Went to the dentist's. There was a power cut in the apartment block.

Hallelujah! So she looked at my tooth - or rather the lack of it - (a lot easier to sit down and succumb when you know she can't possibly do anything as there's no electricity!) and said she would stick a pin in and put a crown on. But on Monday, when there might be some electricity back.

In other good news, I think we all had such a bad time on Thursday that the Pre-Ints have decided to stop. Rah! The Early Eles finished last night which we were all upset about but we knocked off early and boogied down to Fıçı where I proved that having eaten nothing but two bananas all day two and a half glasses of yukky chemicals (otherwise known as Efes 'beer', ew) made me slightly giddy and I think I told all of them different phone numbers. Didn't help that Daria kept breaking into Russian either. Talk about how to totally confuse a girl!

Off to the cinema tonight. And next week, we are planning a quick jaunt down to Assos. Mmm. (Well, Pliny liked it, so it must be good.)

* posted by nat 2:19 PM

Do not want to go to the dentist's.

Maybe will not go.

But should go.

Argh.

* posted by nat 1:44 PM

Thursday, May 29, 2003

WAH!

The internet is still hardly working - I can get into blogger for some reason but just about anywhere else is hellish and long. Can't get into my email, which is slightly dire given I'm trying to organise holidays and things. Although I do know it's cheaper to fly to Moscow from London than from Istanbul, so that's one thing sorted. Have not yet booked Eurostar, which is slightly more bothersome.

I also really ought to go and get some more credits for my phone, as I have about 10 right now and the usual shop seems to have run out of cards. I am feeling rather incommunicado right now. I am also trying to remember if my mobile in England is still going to be working or not. I would call my mother but she has gone to Spain. I assume I am going to Spain too at some point, really must find these things out.

And then to cap it all on Monday my tooth fell out. I know I act like a little kid most of the time, but really, that is taking it a bit too far!
Am going to the dentist tomorrow, I am very freaked out, but on the other hand seems to have lost a few kilos in the past few days. Though I ate an inordinate amount of ice-cream while watching A Man For All Seasons last night - got to it late because I was hanging on the end of the Agassi-Antic match.

Some classes finish this week. Rah. Bitch-woman from hell in the morning classes is making my life hell. Inci the super has gone off to Chicago to her son's graduation thus was not there to cheer me up and make scathing put-down comments to afore-mentioned cow. That class is not finishing. V. typical. Still I only have four more lessons to get through with them and then I am going on holiday. Woohoo! Roll on holidays!

The holiday plans so far go like this:
16th June - fly back to London. Dump half ton of lokum etc on mother.
17thish or thereabouts - teleport to Paris if have failed to get train ticket. Mush around Paris for a week making self ill on baguettes and hot chocolate. See art. Drink wine. Remember how to speak Czech, and French.
24thish - repair to London and do Pike stuff with everybody who doesn't live in the Pike anymore. Plus see other people.
29thish - glue self to second week of Wimbledon from comfort of S'bridge. Spend quality time with parents ie. eat out, go to pub, go shopping, fail to change money back into pounds, oh whoops. Consume vast amounts of Ben and Jerry's, Waitrose pizza, tarka dal with coriander and garlic naan from takeaway etc. Learn Catalan.
Some point in July can't remember when - go to Barcelona. Drink Sangria, preambulate, drink sangria, see art, drink Sangria. Etc.
17thish July - pootle off to Moscow. Somehow. Must really sort that out.
1st Aug - back to v.v.v.hot Istanbul and the madness of summer. Recover from tavla withdrawal. Work. Find a place to live. Argh!

Looks good to me. Just really ought to organise it!

* posted by nat 2:35 PM

Monday, May 26, 2003

I am having a very bizarre day. All hot and stuffy and I'm very, very achey, which is weird.

Last night involved banana bread again, woo! And a new card game called Kings In The Corner which is very, very cool.

* posted by nat 12:21 PM

Sunday, May 25, 2003

Following a successful parents' day in which I pasted a smile on my face and was very creative - (Your son works very fast. Sometimes he works so fast he finishes the exercise before he has started it.) - we are now going in for a marathon Harry Potter movie-watching session. Mert is still a little bit subdued from having been sorted into Ravenclaw by the sorting hat (at the Warner Bros. site), while Gökhan is still very happily in Gryffindor and telling anyone at school who'll listen. They are both highly amused that I went into Slytherin, it just confirms their opinion that I am evil. I told them I was Draco Malfoy's girlfriend but they just looked at me.

I went to bed at 9pm last night and totally failed to go to sleep, thus missing Eurovision completely. I woke up this morning to disocver every radio station in the country is playing Sertab Erener's song on repeat. Aaaargh! Turkey seem to think they've won a serious competition! Either that, or this is proof that Europe likes them. Tried to explain that their victory probably meant the reverse in both cases, and spent half an hour this morning trying to convince the Elementarys that "Everyway" is not a word, and just because it appears in a song doesn't make it true.

* posted by nat 11:59 AM

Friday, May 23, 2003

One of the crows' eggs has hatched! Small pink baby, and nonplussed parents. Dad especially seems very confused. mum goes off to grab a quick snack and he sits by the side of the nest going 'Well what the hell do I do with this?!'

* posted by nat 4:15 PM

When I phoned up on Monday night, the friend-of-a-friend who works for the Stourbridge News was round, so I had a look and there's a little article about Helen in there.

The main excitement of the week is some fish has chewed through the cable under the Aegean or the Med or somesuch and as a result most of the Internet is down, and land lines to Europe are apparently ungettable.

I'm off to cover the little sugar-fuelled kids again this afternoon. Whee! Apparently Julia has taught them the Hokey-Pokey. So I have to go in and inform them that actually, it's the Hokey-Cokey...

* posted by nat 12:27 PM

Thursday, May 22, 2003

And there I was *thinking* I might give this student the benefit of the doubt.... the one who transferred into my class two weeks ago and spent the first hour looking at me as if I had two heads, then who said to me at breaktime "Are you a new teacher?" - No, I've been at this for over two years now - and then "Oh. How old are you?" - Twenty-five. "Oh," she said, "That's better, then!"

But today up comes "My hair's getting long," as in "I need to get it cut." So I look at my hair and say, "I've been thinking about getting my hair cut for summer." The rest of them are off and away with suggestions of how short, and other stuff, and general moanings about how much we hate the hairdresser's... And she says to me, way too seriously. "Yes.... yes, you must get it cut. You need some style. Image is everything, you know."

If I push her off the balcony next breaktime, will anybody care?

-
In the meantime, a rather detailed and strangely accurate INTP profile, which is what I come up as in the Myers-Briggs Personality tests. [gacked belatedly from Kevan, who got it from someone else, etc, etc.]

* posted by nat 3:06 PM

Monday, May 19, 2003

In which I lie on a beach in Agva and scribble down meaningless drivel...

I lie with my chin on the ground and look at the sand and find that every piece is different. Coarse, fine, yellow - gold tan amber blue terracotta pearl - with glassy bits interspersed that catch the sun just so that the whole beach shimmers like an overornate mosaic. Broken chips of shell lie half-buried, undiscovered, and the sand stretches away on either side, until there is nothing there but sand.

The sea is down a short, sharp, drop. I dig my heels in, lean back and let the beach lower me down gently. The shelf falls away rapidly, grey-blue waves froth in, swirl around, blend a little more sand into sea and roll back and forth. It looks cold; it's startlingly colder. There's a demarcation line around my ankles, swirls of appliquéd sand to mark the change from cool froth at my feet to spit-roast warmth from the sun above.

The sky is wallpapered a uniform blue from horizon to horizon, slightly faded with age and bleached by constant washings from the sea. A mobile of gulls hangs there, whirled about on invisible strings, while by the river inlet, swifts dive down and skim across the water like pebbles. The whitewashed lighthouses at the far end of the bay look bored. No ships to see, no travellers to warn, and the waves roll in noisily, regurtitating the usual sticks, twigs and plastic bottles onto the sand.
By the side of the creek entrance fishes take it in turns to leap, and the frogs are still croaking as they have been all night and all morning, floating lazily in the water, lurking amongst the reeds, blowing both cheeks out in bubble-gum fashion.

The sun slides round to a new angle and the beach changes colour, picking out black, brown, grey and cream that encroaches onto my towel, crawls into my bag, hides under my clothes. A myriad of colours to be taken home with me.

(Note to self - beaches really not your thing).

* posted by nat 2:08 PM

Sunday, May 18, 2003

I think I'm just in a state of shock, really. Haven't even touched the ice-cream. Didn't sleep last night. Don't really want to be here at all, but there you go.

Shall go distract myself with the kids and silly computer games. Which won't help either, but never mind.

Edit: Eeeek, there's only one of them! We're playing Quidditch. Lots of fun.

* posted by nat 12:00 PM

Saturday, May 17, 2003

Helen died last night.

I am sort of sitting around going bleh. I think I will go home and eats lots of nasty, fattening food.

...

* posted by nat 3:11 PM

Thursday, May 15, 2003

Just back from getting sunburnt in Agva. (And we stayed in that hotel too. And I really got sunburnt pedaloing down the river at 10:30 in the morning, and not on the beach at all! Typical!)

Agva is extremely fabulous due to the vast numbers of frogs there... but more about that later. Too much work to do now!

* posted by nat 11:31 AM

Monday, May 12, 2003

Oh - and tomorrow we might be going to the beach! Black Sea beach...

Or we might not get out of bed. That happens, too.

But then again Blogger might not post this so I can tell you all after it happens if it happened or not. Good.

* posted by nat 2:04 PM

I went into the classroom on Sunday and there was no-one there but Gökhan. He told me about his collection of computer games and then we played Taz, during which he explained to me about all the different Pokemon and what all their powers are, etc. About half an hour later Borga turned up so we just carried on chatting, Borga showed me his new tanks (push-out-and-assemble things which come free in the newspaper) and then we fought a short but intense battle on the classroom floor. At 3 o'clock we thought we might have a break, at which point Gökhan volunteered, "My mum's upstairs today!"

I nearly had a heart attack!

Sometimes I forget how small nine-year-olds are; they're about half the size of Heather's teenagers - we've been showing them Star Wars over the last hours on Saturday and Sunday (finishing it off next week.) Mine have seen the two new films, but are slightly non-plussed about seeing the original. Excited, but rather confused about the fact that Obi-Wan Kenobi is suddenly very old, R2D2 doesn't do any flying, and where the hell is Luke's father anyway? What about his mother? And if Leia's a princess, who's the queen? Dead? Well why isn't Leia a queen then? And who's the bad black man?

But they couldn't ask any of this in front of Heather or the other kids. No, they dragged me back into our classroom and asked. And they weren't too satisfied with my lack of answers either!

--

On Friday a bunch of us went out to a sarap evi (or wine house) in Taksim. You go in and behind the bar there's just stockpiles of wine bottles, you order red or white and over it comes. Very nice! We had a set meal, but unfortunately didn't discover until the bill came that if you have the set meal you can drink as much wine as you want! Nevertheless, we all drank over a bottle each, and rolled over to commandeer a dolmus at about midnight.

On Saturday night, a quick drink down the pub turned into a few hours of chat, then Haldun turned up from my Early Eles and said a few of them were off to dinner in Tike, which is the bright and shiny place opposite the red palm tree at the bottom of the road, and did I want to come? So against my better judgement, I went, and had a lovely time, and talked a lot of Turkish.

Trying to teach on Sunday was all but impossible though!
--

Halfway up Istiklal on Friday night, after copious amounts of wine, Yasmin said, "Okay, the bloody yodelling thing is bugging me now."

I said, "The original message involved whiskers, as well,"

"I so do not want to know," she said.

So she still doesn't.

* posted by nat 12:48 PM

Friday, May 09, 2003

I have lots of musings in my head about the colour of the Bosphorus, why it's easier to fall in love with fictional men than real life men (and possibly better, but we'll save that one), househunting rants and oooooh, the summer holidays are coming! - but I would like to get my ticket back to the UK sorted before I even begin on that one, and as for the rest, well, I mean to write about them and then I never do. Instead I write about t-shirts, and sit around and eat too much ice-cream - although period deigned to arrive today so am feeling much better already and have not had to go upstairs to let off steam to poor unsuspecting canteen guys, because I know they can be relied upon to be irritating! I nearly lost it with Ugur last night. Poor man. Poor me! But then again looking at the sentence "I want to learn more about other countries" and saying "But what does 'about' mean?" - actually he said "This phrase - about - what mean?" but let's not split hairs - and refusing to give up even when I explained for the 21st millionth time that it doesn't really mean anything on its own... and the joy we had when we got to "all over the world" - 'but over is üstünde' 'Yes, but this is ALL over' 'But!' 'But!'... *Calm self. Find centre. Think lexically*

I'm having another stab at My name is Red, but I still cannot cope with the awful, awful style (or rather lack of coherent, cohesive style) that I am fairly sure is the fault of the translator. However, it's a lot easier to persevere with it when sat on the balcony in the sun with the chocolate soya milk I have finally allowed myself to open as a big big treat!

Last night I mis-sent a message to Yasmin, who was in the next room, about yodelling. She didn't even want an explanation. Which was probably quite lucky!

* posted by nat 5:02 PM

Turkish phrase for the day is Itaatsizligini rahatsız edici buluyorum! which sort of means I find your lack of faith disturbing.

* posted by nat 4:49 PM

Thursday, May 08, 2003

Because you all need to know about my highly exciting and not mundane at all weekend:

On Tuesday we went to Taksim and I bought three new t-shirts: a very exciting new stripy one which is brown and blue and yellow from Mavi, an airforceblue tank top from Oxxo - because I like that colour, and I can never find it about, and a very bright orange one from Zara. Woo! 45 million altogether. I really need new trousers, but my thighs seem to have given over to middle aged spread and I don't fit in anything. Woe! So we went to Starbucks for an iced-coffee, and then made mushroom-and-cherry-tomato lasagne for dinner. I really should be sticking to nothing but salad. It's hot enough, after all! However, I have now finished the jar of mayonnaise, so that's one less temptation.

Went to Karga on Tuesday night though, for quiet chilling inbetween fuming about men. And people-watching out of the window.

Wednesday involved too much ice-cream for my own good (or indeed the good of the top halves of my legs.) I feel lousy today, although my old-pre-ints-who-are-now-ints and I had a lovely lesson. I love teaching Intermediate. I know what I'm doing! Unlike teaching Late Ele, where I'm making it up as I go along...

And we looked under the front grill of the Body Shop in Carrefour and there's lots of boxes and bottles in there. Hurrah! We thought of maybe diving in and helping ourselves to a few, but there were too many people eyeing us strangely...

* posted by nat 3:19 PM

Monday, May 05, 2003

My Turkish phrase for the day is Okula giderken, alırım. which means I'll get it on my way to school.

* posted by nat 2:47 PM

The boys taught me to play Tazo on Sunday, so we spent a blissful twenty minutes doing that at the start of the lesson, halfway through which one of the other teachers walked in to get something he'd left in the room. So that's at quarter past two. At four o'clock, when we're on our second break, he comes in again for something - and we're on the floor playing Tazos again!

So he probably thinks that's all we do in my lessons! Hurrah!

I would just like to take this moment to rant against people with ten-year-old-children who send them off to a bicycle race in the morning in shorts and a t-shirt with the weather in the high 20s and very hot sun and put no sun-tan protection, nor a hat (not even a baseball cap) on them at all. Then they pick them up from said school event, don't bother to give them lunch, just give them a bit of money and drop them off at their English lesson. Of course said child is not even going to have lunch (got to play Taz...), let alone drink any water, and said child by 2pm is an interesting shade of red all over. Of course, he thinks he looks quite cool, suddenly resembling a lobster.

I don't think he understood why I kept making him drink water.

I was so tempted to send him home with a rude note to his parents.

Seethe seethe seethe.

* posted by nat 2:43 PM

The Dante's Inferno Test has banished you to the Seventh Level of Hell!
Here is how you matched up against all the levels:

Level	Score
Purgatory (Repenting Believers)	High
Level 1 - Limbo (Virtuous Non-Believers)	Very Low
Level 2 (Lustful)	High
Level 3 (Gluttonous)	High
Level 4 (Prodigal and Avaricious)	Low
Level 5 (Wrathful and Gloomy)	High
Level 6 - The City of Dis (Heretics)	Very Low
Level 7 (Violent)	Very High
Level 8- the Malebolge (Fraudulent, Malicious, Panderers)	High
Level 9 - Cocytus (Treacherous)	Moderate

Take the Dante's Inferno Hell Test

I'd so much rather be in Wrathful and Gloomy... it sounds far more fun!

* posted by nat 2:33 PM

Saturday, May 03, 2003

I have been sitting here typing by the open window for about 20 minutes, with the sun coming in, and I have just noticed that I have gone and got sunburnt. Clever me!

Better go home, now. Do you know the way to Mordor?

* posted by nat 3:10 PM

Friday, May 02, 2003

I am in the mood to cook lasagne. Which is strange, as I've only just finished off the last lasagne I made.

Hmm. Maybe will do something with couscous, mushrooms, and mango chutney instead.

* posted by nat 3:02 PM

Last night the Eles said "Let's go to the bar." So we did. Oh dear.

It was a good lesson, too, I got all Dogme and abandoned lesson plans* in order to teach them extremely useful questions such as "What fish do you like to eat with raki?" and "Which countries have you been to?" So I asked them, and then they asked me.

We learnt the names of some countries. Then they sat there in stunned silence, and eventually Haldun, who is never serious, looked at me and said, with perfect stress and intonation: "Which countries haven't you been to?!"

I showed them some pictures of Venice. It cheered them up.

*This is not true dogme. True dogme means you don't make a lesson plan in the first place!

* posted by nat 3:00 PM

Thursday, May 01, 2003

More overly large pictures of the moltofantabulous Ortaköy:

I am the daughter of a civil engineer. It's not my fault!
One of those scary big boats that come through every fifteen minutes or so
The quayside, where much tea has been consumed and much tavla played and even more people-watching done.
The other side of the Cami, complete with snogging couples
The kind of photo my mother likes

I went up to the net cafe last night and on my way back every time I walked through a small shadow or behind a tree I ran into some snogging teenaged/young twenties couple. It's only a fifteen minute walk! See what the summer does to people?!

Everyone mental about earthquakes again. "Look, houses fall down and people die!" Well, yes, this is what happens in earthquakes... although, to be fair, that's the second one in a month and buildings here, in general, aren't very earthquake-proof.

Hmm. I have a watch-strap mark. Go me!

* posted by nat 3:11 PM