So I know that googling your name has been and gone and what can I say, I'm catching on late, but... yesterday I went for a walk by the sea. and played tavla. And lost. And had a very relaxing day off. And it was very hot and sunny. And I did crosswords. Yes. today I am not at all coherent but never mind. I've been writing reports. My Nestle elementarys can now say "I'm sick of these stupid meetings. They spoil our lesson." Language chunks yay... I'm off home for a lie-down.

nat is the answer
nat is very spooky
nat is harmful to internet culture
nat is provided as a public service by the food science and human nutrition department at the university of illinois
nat is usually a substitute for good network design
nat is a _plus_
nat is like a funnel
nat is not enough
nat is enabled by loading the ip_masq_ftp kernel module
nat is often your friend
nat is not a security scheme and delivers no safeguards to your network
nat is available for commission work
nat is the process of translating
nat is going to be interface specific
nat is here and will stay irregardless of what the ietf might want

* posted by nat 2:31 PM

Monday, October 28, 2002

Er, yeah. So Isil bit me on Sunday, but she didn't mean to (she was trying to bite a feather, which I was trying to catch, and, um...yeah), and it was rather fun watching me bleed all over my flashcards. (New words: blood, our teacher is bleeding, Isil bit the teacher, plaster, finger, and panda. The last word is cheating, as it's the same in Turkish, but do we care?) Managed to get away with half an hour of colouring. Go me! But when you learn colours, it's good practice... Children have gone from "Teacher, pink!" to "Teacher, need pink!" to "Teacher, I need have pink!" to "GIVE ME PINK! .... um, please."

They're coming on just fine...

Ack, Las Ketchup are on the TV again! AND it's the karaoke version! Aarrgh. *looks around furtively* Ok, no-one knows that I know all the words and the kids have been teaching me the dance. Though we have more fun doing the belly dancing from Sekin ha - even though watching nine year olds dancing like that is frankly disconcerting. I love watching the boys do it though!

As tomorrow is Republic Day - the flags are out and Bagdat has lit-up silhouettesof Atatürk strung over the street several times, all us teachers are off for a bit of a bar crawl. Starting in Karga. Round about now. Better get out the net cafe, then.

* posted by nat 6:59 PM

Sunday, October 27, 2002

Thursday was increadibly hot, and we went to Taksim! Yay! Shopped (visited Hazelnut Chocolate Man, the Turkish Delight Guy, the Man who sells Belts) and chilled out (Tavla in Vargul, beer in Nevizade, spinach in a lokanta...) and had plenty of beer in Yaga followed by grease from the little takeaways clustered at the top of Istiklal before driving home.

Friday was very cold! 17C! So we got up late and did lunch at Cadde - lowering the tone of the place hugely, it's full of posh ladies who lunch round that time. Then there was tavla by the sea at Kadıköy, and the cinema! Yay! We saw Insomnia. It was good. Turkish cinemas of course have a break in the middle of the film so you can go out and smoke. And Fife and Yazmin discovered that I jump at the slightest of scary moments in a film. Oh dear, my secret is out...

Yesterday I got into the Upper Ints and discovered three new people in the class who I knew nothing about. Trauma! Extra photocopying! And with the kids, I caught myself saying "Mert... don't do that!" far too many times.

Still, with the extra hour's sleep I had last night, I'm ready for anything today! Ready, steady, PLAN!

* posted by nat 7:16 AM

Tuesday, October 22, 2002

Major disaster this morning. I got into the taxi at 8 o'clock, taxi drove off, taxi turned left. Uh-huh. After a few more turns, I summoned together my best morning Turkish to ask "Uhhhh, where's Andrew?" Response: "According to my timetable he's not coming." Me: "I know he's coming, go pick him up." Taxi goes back, thinks. "Where does Andrew live?" Me: "Ummm..... I dunno." At which point I turn my phone off, as there's nothing more I can do about it, and the last thing I want is hysterical phone calls. (I tried, right... Ostrich, me?

We get to Nestle and I stick my head down and RUN up to the office buildings - don't want any of Andrew's students to notice I'm alone. Not that they care, probably. I spend two hours getting sidetracked into why the Mediterranean is called the Mediterranean, the fact that they don't speak Spanish in Italy, and the phrase "Winter is on its way." - inbetween managing to practice the third person present simple, manipulating clauses and activity collocations. Woo! But when I get out he's there = having got up there in another taxi that didn't know the way to Dudullu and was stopping to ask all over the place. Which is normal taxi driver behaviour. Euk. Stress horror.

And it's still cold, but sit-outsideable. The hot chocolates from the Nestle machine are actually quite gorgeous, especially with the banana-chocolate powder on top. Mmmmm. Hot chocolate is A Good Thing.

Just had my Turkish lesson... getting my brain back to normality - asagı yukarı... (still haven't worked out how to get the s-cedilla or the yumusak g yet... oh well.)

* posted by nat 1:29 PM

Monday, October 21, 2002

I spent a lazy afternoon wandering in Kadıköy, browsing bookstores, jigsaws and popping into the MOOs - got to RP, yay! Back, via the supermarket, to find that the DoS has too much free time on his hands! This just in:

Medical News
(A) The Japanese eat very little fat and suffer fewer heart attacks than the British or Americans.
(B)On the other hand, the French eat a lot of fat and also suffer fewer heart attacks than the British or Americans.
(C)The Japanese drink very little red wine and suffer fewer heart attacks than the British or Americans.
(D)The Italians drink excessive amounts of red wine and also suffer fewer heart attacks than the British or Americans.
(E) Conclusion: eat and drink what you like. It's speaking English that kills you.

* posted by nat 6:37 PM

Oh, it's Monday... I woke up all covered in sunlight, wandered through the shower, into the kitchen, squinted outside at the bright blue sky, squeezed a grapefruit, trundled out on the balcony, where Fife was having a cigarette and went "Eeek!"

"It is cold, isn't it?" said Fife. "Might have to put long sleeves on..."

So here I am, trying to lesson plan so I can get outside for the afternoon and go walk by the sea, but everyone's in, so of course there's very little work going on. And then someone found this: The Bluffer's guide to TEFL.

Feed back
In the good old days, 'feedback' was what happened when Jimi Hendrix put his guitar near an amplifier. In teflspeak, however, it involves embarrassed students reporting back with mindnumbingly dull information like "We found that 5 people have never climbed Everest, 4 people have eaten octopus and everybody thinks the teacher is a cretin."

Aaah, it's so true!

* posted by nat 9:05 AM

Saturday, October 19, 2002

Horrors of little children! "Teacher, have a baby!"

"What, /now/?"

Must really go on diet...

Also vast amounts of drama after breaktime when Mert discovered that his tooth had fallen out. And he'd swallowed it! I was expecting mass upsettedness, but it looks like the tooth fairy doesn't exist over here...

And now we can count to a hundred and mess around with the verb 'to be' (but only in positives...)

Tomorrow: colours, and Where is the green parrot? Hurrah!

* posted by nat 3:15 PM

Friday, October 18, 2002

Wednesday was the horrors of observation. (It went awfully, since you ask.) I went all nervous, and then the students got nervous and sat there looking like rabbits caught in headlights which made me feel like a steamroller, so it ended up far too much Teacher Talking Time (such a dirty word under present trends - and Ben called me on it in feedback today which wasn't at all fun...) and the students all sitting there going "Who are you and what have you done with our teacher?" They all tried to buy me a tea and fed me chocolate at breaktime, however, and afterwards it was back to normal. Sedat's comment was the best, though: "Are you being audited?" Flipping businessmen...

We adjourned to the pub and Kate, Yasmin and I somehow got onto the subject of men in chunky jumpers. This is why I love this place - I have never before found people willing to expand at length upon the sexiness value of men in chunky jumpers. Have not seen many men in said chunky jumpers so far, as it's in the high twenties again today and my nose is sunburnt, but the shops are full of yummy chunky jumpers so we hold out hopes. There was much anticipatory drooling. MMMMM!

Whilst shopping today (Oh yes, spent money!) Yasmin and I came to the conclusion that the reason we're getting man-desperate is simply because there are so many rather sexy men around (unlike in KL and Poland respectively, where the species was rather rare). Need man! Would really like a man in a chunky jumper. However, I'm willing to bet that all I'm going to get is an empty chunky jumper.

(Mind you, Néa and I have been practicing Verdi's Requiem by text message, so there really isn't a lot that isn't possible...)

* *

We were in Pandora's last night, trying to decide whether to stay or go, so we flipped a coin: Ataturk we stay, 100,000 we go. Yasmin flipped the coin and then failed to catch it, and it fell under the table, rolled, and we just couldn't find it anywhere. So we put the candle on the floor and were hunting around, and eventually came to the conclusion that Ataturk had left the building. So we stayed for another drink anyway.

Then the singing started. I have understood my first song chorus! Ne yapiyorsun bensızte Ankara'da? What indeed...

* posted by nat 3:22 PM

Wednesday, October 16, 2002

Horror of horrors, we discovered yesterday that age in Turkey is slightly different. That is, once you're born you're in your first year, so you're one. On your first birthday, you turn two. Eek! This has had the following ramifications:

1) Apparently I'm 26 now. No. No. No!
2) My 7-10 year olds are actually 6-9 year olds.. This explains why they're all so flipping small and half of them can't write!
3) Ercan (who belongs to Fife) is a whole year younger than she thought he was. Which she is not at all happy about, having known him for well over a year. When she told Ercan he couldn't be 28, he had to be 29, he replied "Goodbye, see you next year."
Have learnt the word for toy-boy. Heh!

*

We all came crashing out of our rooms this morning at just gone seven, met in the hallway and I went:
"I couldn't get to sleep last night!"
"Me neither!" wailed Yasmin.
"I was up till three o'clock!"
"Ah! Me too!"

Went off to Nestle and taught object pronouns. Lovely real-life examples. Mwhahahahaha.
I'm being observed tonight, I'd better sort my life out and plan a lesson. Second conditional ahoy! Joy!

* posted by nat 2:51 PM

Tuesday, October 15, 2002

Am bored of object pronouns. (I love you but you love her but she loves him and he loves me...)

But woo! More Wallace and Gromit! Yay! (More lessons!)

* posted by nat 2:35 PM

The water wasn't off after all. And after all that trouble we went to of translating the notice, too...

Çagtai has just been teaching me the future tense. (Woohoo! I'm not so great on the present tense yet... talk about mixed up.) anyway, we had a good conversation in Turkish about shopping and clothes and why the hell my extra-super knee-high boots are still in England. Given the weather today - hello winter, yesterday it was summer! - I'm wondering the same thing!

Also, after ten minutes of confusion, I finally got to understand why it's "Mısır Çarsısıda gittim" BUT Kapalı Çarsıda gittim." (First one needs the possessive, fact fans. Serves me right for learning these kinds of words from the guide book... oh, and that's the past tense. I'm quite good at the past tense, I use it a lot...)

Mısır Çarsısı - because now you care, is the Egyptian Market, aka the Spice Bazaar (think lokum, yum!) and Kapalı Çarsı is the Grand Bazaar, or Covered Market. (think silly men with stupid chat up lines, but a rather nice building.)

I'm still not planning. Hmm. You'd think given I've worked six day weeks the last two weeks I'd be a bit more motivated to get my planning done! But no. Ok. Back to object pronouns.

* posted by nat 2:20 PM

Monday, October 14, 2002

Someone annoying is calling my phone and hanging up each time I answer. And when I find out who it is, they will die. Oh yes.

I'm going home. There is a mountain of spinach in the fridge. Dunno how I'm going to cook it, as the water is off until tomorrow, but I'll think of something!

Like getting take-away...

* posted by nat 4:59 PM

Last night we had a barbecue party at school. In true English fashion, the rain clouds came rolling in at five o'clock, and by six it was bucketing it down at a neat 45 degree angle, and we all sat in school and watched it. But afterwards, about seven, when the sun set, the entire sky lit up an incredibly bright golden colour, the undersides of all the clouds catching the setting sun, the sea turned a sparkling silver, and the whole of Istanbul glowed. It was like looking at the world through a filter. Behind us, over the land, there was a perfect double rainbow that hung in the sky for over twenty minutes.

We opened a bottle of champagne, poured it into the punch, and carried on getting drunk.

* posted by nat 12:44 PM

I started to feel like a real teacher on Sunday...

"Yes, Gözde, I could see he was hitting you, but that's because you stole his notebook. It's no reason to take a pin off the wall and stick it in his arm..."
"Yes, Mert, she is a horrible little girl, isn't she? Don't worry, you totally deserved it. You're a big boy and it's only a very small pin." (note use of language: practice of big and small!)
"No, I'm not married."
"No, we don't all have to run to the window to watch the Social Democratic Party bus (yes Ezge, I can read what it says on the side of the bus) go past with the music turned up and the loudspeakers blaring... oh all right, maybe we do."
"Gah, what's your name and why are you crying AGAIN? Oh, Buket. Well, that's a very impressive paper cut. Here, have this plaster, it's got a picture of an octopus on it... smile for me? Good girl."
"No Mert, you've only been stuck with a pin, you don't need a plaster, there's no blood. No, don't do that!!!"
"No, I'm not married."
"I'll let you clean the board if you're good."
"No, the Powerpuff girls aren't cool."
"Yes, of course we can play Heads Shoulders Knees and Toes again. That's, what, fifteen times this hour?"
"Elif, if your birthday is in July, why are you standing under December? Well, I know Borga's birthday is in July too, but you don't have to stand quite so far away from him."
"Ooooh, another mobile phone switched on in class! I can call my mother in England! Oh, it's off now... strange, that."
"No, I'm not married."
"It's all right, Baturay, it really isn't the end of the world if you can't remember when your birthday is... er no, don't cry, go upstairs and ask your father."
(30 seconds later) "So he told you and now you've forgotten... Okay... when would you LIKE your birthday to be? You don't know? How about tomorrow?"
"Okay, so you've spent the first two hours in tears and now you don't want to go home... well I want to go home! Let go of me! Argh!"

* posted by nat 12:36 PM

Friday, October 11, 2002

I'm glad to see I've improved several people's University Challenge score by providing them with the answer to a certain Virginia Woolf quote. (And a big wave goes out to the three or four people I get each week who google for 'capacious hold-all' or somesuch, and another to any errant UC researchers, although they probably just used the same book of quotations that I did...)

I love quotes. I have bookfuls of them, both bought and scribbled down in various notebooks, in my diaries, in my coursebooks, on random scraps of paper that float around my bag and never get organised or put together. I never quite know what I'm actually going to do with them all, but as Pablo Picasso said, 'If you know exactly what you're going to do, what's the point in doing it?'

I don't think this will convince my students about my lack of lesson planning, though... although I think come Sunday we'll be using a whole bunch of quotes and proverbs to mess around with different infinitives. There's always a way to sap joy out of something. It's usually by using grammar.

*** ***

Five of us - the usual four suspects plus Kevin - ran away to Kadıköy last night, had an exceedingly spaced out time slouching around on the sofas in Arkoda (we felt as if we were the only person not completely stoned; we probably were), and then tried out Pandora, next door, which has lovely music, very good chips, and lovely waiters who not only convince the kitchen to open at one o'clock in the morning, but even bring you extra mayonnaise.

We got home just after 2am, and I was fast asleep when my phone started ringing. I bumped round the room looking for it in the dark (not to mention a rakı induced haze), as it was going on and on and on and on, finally found it in my bag, and discovered it was Ben calling. My first thought was 'Argh, I'm going to have to go cover at B.A.T., please no!' but it turned out that Iain had got himself into trouble with the police - lack of ikamet or any I.D., thus they were threatening deportation - and Ben didn't have Zeynep's home number on him. Neither did I, so I woke Yasmin up (with some difficulty - Fife was awake and I knew she would be as she's a light sleeper, but with Ercan in the room, I wasn't going crashing in there!), and we crashed around her room trying to find the school handbook, eventually discovering it in the lounge, so I rang Ben back - and he was on the phone to Deirdre at the time, trying to find out if she knew - and I gave him the numbers.

Then I found out it was four o'clock in the morning.

Bleh.

* posted by nat 11:55 AM

Thursday, October 10, 2002

It's hot, it's sunny, and I've just bought a tavla* board made of rosewood, and it's big, and it's preeeeeeetty!

So now I'm going home to sit on the balcony and Yasmin and I are going to play. Hurrah!

* backgammon - but tavla's a much nicer word.

* posted by nat 2:22 PM

Monday, October 07, 2002

Good grief, am I seeing things? An email from Jess? Gosh!

*faints*

* posted by nat 5:19 PM

*takes a deep breath*

Friday was exciting, I changed a bit of money, went to the bank, opened a sterling account, tried to pay it in, had every single note closely scrutinised for about five minutes for each one, which takes a while, and then after a long argument, as she didn't want to accept half of them, I got her to take most of them. Sigh. That took hours.

Then we jumped in the car and went off to Carrefour. It is the hugest Carrefour I have ever seen. We all got lost in the aisles and ran round like maniacs, it was like Supermarket Sweep. but we managed to get back in time for Yasmin's conversation class...

Saturday was quite a nightmare, the UIs were in full whinge mode at me in breaktime (we don't like that, we want to do this) till Kate sidled up and said, "Hey, Happy Birthday!" which made them all go a bit red in the face. Mwhahahaha. Then at lunchtime Ben tells me I have a one-to-one first thing on Monday morning on the other side (panic!) followed in the afternoon by three hours eight noisy kids, who despite being the sweetest little things (apart from one) stay hyper even after being run around the room for half an hour only get noisier. I blame the Pez. I think the school needs to buy sugar-free Pez. Oh yes.

After that it was straight down to Fıçı for a quick cold beer, which I got on the house - I should think so! - we went home, demolished a bottle of wine, and went down Bagdat to Cadde, which is a rather posh little cafe-restaurant that does Europeany-type food. And it was very nice. Including the chocolate pudding. Mmm.

Then it was home and collapse and do it all over again on Sunday... although I finally got the UIs all happy - one lesson of political collocations followed by a negative word brainstorm (what do you think of when you see the word politician?), followed by one hour of listening to an eco-warrior telling us about his protests, which they seemed to like even though they thought we was mental, followed by one hour of discussing single-issue groups in Turkey, which somehow morphed in to a whole discussion on Human Rights and from there to why the EU didn't want Turkey to join them and why they were all such hypocritical people. I referred them to the word 'politician'... anyway, that was a lot more fun than it sounds. Then three more hours of the kids - we made a poster for the wall with all of us on it - I think they've wrecked all my board pens, and one nine-year-old boy was in tears because his picture wasn't quite right, but we just stuck a bit of paper over the offending part, and then his picture ended up being stuck in the middle next to the one of me, which made him smile, so that was all right! Also I am getting rid of the really annoying hyperactive child who can't actually sit down for more than one minute, he's going up to the more advanced beginners next week. YAY!

Then it was down for another beer, go home and totally collapse - we were all in bed by just after eight. Then Mark phoned at nine. Heh.

It is most amusing with the small kids, they all have their hands up and try and stand up at the same time, any question is immediately followed by a round of "MeMeMeMeTeacherMeMeMeMeMePleeeeeease!"

And our poster got admired by all the other teachers today. I am fab. Rah.

Going to Levent this morning was not fun, though, but once I was there it wasn't so bad. I have a rather sweet student called Erol who's very talkative and I think we're going to get on fine, not to mention I was absolutely plied with tea throughout the lesson! Phew. I just have no idea about teaching 1-2-1s, but I'm sure I'll figure it out. I don't have much clue about teaching small kids, either. I want the teenagers back!

... I can't believe I just wrote that.

I am now off to Burger King, as I need the grease, and then I shall get back to planning before heading off to the pub later tonight, as it's Yasmin's birthday. Must remember to give her her present.

* posted by nat 5:04 PM

Oh my goodness! It is a computer! Havent seen one of these in ages...

Am off to workshop now. Might see computer again in a month or three...

* posted by nat 10:56 AM

Thursday, October 03, 2002

We walked down the road this morning to discover the pavement has gone! It has been replaced by a beach - several piles of sand, a modern art sculpture - several hundred artistically placed blocks of concrete, and a digger. Apparently this is something to do with the elections. Hmm.

Then went to the bank, armed with my ATM card, and discovered that I didn't know the Turkish for "withdraw money". Minor problem. Pressed all the buttons I dared and got nothing, so I went into the bank and looked like an idiot. The cashier gave me money, but didn't actually manage to tell me what the button I needed to press in future was. Aaargh!

Ok. So the shopping list went: long skirt, comfy sweater-type thing, present for Yasmin.

Actually bought: three new shirts, kadayif, hazelnut chocolate (from the Hazelnut Chocolate Man on Istiklal, appropriately enough) and a birthday present for Yasmin. go us - and Ercan's haggling abilities! And we ate gözleme. Yummy pancakes. I had one with spinach in it. Yum.

Right, now I am off to plan my lesson. REALLY! And then we are off to the pub, hopefully without too many Fenerbahçe fans about - fat chance - to ignore the match and get started with the pre-birthday celebrations.

Actually, come to think of it, I might go and get a cup of tea first.

* posted by nat 5:52 PM

Wednesday, October 02, 2002

This explains everything:

An EFL teacher is an alcoholic drink that glows at night! It looks like a pot-plant and pings when it's ready.

Possibly the most accurate description ever...

Back to the hell of lesson planning for the weekend, now. Tomorrow Fife and I are going to Taksim to see how much of our pay we can spend in one go! Yay! Have money!

* posted by nat 1:52 PM