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Category Archives: Anecdotes

Comedy of Errors

Friday, February 12, 2010

You know the advice I should have gotten or heeded or something last night?
“Make sure your class shows up.”
—-
Today was supposed to be the first real lecture section of the first real college course1 I’m teaching: Introduction to Greek Mythology, for the first-year literature students. (Yesterday we met to go over the syllabus. [...]

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Written on our hands

Monday, December 28, 2009

When I was in high school, I had a horrible habit of writing notes to myself on my hands– so much so that sometimes the entire back of my hand would be covered, up onto my fingers and curving down onto my palm. (I had not yet discovered planners, and I didn’t have the [...]

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Yesemek’e

Saturday, December 5, 2009

Tired, as I wound up in Yesemek (a village with a Hittite sculpture quarry, nearish to here) today, with a bunch of silly travel frustrations I don’t feel like recounting. Instead, you get two and a half vignettes of good things.
• (1) On the minibus ride from Antep to İslahiye (the nearest town), we [...]

Filed in Anecdotes, Language, Living in Turkey, People, Transportation, Travel, Turkey, Turkish | Comments (2)

Scenes From a Day

Friday, December 4, 2009

Quite possible the single funniest student mistake I’ve ever seen:
Found while grading writing quizzes. About the Taj Mahal, one student writes,
“It’s made of white barber. It has two towels.“
…
It’s a sound-based mistake, of course, though as a friend pointed out, “How can you mistake marble for barber when the cognate in your own [...]

Filed in Academia, Anecdotes, Cooking, Food & Drink, Living in Turkey, Quick Hit, Reactions, Teaching, Turkey, Turkish Culture | Comments (0)