Domates--Bir Kilo, Bir Lira

I am living the life: sitting on my balcony in a light breeze, drinking my morning Nescafe and eating my muffin, watching the waves a few hundred meters away.

A truck rolls slowly down the street. The driver is on a loudspeaker blasting: "Fresh tomatoes--one kilo for one lira." The message ricochets off the tall walls created in the corridor of apartment buildings lining Mithat Paşa Street. His son stands in the bed of the truck, yelling a similar message at a lower volume.

The truck--laden with tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers--stops midway between the two small grocery stores in front of my flat. The driver gets out, stands in the street and hollers about his tomatoes again.

Women in the flat directly above the truck start to notice. A couple poke their heads out of windows and lean off of balconies, craning their necks to see the produce. One on the sixth floor confirms the price with the driver and disappears into her flat, only to emerge a few moments later on the street to buy.

A head appears in a second floor window; her friend from the sixth floor buys her tomatoes for her.

The driver, as he looks around at the tall flats and balconies, notices me peering down at him. He hollers about tomatoes at me, but I sink back in my chair, out of his line of sight. Thankfully I didn't have my camera out right then when he looked at me. What a yobancı...

No one else comes to buy and he climbs back into the cab, his son braces himself against the truck walls and they continue their crawl down Mithat Paşa.

This kind of thing happens regularly in İzmir. Farmers with local, fresh produce park their truck--often in the street--and set up temporary shop. I can't imagine that local manavs (green grocers) are happy about this, but what can they do?!

Maybe I never lived in a big-enough city in the States, but this approach to food is entirely new to me. I think that there would be all sorts of red tape stopping my farmer and his son from selling their veggies on the street: no business permit; health and cleanliness standards that someone in a white coat would be willing to quibble about; disturbing the peace with all that hollering.

Then there's the moving traffic violation of his son enjoying the morning sun in the back of the truck... Not to mention the crime of selling tomatoes for so absurdly cheap: At today's exchange with the American dollar, that's 32 cents a pound for fresh, farm-picked tomatoes that actually taste like tomatoes. Beat that Monsanto.

They Grow Up So Fast *sniff sniff*

I had my final K24 class tonight. That's it. As of tonight, the complete path has officially been forged. I can teach two consecutive years of general English.

The final, seventy-minute exam doesn't let you off lightly. My seven students were deep in thought when I called twenty minutes remaining. They barely shifted when I called ten minutes remaining. I expected ferocious sighs when I called five minutes, two minutes, one minute, but they were absorbed: tackling English.

When they finished, and I had collected their exams, they just stood there awkwardly. No one wanted to be the first to leave. There was foot shuffling and weight shifting and words started and stopped. How to say goodbye?

I inherited the group at K16--they were my first class at PEÉ and they've been both my favorite and most-feared class (favorite because they are adults with life experience and they are serious about studying; most-feared because they are adults with life experience and they are serious about studying). I was so challenged by them. There were days I absolutely dreaded teaching them grammar because they would argue with me about it. However, it forced me to a level of preparedness that I otherwise would have been too lazy to achieve. They made me better.

"Thank you," they said to each other and to me.

"My pleasure," I returned with a smile.


P.S. I've been here 256 days.


P.P.S. I've got four new mosquito bites. *sigh*


P.P.P.S. I've already got a class starting to replace my K24. It's K1. From discussing complex hypothetical situations in the past to "Hi, my name is..."

The Grass Is Always Greener...

Sometimes I really don't know about this whole living abroad thing. What's wrong with me?! Why can't I just be satisfied in good ol' North America?

The weekends are the hardest part of being overseas. You'd think I would relish the time off, especially my new-found time off. My weekends that are actually weekends. Forty-eight solid hours of unplugged-from-the-job. Sweet. Or not.

Usually on Wednesday or Thursday night (if I'm lucky to put it off for so long), depression and/or extreme frustration set in. Whatever insubstantial human interaction I've had that day replays over and over in my mind until I've become frustrated and wounded by it.

For example, today we had the flat cleaned. It was basically a hazardous area and two women spent 5 hours (that's 10 total for you math challenged) cleaning and shaking rugs and mopping and bleaching and windexing and dusting and wiping and de-greasing. The woman in the flat below us was less-than-thrilled by the noise at 5pm, so she came up to ask what the hell was going on.

I opened the door to her grumpy face, asked sweetly in my horrible Turkish if she was ok, and watched her and the cleaning ladies had an exchange since I am incapable. Her husband is sick and the noise is bothering him. Ok. We'll keep it down. Have a good day. She looked slightly less grumpy after I kept smiling and apologizing at her, but still. Fucking dour.

Anyway, I decided that I would give her and her ill husband a couple of my fresh strawberry/ginger/vanilla muffins that I just made tonight. Part of me doesn't know if she'll eat them--Turks (and here goes my fed-up over-generalization, so write this off but I have to type it) don't like to try new things--and wonders if she'll just throw them away. It's my irrational, "Everybody hates us because we're the yobancıs of the building, and what kind of young women live alone all this way from our families and occasionally have a man come to our flat" behavior. But I decided that so be it if she hates us, or hates my muffins, or if her husband is allergic to cinnamon or something.

Maybe my tiny little peace offering will be excepted and even enjoyed. The possibility that she might throw them away is a small price to pay for establishing American generosity and kindness abroad. But as I made the muffins, and then cleaned up from the mess, wondering if she could hear my dishes clinking, and if she was maybe gritting her teeth, I thought about what I'm doing here.

What AM I doing here?! Learning how to teach, I suppose. And trying to make friends, though it's incredibly difficult to meet women (they're at home all the time--another exaggeration), and the men I've met either want to be my boyfriend or nothing at all (that's not really an exaggeration). So. Ok. That leaves me with... right. No one, basically (after my boyfriend and all my co-workers have gone to work).

I'm trying to make lemonade, but on Wednesdays and Thursdays these lemons are really f-ing sour. At least tomorrow I'll be busy again and I can prolong these depressed thoughts for another five days.

Knit Like A Turk

I was watching some home crafts show today and couldn't resist making a video (of horrible quality...) of this woman knitting. For you Western-World Yarn Fiends out there, you'll probably be interested in the way she wraps the yarn and carries it in her right hand. I've never seen a Rightie knit with such speed before... Good luck figuring out what she's doing...

She Has Got Fire Hair

I Don't Write The Exam, I Just Give It
One of my classes just had their exam to mark the end of the fifth month of English classes. Every exam has a writing topic, some of which are dreadfully boring. But the K5 topic is mildly entertaining in that it serves my vain self-interest: describe your teacher (clothes and appearance); talk about her past, present and future life.

It's an awkward exam to proctor since they keep peering at me, studying my face and clothes while I try to ignore them. They think the more they flatter me, the higher their grade will be. False. Here are the gems:

• In this day she looks fit like be everytime. [Thanks, I do try to stay slim.]
• She is a good teacher, really. [Really?!] She wants to be more good teacher and I think; she is trying for it. [I am. This is true and I'm thrilled you noticed.]
• She don't make up but she looks nice. She isn't tall. She is medium and she isn't fat.
• She has got fire hair (dark yellow). [That would just be bad-ass.]
• She isn't a pants. [Correct. She is a teacher.]

Word travels fast at PEÉ. Students from different classes and across levels are friends. They talk. These students [exam results above] found out weeks ago that I'd hung out with a different class and demanded equal treatment.

"When you finish K6," I told them. "Finish Elementary and we can go somewhere." That was the deal with the other class.

Their ideas for "hanging out" have morphed over the weeks. What started as dinner at a fasıl restaurant [traditional Turkish music] became going to a waterfront cafe and smoking hookah became, most recently, paint-balling. To which I flat out refused. I have to maintain my dignity somehow and running around some field getting shot at by my students isn't the way to do it.


Yobancı Like Me
Tonight I was walking home when I paused for a bus to drive by. A woman standing on my left peered at me and asked in slow, overly-articulated syllables: "Soo-per market?"

"Do you need help in English?" I asked, pulling off my headphones.

Her eyes got wide, her face lit up and she gripped my arm. "Oh bless you! Where are you from?!"

"America."

"Well yeah. Where?"

"California. You?"

"New Jersey."

"Why are you here?"

"Tour." We had a boring conversation not worth recounting. Anyway, I helped her across the street and took her to the soo-per market which was right there but she never would have known it. I didn't bother telling her that no one would have understood her "soo-per market" because it's not a Turkish word. I mean, seriously. What the hell would you do if someone tugged on your sleeve on the sidewalk and clearly enunciated: manav?!??! You'd blink a few times, look at them like they were a fucking crack-pot and walk off, that's what.

Antalya...

My four day vacation to Antalya was horribly unlucky. It rained 80% of the time. In a city that's made to be enjoyed in the sun, I found myself thwarted by weather.

However, the third day was clear and I made the most by going to Aspendos, a little village north-east of Antalya.

That was really the only thing interesting that is worth talking about. But it's the perfect example of why you should travel alone.

Getting to Aspendos required one bus or dolmuş after another. OK. Well, four isn't that many, I suppose, but it took a few hours to finally arrive. I could have taken a tour but screw that. I wandered around the giant stadium of Aspendos and eventually met the man dressed as a gladiator.

I chided him quite a bit, laughing at him all decked out in his costume that could have landed him a role in Troy. I giggled as I took pictures of the tourists taking pictures with him. He got a bit sheepish after awhile, especially when I asked him:

"Işin ne? What's your job?"
"Bu. This," with a gesture to the outfit.

I chatted with him for awhile about the history of the stadium and then got him to draw me a map to get to the aqueduct nearby. Before I left him in peace, I got a photo of us together. You know. My new boyfriend. :-p

I set out on a 20-ish minute walk, eating an orange. Tour buses had stopped in the distance so people could take panoramas similar to mine. As I continued down the road after the last tour bus had gone, I spied a Turkish woman. By the time I passed her, she was sitting in a white lawn chair in her yard, eating oranges picked fresh from her trees.

"Merhaba," I said in Turkish.

"Merhaba! Gel! Gel! Otur! Otur! Come, come! Sit, sit." And she wouldn't have my polite refusals for the orange so I ate another one. After a few minutes, her daughter appeared. We chatted for awhile.

Where are you from? What's your job? Where's your family? How long are you here for? Who are you traveling with? Are you scared to be alone? Where are you going? I pointed with orange-juice-stained fingers to the aqueduct in the distance. Less than a kilometer from their house. The daughter took me to wash my hands at a faucet behind the house, and then took me through the orchard (picking plums as we went), my voluntary tour guide.

Özge kept asking me questions. Are you married? Do you have children? Do you want to get married? Do you want to have children? Are you happy? I asked her: Are you married? No. Do you want to get married? Not really. Do you want to have children? Meh. What do you do now that you finished school? Sell jewelry to tourists at the aqueduct site.

We passed a cemetery and I asked if it was OK to take a picture. I talked about the difference between American cemeteries. We crested the hill to the aqueduct and I was pretty excited to be so close. She showed her table with the jewelry. There was also a juice press for making OJ. She made me a glass, free.

Then we climbed up the tower into the aqueduct and sat on top of the world for awhile. We exchanged contact information--cell phone and Facebook names. She invited me back to stay with her. If only it weren't a lifetime away from Izmir.

We climbed down and waited for the bus for approximately 14 seconds before she announced it wouldn't be coming soon, and we should explore the old house ruins to pass time. I shrugged. Why not...

Then she took me on Tour Özge--up a hill, under a fence meant to keep people organized and law-abiding, and through absurd amounts of wildflowers, bushes, shrubs, nettles, burred, thorned plants and more. Over the next hour, we discovered turtles, snails, flowers, ruins, trails, no trails, rocks perfect for sitting and looking out, and the way all the way back to the stadium where I'd originally started.

By the time we finished, I was exhausted, sore, thirsty, bleeding (from falling into the nettles), mildly sunburned and dusty, dusty, dusty. I finally got onto the dolmuş to head back to civilization and could do nothing but sit in my own stunned silence.

(Check out the album for a jumpy companion photo sequence...)