although the dollar/lira vs. euro exchange rate was almost prohibitively awful throughout the trip, we still stocked up on face wash, conditioner, and other relatively expensive turkish goods (thanks to importing costs) before leaving. coming "home" (on christmas day) was a strange experience; the juxtaposition of returning to ankara after berlin helped me see ankara with fresh eyes. i realized i'd been subconsciously self-censoring my individuality/gender performance in turkey - i'd grown meeker, quieter, and more careful with my body movements - whereas in germany i felt more free to move and dress and randomly sing on the street as i pleased. i suddenly missed things as banal as efficient public transportation and international cuisine to thought-provoking contemporary art and the presence of vibrant, alternative subcultures i could celebrate and understand - not to mention the familiar pleasures of stumbling across all-girl accordion punk band shows and squatter kids playing beautiful acoustic guitar on the subway with their dogs. most of this is can be found in istanbul and, to some extent, in ankara, even though my lack of turkish keeps any meaningful understanding just out of my reach. but, in another way, the individualistic mindset isn't the same in turkey. my ability to be the woman i want to be feels stunted. maybe all this has to do with being abroad and yet not visibly a foreigner for the first time - and probably because berlin is just an amazing city as far as cities go in general. but the trip solidified my decision to leave turkey after this year. while there are obviously incredible experiences unique to living in turkey that would only grow as my turkish improves, i really felt the benefits of existing long-term in a more accepting, liberated society (ironic coming from germany.)

i also experienced my first earthquake!! - on december 27th around 2 in the morning when i awoke to my entire bed shaking. since our building is brand-new and got finished in a hurry, laura and i (unintentionally??) took whatever genuine element of danger existed and went with it, getting dressed, searching online for earthquake survival tips, and freaking ourselves out over the 1999 earthquake in İzmit that killed around 17,000 people (including the father of one of my friends here.) it turned out to be a 25-second-long 5.5 magnitude earthquake, preceded by a 5.7 magnitude quake the week before while i was in germany. there are now several big cracks in the walls of both my classroom and laura's room.

i spent new years drinking gin & losing at monopoly in my apartment building (sorta more fun than it sounds.) now it's back to teaching (i love my students so much!!) and finishing up the work for my grad classes (i'm so stuck!!) after our coveted trip to syria was fully confused by time constraints, train logistics, and visa difficulties, michelle and i decided to go ahead with a pair of relatively cheap tickets to cairo for our february break. i'll be visiting a friend of mine from semester at sea and hanging around with my co-worker paul who studied abroad there & is excited to play tour guide. thanks to my aunt who gave me the christmas money to afford it!

happy new year, everyone! if you're reading this, chances are you're dearly missed.

iyi kurban bayramlar

this is my first winter-holiday-season away from my family. even though i'm not especially nostalgic for american-style christmas-time, i hosted a gingerbread-house-making night to get in the spirit of things. recently i've been growing to love (and appreciate) my american friends here - especially laura and michelle - and since we're pretty isolated in a mostly-foreigner dorm-like apartment building in the semi-middle of nowhere (on bilkent university's campus) we spend a lot of time together. it's not ideal in terms of exposure to (let alone immersion in) turkish culture, but it's fun to pretend i'm a fresh(wo)man in college again, wandering around in pajamas & stumbling upon impromptu visits/dance parties/existential crises/discussions & dreams of life-plans. it was nice to gather up some people and realize how much i genuinely like them. makes being away from home a lot easier.

michelle, as always, came over early to help set up. we tried to eat something healthy before the whole thing -



until marion brought real gingerbread, , ,



and everyone dug into a mess of sugar.



we also cut paper snowflakes,



stuck cloves in oranges,



and don't be fooled by laura's grave expression: got goofy + stayed up way too late for a wednesday night with work at 8:50 the next morning.



thanks to this year's kurban bayramı falling in mid-december, after work on tuesday i'll be leaving for a week in berlin with my friends brian and megan. i'm looking forward to great museums, sorely-missed indian food, good beer, confusing turkish immigrants with my turkish, and a fancy christian christmas eve service somewhere before flying back on christmas day. since brie pushed her visit back i'll be staying in ankara over new years to work on my final paper + project for my grad classes. even though i love my new batch of students, juggling work with my classes has been pretty tiring recently & i haven't been able to give enough energy to the latter. these breaks will be nice.

also, after four months in turkey i was just given keys to a mailbox!! if you wanna send mail you can either send it to my work address at BUSEL or. . .my apartment, which is probably better:

#202
Orta Kampus, Lojman 106
Bilkent Üniversitesi
Bilkent, Ankara 06800

more after germany. . .my first time to europe (unless istanbul counts?)

brick in the wall

While working at the Marlboro Music Festival this summer, I befriended an awesome & inspiring girl named Brie (featured in this older post) who runs the blog Where have all the cowgirls gone? with her friend Huma. Brie asked me back in July or so for a contribution and I finally got around to putting one together this week with the editing help of Michelle and especially Laura. (THANK YOU!!) It should be posted on her blog soon, but I've decided to post a version here too since I haven't written much about my experiences teaching. I'm also posting a picture I didn't take because 1. it vaguely reminds me of brie (since i first saw it this past summer on the BBC's site) and 2. pembe seviyorum!



This August, recently armed with undergraduate degrees in literature and political science, I did what any directionless American liberal arts major lacking financial ambition might do: ship off to teach English abroad. I was lucky to land a year-long Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship at the prestigious Bilkent University in Ankara, Turkey – a part of the world I’d always wanted to visit. I could take free graduate classes while teaching “speaking skills” to small classes of would-be Bilkent undergraduates lacking the language skills necessary to meet the English-medium university’s standards. Read: they wanted warm-blooded native speakers to talk for twenty hours a week. Sounded simple enough. Little did I know just how provocative those hours of essentially free-for-all conversation would be.

My original goal was simply to hold the students’ interest, avoid philosophical landmines (i.e. obey the law) and nudge them towards fluency. I start out with a seemingly flawless lesson plan: an analysis of the Beatles’ “When I’m 64,” followed by predictions of what their lives will be like when they reach that age. To my dismay, my chirpy questions are answered with blank stares. The distant future? They’re late teens still trying to pass the upcoming exam, much less deal with answers to existential questions fifty years from now. To top it all off, the questions are coming from a wacky 23-year-old teacher – barely older than them – hiding anarchist sentiments under awkward-fitting “professional” clothes. The fact that I’m ditching my friends and family to teach them the English they need to get a Turkish education is beyond comprehension. What can they say? Will they end up staying in Turkey or go for the “utopian” dream of graduate school – and potentially life – abroad? Will their passports ever double as tickets into the EU? Is Turkey sliding down the same “slippery slope” towards fundamentalist Islamic rule à la Iran as some Turks insist? For those with immediate family in current or potential war zones, the future is even more precarious. “Insh’Allah, teacher,” they say, Arabic for “god-willing,” “we want a good life, but we don’t know what will happen.”

Actually, each time I walk into a classroom, neither do I. I consistently find myself in a crossfire of social issues I only vaguely understand. A macho student in a pink playboy-bunny shirt fiddles with his brand-new BMW keys in one hand and seductively swings his prayer beads in the other, bragging about the girls he’d met at a bar the night before; next to him, a girl pats her hairpins to make sure the hat she’s wearing covers all her hair (since by law she can’t wear a headscarf to school) as she complains about society’s expectations of women’s physical appearances; next to her a heavily made-up girl in a skin-tight miniskirt and knee-high boots furrows her brows at the mention of alcohol (technically prohibited in Islam) and promises to bring me a copy of the Koran next class. An Iraqi exchange student describes her recent trip home as “peaceful” while an adrenaline-charged boy fresh from his military service demands an explanation of the US’s presence there. A previously quiet girl offhandedly suggests the army destroy Kurdish villages out east; an invisibly-Kurdish boy from the far east is silent. The Bulgarians and Azerbaijanians need special translations of new vocabulary. Those on scholarship need help circumventing the all-too-prevalent topic of “shopping.” Most students are happy discussing their hometowns and Turkish food, but for a small yet vocal minority, the topic of Greeks and Armenians (not to mention Jews, Asians, and blacks) offers endless material for cruel jokes. One boy says he wants to “holocaust gay people.” And I am to say…what? “Holocaust” is not a verb?

The problem is, I’m trying to juggle a little too much: teach English with laughable training, wind my way through a labyrinth of cultural nuances, and figure out what to do with my life. Let’s be frank: for most young graduates, “teaching English” is less a passion for grammar than it is a “gap year” between school and “real life.” Meanwhile, the luxury of my indecision feels increasingly unfair. Bilkent University is one of the top universities in Turkey, and the Turkish-born English teachers I work with are some of the best in their field. Their jobs are competitive and they work hard towards advanced teaching degrees. Me? I didn’t take a single education course in college – yet I have the option of teaching virtually anywhere until I decide to dabble in the myriad of choices available to me. Japan or Spain? Journalism career or graduate school? I’m the face of the cultural imperialist force neither side can escape: no matter how hard my coworkers study English, I’ll always have a leg up just because my native language happens to be the current international one. No matter how much I struggle with the assigned English translations of Foucault and Deleuze in my graduate courses, my Turkish peers are facing an exponentially more difficult battle. And yet no matter how American foreign policy taints my students’ gut reaction to my nationality, they’re always up for talking about Justin Timberlake’s new song. Not necessarily because it’s good. Just infectious. Because it’s everywhere.

These students don’t particularly care about the Beatles. Like most of the industrialized world they know Lost and Angelina Jolie, but they’re also growing up in an especially conflicted and diverse country currently facing issues with enough conversation material to last a lifetime. They deserve teachers who will encourage critical thinking relevant to their lives. I’ve adjusted my lesson plans to discuss topics like gender roles, global warming, and international standards of beauty – even the wildly popular (and arguably anti-American) Turkish television show Valley of the Wolves Iraq. We have debates. Heated debates. And I learn far more about Turkish culture from my students than I ever could fumbling through Turkey on my own.

The cliché rings true: I learn just as much as – if not more than – my students. What was originally a vehicle for getting abroad has become the most stimulating aspect of my life in Turkey. I can’t always give them my all; teaching, studying, translating, and missing home is exhausting. However, I give them more than I expected. Like them, my future life-path is fuzzy. We’re figuring it out together.