Random Stuff

Digital-Schmigital
My recent trip to Ayvalık was carefully documented in digital. Due to a computer glitch, they deleted themselves after I formatted my memory card. So Ayvalık is lost. Take my advice: Just go there.

Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?!
Young learners are not so bad. Their grammar is actually amazing, considering that they're 16 years old. They can--and will--happily plow through a grammar worksheet. But when I hand them a speaking activity they freeze up like molasses in January. One girl, bless her, actually cowers when I walk towards her to listen. She keeps her head down, but I can tell when she's noticed my feet approach her--she sort of sways back, trying to get away but! Damn! The wall is there, trapping her. And I'm looking at her with a smile: "Speak a sentence!" I say. And she tries, but her eyelids flutter, she sputters and dies in a whispered failure.

With my incessant smiling and my ludicrous classroom antics (today's included demonstrating "plead" by getting down on my knees--in a skirt--and wrenching on Gizem's hand, all the while crying "Please, please, please?!?!?!" with a look of tragedy on my face), I would think to be non-threatening.

Melt-worthy hot.
Dinner is a slice of bread with cheese spread on it and a cucumber, followed by three times as much sorbet. If it didn't just exit a fridge, I don't want to eat it.

And yet... Turks sit outside--wearing jeans, trousers, long-sleeved shirts, the occasional woman in the çarşaf and the quite usual woman in a headscarf (the mere sight of any of these makes me wriggle; imagine the trickles of sweat that must be pooling and creeping down the backs of their legs, or the disgusting damp pinch of an armpit-soaked t-shirt)--and they drink tea. Hot, steaming tea. In temperatures inching towards 100°. It's unbelievable to me.

People do wear shorts and skirts and tank tops, but it's totally normal to be covered to a degree that would make any American cringe.