Gaaaaaah. Hate everything.

* posted by nat 7:13 PM

Monday, December 29, 2003

Oh, Gods of Aspirin and Ibuprofen, how I worship you!

Also worshipping the lesser deity of the hot water bottle and the central heating system.

The God of three-days-off-again-yay, is also making an appearance.

* posted by nat 3:40 PM

Saturday, December 27, 2003

Aha. Christmas happened.

I spent most of Wednesday cleaning the house, which took an awfully long time because it took me two hours to gear myself up to starting to do it (out late drinking in Rock Bar with half the teachers on Tuesday night). But after I'd poured myself a large glass of rum (no sherry in this country, none anywhere that I can see) it all got a lot better. At about two o'clock I managed to finish and got out of the house, but got side tracked by the pide waiter man who kept asking me where "Lahmacun" were. I was totally flummoxed for a bit until I realised he was asking where "Lanna and Cem" were; in other words Loni and Jeremy. Had to explain about the frozen east, which took so long I ended up staying for pide. Then I took it into my head that I wanted bagels, which is not the world's most normal craving, so I took the dolmus up to Göztepe and had already got off before I remembered that the Bagel Factory is in Selamıçesme so that was a huge walk, then trying to get the bagels paketted was a nightmare too. Came home via fast present shopping in Nezih, buckled and bought Christmas lights in Migros, then dived into shower and had panic hairwashing session; just about finished getting ready when the girls called to pick me up.

Zanzibar is a lovely restaurant in a beautiful old nineteenth-century style Ottoman house with lovely views out over the sea towards Sultanahmet. It was all lit up ready for new year and full of festive lights inside, all red and green, complete with about half a dozen Christmas trees. They had these nifty little weights that balance on the side of the table for you to hang your bag on, and the waiters are all excessively good looking. The menu is also very good looking, as long as you don't look at the prices (thank heavens I wasn't paying, as despite having brought what I thought was a lot of money with me I certainly didn't have enough to pay for my meal!!!). We all had salmon, partly because Armagan said she'd read that salmon was very good for the skin, and partly because it sounded very good. Good for the skin it may be, but following it up with Profiteroles for dessert I suspect undid all the good work. We spent the rest of the evening trying to translate Turkish dirty jokes into English. Most of them actually worked!

I went home and phoned L&J, much missing took place. Wah. Then found rum again and watched Carols from King's which was apparently only six lessons and carols instead of nine which I was most put out about, and then they had midnight mass from Ely Cathedral, and Ely is pretty, and I had a lot of rum still to drink by that point so I lit about fifty candles and fell asleep on the sofa.

I woke up on Christmas morning and realised I didn't have any time to do any cooking, which I decided very quickly was probably a good thing, so instead I ate bagels and carried on with the rum. After a while I remembered Ilknur's Lebkuchen which she had brought back from Germany for me, so I made a start on them.

Yasmin turned up at about two o'clock going "Argh argh Christmas oh my god argh I hate it hate evil traffic hate everything evil evil evil!" Sent her out for cigarettes, after which she calmed down a little. We congratulated ourselves on staying nice and quiet and decided not to bother with the traffic and just stayed in. Ate more bagels, opened nice bottle of Cappadocian wine, played tavla, considered food, decided on the Italian restaurant, phoned Mustafa, got ready to go.

Could not find car keys anywhere. Went down and looked in car, could not see them. Car keys also involve Yasmin's house keys.

Stood out in rain and got wet and said "Hurrah, tis Christmas."

So we taxied back to Yasmin's and paid a man (friend of her kapaıcı's) to break into her flat and change the locks, which took about five minutes, most of which spent asking about price. We picked up the spare set of car keys, then decided we were hungry and just took a taxi up to Kosuyolu anyway, and spent a pleasant evening at the Italian resturant which seemed to be inhabited mostly by English speaking people, which is always rather offputting. Drank more wine, etc.

Went back to Yasmin's car outside my flat, very much later, and discovered she had left the keys in the ignition. The fact that she did this when she went down just to get her cigarettes out of the car is fairly incredible.

On Friday I went and bought two more pairs of gloves from the Pazar, as I keep losing mine, and went for my saz lesson, which was very exciting as the electricity in the block had failed so the electrician was mountaineering in the stairway and there were live wires all over the place, however as it was dark I thought they probably weren't that live and fell up the stairs anyway. Luckily heater was gas, so did not freeze. Spent an hour playing scales. Way too much fun. I have never had fun playing scales in my life before, but it seems to be fine! Saz man speaks no English and as usual I have forgotten his name. Grr. Anyway, great Turkish practice!

Went home, made kolaczki finally. Yasmin phoned and asked me round for dhal. Accepted. Went to clear up in kitchen, opened cupboard and discovered small beetle infestation in the beans and sugars. I know they were not there on Wednesday as I cleaned the whole place yet there were hundreds in the cupboard. so I had to throw away half the food, disinfect the kitchen again, put all the rest of the food into airtight containers or clingfilm the lot, and generally go 'grr' a lot.

Stomped over to Yasmin's, wailed, had scrumptios dhal, plenty of beer and watched Pirates of the Carribean all over again which cheered me up no end. Hurrah!

It has rained non-stop for three days. And I have made no transatlantic phonecalls despite thinking about it rather a lot. Not sure if this is a failure or progress.

I really did not want to come back to work this morning. Still, two more days to work then I have another three and a half days off. Yay! Now, however, I think I will keep up with the theme of the week and go back to the pub.

* posted by nat 3:11 PM

Tuesday, December 23, 2003

My morning ladies bought me a gorgeous orange polo-neck that is just so me it's scary, and they are taking me out to Zanzibar for dinner tomorrow night.

I gave them biscuits. They seemed to think this was a fair swap, as long as I promise to go and get a haircut.

In the meantime, I have finally achieved tinsel, so there'll be at least something in the flat besides lots and lots of carols played at loud volume, which isn't that bad of a thing at all, except my oldest CD, which has Ceremony of Carols on it, is almost completely screwed up. Too many scratches. However, This Little Babe still plays perfectly, and that's the most important thing.

This morning Ben took me to meet the saz man and I played scales for half an hour. It was fun! So I am going to try having saz lessons for a bit and see how it goes. It's rather exciting, really.

Off home to have a go at making Kolaczki/. If I can remember it properly.

* posted by nat 12:50 PM

Saturday, December 20, 2003

J&L have left for the Frozen East and I am all alone at home. I have celebrated by throwing an awful lot of stuff away, mopping most of the floors in the flat, going rampant with the Cif and still finding time to back a whole batch of OatmealRaisinCookies (overdone slightly, whoops) between 7 and 9 o'clock.

...although the only reason I started mopping was due to a huge sahlep spillage. Oh well.

We went to see RotK last night, it was fun. We were right at the back so when we stood up we basically blocked out the projector, so much fun for the adverts. The back row thus consisted of: Heather and Fife, squeaking and gasping and hand wringing though all the right and some of the wrong moments, Mustafa and Yasmin, hand-holding both when they did and when they didn't need to, Katherine letting it all wash over her, me going 'why why why', or 'cut now, darn it, cut it now!', and me occassionally joining in with Loni and Jeremy for appreciating the many slashy moments in the film, and just laughing at the bad dialogue. (Legolas wins by a mile, toss up between "The horses are restless" and "Ah. A diversion." How did he do it and keep a straight face?)

You don't actually need to go and see this film, I can summarise it for you: Shot of big mountain. Zoom into Sam and Frodo walking up a mountain. One of both of them fall over. Close up of Frodo pulling a weird face. Occassionally, let them stare lovingly into each other's eyes. Repeat ad infinitum. Interdisperse with lots of CGI battles, and a couple of Tolkien songs that you've hacked about with a bit and put to rather annoying Irish-type tunes. (I do not like Irish music. I am beginning to think I am the only person in the world who does not. Grr.)

Requirements for battle: Stirring music, at least one woman wailing and crying, preferably holding crying child, dwelling on aftermath too long.

Actaully, you do need to go and see this film. Because, well, it's got Aragorn in it. Drool. Plus Eowyn. Oh, and Faramir does a lot better in this one. Yay Faramir! *waves flag*

You should also go and see it in a Turkish cinema, because the *groans* when Aragorn and Arwen finally snogged were incredibly amusing! Also for the wonderful moments when, due to the odd grammar difference, "No" is translated as "Evet" and 99% of the cinema thinks the translator screwed up. Then there's me, smug in knowing that EVERY time I ask a negative question in class everyone agrees with a fervent "Yes." So there.

* posted by nat 8:41 PM

Thursday, December 18, 2003

It's snowing. Yay snow!

It's the usual Istanbul whirling around in the air stuff, and it's a little bit early, but still, it's snow! I think I might have to have a go at some biscuits tomorrow.

I am contemplating learning the saz. Just an idea.

* posted by nat 3:37 PM

Wednesday, December 17, 2003

We had a busy day on Tuesday.

We got up early and adventured onto the blue minibus down to Kartal. Jeremy kept saying "do you know where we get off" and I kept saying "Why the heck would I ever have come down here before?" but we saw a sign in the end, and made it to the iskele in time to buy simit and spend a while convincing the ticket-seller that we really are teachers and we wanted the discount, yes please!

The ferry to Yalova was over almost before it had started; the dolmus took a little bit of finding on the other side and it crawled through town before getting going, and after about half an hour we hit the town of Termal - and it was still raining. So we had a quick tramp around, basically going "hurrah" at all the steam coming out of the bathouses, thought about going to the outdoor pool but decided very entirely against it, and disappeared inside one of the smaller ones (choosing 'good for rheumatism' over 'good for the heart'.

After we got in we realised that Jeremy had ALL the hamam soap.

We deliberated for a while and then settled on swimsuits just in case, then we got down there and found that most people were entirely naked, apart from one or two who insisted on keeping their knickers on. So we thought what the hell and stripped off. There was a lovely, very hot pool that smelt slightly of suphur, then the taps to wash from which were also scalding, and the hot slab to just lie back on, most of which was impossible to see through the mists of steam. I wallowed in the pool a while, scrubbed several layers of skin off, lounged about on the stone until I turned a lovely shade of lobster red, then rinsed and repeated; it was lovely.

After a while all the naked women left to be replaced by a whole bunch of women wearing bikinis. At which point we decided we just couldn't win.

Lunch was fantastic, simply because the pide place actually served beer. My delight was greeted with huge confusion by L & J, mostly, I think, because they still haven't grasped how virtually impossible this is. (I told Yasmin later, however, and she was suitably impressed!)

We made friends with a very wet dog that looked more like a miniature wolf that really just wanted us to stay and play, but as it was still tipping it down with rain we shared a dolmus with a load of overexcited schoolkids (all going "foreigners on the bus, foreigners on the bus!") back to the ferry terminal where we just about managed to get onto the ferry before conking out completely.

Then in the evening Yasmin and I grabbed gözleme before heading off to Karga - getting picked up by Mustafa in a taxi on the way - and settling in for a slow evening of plenty of drink and plenty of gossip. Oguz came along a bit later and Mustafa turned into a very grumpy old Eniste and gave him the complete twenty questions grilling even while Yasmin was busy trying to murder him. It was a lot more fun to watch than it perhaps sounds!

Today has been slightly less manic; I was woken up at 6am by noises of the storm dismantling the makeshift garage in the car park of the next door apartment block; pieces of corrugated plastic flying all over the place setting off car alarms left right and centre. Loni and I braved the evil nasty weather up to Kadıköy to do some panic shopping - as in argh, it's Christmas next week, why why why? - and then Yasmin and I took refuge in Starbucks before going to see Dogville at the cinema.

Which brings me to now, feeling extremely ill from the camerawork, warming up at school and trying to do a bit of planning before having a hopefully relaxing evening.

I have Christmas biscuit recipes. Oh yes.

* posted by nat 5:25 PM

Monday, December 15, 2003

The kids and miming verbs, up and around the room. 'Sing' requires being opera-singers; 'swim' requires lying stomach down on the chairs and flailing about hopelessly. 'Roller-skate' requires a look of panic, and then a crash-landing onto the floor.

And as for 'play chess' - these kids play at speed!

* posted by nat 3:07 PM

Friday, December 12, 2003

Those evenings where you go home and think "shall just watch a bit of Bridget Jones" and then you end up watching the whole lot over far too many strange-not-almonds-might-have-something-to-do-with-apricots-type-nuts, and a bar of chocolate -

They are good.

* posted by nat 10:01 AM

Thursday, December 11, 2003

So I thought on Monday, what the hell, and sent Oguz a text message, and the phone went off pretty much instantly and I got an earful of "I thought you weren't talking to me any more!" to which I basically said, "Er, I kind of wasn't, but I give up now." And I thought, I am being evil, and everyone else instantly said, "Aha! Snogfest!" (which I tried to deny but, well, obviously not very well.)

So I went out and met him for a drink on Tuesday night, the first time in about two months, I think, and most of the evening was spent sprawled all over one of the sofas in Arkoda having a Turkish anatomy lesson. (Well, his English ran out after about three minutes, my Turkish ran out after about half an hour, so we had to find something to do. I know know fabulous words such as little finger and back of the knee.) I drank my beer rather fast and then drank his so then he bought me another one and it was all incredibly comfortable.

Well, apart from having to translate, a little bit too late, that "OW!" is English for "AH!" and that means STOP! Stupid sounds, never can quite get the hang of them.

And the rest of the evening was spent with me going, "Argh, you're far too young for me really," and "Argh, not another Aquarian," and weighing it up against, "Good Turkish practice though," and "Well, the hugs are very nice," and "Yes I know I am doing this for just about all the wrong reasons but er."

Er.

And Yasmin has got a whole back row of tickets for Lord of the Rings next Friday. Hurrah!

* posted by nat 3:10 PM

Wednesday, December 10, 2003

So here I am in Mustafas shop drinking tea and buying headscarves. Yay for random weekend stuff.

* posted by nat 4:06 PM

Monday, December 08, 2003

All the kids seem to have coughs and colds now, despite being wrapped up in several layers, so after we got all the usual class stuff out of the way ("Hello teacher I'm fine thank you and you today there are nine of us today is sunday the seventh of december TWO THOUSAND AND THREE" - which most of them now say without a breath, and they always have to shout the year, I have no idea why, all my classes feel the need to yell the year out) we had a quick impromptu act-out-your-illness lesson. Crippling stomach aches, truly dreadful headaches, the flu, colds complete with English "Atishoo!", and truly painful sore throats. At which point Efe said "I've got medicine!" and promptly became the class pharmacist.

Then we did a little bit of decorate-the-wall which involved drawing pictures and doing a bit of free writing about themselves, which was their usual delightful stuff, apart from when Yigit wanted to know "How do you spell terrorist?" "Er," I said. "Çünkü I am a terrorist yazıcagım."

*Me: . o O Oh, crikey, can't have THAT on the wall!*

"You can't write that," I said, "Because when a policeman comes in and reads that he'll come and arrest you and you'll go to prison for EVER."

At which point he looked rather panicked, so I suggested that a good cover for him would be to write "I am a student," and no-one would ever know.

At 4:45 we all practised our terrorist skills (water bottles are now hand grenades) and left the classroom, at which point I was kidnapped into a taxi by Yasmin and Mustafa and taken to the beer-and-tavla place, where I lost several dice and one piece on the floor but fortunately did not knock my beer over. Which is the important thing.

* posted by nat 3:27 PM

Saturday, December 06, 2003

Last night I discovered it is bad to go to the pub and drink three beers and smoke a cigar when you have only eaten an açma for breakfast and a kitkat for lunch and nothing else.

Rolled home and watched the room spin, before making a lot of pasta and chocolate. Pasta and chocolate is surprisingly good.

Today I had lots of fun with the kids (songs rehash, more picture book stories, and counting up money in quantities of five hundred-thousands), and at the end when we all put our coats and hats and scarves on we all turned into terrorists; folders became bazookas and water bottles became guns, and I died a horrible, messy death in the middle of the classroom. What else is there to do against the firepower of eleven folder-bazookas?

* posted by nat 3:03 PM

Friday, December 05, 2003

Have to go to pub am not being allowed cannot pass go cannot collect

* posted by nat 4:21 PM

*looks at test that students have just done*

*looks again in forlorn hope that it might get better*

ARGH!

*goes to find rock* (I am way past hiding under it, I am just going to hit self on head with it. Would be far kinder.)

* posted by nat 11:27 AM

Thursday, December 04, 2003

I want to go and hide back under that rock. Gah. Wah. GAAAAAAAAAAH.

Rant that went on for far too long and probably was not very interesting inserted, and then deleted, mostly due to the amount of four letter words in it, and because even I do not like the amount of vitriol I am capable of producing.

On the other hand, housemates rock. (Housemates not actually said rock, they just rock.)
Loni: "Stop banging your head against the wall and come and have a beer."
Jeremy: "Beer!"
Loni: "And Jeremy, this is where you tell her that men are dumb."
Jeremy: "Beer!"

* posted by nat 1:30 PM

Wednesday, December 03, 2003

You are 'Adam Lay Y Bounden'! Ah, you appear to be something of a Christmas snob. Whether you are a musician who has sung one carol service too many, or merely someone with very highbrow views on music and culture, you shudder at the thought of piped music in lifts, wince at endless repetitions of Jingle Bells and have put out a contract on Rudolph. While you agree that some of the well-known carols are lovely, you are more drawn by the really obscure medieval carols, or the ones arranged by Bach. You also know parodies of several carols - a legacy of excessive carolling, or perhaps just the product of an enquiring and slighly cynical mind... Try to enjoy Christmas, anyway.


What Christmas Carol are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

Yes. So. I have played Ceremony of Carols about a dozen times in the last couple of days (even more annoying because my CD is scratched so the beginning of 'Wolcum Yole' plays at double speed). And we went through an awful lot of carols sitting in the bus stop at Çavusin on Saturday evening. Mostly in Polish for all of us, or Czech just for me!

* posted by nat 1:28 PM

Tuesday, December 02, 2003

I think I am in love with rocks.

And light. Light and rocks and oooh, rocks.

(I posted this yesterday and was far more eloquent but then the computer crashed, so I am just trying to write up my scrawl now and then I will get somewhere. I tried today but the sink has broken and that lady who has just moved in came up from the floor below to point this out. Whoops. Still, I got to practice my random French skills, as my Turkish didn't get into gear fast enough so she switched. And then we went out to dinner. Rah.)

And I never bought my kilim. Wah. (Hot air ballooon so superiorly good, however...)

Anyhow, after a week of scrambling up and down valleys looking for frescoed rock-cut churches, exploring underground cities and going in for minor spelunking in cliff houses ("If you see any honey in there, DON'T EAT IT!") I am now back in Istanbul and suffering slightly.

Until I spoke to the doctor girlie in Conversation Class (as I was sitting with one doctor and 3 AstraZeneca reps I thought I would test-study myself), and asked her about getting more Piroxicam.

"Oh no," she said, "We don't recommend that one any more, you should try this other one. What's the matter with you anyway?"

So I explained about the thingy and she said, "Oh, cool, I've just started on my rheumatology rotation."

"Er." I said. "Where do you work?"

"Istanbul Uni Hospital," she said.

"Eeeek! I said, "so do you know *name of doctor I was given by my specialist blokie in London*"

"Oh of course!" she said. "You'd better get your details sent over."

Well, go students! Only 15 million people in Istanbul, after all.

* posted by nat 6:25 PM