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.

sanfran- - i mean safranbolu

due to a blissfully lackadaisical avoidance of planning-ahead, my weekend trip to amasya with laura, michelle, sidney, and marion was abruptly botched when we realized the bus schedule wouldn't allow for enough time in the area. instead, michelle and i opted for two days in the partially preserved ottoman-style town of safranbolu (where the others had already visited) - a UNESCO world heritage site about 3 hours north of ankara. a visit to the old-part of town mainly involves wandering through the maze of ottoman houses and narrow stone streets, picking at street vendors' wares, and taste-testing a bunch of lokum (turkish delight); - - however, the brisk/crumbling november weather made it especially atmospheric (and off-season as far as the tourist industry goes.)







our pension (bastoncu pension) was gorgeously restored & immediately discounted.



however, it was also very cold - the owners turned on the heat upon our arrival - so michelle and i hung out in cafes as late as possible & drank salep to keep warm.



it's a hot drink made with the flour of ground + dried orchid tubers, milk, sugar, and cinnamon. (recipe here.) i loved it, although apparently it's apparently depleting turkey's orchid population (and thus illegal to export.)



we also got a semi-creepy impromptu massage from a blacksmith in the back of his shop, two free private tours by a parking lot attendant-turned-"official"-tourist-guy and a certain (more genuine & wonderful) mehmet, and ate ridiculous lollipops from a man who must HATE his work uniform. but was jolly all the same.



as usual, there are a few more pictures here. ALSO, the most wonderful thing just happened: it's snowing and i got to announce this fact to a CELTA girl from florida who has never seen snow before. words cannot express the joy this brought laura + me as we watched her look out the window. before it was snow it was rain, and this is what laura looked like when she came home:



(hi dad, she says!) she then requested i post this picture of a mannequin from an ottoman-house-museum in safranbolu.



because it is crazy.

happy turkey-turkey day.

after work today the SSIs (speaking skills instructors - that's me!) in our building really pulled together a wonderful-giant thanksgiving potluck dinner in our building's atrium - here are the initial tables which ended up seating a portion of the people that came:



and the line for (some of!) the food:



a picture of laura (for her dad!) making mulled wine with alix:



and a general picture of bucky, me, and michelle:



i made 2 giant bowls of fruit salad. laura, sidney, michelle, and i are going to amasya this weekend so check back for a report on that. until then, happy thanksgiving!! - i really missed my family tonight.

look for me on tv.

to convey the pleasant & self-indulgent nature of most of my weekends here in ankara, here's a recap of this week's:

after finishing friday's 7 hours of teaching duties i took the bus downtown to go out with the 3 aforementioned american speaking skills instructors (also known as SSIs - abbreviations are a way of life here) from my teaching unit (TU): paul, anna, and erik - along with laura and a few other SSIs - to meet up with azra and bedra (from our TU) and a few of their friends. we met in the landmark known as BURGER KING and headed on to a bar with a texas/western theme (complete with a giant texas flag + a COVERED WAGON inside) to hear a live band playing the 80's english-language pop music that is so incredibly popular here (featuring billie jean and englishman in new york.) azra chose shots of sex on the beach as our drink which ensured a night of dancing and singing. at 1:30 laura + most others took the last bus back to bilkent while paul, azra, bedra, and i drove to another bar/club to dance to the same songs played by a different (actually, much worse) cover band but in a really cool atmosphere - there were blue christmas lights strung all over, stained glass lanterns, and outdoor space heaters hanging from trees in a shaded garden. afterwards paul and i went to bedra's apartment to eat pasta and sleep for a few hours before waking up on saturday and driving to atatürk's mausoleum for the annual remembrance of his death.

atatürk died in 1938; since then, every november 10th at 9:05 am the entire country stops for a moment of silence as deafening sirens blare. everything stops. we were actually next to a large outdoor running track/exercise playground on our way to the mausoleum when it happened and it was such an eerie scene to see all the runners standing erect and motionless as only tree branches rustled near my face. cars stop (although some blare on their horns the whole time to enhance the effect of the sirens, i guess) and time freezes. it was an incredible minute.

afterwards the three of us walked to the cafe-ish middle-class neighborhood of bahçelievler to drink turkish coffee and buy some produce; the sun filtered through the trees and buildings in the beautiful, relaxing way only saturday-morning-sun can. paul and i took the bus home where i relaxed in my room for only an hour or two before laura invited me to the lower-class & more religious neighborhood of ulus for my first-ever trip to a hamam.

inside, we were instructed to undress and wash ourselves off in a steamy white marble room while naked women of all shapes and sizes did the same, older women sang, and a purple sunset hovered over the star-of-david-shaped skylights in the domed ceiling. after a bit a large kindly woman beckoned me to lay down for an intense scrubbing massage where layers of black dirt i didn't even know existed peeled off on large quantities. she then dumped buckets of warm water all over me and completely soaped me up. i rinsed off as laura went through the same process; afterwards we were totally pink-skinned, clean, and relaxed.

we walked from ulus to a nearby metro station to get back to bahçelievler for some silly fun on these ubiquitous outdoor exercise machines in a park, went to a restaurant for amazing pide, kebabs, and ayran while goofing around with two rambunctious little boys, and took a cab to a bilkent bus stop. unfortunately it started RAINING & we were forced to take cover in a nearby sweet shop & subsequently buy some fancy chocolate. our plan to watch a movie in my apartment was quickly foiled after we had to run for 20 minutes through the rain & i promptly fell asleep - exhausted - at 11pm.

this afternoon i went for coffee with my friend michelle and attended a ceremony awarding shimon peres with an honorary doctorate from bilkent university. although i would have gone anyway, bilkent - perhaps fearing low attendance? - required all BUSEL teachers to attend. he was an eloquent, charismatic speaker & answered the expected questions re: the wall separating israel and palestine, his views on iran (or, rather, his views on mahmous ahmadinejad, since peres was quick to separate the president from the iranian people), the connection between israel and the US in regard to their middle east involvement, etc, in a somewhat evasive yet wise-grandfather-like-way. afterwards i was interviewed by either the turkish or israeli news (not sure which, although most bystanders claimed to see israeli on the video camera) whose eyes lit up when i said i was from the united states. it was actually pretty stressful since it was obvious they were asking me purposefully provocative questions like "no one here is wearing head scarves. is turkey a muslim country or what?" and "what do you think of the claim that the US and israel are involved in a conspiracy together?" and "why do you think most turkish students are against america and israel?" i tried to be as honest as possible, but after working at npr where selecting seconds of clips is key, it was hard to be candid knowing any given phrase could be chopped out and spread across national television.

i just finished eating michelle's eggplant parmigiana & now i'm planning to read for the rest of the night. this week is our last week with our first set of students - next week they'll find out if they pass on to upper-intermediate or will stay to repeat intermediate. apparently repeating is more common than it should be, which for me isn't totally bad - i love my students!