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Category Archives: Turkish Culture

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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Şanlıurfa’ya Scenes

Sunday, January 10, 2010

[No proper introduction, as I'm on my way to bed, but here are some things jotted down in my notebook while on the way to Urfa this morning, and while at dinner. Other actual Urfa reflections to follow sometime. Short version: it was an absolutely lovely travel day.]
—
On the way to the bus [...]

Filed in Ancient What-Not, First Impressions, Living in Turkey, People, Transportation, Travel, Turkey, Turkish Culture | Comments (0)

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 [...]

Filed in Anecdotes, People, Quick Hit, Religion, Turkish Culture | 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)

Speaking.

Thursday, December 3, 2009

All the classes here took their first speaking exam today. I’m probably somewhere near as nervous as they are about the results; my biggest teaching responsibility is 12 one-hour speaking classes, taught once per week to 12 of the 15 pre-intermediate groups. I am, in a rather solipsistic way, seeing this partly as [...]

Filed in Academia, English, Introspective, Language, Teaching, Turkey, Turkish Culture, Turkish Education | 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 [...]

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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 [...]

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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)