Yay for the Eles! Warmer lasted over an hour! Woot woot woot! (Got them asking questions about Kat and Rosie, for third person practice. Loved Yücel: "Are they married?" Then "What are their e-mail address?") Thus problem solving of Not Having Planned for Thursday solved!

Instead, I am now going to watch men move beds. Because. You know, it's normal. Last night I watched women move mattresses. My life is that exciting!

Actually, my life is insane. And I am going to be teaching overtime for most of next month as well. *crosses fingers that teacher who is supposed to turn up on the 21st /does/*

* posted by nat 5:11 PM

Saturday, December 28, 2002

Random messages to people who will know who they are, because my email is on the blink again and anyway I want to go home.

Squirrel Nutkin's brother is called Twinkleberry and I don't care if anyone says different. I know I'm right!

Yay! Got your Christmas Card!

And I care. Yes I do. Yes I really do. Ok?

* posted by nat 3:04 PM

ARAGORN arrives and collides with LEGOLAS.

LEGOLAS: Oh, good HEAVENS. You look TERRIBLE. You are NOT wearing THAT to the battle tonight, are you? And your HAIR! What will we DO with you?

Right. Off to teach the future. Really just want to go back to bed and curl up with book and have nasty horrid cold all on my own. And I have to go out tonight for Kate's leaving do. Which will be fun, but.

Yasmin and I continue to be married. She phones me up from Carrefour and asks how many croissants I want.

* posted by nat 7:38 AM

Friday, December 27, 2002

Words cannot describe how much I currently want to kill my 1-2-1 student, who cancelled on Monday, wasn't too impressed that Thursday was a holiday, rearranged for this morning and then didn't turn up. Git.

Christmas Day was hungover, with tearing of presents, jumping in wrapping paper, eating christmas dinner in the Irish Pub in Taksim, then going home to be more hungover with chocolate fridge cake and playing Hunt-the-broken-resistor inside the TV.

Boxing Day was lovely and sunny, so we drove up to Hidiv Kasri, which is a small mansion on top of a hill above Kanlıca, walked in the park and had coffee in the mansion, then we drove down to Kanlıca and ate yoghurt. With honey. Mmm.

Then we came home and went to see The Two Towers. If you haven't seen it, don't read what is to follow - which is not a review, more another burst of small outrage.

Though I should start positive. I adored Gollum. I thought he was near-perfect. Frodo didn't do too badly either, nor Sam.

However. takes deep breath. Arwen just shouldn't be anywhere near the screen at all. Stupid pouty twit. And the whole thing about her wandering around in the forest forever, when we've already had the bit about a Mortal Life etc etc etc in the first film. Blech. What are the elves doing rushing (okay, floating) off early anyway? What the HELL are they doing at Helm's Deep? (And apparently, they all died, or there was no-one to translate the run-back-and-hide-inside-the-cave bit, as there weren't any of them in there except Legolas. Oh well. Lórien elves are all weedy drips anyway.) And why did we suddenly get a cup-of-tea and a chat between Galadriel and Elrond? And Aragorn falls off a cliff? Obviously copy-cat attempts to emulate Gandalf. And If Éowyn owns a hairbrush, why don't any of the other women in Rohan? (Was in a sulk about exiled-Éomer, too.) And Éowyn - really all she did was drool over Aragorn. Could have had her fighting earlier, I reckon! On the other hand, drooling over Aragorn is perfectly natural... Ents were okay, as I wasn't expecting anyone to ever get the Ents right anyway. But they were awfully twiggy. And really rather hasty at the end of it all.

And Faramir should sue.

I'm going to have to go and see it again, though, to see if I can appreciate it as a film this time, and not sulking at sudden Stalingrad-manoeuvres-in-Osgiliath. (And besides, I missed the Ent on fire dousing himself in the water.) Loved Helm's Deep though. It looked just right. And Aragorn. And Legolas. And Aragorn...

The New Very Secret Diaries have cheered me up, though!

I am off to attempt the King William Quiz now. Ha ha.

* posted by nat 9:03 AM

Monday, December 23, 2002

Mali is SUCH a flirt! I might kill him at some point, but for now he brightens up my day, as do the rest of them.

So we had our first mingle today with the Eles. Awww! Exchange of personal information. Mahmut asks all the women how old they are and then takes a few years off the age. So cotton-socks! He actually lives further up my street, which is good to know. Then we did these/those and classroom vocab. It is so amusing how motivated and how hard they all try, bouncing around the classroom going "What's this?" realising they're nowhere near said object, and so running over to it (I mean, they could say 'What's that?', but where's the fun in that, huh?)

And as for Mali... we get to the bit in the mingle with 'Are you married?', and I happen to be nearby, and he grabs my arm, all parade-up-the-aisle-like, and goes "Yes, I'm married!" I just made 'Pfffffffft!' noises.

So now I'm in the Net Cafe, and chatting to a lot of people I haven't seen around for a while, like Rae, and Ray, and Tim, which is all rather nice. I know I haven't seen them for a while because at least three people have LTNSed me!

Tomorrow is the Christmas Party. Hurrah!

* posted by nat 6:22 PM

So yesterday we went into competition, Fife's class and my class, over who could sing Jingle Bells the loudest from within their respective classrooms. Pity the rest of the classes in the school. But we had fun. Learnt We Wish You A Merry Christmas as well, but not so loudly.

* posted by nat 12:25 PM

Sunday, December 22, 2002

A great time was had yesterday afternoon singing Jingle Bells (Teacher: New Year! Jingle Bells!) - sounds so wierd. We drew a New Year Tree (I'd given up by then) with a star on the top - so then we had to stop and sing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, as we all know it. Elif, the youngest, has had a slight problem with learning the words. She sings:

Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, How old are you what you are?

Which I personally think is super and amazing. After all, 'How I wonder' isn't exactly general English, so she's just substituted it with something she knows. She dragged me out to her mother afterwards and wanted her photo taken with me. Her smile is wider than her face sometimes!

I finally managed to explain dates of Christmas, that Christmas was for Christians (ie. me) and I got my presents earlier than they did, ha ha ha! Gökhan had an absolutely wonderful cross-purposes conversation with me, but he managed to make me understand in the end, and he did it all in English! "Teacher! Christmas, 4 days!" "No, no," I said, "Christmas is only one day." "Noooooo! 4 days? 4 days!" Then he stopped, and thought about it. "Teacher, today is the twenty-first. Christmas - four days!"

With the amount of upper-intermediates around who can't explain what they mean, the world needs more eight year olds like Gökhan!

Mert and I also had a small fight right at the end of the lesson which ended with me clapping my hand over his mouth to stop him yelling, which he promptly drooled all over - as he was laughing so much - at which point I screamed "Ew!" and chased him round the classroom trying to wipe my hand on his jumper. He escaped into the corner and presented me with a tissue! (He even remembered the word in English. Hurrah!)

I love my weekend afternoons!

* posted by nat 7:35 AM

Saturday, December 21, 2002

Gah! Everyone's nicked all the coloured pencils! Gah!

* posted by nat 11:48 AM

Friday, December 20, 2002

We have snow! A morning blizzard of the horizontal kind, snow that actually settles and covered everything white for an hour or so.

And now the sun is out, and it is melting again, though the wind is still up, and trying to blow the big tarpaulin off the side of the building. Engin climbed out this morning to try to reattach part of it, in that casual approach everyone in Istanbul seems to have to climbing out of upper-storey windows and leaning out precariously.

So I have been at school for about four hours and I have done nothing useful except plan vague amounts of Kids lessons and teach Deidre to sing "When Santa got stuck up the chimney" and to make cut-out snowflakes. I'd probably be more productive if Yasmin hadn't called and insisted I go down to Fıçı last night. It was worth it though, for a rakı and to discuss new cotton-socks students. I have one, an older man in my early ele class, who beckoned me over yesterday during a speaking exercise and said "How old are you? 22?" Officially my favourite student!

... and the snow is falling again!

* posted by nat 10:41 AM

Thursday, December 19, 2002

Just after I posted on Monday there was yet another power cut, which got me home nice and fast. Apparently in the teacher's room there was a conversation about what to teach during a power cut - Pin the Tail on the Donkey, according to Kevin!

Tuesday afternoon Yasmin and I went to the Suadiye Movieplex, which is a very posh ultra-modern cinema tucked away down a little back street just past Vakkorama, to see Harry Potter. We were the only two people in a very large cinema, which was rather fun. I spent most of the first half bemused and the second half excessively scared, so it was fun. Not enough Snape, though. Really not enough Snape. Or Oliver Wood. Sigh.

Fife went to Carrefour and bought Christmas Lights which flash. Fortunately, they don't quite work properly and don't always flash, because I can't quite cope with that. Trees are too expensive to get, so we're considering a raid on one of the gardens down the road for a bit of evergreen foliage. Everyone here wants to know why we celebrate New Year one week early. Christmas and New Year are apparently the same. Oh well. It's warmed up a lot and it's raining again.

I popped into school yesterday to pick up some stuff, and got in a lift with another student, who decided to make conversation, and couldn't quite get it into her head that I don't speak very much Turkish.
Me: "Floor four?"
Her: "Yes... um... what class are you in?"
Me: "Errr, I'm a teacher."
Her: "Oh! What kind of teacher?"
Me: "Eh? An English teacher!"
Her: "Yes, but what courses do you teach? Toefl?" (ie. You must be a Turk.)
Me: "No, general courses, everything else!"

Fortunately at that point the lift reached the top floor, and I ran away. She's right up there with the student who thinks I'm Turkish and gets upset by the fact that my English is excellent and hers is horrible, and the student who is convinced that Yasmin is a student rather than a teacher and doesn't speak English at all. And the one who is convinced I'm mad because I've just spent ten minutes explaining, very earnestly, to Fetih upstairs in the canteen, that yesterday I went shopping for trousers and I came back with three pairs of tights, a Frank Sinatra CD and a mug with a frog on it. But maybe she has reason...

My Ele class is proving to have brains! Hurrah! They don't quite need to be spoon-fed. Three cheers, and pushing on fast fast fast. Today's piece of cotton-sockness: "A police officer works in a police office!" Fife still wins this week, though, with her mid-eles: "What's a man who comes to mend your toilet?" "A toilet doctor!"

And Fatih is in Etiler (Zeynep and Bora have just bought the Etiler school back and there's a LOT of work to be done over there), but I need him here as he's locked all the flipping disk drives down and I can't load anything onto the computers. I need to!

* posted by nat 2:28 PM

Monday, December 16, 2002

Oh, I do love my young learners, who opened the door at me, said "Teacher, surprise!" and threw a big plastic spider in my face. Then they fastened it to the zip of my cardigan and I trailed him around all lesson. We named him Mert, as he was only marginally less annoying than the actual Mert, who came in with about half a ton of hair gel in his hair looking very spiky! "What happened?" I asked. "My mother," was the sum total of the response. I taught them jobs (successful) and they tried to teach me the Turkish National Anthem (notably unsuccessful). My new Saturday morning class is fine; lovely people, just all rather shattered. And I am too, even more so now: working two ten hour days at the weekend followed by an eleven hour day today, and doing the latter on two hours of sleep last night... (drat the insomnia, the general darkness, and all that) and well, thank goodness for Young Learners who actively want to play Hangman for half an hour. And who can do Heads Shoulders Knees and Toes all by themselves! Phew!

Right, it's my weekend. I am off home to sleeeeeeeeeeeeeeep.

* posted by nat 5:08 PM

Thursday, December 12, 2002

I would just like to say a heartfelt thank you to all those students out there who make a five minute warmer turn into a forty-five minute exercise. So that�s my planning done for next week, then. Added to that I should be able to get away with teaching the YLs exactly what I taught my eles this morning. Joy!

I got 98% on my Turkish test. I am well pissed off. I couldn�t remember what February was and I couldn�t remember the words for minimum or maximum. It�s not as if it�s difficult - if I can write prolonged apologies in Turkish in the margin, though, obviously that makes it all right!

February is Subat. I know /now/.

* posted by nat 2:37 PM

Tuesday, December 10, 2002

*boggles* Three hours of kids yesterday who just weren't speaking English to me. They know better now, though! We played the 13/30 game (which took fifteen minutes, as they each took a turn to be teacher). Then we played Hangman, which was great fun when Hazar was up, as all the kids were going to me 'teacher, teacher, pick me!' 'Hey!' yelled Hazar, very seriously, even though he was almost doing the splits on the floor under the board at the time, 'BEN ögretmenim!' Then they all stopped, as I just burst out laughing. After that we played The Sorting Hat with Ozan's rather fun huge hat.

I also played the 13/30 game with my new early eles, though I just got them to point instead of run to different sides of the classroom. Have discovered adults also like throwing the dice. Hmmm. There was also a fifteen minute power cut right around the time we were getting mixed up between half a million and one and a half million. Off went the heating, result: seven frozen people. I haven't quite got over Yüçel's introduction to me. "Hullo, my name is Yüçel, I'm seamen." (Promptly taught him the word 'sailor'.) Nice chunky cable-knit sweater and all. There is also an exceedingly sexy tango teacher in there as well. And a poor woman who can't quite manage 'I am a housewife'. She says 'I am a house', then stops. So I shall stay happy in the mornings!

It's still snowing! (It was yesterday, too, I forgot to mention in all the other excitement.) Ercan arrived at the flat just after 10pm with a large snowball in his hand looking rather surprised. "There's lots of snow on the ground on the european side. It's all over my car still, you can go and look. But nothing after the bridge." Mass sulking ensued.

So I've been in school half the day planning away happily (even though it's my weekend now, grr. I shall try and get away early on Thursday), then Yasmin and I went to see Bend It Like Beckham in the overly loud cinema above M&S. And apparently Harry Potter is on in English at the Suadiye Movieplex. So here we come!

* posted by nat 2:31 PM

Monday, December 09, 2002

Bayram was wonderful, wonderful, apart from the 350km of coast road. Mountainous coast road. Oh dear. But the other 1700km were just great. Love road trips! Anyhow, diary to follow when I can get my notes into some semblance of order. and I don't know when that will be because...

I'm now on overtime, having achieved one of Yasemin's classes. The plus side to this is probably no conversation, and also the class I'm getting is another kids class, about the same level as my other kids but a bit older, so they'll be faster. But it looks like Yasemin isn't going to be back from Hong Kong for a couple of months. And here I am, running off to teach them now... apparently they're lovely, though. Pull out the songbook, here I come!

* posted by nat 12:25 PM

Monday, December 02, 2002

Feeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeh. *mumble mumble mutter timetabling argh grrrh evil mutter*

I don't WANT to have Turkish lessons on a Friday afternoon, it's the only time Yasmin and I have to go off anywhere together!
Bah! *sulk* And conversation three times a week? *dies* We need more teachers. Lots more teachers.

But...

I am going on holiday now.

*cheers up immensely*

Be back in a week!

* posted by nat 10:58 AM