Skip to content

Category Archives: Reactions

Gideceğim Geleceğim

Saturday, June 5, 2010

I am leaving Turkey in much the same way that I came to it, in a frantic whirlwind of packing and paperwork up to the last possible minute. (Followed by plane trouble.)1 This week has been finals week for my students in both department, so it’s been chaotic, to say the least, with [...]

Filed in Introspective, Living in Turkey, Navel-Gazing, Personal, Reactions, Travel, Turkey | Comments (0)

Little Things / Big Things

Monday, December 7, 2009

On the one hand (μεν), it was a rough day. I realized in the morning that I had another stack of midterms I’d forgotten to grade, and then found out I was supposed to vacate my office by the end of the day (that didn’t happen, unfortunately), and had to go to a meeting [...]

Filed in Academia, Introspective, Navel-Gazing, Personal, Reactions, Teaching, Turkey, Turkish Culture, Turkish Education | Comments (0)

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)

Thankful

Friday, November 27, 2009

Today is (or was, at this point) Thanksgiving in the US. Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday– secular, identified with a spirit of thankfulness and generosity, and heavily food-focused (which satisfies my culinary hobbies). I didn’t expect to be able to celebrate here, because I hadn’t made plans and it’s complicated by Kurban Bayramı [...]

Filed in Cooking, Food & Drink, Introspective, Personal, Reactions, Travel, Turkey, Turkish Culture | Comments (0)

Let’s be inoffensive about this, ok

Friday, July 24, 2009

Most mornings, I skim the online edition of the New York Times while drinking a mug of tea. I’m usually not yet caffeinated enough– and thus not optimistic enough– to handle serious news, unless it hits very close to home, so I wind up doing the link-following equivalent of flipping through the editorials, the [...]

Filed in Art, Reactions | Comments (5)