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October 2nd, 2009
06:22 pm - instead of worrying about t.s. eliot, these are the questions i spend my time thinking about:
can you have friends outside of ultimate?
(in grad school, without sacrificing time spent playing, without sacrificing other friendships)
seriously i feel like it is always a conflict with ultimate and mandatory research training sessions and ultimate and basically mandatory lectures / wine socials.
i am just feeling right now that by trying to not miss out on either one i'm somehow missing out on both...
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September 17th, 2009
07:25 pm - scottish excitement
i just got an e-mail with the subject line "Ultimate Frisbee this weekend and more!" which made me happier than i have been in a long time, and i think most readers here will understand why better than your average non-ultimate playing reader.
anyway. today was productive.
it started out by me bee-lining it to the ro-sham-bo table at the sports fair. two minutes later i have successfully figured out when the first practice is and also met the women's captain (who looks curiously like a certain other fair-haired captain women's named ralph). they seem friendly and their uniforms are SWEET.
i then successfully found my way to the language and cultures school meeting where i was able to meet (most of) the other people in my course. this is difficult to explain how much of a relief it was, because after almost a week or so of awkward wine, chips and chit chat (oh hey! you are post grad? me too! silence... more silence...) it was nice to have a fairly in depth conversation with a group of people who i will be seeing on a regular-ish basis* and hopefully having substantial literary conversations with throughout the next year. thankfully, most of them are also returning to school from the world of work after varying amounts of time off. for some reason, i find this comforting, even though i can't quite articulate why.
(*my class schedule was also discovered, which is great because now i know what i'll be doing. i have approximately 4 hours of class a week. yes, 4. two classes, meeting for two hours each. i'm pretty sure this will still involve brain crushing amounts of reading and thinking, and i'm seriously considering taking a 2 hour german course, which will bring my total up to a stunning six hours. unstructured time, here i come.)
i also went with laura to a ceilidh, which is scottish dancing. which is a-mazing for a lot of reasons, but it involves a lot of jumping and skipping and twirling type things, so clearly i found it wonderful. i'm considering joining a society to learn more because it was fun and also because there are really great outfits involved.
and tomorrow, i'm trying haggis. right.
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July 6th, 2009
02:07 pm - for lauren, part deux
so! back in istanbul! that is a whole lot of yay all around!
though also it is completely exhausting because i'm not used to having friends or things to do (thank you, adana) and now i'm almost overwhelmed with all there is going on and how much i'm moving around on a daily basis (thank god for that!) and all of the dance parties i've had... so exciting. i really miss camp/istanbul/turkey when i'm not here.... sad face. but seriously... i have MISSED pop music.
but i'm also getting freaked out at how much i HAVEN'T managed to get done yet (like pay tuition or call my parents of apply for a visa... eep!) and i've got tons to do.
also my roommates are awesome. their real names are emily, steph and sienna, but most of you probably know them as ace, jersey and balto and it's like a whiptail reunion all the time.
and i'm playing ULTIMATE tomorrow. life could not be better.
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April 15th, 2009
05:10 pm - midnight in the lojman
so, my friends, the time is now 12:10 am and here in the lojman (aka my apartment building) that means it is...
TIME TO INSTALL NEW SHOWERS
yes, that's right. currently, there are about 10 workmen scrambling around with various shower parts and tool boxes yelling to each other (ABI! ABI!) from down the hall, across the courtyard and in the staircases.
all manner of installation noise (drills, hammers, the occasional shattering of glass and dropping of large metallic objects on the marble floor) have commenced and i fear at any minute now they will either drill through my floor or my water line.
and when we went to chat with our friendly doorman about "what are they doing?" his answer was, brilliantly, "working."
seriously what is wrong with this place that installing new showers after midnight is nothing remarkable??!!
his response to me saying i can't sleep... "problem yok" (there isn't a problem)
le sigh. it's just the 80 percent rule in action.
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March 20th, 2009
05:40 am - thoughts on starbucks-in-turkey
so i just got news that a starbucks is opening up on our campus on the 25th of march. next week. i am so ridiculously excited for a myriad of reasons:
1. drip/filter coffee and espresso are quite difficult to find in southeastern turkey, and if it is available, it is usually heavily flavored (ie. irish cream, chocolate raspberry, white truffle almond... you get the idea), which is not always desirable.
2. i dislike having to rely on nescafe cappucino or turkish coffee (türk kahvesi) for my between-classes caffeine fix. let me rephrase that. i hate nescafe with a firey burning passion. it's nasty and bitter and chemical-y and i need 4 sugar cubes to make a dixie cup portion taste anything but bitter.
3. while a whole bunch of cafes already exist on campus, they are all very cheap (like 30 cents/kurush for a cup of tea or 1 lira for a cheese sandwich cheap) and overrun with students, so there is no where to sit and frequently not enough food to go around at lunch time. don't get me wrong. i absolutely adore being interrupted every five minutes when my students see me "teacher! teacher! hi teacher!" only to be told when i see them in class the next day "teacher! i saw you eating lunch yesterday!" or constantly being told "kasar yok" (no cheese) every time i try to order.
4. arm chairs. i guess i'm just american enough to adore sitting in arm chairs. i love reading in arm chairs. i love drinking coffee in arm chairs. it's great. almost as great as fireplaces.
5. everyone says the army base at incirlik (about 15 minutes away from adana) is like a "little americas" because the houses and the fast food places and the market are all the same as in the states. well that is how i feel about starbucks. sometimes global conformity and brand synthesis across continents just makes me feel happy. really, it's like a little bit of home and every time i go to a starbucks in turkey it's like a mental health trip, and now there will be one so close!
6. starbucks has a very strict no-smoking inside policy, so i can go there and not come out reeking of smoke. woo.
7. expense. starbucks here is super expensive (comparatively). for instance, your average nescafe cappuccino costs 1 lira. at starbucks you pay around 5 lira (around the same price as in the states... right now 1 dollar = 1.7 lira). this means i have very little chance of running into my students there, so i can read and enjoy my coffee in peace.
8. lines. if there is one thing turks just don't do... it's waiting in lines. so when they keep yelling at people to stand in line, and i'm using my excellent lining up skills that american society has drilled into me since kindergarten, it is nice to know that the dude behind the counter will help me first because he knows i got there first and nobody will jump ahead just because i'm not physically touching the counter.
9. somewhere to go besides my apartment. this town shuts. down. at night. buses stop running at 10 on weekdays, very few stores are open past 8. so starbucks will give me somewhere to go after i'm done with classes so i'm not sitting alone in the lojman every night.
10. caramel lattes. yum.
also, today is nevruz, which is some sort of spring celebration. yesterday, because of the holiday there was some demonstration/celebration which involved about 60 policemen with guns and shields and all kinds of things. nothing like walking out of your classroom into a full police line up. kind of terrifying.
and today, from what i can hear, there seems to be all kinds of traditional music and such, but we were told to stay away, so i am doing that. but it sounds fun.
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February 25th, 2009
03:14 pm - musings
welcome back to turkey!
woo hoo.
after not nearly enough time spent with all kinds of friends and family, i have returned to adana, which may or may not currently hold the record for the rainiest city in the entire world. seriously. i've never actually seen it rain sideways, but now i have.
so new classes.
they are going well. i like the students. i (mostly) like the curriculum, which, with the exception of my one speaking class, i get to put together all by myself.
oh except for the fact that my speaking class involves using a book that presents as absolute truth comments very similar to those that got larry summers in all of that trouble a few years back. i try to couch everything as "WHAT DENNIS (a character in the book) SAYS is boys do better than math in girls and girls start "dumb down" in middle school in order to be attractive to boys" and then ask them what they think about that.... but i can't get my students to challenge anything. they all just hop on whatever bandwagon the first student started on, mostly, i think, because they are still uncomfortable in english.
but still, i feel as though i will retroactively be striped of my wellesley diploma even getting close to this material. and then i also feel like i'd be violating turkish culture (the parts where it is still a relatively new thing for girls/women to even be getting a higher education) and have many of the students never come back if i got all GENDER IS A SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION!!!!!!1 on them.
le sigh.
i am trying very hard to be very positive about everything here, which i think is good practice for a life of optimism. if nothing else, the view out my window is breathtaking, and seeing students smile is heartwarming, even if the lojman is dirty and the fact that the bus goes at least a quarter of the speed of every other vehicle on the road makes me want to break something.
oh and starbucks just opened here. which is another subject for another post...
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January 8th, 2009
07:16 am - giving up on the job
so out of the 60+ students i was supposed to see today, only 4 showed up.
well actually 3 showed up in my office 30 minutes after our 45 minute class began wondering why i wasn't still in the classroom waiting for them. we had a nice chat about responsibility and being a university student. i don't think they actually understood any of it. i'm supposed to be teaching classes tomorrow, but i think i am just calling myself done and moving on... it isn't worth my time.
a lot of times i like to play the "if this happened at wellesley" game. for instance... if a wellesley professor walked into an empty classroom, expecting to see 30 students and waited for 10 minutes and then went back to her office and 30 minutes later 4 students showed up saying "um you're supposed to be teaching us right now, what are you doing in your office, can we start class now?" i mean... imagining this happening to vicki mistacco or margery sabin or lisa rodensky is particularly funny... seriously the look on their faces would just be too priceless.
so i'm going home soon. really soon. and i'm really excited. this semester has been a big letdown in a lot of ways... not nearly enough things to do, and my ability to care about things here is almost gone. i mean... i generally consider myself to be a pretty involved person. also a pretty adaptable person. but i can't get used to students who don't take even the slightest responsibility for their own education, and the easiest way for it not to ruin my whole day every day is to just stop caring.
which i really really hate.
so next semester, when i come back, i'm starting over.
new department. new students. new office. new buildings. new party of campus. (hopefully) a new hot water heater which i am eagerly anticipating arriving any moment now and will render my perfected art of the sponge bath completely useless.
seriously this whole fulbright deal has been so the opposite of what i had hoped and wanted it to be that a few weeks at home to readjust my expectations and to remember what i want and need out of life is going to be a very very good thing.
not to mention the complete excitement of seeing friends, family and the places i call home.
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December 25th, 2008
03:47 pm - christmas in turkey
so... i went into class this morning armed with christmas vocabulary handouts and a speaking activity based on love actually scenes that i was pretty proud of because it took a long time to put it all together and i thought it might actually be something fun. the following dialogue is not an exaggeration:
me: "hey! how are you guys? do you know what today is?!"
student 1: "persembe... persembe... thursday! today is thursday!"
me: "okay... um, yes... right! today is thursday! but what else? what else is today?"
student 2: "it is thursday no? 25 today is 25!"
me: "yes, today is thursday and today is the 25th... anyone else?"
students: *blank stares*
me: "today is christmas!"
student 3: "no no no, christmas is next week."
me: "no, christmas is today"
student 1: "but... christmas is... 2009."
me: "next week is new year's. today is christmas."
le sigh. not really sure where that particular cultural confusion came from, but okay!
so today, despite all of the pathetic things that could have happened and been really depressing, was actually really great! i taught my classes, which were doubly painful because i just really wanted to be home in my pajamas drinking cocoa, and then christina and i went grocery shopping for our dinner tonight which was a festival of carbs and butter!
mashed potatoes and butter!!
homemade stuffing and butter!!
fettuccine-ish alfredo-ish attempt which would have been great if the "100% parmesan" hadn't been a complete and total lie... (sauce made with butter)
crepes + nutella + strawberry (also made with butter), in honor of lauren.
and mulled wine, which astonishingly had no butter. but was delicious none the less! also the closest thing we ate to a "fruit" or "vegetable" the entire night! yesss!
and there were christmas lights and everything smelled wonderful and it was kind of like christmas and not really pathetic at all.
oh and i'm applying to grad school. iiieeeeeeeee. insanity.
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November 30th, 2008
03:34 am - the decemberists' new album
i just heard a few songs.
they really really really really suck.
i'm not sure the last time i was this disappointed.
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November 11th, 2008
06:54 am - turkish update
long, but conveniently labeled so that you can skip the boring and read what interests you.
1. my job: kind of sucks. i mean... it alternates between non-existent and really really crappy. i feel (mostly) like a huge failure because my students are unwilling to do pretty much everything i ask them to do (this is put lightly and politely... they actually know less about how to behave in a classroom than the 7th graders i taught) and they really don't want to be learning english, so they resist every bit of information i give them. basically they just want to sit there while i talk the whole time, and i'm not going to let that happen, whether they like it or not. and the whole not speaking turkish thing means i don't go to department meetings, which means i don't ever know what is going on. it also means they forget to sign me up to do things (like grade or proctor midterms) and that leads to resentment from the other teachers because i'm sitting in my office reading a book while they have to grade exams. not that i blame them, but i asked five times if there was anything i could do, and each time the assistant director told me 1. there might be something, stop by next week. 2. there probably won't be anything, but ask anyway. 3. there isn't anything, but you should be here anyway. 4. yes i'm sure, nothing to do. 5. you can't make photocopies, we pay someone else to do that, go back to your office. frustrating.
2. turkish language acquisition: is awesome! due to the fact that i don't actually have to work, i mostly just sit in my office learning turkish. which is awesome. i still can't communicate with anyone, but i've learned a lot of basic vocabulary and grammar stuffs. for instance "bir zamanlar" means once upon a time... which is probably my favorite phrase in any language.
3. my to-read list: is being vanquished at the same time it grows exponentially every day. also due to extreme amounts of free time i've read a whole lot of books in the past two months. "if on a winter's night a traveler" by calvino, "sons and lovers" by lawrence, and right now i'm reading "a passage to india" by forster are the big highlights. woo hoo modern british novels (and yet, while i'm reading them i can't get lisa rodensky's voice out of my head... i think that class changed everything about the WAY i read novels, and everything holds so much more wonder now... i miss being a college student.) i've also started reading up on turkish literature and doing research. i think next semester i'm going to try to do some sort of independent study that will end in a paper with one of the professors in the turkish lit department. i just finished "mehmet, my hawk" by yasar kemal and it was AMAZING. and i'm reading a book of essays on turkish lit in the west, so my nerdy side is having a great time with that.
4. adana: i really like the city far more than i expected. a few weekends ago a friend and i wandered around this bohemian area that had a bead and jewelry bazaar, which was really really cool. i also saw a guy selling a whole booth full of plastic princess crowns. it was awesome. the city has a really cute old town by the river with beautiful old ottoman wooden houses and a really really nice, clean park that is also by the river and has a good view of the sabanci mosque (the 3rd largest in the world... or something like that). and it is modern enough to keep my interest as well. tchibo (german starbucks) is downtown and i've been spending too much money at mavi. the campus is also incredible... amazing views of the lake (which is tropical blue colored) from pretty much everywhere, because the campus is located on the mountain surrounding the lake. and there are cafes all over campus that have great views where you can sit and drink tea and read books or just relax...
5. food: so mythbusted. food here is no way near as good as in istanbul. maybe the veggies i get are amazing (they are... and i've never bought produce in istanbul, so i have no way to compare), but the restaurants here aren't as good and have almost no vegetarian options (except, of course, burger king's delish bean burger... haha). but the food i can buy is incredible!!! there is this awesome market on saturday mornings that is sooooo cheap and awesome. for 15 YTL (less than 10 american dollars) i can buy: 1 kilo tomatoes, 1/2k pears, 1/2k grapes, 1/2k zucchini, 15 farm-fresh eggs, 1/2k green peppers, 1 ginormous bunch of swiss chard, 1/2k apples, 1/2k persimmons, toasted sesame seeds, 1/2k red lentils, 1/2k cucumbers, a hot water kettle thing, 3 simit (a kind of bagel-like thing), and soap. and all the produce is way more delicious than anything i can buy in the store. le sigh. i will miss that when i'm gone.
6. travel: is looking to be exciting. last weekend i went to antakya (photos on facebook), which was ancient antioch, with Christina, who is the other american here. it was SO cute. the town used to be part of french syria, so the architecture there is really interesting. you've got a lot of french colonial and art deco accents mixed in with traditional ottoman architecture. the town itself is a little shabby, but still pretty and the food is great because it is a mixture of turkish and arabic dishes. yum. we also went to the very first christian church, st. peter's church, which is really just another cave church, but this one was embellished by the crusaders who took pilgrimages to it back in the day. other highlights to come are gaziantep, ankara for thanksgiving, tarsus/mersin/kiz kalesi, munich with jess for christmas markets (!!! so exciting!!!!), perhaps konya for bayram and the dervishes, whitney coming either late december or early january, home/boston in january probably followed by egypt, and a trip in the works to traubzon/erzurum/kars/georgia in the spring as well as one to syria, if the visa situation gets better. i go to bed reading my travel books every night.
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October 19th, 2008
02:50 pm - life in list form
things exciting about today:
- tchibo cappuccino
- lysol wipes at migros
- waking up to german pasteries
- beautiful sunny weather
- discovering a bookstore that sells both translations of famous turkish novels AND penguin classics
- kavun-çilek aromali dogal mineralli gazli içecek (minus the butchered turkish spelling due to my complete lack of competency in turkish keyboard skillz)
- perfect-fitting mavi jeans. finally.
- semi-consistent internet! also finally.
- oktoberfest (which was actually yesterday, but the glow-y wonderfulness of it was still pretty exciting today)
things to be done in order to not be mistaken for a prostitute while in turkey*:
1. do not leave the house with wet hair. buy an extremely over-priced hairdryer to remedy this situation at all times.
2. never walk alone at night. never never never.
3a. if your name is Natasha, change it.
3b. likewise, never admit you are from russia.
4. do not interact with unrelated members of the opposite sex. this includes talking to, walking with or sitting next to (even on a crowded bus).
5. tea houses are to be avoided at all times.
* this list comprises many things that i have been warned about though have not actually experienced because adana is fairly not-conservative (i hesitate to use the word "liberal" as the opposite of conservative here because "liberal" in the sense that many people reading this blog consider "liberal" certainly does not describe your average adana resident.
also, if i am chastised about issue 1 again, i might cry.
so things are looking up, looking good and actually looking quite cute and beautiful in some parts of the city. i can't wait until things start being exciting.
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September 20th, 2008
07:22 am - at jess's request
so... adana.
since arriving here i've gotten very good at killing mosquitoes by clapping them. the current score is kait 8 mosquitoes 3 (though if you count all the bites i've acquired since wednesday, the score is more like kait 8 mosquitoes 25 or something.... blah)
at first i was super afraid of the mosquitoes because apparently like 30 years ago there was a malaria problem and because of that the state department website still has that there is a risk of malaria in adana, even though there isn't (even the americans who work at the consulate here don't take malaria pills... or so i'm told).
so yes, i am here. i have had no magical adventures as of yet. so far my only solitary venturings have been tho the grocery store on campus, but i think even that was maybe a bad idea because while i was checking out the security guard had me wait for about a minute while he could figure out how to tell me that i was "very beautiful" in english. oy. perhaps i'll have to find a different check out line. i just love being american and conspicuous!
also i tried this extremely bizarre dessert last night called bici bici (pronounced because of the turkish j and vowels like "beegee beegee"). so imagine a bowl filled with flavorless jelly squares (kind of like jello except not) which are then covered with shaved ice (think sno cone) and then rose syrup (yummy yummy yummy) is poured all over the ice and jelly and then top that with powdered sugar and banana slices. the sno cone and sugar part was delicious... actually i am kind of dreaming of eating that part again right now... but i am not too sure about the jelly bits. the texture kind of freaked my mouth out... but delicious anyway.
so yes... that is all for now. today i am hoping to conquer the public transportation and hopefully get myself to the mall to get some stuffs for the apartment... because cooking with a pan the size of a mini-brie wheel is getting a little difficult.
jess, are you happy now?
Current Mood: ![[mood icon]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/classic/smile.gif) optimistic
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July 14th, 2008
12:05 am - hunting and gathering
so much to do! so little time (as always)! whirwind tours of the glasses store and the mfa (one! last! time!) and seeing people and saying goodbye-but-see-you-later and shopping shopping shopping for everything i could ever possibly need but would be unable to purchase in türkiye!
and also as always i'm just now finding out how cool boston is and how much i love weekends and how much i wish i had taken advantage of while i was living around here, and how much i'm going to be missing out on when i leave... bah.
but at least this time there is contented sadness at leaving instead of heart wrenching broken-ness like at the end of the school year.
posting a to-do list here would be redundant, so i won't.
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June 19th, 2008
07:36 pm
so i'm um... actually going to turkey now.
the grant papers officially arrived this afternoon.
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June 6th, 2008
09:00 pm
OH MY GOD COULD I JUST MAKE A DECISION ALREADY??!!!
jeepers.
also, i am thrilled to find out that my future as a crazy alum is totally going to happen. i will totally be "that alum," and not the one that hangs around all the time, but the one that owns way too much sparkly stuff in her class color and encourages all the student workers to drink wine and eat dessert, all the while gesturing wildly and talking too loudly about what it was like "back when I was a first-year."
oh la. i do love the alums.
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June 1st, 2008
03:15 pm
empty and confused and pissed off (a bit) and excited and more confusion and missing people, especially crazy ho roommates.
i'd really do it all over again, in a heartbeat.
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May 30th, 2008
12:36 am
i can't believe this is happening...
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May 24th, 2008
12:53 am - doing things that scare you...
i keep bouncing back and forth.
turkey is exciting! and camp! and the campers! and fun and the bosphorous at night and everything about istanbul that is happy and wonderful! and getting to see friends again! and being back at camp and the craziness that happens there... and yay! and then next year! the fulbright! teaching english at a college! learning turkish! taking classes on turkish literature! and it could all be perfect.
but staying here this summer could be perfect too!!!! there is potential for a lot of good exciting things, like finally getting to have real time with alex (lots of exclamations there) and babysitting and research on interesting topics!!! (yay my love-affair with wellesley's library is not over yet!) and yoga and relaxing and learning russian and being in boston in the summer playing frisbee and being a real person with an apartment and food and a life.
and next year could be amazing in austria as well! teaching high school and being in vienna and traveling (much more traveling than if i were in turkey) and being closer to whiptails which means closer to friends and learning (actually learning) german and taking amazing classes at the university of vienna!!!
i don't know. everything is just so mutually exclusive and i want to do it all... have it all. and it isn't possible. i keep thinking "okay this is it! i've made my decision and i'm not going back!" and then as soon as i think that i start thinking about other things. bah. i just want someone to choose for me.
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May 17th, 2008
01:45 am - whiptail wonderfulness
jersey, on be-dazzling: "dude... that's not gay. that's not even straight."
hemo, to topher: "just shut up and spoon me"
pebbles: "so, jitters. i've been facebook stalking your boy. and there are these really weird pictures of him on a farm? can you please get an explanation about that before i leave?"
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May 15th, 2008
01:53 am
i'm really sick of always being on the verge of amazing things and then... good bye and then good bye and then moving on and then move along. and i just wonder how many more times i can keep... leaving places... and pretending like this is normal! this is fine! all good things end, and that's okay! smile!
because i feel more like sick to my stomach. great.
i'm just... really ridiculously upset with myself right now for stupid reasons and more reasons than i want to think about and i'm angry and upset and sort of feeling-less to be leaving wellesley and life and everything right now is so good.
and i know everyone feels like this, but no matter how exciting things are next year, i can't bring myself to get excited, because leaving right now just seems so wrong.
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