Why it is good to be a Libra.

When there is one Libra, it is all about ME.
When there are two Libras, it is all about US.

* posted by nat 5:50 PM

The capacious hold-all is a bedside table. It hums incessantly!

(Kudos to Kevan, as ever.)

* posted by nat 5:48 PM

Sunday, September 29, 2002

Have I mentioned lately that I LOVE THIS CITY!!!!!!!!?

I have? Oh, good. Just checking.

* posted by nat 12:38 PM

Ercan turned up yesterday with four lüfer, bags of salad and a bottle of rakı, Fife cooked it, we ate it - it was delicious! And a very good excuse to drink rakı! Although typically, the night was the first it's been too cold to sit outside, and I've got half a jigsaw all over the dining table, so we pulled in the table from the balcony, and ate in the middle of the lounge. Which was nice.

And so I have learnt my first word in Turkish that I didn't know in English. Lüfer is, apparently, bluefish. Very good, and very cheap at the moment, too! And goes very nicely with rakı...

Side note: you know you're getting on TOO well with your housemate when you synchronise within a month, right down to waking up several times in the night before, at the same time...

I have to go and finish that jigsaw now, before Ercan gets it into his head to bring round any more Turkish delicacies to cook.

* posted by nat 12:29 PM

Saturday, September 28, 2002

Mmm. Let me tell you about apricots. I have already told some of you about the apricots, except I have hardly any credit on my mobile left and it's down to emergency level now, thus no more serious texting about apricots. Roll on Tuesday. Pay Day!

Anyway. The apricots. Almost as good as the almonds. (The evil caterwauling muezzin has just started up. Gah. Distracting. the lyrical muezzin does not work weekends, evidently.)

Anyway. The almonds are good, all lovely and sweet and delicious, but the apricots - semi-dried, but still all sticky and sweet, juicy and gooey when you bite into them, come in large bags from Fruit Seller Man for a few million each. They taste divine, and you just can't stop eating them. And then you eat far too many and give yourself stomachache.

There is yet more pratting about the election. Ban a person here, ban a party there, and no, the current government still doesn't look like it's going to win, and keeps muttering about postponing the whole thing. Presumably until they can fix it totally. It is fast becoming the main topic of conversation classes. It's getting repetitive.

Am on Chapter 3! (Getting overexcited here, think there are going to be eight of them... oh, just wait...) It's strange, the minute I stop roleplaying, I end up writing again. Actually, it's not so strange, there's plenty of people who have the same problem... I went down to Kadıköy yesterday, went to a net cafe and logged into the mushes for the first time since I got here. Half an hour cost me 250,000. This confused me when I asked how much and he said, "two-fifty", as I automatically assumed he's just knocked four zeroes off instead of three and offered up two and half million. Embarrassment ensued... Anyhow, the equivalent of ten pence for half an hour. That's just silly. The dolmus ride just to get there costs three times as much! I must find a Net Cafe closer to home. There must be one somewhere.

Anyhow, I am going to get this worksheet sorted and then I am off home. There's a just-started jigsaw puzzle at home that I found in the cupboard yesterday with my name on it! We found two big lever arch files and a load of magazines and books, too. Yay! not to mention we have but up a large map of the world on the lounge wall. We have decor! Yay us!

I AM going to lesson plan now. No, really...

* posted by nat 2:40 PM

Wednesday, September 25, 2002

It is one of those silly days, where it is too hot to move, the only air outside is heavy and sinks straight to the bottom of your lungs, and as a consequence strange things happen.

Fun with the Nestlé gang, when at five minutes before the end of the lesson the mobile rang and they all said, "It's yours!" So I looked at it, didn't recognise the caller, and switched it off. Then wondered why it had turned into Turkish, and then realised I was actually holding someone else's phone! Cue: "It's not mine, it's yours!" See. I have taught them useful, needed language!

Went back home and slept, read, tried to write for a few hours (I'm in Chapter 2, page 10 meltdown... must get through this... it's got a plot, for once in my life!), then decided to get back into school before it started raining. I opened the door, and was confronted by a small man on the stairs in front of me (we're on the sixth and a half floor, so halfway up the flight) carrying an eight-foot long five-foot wide piece of window pane - window, metal and all. Now our stairwell is quite narrow. It wasn't really working. So he reversed the entire thing into our flat hallway, and then reversed out again in order to execute the turn. Yasmin suggested it would be less dangerous to throw it out the window. I left him to it and took the lift.

**

Last night with my Late Ints we were scripting a telephone conversation: one group writes their line, someone comes up and records it onto tape, then the next group do the same. The instructions they were given seperately were as follows:
1. You're inviting and old friend out to dinner. You haven't seen him for a long time and you're really desperate to see him.
2. Your friend calls, but unfortunately you're really busy this week. Try to make plans for some time in the future.

I didn't give them any help, and this is what followed:

Sinem's group: Hi, this is Sinem. How's it going?
Metin's group: Hi Sinem. Not bad. And you?
Sinem: I'm fine too. I started to work in a textile firm. How is your job?
Metin: I am busy recently. I spent a lot of time in the company. I hope this job is good for you.
Sinem: Thanks. I miss you a lot. What about you? Maybe we can go off out tonight. Is it OK for you?
Metin: Sorry. I want to accept your invite but I must work tonight... again. Maybe next month.
Sinem: If you\re anxious for the bill, don't worry, I'll pay for you. I think you have another reason but you can't tell this to me. Am I right?
Metin: I have no hidden agenda! You make me shocked! So you must know money isn't important for me. How could you forget the presents which I bought for you?
Sinem: How I can forget? They were too horrible. They were all imitation!
Metin: You make me crazy! Liar woman! I haven't got time to interest with you. Don't call me again. I am busy man. Sorry bye. *click*

(And I'm even more proud of them for the fact that once we played it back and got feedback done to board they managed to self correct just about everything, and improve the language. Hurrah!)

* posted by nat 2:51 PM

Tuesday, September 24, 2002

So at 7:45 this morning, as we were driving along Bagdat Street, it was 21 degrees Celsius. Hot, hot, and hazy. Lots of fun with the Nestlé elementary gang, we learnt a bunch of vocab (if it was on the table, we learnt the word for it - cup of coffee, ashtray, notebook, purse, mobile, etc.), then did "Whose is that?" and messed around with possessives. By the end of hour two we'd got on to:

"Is this my cup of coffee?"
"No, it's hers."
"Or maybe it's his..."
"Yes, it's mine!"

And other fantastically inane conversations. Lots of fun. One of the men is called Okay, so I'm having to elimanate that from my vocabulary (Okay, let's look at page 12, means that ONLY Okay opens his book at the moment. Bizarre.)

At lunchtime I put my washing out and dried in one hour flat.

And then I came into school and the air conditioning's on full blast. Shiver. I feel a song coming on... at the weekend, I think.

I'm going to be teaching little children beginners, starting next week! Well... 9 to 11 year olds, not that little. Cue half an hour of "Nat says" in order to learn classroom vocab... and as their first class is going to be on my birthday, I think I feel a song coming on there too...

***
Normal everyday conversations:

Engin the Admin Man came up to me yesterday as I was photocopying, made some strange designs in the air above the copier, and said "Water!"

I looked at him. Looked at the photocopier, which was water free, then looked obligingly blank.

More hand waving. "Water, you know! Musluk!"

I start to back away. Looking very endearing. "Turkçe yok?"

More frantic handwaving. "In the kitchen, in the toilet!"

"Oh, taps!"

"Aha, yes, taps, thank you!"

* posted by nat 3:37 PM

Monday, September 23, 2002

I have money again! Hurrah for the Döviz and their rather nice money-changing rates! Now I can go and buy yet more dried apricots from Fruit-Seller Man. Delicious.

Last night really was silly, we flopped in front of the TV and channel hopped for ages and ages, had anohter abortive attempt at trying to tune things in (where IS National Geopgraphic, darnit? And German channels, and BBC World - anything's better than CNN!)

And then we discovered 24, which is only on the second episode, but I think we might be hooked.

Oh dear.

* posted by nat 10:49 AM

Sunday, September 22, 2002

I managed to get to the restaurant over the road and back last night without breaking the other ankle. So that's something!

This morning was a slight disaster, with my ever-bouncier upper-intermediate class, doing defining and non-defining relative clauses. The clauses in themselves weren't a problem, but the question of where to put the commas was. We ended up just going through piles of examples, working out where the commas went, and then trying to work out why. Poor things. And poor me as well! By the end they'd asked so many questions and got themselves into a complete tangle... We've just about managed to ascertain that the books definition is way too clean cut and, more importantly, I do exactly the opposite of what the book says. As usual.

Gaaaaaaah. And then I was looking at what I'm going to be doing with my Intermediates on Tuesday... you'll never guess.... relative clauses. Shoot me now!

I'm off to sunbathe on the balcony, it's all I'm fit for.

* posted by nat 1:05 PM

Saturday, September 21, 2002

I've just seen Kat off on the ferry to the airport. Waaah! Back to three in the house again. Unless Ercan's around for the weekend, which is likely, as I saw him at lunchtime, looking very smart and post-job interview.

Thursday, though. Thursday. On Thursday we went to the islands. It was beautiful and clear - the first time I've been able to see all the way to the European shore from Suadiye, and over behind the islands to the mainland in the south as well. We took a ferry to Büyükada, the biggest of the Prince's Islands, in dazzling sunshine and bright blue sea. It's not far, just over half an hour. The views were wonderful, although Kat got accosted by a man sitting beside us who was desperate to show us photos of him taken on cruise ships with lots of models. Miss Burger King figured, as did several other with equally silly names. We all fled down the gang plank (with Ercan teaching us useful words such as 'womaniser') and onto the island.

The best thing about the islands isn't the old nineteenth century Armenian villas, nor the forests, the small coves, the small shops that look like they're seeling things that have been there sine the thirties, but it's the fact there are no cars there. After the constant noise and traffic in Istanbul, it's something of a shock to find yourself being run down by nothing more than a horse and phaeton, or possibly a bicycle. Fife and Ercan went to look for a beach, and Kat forced me to buy ice-cream (really she did!) - but it was cinnamon flavour and rather nice - and we looked at the views for a bit, watched the cormorants fishing, and then went to investigate horses. And investigate we did, we were rather particular. There weren't many particularly badly cared-for ones, but some of them looked a little peaky, and all the really healthy ones seemed to be tied up and having a rest, so we'd just about given up, and were heading back down to the main road, when another pair drew up who looked very frisky, so we piled onto that on. We got a long, leisurely tour all the way round the island - the villas and the views, little bits of history, and park and forest land; incredibly relaxing and very beautiful. There were lots of birds about, a few of which I recognised, and vast amounts of fauna, most of which Kat recognised. We disappointed our driver though, as Kat's film ran out, and I'd forgotten to change the battery in my camera, so he didn't get to take many photos of us, which seemed to upset him as he had told us what a good photographer he was!

We met Fife and Ercan back at the village end of the island, lusted after a few villas, and took the ferry back at sunset. Perfect timing. Then we went out for dinner at Emmim. Yum! I haven't been there in the evening before, only at lunchtime, so it was interesting to sit down, and have the mezes come over immediately, accompanied with some very obsequious waiters who piled our plates high, and we stuffed ourselves, then repaired to Fıçı, naturally, for some drinking.

Friday we went to Taksim on the dolmus and met an excessively sexy Turkish man who lives in Blackpool(!). Drat. We did some leisurely shopping on Istiklal, and wound our way down to the Golden Horn, crossed the bridge, and took the ferry back at sunset again. It was a wonderful sunset, and watching the sun setting behind Sultanahmet is possibly the best view to be had in Istanbul.

Dilek and Kerem rather sweetly sorted my phone out so it now tells me where I am all the time, which I stupidly find quite exciting, especially as it changes almost every ten metres - it told me that I was on Istiklal street, and only walking twenty metres down a side street, it was quite clear that I'd changed districts. I know, I know, I'm easily amused...

Foot update: not so swollen but really don't need to do all this walking. Owww.
Money update: have 9 million left of advance. I suspect I will have to change some more money!

* posted by nat 1:40 PM

Wednesday, September 18, 2002

I love it when students shoot themselves in the foot.

Yesterday, we were messing arround with collocations with 'go' and doing a Find Someone Who, as you do, and one of the questions was Find Someone Who goes to football matches regularly. At feedback stage, Metin pipes up with "I only watch it on TV, and there's a very important game tomorrow, Galatasaray against...." At this point, the rest of the class, who are fervently Fenerbahçe drown him out, but once I've shut them up I say: "Yes Metin, and where are you going to be tomorrow night?"

Watching the realisation dawn on his face that he's got class tonight, and if he's not there I'll know why, was really rather amusing. I suggested he could pop up at breaktimes to find out the score on the TV in the canteen. He didn't look impressed by that, funnily enough. - I bet he doesn't come, though.

Kat came for the last half an hour and quizzed the class about souvenir shopping and suchlike, and it worked really well.

Yasmin has bought a tree. It's called Fred. And the geraniums on our balcony are looking far less dead - there are flowers appearing!

* posted by nat 2:21 PM

Tuesday, September 17, 2002

Yesterday we went to the Grand Bazaar and met a man who told us ALL about carpets. It was quite a lesson - we were in his little shop for well over an hour, umming an aahing over kilims and suchlike. And he got Kat all dressed up in strange regional costume things, and I took a photo of her, surrounded by carpets draped all over everywhere. Much apple tea was consumed - by me.

And today, finally, the sun is out!

* posted by nat 12:04 PM

Monday, September 16, 2002

Bandages and great big blue painkillers are GREAT! But my ankle is still about four times the size it should be, and it's turning a particularly iiiiiinteresting shade of purple.

Yasmin and I went to pick Kat up on Saturday, and got drowned getting from the dolmus to the SeaBus. Large thunderstorm. Then we froze on the catamaran due to evil aircon, then we got off at the other end and got drenched again, at which point we got in a taxi, got to the airport, and stole some of Kat's clothes to change into. It was... interesting.

But Kat's here, hurrah! And yesterday we took the ferry to Besiktas and went to Ortaköy, ate kumpir, sat in a cafe and drank vast amounts of tea, played a very close backgammon game (5-4 - maybe I do have a hope in hell of winning one of these days!) then wanderd round the backstreets, the little stalls, then went back to Kadıköy, had a big salady-veggy dinner, then curled up in Arkoda. All very nice.

And today it's raining again! That's the last time I let any friends come to visit!

* posted by nat 9:10 AM

Saturday, September 14, 2002

So I didn't quite manage to break my leg...

Last night we were up on the balcony, playing Bantumi and Boggle (I haven't quite got the hang of Bantumi yet, but I'm getting there) and then Yasmin and I decided we needed take away, so we phoned down to our friendly restuarant across the road, and a few minutes later went down to collect it. Fine, we picked it up - very hot pide, and so I wasn't concentrating, which is my excuse and I'm sticking to it! - walked off, down the steps, and then down the kerb onto the road. At least that was the idea, I didn't quite make it. My ankle snapped sideways and down I went, with a nice bend in the ankle that really shouldn't have been there, but luckily I'd only got sandals on so I came straight out of them and it snapped back in again, but it was excessively painful. Luckily I wasn't in the middle of the road or I'd have been run over as well!

So the waiters came dashing out and after five minutes I let them pick me up, went back into the restaurant and ate dinner, with them bringing out cold cans of coke every five minutes for me to shove on my ankle, then I hopped back home and put it on ice and then heat, and discovered I'd run out of Iboprufen. Clever.

And this morning it was so bad I couldn't put any weight on it, so it was ice and heat until nine, then a twenty minute hobble into work, three hours of teaching - the lovliest, bounciest, most motivated class I've seen in a long time - being pulled up and down the stairs by Murat, Durdane and others, Nick sent Galip out to buy pills for me, Ayse's lending me cream and bandages, and one of my new students is a GP! So I'm in safe hands, and everyone is being as lovely as usual.

And in a bit I have to go and pick Kat up from the airport. Yasmin's coming too, just in case I try to sprain the other ankle...

But I DO have a mobile phone now! Just no numbers, as they're all in my old phone. At home.

* posted by nat 12:23 PM

Friday, September 13, 2002

Ok, so first I'm going to read the end of Watty's Wonderful Epic, and then I'm going to go buy a phone. Give me words, words, amazing words any day... *fangirls Watty*

* posted by nat 12:44 PM

To Kadıköy yesterday to play backgammon, wander around, more cheese pide and then chilling over a Rakı in Karga, deliberating mobile phones...

And today Durdane gave me my advance, after yesterday's little kerfuffle in setting up my bank account that went something like this:

Over phone. "Can you tell me, for security, the second and fourth letters of your mother's maiden name?"

Me: "A, G"

Him: "No, that's wrong."

Me: ...

Him: "Have you tried writing it down?"

Me: "I have written it down, you twerp." Gives all other letters of mother's maiden name.

Him: "No, still wrong."

Me: "No, I think you're the one who has it wrong. Slams down phone and swears loudly, goes into school, wails apolegetically at Durdane, the super-lovely accountant, who drops everything, goes round to the bank and kicks major rear-end, and sorts everything out in under two hours. Which is majorly fast for Turkish banks.

And today Durdane pays me in cash. I'm a little bemused about this, I don't quite see the point of having a lira bank account yet. One in sterling, yes. But I can't face setting that up right now.

Yasmin has a mobile phone, but no-one to call. Blatantly I need a phone so I can call my flatmate. After all, we're on different weekends (sob!) so we hardly ever see each other - not that it's stopping us right now, as the timetables aren't full we're just working whenever we feel like. Anyway, she's been in to wail unhappily (sort of) at Ben today, so it's going to be "looked into". Yay! crosses appendages

Anyway. Now I have money in an envelope. I'm off to get a Nokia so I can play snake. And Kat is arriving tomorrow for a week! I've got friends! Hurrah! Heaven only knows how I'm going to get to the airport though... I have to make it through today first without killing myself, I've tried to break my leg several times. That's Friday 13th for you.

* posted by nat 12:25 PM

Wednesday, September 11, 2002

Yay! Have lovely Intermediate class, who spent the first fifteen minutes looking at me strangely but seem to be getting used to me now. The moment I realised this was going to be a really good class was when at first break the majority of them disappeared out onto the balcony to smoke, and I was left inside with two of the men, and the following conversation ensued.

"You don't smoke, then?"

"No, but we do work for Philip Morris."

I could see this one coming. "What department are you in?"

"Sales." Said with such beautiful irony. And they didn't seem at all offended that I felt the need to giggle at that for rather a long time.

And yes, I went to Nestlé this morning, but it was mostly Nurperi and I sitting around as they seemed to have forgotten to tell the students to come. We got two of them eventually and placement tested them, but other than that it was plenty of sitting around and drinking tea. Which was all very well and that, but I really didn't need that at eight o'clock in the morning!

* posted by nat 2:22 PM

Tuesday, September 10, 2002

Went for a "quick drink" at Fıçı at seven - left at about eleven-thirty. Hmm.

Tonight I have my first lesson, then tomorrow morning I might have to go to Nestlé to placement test Early Elementarys (noooo! heeeeeeelp! noooooooo!) - except it's not finalised yet so I might not have to. Stupid companies.

So had better go and plan a possibly non-existent placement test lesson. But everything is all right really, because:

* posted by nat 12:13 PM

Monday, September 09, 2002

Glossing over the Saturday night out, in which everyone got far too drunk and did lots of very silly things...

On Sunday I came into school for conversation class, and then afterwards Ercan, Fife and I drove up the coast on this side til we got to Anatoli Hisarı, and in front of the tiny castle that's left there's a wonderful little café where we sat and had pancakes and watched all the ships going up and down, the sun on the water, everything... Ercan looked at us, shook his head and said "I think you are falling in love with Istanbul."

It's that obvious!

Later we drove up the hill to visit a bunch of his friends, and sat up on the roof of their house, eating dried mulberries and watching the sun slowly sink down, turning from orange to red to pink as it sunk into higher levels of pollution.

* posted by nat 9:13 AM

Saturday, September 07, 2002

I really should mention that on Friday I cleaned. De-dusted every last square inch of my room I could find. Had a Shallow Grave momnet when I pulled the mattress off its base and went "Eeek! There's something under here!" But disappointingly it turned out to be just more blankets. I vacuumed everywhere. I washed the net curtains. I started cleaning the windows but by this point I decided I was getting just a little too Turkish, so I stopped.

Yasmin and I checked out the restaurant opposite our flat, and it's really rather nice. And they even do deliveries! This could be dangerous...

I was chatting with Okan today, his girlfriend's Slovak (and coming over, hopefully, hurrah!), so we pieced together a bit of Czech and Slovak between us, and then I explained that the first time I'd been in the Czech Repulic I'd lived in this small town south of Prague that hardly anyone's ever heard of called Príbram, and Okan says "Oh, I know a guy from there..."

* posted by nat 3:07 PM

As our numbers of days off together are limited (howl!) Fife and Ercan went off to the islands on Thursday, and Yasmin and I headed up to Kadıköy and took the ferry over to Eminönü, dodging large ships, watching all the birds watching us, and docking just inside the Golden Horn and spilling off, under the underpass and then up and quite quickly into the Egyptian spice market.

The European side is another world, suddenly we're tourists again and there's English everywhere, there's the looking, and sometimes there's the comments. And there's also the spices, the sweets, the stalls bursting with strange and not-so-strange things, the hustle and the bustle and the noise. I decide that the only way out is to buy something, and the only way not to buy two tons of sticky lokum is to buy... a sponge. They were hanging off loops of string from the ceiling, so I stood up on tiptoe - having chunky sandals to balance on the end of works for this - and got the whole patter of how they were Turkish sponges and which one would I like and that was a good one, and so was that one, and that one I'd just put my hand on was good too and on and on until I made up my mind and pulled one off, and it was weighed and put in a little plastic bag, all of that was fine, until he gave it to his son who rushed off and put it in a little machine that not only heat-sealed the bag, but vacuum-packed it as well.

A vacuum-packed sponge is a rather sad sight.

We threaded our way out and up and over, through the back streets of market stalls and hawkers until we found a small cafe and stopped for lunch: I used my fork to eat my marrow and mashed potato, and my knife to liberate the sponge, which began to look like a sponge once it got some oxygen back inside it. We wandered around the outside of the Blue Mosque, which was enough to look at just in itself without going inside, and then down and through some of the more upmarket little touristy shops, which was slightly hassly due to the repetitive nature of "Hello - how are you - where are you from?" that kept coming at us from all directions. I'm considering getting a t-shirt made so all I have to do is point at the answers. We got a little variety at then end of the street, with "Hello! Hello? You dropped something!" Neither of us stopped, or really looked back, but he carried on anyway with "That was my heart..." at which point we couldn't manage to keep a straight face.

We got round the corner and it started to rain, and within seconds it had turned into a deluge and we found ourselves sheltering under the awning of a tiny water shop, but it wasn't long before the owner made us come in, as after about a minute the street,which was on quite a slope, had turned into a river and after five minutes was dislodging pot-plants and carrying away newsstand signs. Shopkeepers with umbrellas were ferrying people from one shop to the next, and after about ten minutes we chanced it to the next shop which was a cake shop, so we had to leave quite quickly for sanity's sake, and then on the corner found a large pottery shop, so in we went.

It was a large shop with all the goods spread out for display on two levels, and unfortunately there was a leak in the roof and all the men were hard at work with mops and buckets and brushes, however one in particular still had time to insist on talking to us, after working out quite quickly that we obviously couldn't afford a single thing in the shop, and we sat down and chatted and had a few glasses of tea and watched them work, before they took a break and we sat down and chatted. We ended up in there for well over an hour and a half, and got educated about carpets, the bad tourism season, leaks and pipes and other really useful Turkish words.

And then we walked. Back round the coast, over the bridge and then steeply up the hill to the main Istiklal Caddesi (which I can't spell) shopping street, where we mooched straight into a café and Yasmin taught me to play backgammon. She won 5-2 but given I'm a beginner I think that's quite reasonable, anyhow, I'm hooked. Eventually Sadat turned up (Yasmin's sort-of-ex-now-looking-like-might-be-ex-ex) and from there it was down the road to a bar, where he got into a heated discussion with an American who works for Time Out about international politics etc., which was difficult to comprehend as they both seemed to be arguing the same things, nevertheless, they were happy, and I had an exciting accident flushing the squat toilet and managed to soak my trousers which was slightly embarrassing but also very amusing for just about the entire bar.

Then we went and ate künefe, which is a Turkish dessert and as such is really rather gorgeous, popped back down the road, met up with some of Sadat's friends and got going on the rakı - lots and lots of rakı - which made driving home, when we finally got round to it, very late, very interesting.

* posted by nat 2:46 PM

Wednesday, September 04, 2002

So last night I drank my first rakı. Yum. I'm hooked.

This morning I went to buy bread from the cafe down the road - sesame roll, delicious - and then I found a peynirci aka. cheese shop. So I poked my head in. This was a mistake. As my Turkish is functionally up to buying things (and trying things) I tried half the contents of the shop and then bought a large lump of cheese. Which cost all of my change - but it is good cheese.

Off to the supermarket now to debate between hummus and patlıçan. Mmmmm. Foooood.

* posted by nat 1:48 PM

Tuesday, September 03, 2002

So I get into school this morning - well, more like this afternoon, actually, as most of the morning is spent doing laundry (note to self: it helps if you wait until after the spin cycle to take the washing out, oh yes) and nattering to Yasmin, and so eventually I get to school, and I replan, and I'm just beginning to get psyched up when Ben arrives and says "Oh, by the way, your class is cancelled." And I pause, and there's this little whooshing sound by my right ear where all the pressure's just escaping and I say, "Tomorrow as well?" And he says, "Yes, till next week," and I say, "Oh," and spend the next two hours going through a folder of materials, because it needs doing, and while part of me feels happy to have a couple more nights off, the rest of me is feeling all deflated and mopey, because I want to get back and teach to make sure I haven't forgotten how!

The three of us got home at various times and ended up on the balcony, eating lunch, watching the rain come down and cause a flood on the road under the railway bridge after about 10 minutes of rain. I'm not convinced about the drains there, and we'll have to find the long way round to go to avoid being soaked by aquaplaning cars, as there isn't much of a pavement under the bridge.

Yasmin unpacked all her exciting curry powders and pastes, and I celebrated this fact by managing, somehow, to knock the shelf off its supports inside the cupboard and send them all crashing down, resulting in a lot of mess and broken glass, although luckily it was only a jar of black pepper that broke, nothing irreplaceable. Yasmin was going "Don't move! Dont move!" and pulling bits of glass out from around my feet, but I still managed to step in some so my foot is all covered in plasters underneath now, as well as on top, from the blisters I gave myself going on long walks in a pair of flip-floppy sandals. I crept out of the house and back to school very, very carefully.

* posted by nat 2:53 PM

Monday, September 02, 2002

I have just realised I now officially have a retired *cough* kept woman for a mother. Does this mean I get to feel old now?

* posted by nat 5:19 PM

Fife has a tame Turk (a "sort-of boyfriend", hurrah!) who has, rather usefully, a car. So we met up on Saturday night for a drink, and getting on for eleven-thirty he got a phone-call and said 'My friends are in Taksim, shall we go?' So we went. Driving with a not-quite-sober Turk is, to put it mildly, SCARY. But we made it, into the bright lights and utter chaos of the big city. Parked in a car park of Taksim square, ran into half-a-dozen Turks he knew, and wandered through the crowds down to a bar playing Salsa. It was fun!

But it meant that we got quite a late start Saturday; spent a long time trying to raise Andrew but once we did Ercan drove us all back over to the European side again (his driving skills improve beyond question when he's sober - no weaving between four lanes - when there's three marked - at 120kph...) and we parked right under the first bridge in Ortaköy then walked down to the water, collecting the largest, most incredibly gorgeous baked potato on the way, then sat and ate it while waiting for the boat, which took us on an hour-long round trip up to the second bridge and back again, via very expensive looking houses on the shores, hundreds of people fishing and of course that castle. Then we sat and had a glass of tea before driving further up the coast (past yet more palatial mansions, and the fishing hordes) before stopping for börek, and wending our way slowly back. It was rather laid back and pleasant, and crossing the bridge in either direction is always exciting - from chaos to slightly more chaos, whichever way you go.

I actually wasn't woken up by the trains this morning, the müezzin got me instead, he's an altogether more pleasant thing to be awoken by, even if he does start just before dawn! There've been a few more people to meet in school this morning, a few things to sort out, some planning to do, Pete's on CNBC-e later, and Yasmin should be here any minute... but in the meantime I'm off up to the cafeteria for another glass of tea and a quick flirt with Ersin. In Turkish, of course!

* posted by nat 1:46 PM