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Monthly Archives: October 2009

Your daily misinterpretation

Monday, October 26, 2009

Today I found myself talking with a friend about whether costumes are ever worn in Turkish culture– I’m planning a speaking lesson that deals in part with Halloween, and needed background information to use when encouraging my students to draw out comparisons between traditions. She insisted that costumes were extremely rare.
I remembered a [...]

Filed in Photos, Quick Hit, Turkey, Turkish Culture | Comments (1)

What have I been up to?

Sunday, October 25, 2009

Teaching, mostly. People aren’t kidding around when they say that first-year teaching is tough. I’m learning how to plan a lesson properly, how to work with students who don’t yet know enough English to understand my classroom directions, and how to manage big classes of mostly-sweet but generally-distracted students not much younger than [...]

Filed in Ancient What-Not, Bazaars, Cooking, Food & Drink, Living in Turkey, Museums, Status Reports, Turkish | Comments (0)

On Meatballs

Monday, October 12, 2009

There’s all kinds of stuff to put in a real post– on a tour of the neighborhood, on balancing teaching and adjusting to the culture, on my language struggles, on the Turkish engagement ceremony1 I went to on Saturday– but I taught four hours of night class to my tough group tonight (who were mercifully [...]

Filed in Food & Drink, Turkish Food | Comments (1)

Daire var!

Tuesday, October 6, 2009

I have an apartment! It’s right across from the university and furnished– the best possible option. Pictures– of this and other things, though I’ve been too busy to photograph much lately– incoming.
In discussing the apartment with Narin, I found out something very surprising to me: many Turkish people apparently don’t know– and don’t [...]

Filed in Housing, Living in Turkey, Quick Hit, Turkey | Comments (1)

The last five days

Sunday, October 4, 2009

For the last five days (Tuesday-Saturday), I’ve been in Ankara for Fulbright orientation, an intense and extremely helpful experience. I haven’t been posting because the orientation was so exhausting; I’m full of ideas for outreach projects, research plans, and English teaching techniques. Unfortunately, I didn’t get much time to see Ankara’s sites (primarily [...]

Filed in Quick Hit, Travel, Turkey, Turkish | Comments (0)