Kicking Ass and Taking Names

Tuesday was a long day, but it was triumphant. I am working like none other, but it is paying off. I haven't felt the legitimate rise of panic/stress in at least a couple months. Amazing. What's happening to me?! I got so stressed in college where I was graded, and there was maybe a sense of absolute perfection that I strove to attain. With teaching, however, there is a constantly moving target, and perfection is impossible because a) there simply isn't time and b) you can't possibly anticipate all of the problems your students will encounter with a given subject.

It's a novel experience for me to be so laid back about everything. We'll see how long it lasts. I mean, there are times when I find myself legitimately concerned about my abilities. For the most part, however, I am keeping my head above water.

I had two triumphant moments today. It's especially gratifying considering that they occurred during a 12-hour day on my fifth consecutive day of work.

The first:
I've been having one-to-one lessons with a student who recently completed K6, but wanted a review of the entire Elementary level. It was our penultimate lesson this morning and I was breaching the Present Perfect.

I was asking her if she had ever been to Istanbul. Yes, she had. So then I followed up with how many times (in her life) she had been to Istanbul. She kept thinking that I wanted to know how long her last stay had been. Three days, was her answer, and when I kept asking how many times she'd been, I could sense her frustration of failure mounting.

"No problem! No problem," I assured her with a smile, squeezing her arm gently. "There's no problem." But there was a problem. I had no idea what to do besides repeat the question. I sat for a moment, trying to figure out another way around the problem. It suddenly dawned on me.

"Neşe, ask me the question."

"How many times have you been to Istanbul?"

"I've never been to Istanbul," I said, holding up the fingers of my right hand in the shape of an O for zero. "I've been zero times."

She got it. That flicker of understanding flashed across Nese's face. Amazing how that transcends language.

We grinned hugely at each other. I solved the problem. A triumph that seems so small, but was so epic at the moment.

"How many times have you been to Istanbul?" I asked again.

"Seven," she answered.

The second:
My Upper Intermediate students will soon be taking their K21 exam. They are more than a year past Neşe's studies. Though they still struggle with the Perfect tenses, tonight our challenge was cleft sentences (Normal sentence: You lost all your credit cards and I found them. Cleft sentence for added emphasis: It was you who lost all your credit cards and it was me who found them).

Due to some complacency on my part, I misjudged how much time I had left before the exam to cover the last bit of a chapter. What looked like only a page in the book was actually packed with grammar--far more than could comfortably fit into an hour and half, if I meandered through the material like I normally like to. Oops.

Tonight was going to require some significant hand-holding to get my students through the thicket of cleft sentences without them losing confidence in themselves or me before the review session next class. When I could feel that the triage task was beyond my capacity, I asked for help.

After admitting my error to my boss, and being reprimanded mildly, he sat me down and gave me a quick and dirty run through of cleft sentences, outlining what I needed to cover in my lesson. I ran through my presentation with him to get feedback and suggestions.

It's awkward giving a fake lesson to my Director of Studies. Much easier is performing in front of my students--and teaching is a performance of sorts. Especially with something difficult and obscure, each sentence needs to be contextualized so that they understand why the hell people would even say something like "What I really feel like is a nice hot bath," or "It was you who slept through the play," in the first place.

Anyway, it was one of those lessons where I flawlessly completed my juggling routine in front of my businessmen (though there are now three women in the class, it still has a very serious, professional, mature vibe which unnerves me if I think too much about how 9 legitimate adults are looking to a 23 year old to explain a giant mess). I left class positively elated.

Light at the end of the tunnel:
My own level of confidence plays a huge role in their trust in me. I'm horrible at bullshitting this confidence but it is coming with almost six months of teaching English at every level. My ability to explain obscure grammar points on the spot is growing. I feel butch.

In a couple of months I will know how to teach two consecutive years of English. There's going to be more than one celebratory drink at the end of that day.

Cleft sentence fun
Rearrange the words to make cleft sentences. The first word is bolded.

1. grandmother -- gave -- was -- who -- awful -- It -- that -- my -- me -- picture
2. like -- hot -- What -- a -- bath -- feel -- is -- nice -- I -- really
3. It -- crashed -- me -- car -- who -- the -- wasn't
4. designs -- I've -- are -- latest -- got -- our -- What -- here
5. who -- play -- through -- It -- slept -- the -- was -- all -- you
6. who -- was -- 1998 -- It -- won -- World Cup -- France -- the -- in
7. about -- impressed -- was -- enthusiasm -- me -- his -- What -- Sam

Turkish Encounters

The Turkish Home
Dinner with the Turkish family was really wonderful. The food was fabulous--I had a tiny fillet of salmon, the first in months and months! They invited another couple and their children. The four of them spoke fabulous English, all things considered, and struggled to have conversations about their children's development in English. After awhile I told them to stop for my sake and they lapsed into Turkish. But so thoughtful of them to try!

Their house was immaculate. Despite the litter that is everywhere in public spaces, the four Turkish homes in which I've visited have proven that the private space is a sphere of extreme clean. You remove your shoes at the door (or your hostess offers to clean the soles if you prefer to wear them inside), and are offered slippers to keep you toasty for your stay.

The best china and silver is laid out for their guests. Elaborate dishes are prepared and you leave more than satisfied. I experienced the same phenomena when I dined with one of my students and her husband about a month ago (he came home, took one look at the beautiful dinner table and told me that I was welcome to anytime I wanted if it meant that Filiz would cook like that).

Fasıl Fasıl
The next day was Sondra's birthday, and though we didn't do anything on Friday, we did go out as a huge bunch on Saturday night after work. We went to a restaurant where you pay 35 lira to be fed and boozed all night, and listen to fasıl music. Though the instruments are familiar--a clarinet-type thing, a lap harp, a darbooka (a small hand-held drum maybe a little like a bongo)--they're played in a distinctively Turkish way. Come to Turkey if you want to know more.

I drank rakı (an anise-flavored hard alcohol that is diluted with ice and water) which tastes absolutely amazing with practically any Turkish food--cheeses, vegetables, kebap meat, roasted red pepper spread on bread, you name it. But with fish it is especially good. Rakı, it could be said, is the Turkish national drink--or at least the drink of the Aegean region where the fish is fresh. One of my students told me that if you eat fish without rakı, the fish cries.

It's the straw that breaks... you know how it goes

My father lives and works at a government agency in The States. One of his colleagues is a Turkish immigrant who's lived there for years. She was very nice and helpful when she learned that I was going to Turkey.

"Let me know what city you end up in," she said on email, "So that I can put you in touch with people I know. They'll be happy to look out for you." Turkish hospitality is no joke.

I'd received a few emails from various people--dinner invitations that have taken months to organize. I've just been so busy. Too busy to visit Turks, too busy to learn Turkish.

Well, it finally got sorted out with one of the couples for tonight. So I went to buy them a gift--dessert of some type to take as a thank you. I'd seen a new pastry shop that I thought sold baklava, so this afternoon I walked through the rain to buy some. It turned out, when I pushed the shop door open, that I was wrong. It wasn't baklava, but some other syrupy desert-type thing: subye. Ok, well whatever. I'm here now and it looks tasty.

The woman was alone in the shop and it took some time before I understood how much the subye cost. She keeps gesturing to the mammoth tray of subye and saying lots of extraneous information. I'm listening for numbers but don't hear any. I say I don't understand and again ask how much it costs. Finally she says something I understand. Subye is twelve lira a kilo. Lots of things here are sold according to weight: silver, cookies, bread. I have no idea how much subye is an appropriate amount to give as a gift, but I don't want to look like a cheap American.

"Ok," I said, pointing to a box. "One kilo. " So began the laborious process of lining up the in the box just so, and then weighing them, and then adding some more, so the box was full. She's chattering away to me but it falls on deaf ears. What part of "I don't understand" don't you understand? It was starting to look like an awful lot of subye. I noticed behind the counter that there was a smaller box that would probably hold half a kilo. Oh well, I thought, they'll think I'm generous. Or overly-generous. I don't want to bring too much, either, because that's embarassing for different reasons.

The box was now past a kilo, but she didn't ask if I wanted more when she added an extra few, so I figured it was still twelve lira.

She got out the ground pistachio powder and dusted my subye with it. I was reminded of the scene between Rowan Atkinson and Alan Rickman in "Love Actually" when Atkinson just won't finish wrapping the fucking necklace.

She's finally finished and it turns out that it's fifteen lira instead of twelve. Three lira is a tiny difference, right?! But I crumple. I don't even know what to say, or how to argue, or how to ask for fewer. And the energy it would take to have her untape the box and remove some of the subye is--though possible--beyond my current capacity. I hand her my twenty lira note and get back five. She looks at me, trying to figure out what is wrong. I can't say anything, anyway, but my entire demeanor has deflated in less than a second.

"Iyi gunler (Have a good day)," I say hollowly as I leave the store. Back on the street, I'm grateful for the rain that lets me hold my umbrella and hide the fact that I'm trying my hardest not to cry. The sense of defeat is overwhelming. But the only thing to do is keep plodding along. I try to convince myself that that's not defeat, but I know I'm lying.

Moral of the story: If you encounter someone who doesn't speak English, be nice to them. They're probably having a shitty day.

:-P

*sigh*

It's called stepping out

It was this morning. It started to drizzle and I was glad that I'd decided to wear my raincoat instead of the more fashionable suede jacket. I hadn't needed a coat last night anyway, since it's been unseasonably warm--more like April than the first week of February. I was trying to find a taxi, a task which kept my mind off the nausea churning in my stomach and the throb in my temples.

"Why are there always taxis everywhere except when I need one?" I wondered as I stepped around a massive puddle, trying to keep my boots dry. I saw a yellow beacon of hope, stuck my warm out, but watched it turn down a side street. I kept walking, and decided that it was wise I'd woken up so early. Better to have too much time than to be a stressed yobanca in Nehir's unfamiliar neighborhood. I had stayed with her after we'd gone out to the cool rock club, Ooze Venu.

I spotted a couple of cabs waiting for fares--the first in the queue was missing a driver; the second was ready to go but had a dent from a minor accident. I approached the latter, wondering if he was a safe driver, but he waved me to the first cab. I've seen drivers arguing over failing to honor the queue. As I looked at the empty cab, the driver appeared from nowhere.

"Bolge metro'ya, lutfen," I instructed. He asked some question about the metro stop and my yobanca status was quickly evident. He started the meter at 1,70 TL, making me wary. Nehir and Gokce had said it shouldn't cost more than 4 TL to get to Bolge station. A few blurry minutes later I was paying my 3 TL to the driver and braving the rain.

The Izmir metro isn't complicated--there's only one line with about 10 stops on it--but in my hungover state, I wondered which side of the platform to wait on. In the end, I trusted the majority of people who boarded a train for Ucuyor. If I went the wrong way, I could get off and go the other way. It's amazing the lengths I go to to maintain my comfort zone. I'll risk being 10 or 15 minutes late on a morning I have to teach just so I don't have to summon the brainpower to produce broken Turkish.

I have continued to be embarassed on behalf of all expats/yobanca who have ever lived or continue to live in Izmir. They have set Turks' expectations abysmally low. No one thinks that I should be able to speak Turkish (except my students who are more surpried than anything, I think), and so when I produce some crumpled scrap of language, they are always impressed and delighted.

"Your Turkish is so good for five months!"

Are you kidding me?! I know about ten adjectives and five verbs that I feel marginally comfortable using in the present tense. With the help of Nehir and her sweet friends, I'm venturing into the simple past. I'm getting the hang of insterting the question tag into the verb, but Nehir often repeats it with a correction. Not to mention when I mean to say a number (example: one) and end up saying the wrong one (example result: two).

But when I keep my mouth shut in Nehir's company, no one thinks I'm foreign at first blush. We've been able to have some fun with that when she introduces me to new people. My eyes and hair are just dark enough to pass, but I probably seem marginally Turkish because I do such normal things. Despite not knowing the language, I can operate in my neighborhood without serious incident. The bubble of yobanca ignorance always surrounds me, though. Even there, on the metro at 8:30 on a Sunday morning.

I closed my eyes and tried not to think about how the swaying metro made my stomach worse. The discomfort was worth it, though. We had gone to Ooze Venu, a massive rock club in the cool student neighborhood. After paying the 15 TL cover (one free drink coupon included, which, I was happy to discover, I could cash in for a gin and tonic) we passed through the metal detector, had our purses searched, and proceeded down a long white tunnel with curved walls and ceiling. The walls were illuminated with green lights, and it felt like we were walking into a giant beer bottle. The neck opened up into a big, dark room. You descend some stairs and choose from a couple of bars. In the pit were probably 100 little tables for setting drinks on; if you went upstairs from the pit, you could hang out on balconies running the length of the club. Everything was oriented towards the giant stage for performances, but in the meantime, three huge projection screens hanging 20 feet above the ground floor displayed videos for the music blasting: Pink, Good Charlotte, and some others I can't remember.

In a couple spots on walls around the club were scrolling message boards that displayed drink prices: a bottle of beer, 7TL; a mixed drink, 10TL; a Vodka Red Bull, 15TL; a bottle of Jack Daniels', 250TL. The pit was crawling with people, but Nehir and I managed to snag a table that was being reserved for people who hadn't yet arrived. Nehir and I sipped our drinks while we waited for the band to come on.

Nehir and I went "alone" which in Izmir means without a man. Apparently, even if you have five women, you're still "alone." I don't know what the hell they're worried about. I felt ridiculously safe--unappealing even, for the lack of attention we got. One guy approached us but left after Nehir's brush off. I kept looking around the pit and noticed that everyone was looking at everyone else. Ooze Venu definitely had a "see and be seen" kind of vibe. But fun, nonetheless considering that it was my first official outing in /months/!!! All the women I saw were dressed quite conservatively by American standards. A couple short skirts, but no excess of skin. Not by a long way.

The band finally came on and performed some rather exciting Turkish rock. Except for the lyrics (and even those are sometimes in English), it sounded like regular American rock. The bassist hopped around, the drummer went nuts on his drum set, the lead guitarist wailed and rocked around. There were strobes and a smoke machine. People didn't dance as much as I would have expected them too, but they were still having a good time. They were mostly listening to the music and wailing along with the lyrics.

When we finally left at 2:30 in the morning, I was exhausted and not looking forward four-ish hours of sleep, but it was totally worth it. I scheduled my mayhem to occur the night before I come to work and give two exams--so there are almost four hours of sitting around that I got paid to do today. It's easy to summon the energy to teach for 15 or 20 minutes in between a computer review session and 60 or 70 minute written exam. It will be happening again, and there will be more reports of true cool Turkish life..

Yobanca Cooks

My students occasionally ask me what I've been up to lately. If I can remember far enough back to a time when I wasn't at work, the answer usually includes something about food. They ask what I cook and the answer usually includes something with tomatoes. They're so ripe and good in Izmir! American tomatoes taste like they've been sitting in a truck for ages--oh wait! Because they have! So I eat lots of tomatoes, I tell my students, but I try not to talk too much about how embarrassingly simple my food tends to be.

You see, in Izmir, the Family Effect is still in full swing. Americans might be too busy to make food from scratch, but here there tends to be a wife or mother who creates daily deliciousness. Alas, I lack a wife or mother to cook for me, and so I am my own wife and mother. Even something as simple as a jar of tomato sauce is non-existent here. I don't mind making things from scratch--I prefer it, but it's sometimes hard to find the time for more elaborate dishes.

In this week's edition of Yobanca Cooks, we'll take you behind the scenes to show you what I'm cooking up on my weekend to help me make it through the week without ordering out every day.

Beat This Aunt Jemima
Thanks to my mother, I received a canister of Baking Powder. Since I'd been eating flat, sad pancakes for weeks, I took no chances with the baking powder content of my latest batch. I was pleasantly surprised by the Fluff Factor.

These pancakes are so epic that one day I'll be able to win any man's heart over with them. "Do you like fluffy pancakes?" I'll ask, and he'll say yes, because no one doesn't like fluffy pancakes. And with the first bite, he'll be mine forever.


Lentil Soup
The big pot on the stove is bubbling with a super easy lentil soup, adapted from a recipe on the New York Times that I saw a few weeks ago. Turkish lentil soup is often thick, and I'll post a recipe for it soon, but this one reminds me more of home. I love having a big pot of this in the fridge all week so that I have something other than crackers to eat when I'm starving at 9:30 and I get home from teaching all night.

Red Lentil Köfte: The fastest, cheapest, most filling lunch ever
Seriously. Lentils rule--I love them because they can survive in my cabinet till I call on their awesome power. I usually make a red lentil köfte that I can spread on a wrap (like a Turkish burrito, if you will) and smother with spicy ketchup (yes, they have spicy ketchup here). It's not pretty, but it takes approximately 45 seconds to make lunch in the morning. And when you're exhausted or still feeling a little hung over, pretty doesn't matter. ;-)

This is yobanca Turkish food. I'm sure I'm doing something wrong but it's the most Turkish thing I make.

• 1 part red lentils
• 2 parts water
• 1 chicken bullion cube thingy
• 1/2 part wheat bulgar

Wash and simmer lentils in water until almost all of the water is cooked off (15-20 minutes). Mix in wheat bulgar and let it soften in the remaining water. It should be pretty thick at this point.

Meanwhile... Saute:

• onions, minced
• tomatoes, chopped and salted
• garlic, minced
• tomato paste
• lemon juice, mint, cumin powder and chili flakes to taste
• a sugar cube

When satisfied with the flavor and consistency of the tomato/onion concoction (it should be kind of wet, because the lentils are dry, dry, dry!), mix it with the lentils.

Since the köfte is the consistency of cookie-dough, it can be shaped into little discs, or into whatever creative, attractive shapes you choose. I'm friggin' lazy and keep it in a giant mass in tupperwear. Be like me and smear a healthy serving on börek wraps (see below: it's like a giant phyllo, tortilla-like thing--only saltier) and roll like a burrito. If you want to get fancy, you could put some lettuce, a sprig of parsley, and spicy sauce on it--like real Turks.