I have spent most of today trying to write reports. The computers have been extremely uncooperative. That would be why I am still here after 12 hours going GRRRRR. I blame the weather which is cold and wet. Today I have consumed: a bowl of cereal, an olive toastie, two apples, two cherry-brownies, a portion of chips from the fish and chip shop and a Kitkat. Oh well.

I have decided I am going home to drink the drink beloved of grizzly bears. GRRRRR.

* posted by nat 5:52 PM

Sunday, May 30, 2004

I am running around school like a mad thing because I have to write a whole batch* of reports, plus none of my adult classes are finishing because my students love me just that much!

Work work work work work! Everyone keeps saying 'You're leaving, aren't you?' And I keep having to jump down and wail 'not yet! not yet!'

I have not forgotten about the kilim. Story coming soon, but I now feel an urgent need to go and consume ice-cream.

*I originally typed 'bath'. Sometimes I think I shouldn't proofread.

* posted by nat 3:01 PM

Thursday, May 27, 2004

My parents have arrived. They have talked incessantly about the house before they were even out of the car. So today I took them to Büyükada - and left them there; I am now at work. I'm sure they can make their own way back!

Katka and Jana have left for the civilisation of Europe, headed homewards. Yesterday, after we fortified ourselves with nargile (strawberry flavour), they helped me purchase a kilim. More on that in a later post, when I have time. We have had a truly silly time consuming too many cherries, Troy wine and singing many Czech songs, and I have a feeling I shall be back in the Czech Republic again at some point in the not-too-far distant future.

I also must do some work... class to teach!

* posted by nat 2:48 PM

Monday, May 24, 2004

On Sunday we practised our beach vocab and then we drew pictures and wrote stories about 'last summer'. I wish I had a scanner, but nonetheless I hereby present you with Hazar's story. (The not-quite-eight-year-old):

Last summer I went to Antalya. I went very very very very very very swiming. My ears got sunburnt. In pool there were sharks. hotel closed. Typhoon grew up. There was a fire devil.

The drawings of the sharks absolutely MAKE this story!

At the end of the lesson I told them we only had four more classes left. Most normal children would go "Yay! Summer!" they all looked at me for a few seconds and then Basak said, blankly, "Why?" I said, "Summer holidays." They said, "Oh." And we all looked sad for a few minutes.

Ben has finally got the computers in the office to stream Test Match Special. There is a crowd of awed worshippers in the office.

* posted by nat 3:56 PM

> WARNING

nat is radioactive. Wear protective clothing at all times.

Username:

From Go-Quiz.com

* posted by nat 10:33 AM

Sunday, May 23, 2004

Doom Howard Schultz doom you!

Moving on... yesterday was quite exciting.

Katka phoned on Thursday night from Samsun and was wibbling about the best time to arrive. I told her to come whenever she could manage. Yesterday afternoon she phoned to say they were busy hitch-hiking and hoped to be there by the evening. A few other confused phone calls later and finally about 10pm I got the 'we're in Caddebostan!' call and we met up outside Marks and Spencers and popped back to the pub. They (Katka and Jana - they met in Nepal apparently and met up again in Pakistan and have been travelling together since then) got slightly over-emotional at the appearance of beer; fortunately they were not too fussed about the taste, as you can't be when it's Efes, and we yakked and yakked for the rest of the evening. Today they are off to Europe and are excessively excited about it (as they are about kettles, hot running water and other mod cons). It's a madhouse!

* posted by nat 11:06 AM

Thursday, May 20, 2004

Doom. The new Starbucks in Suadiye has opened.

Doom comes in the form of Mocha frappucinos and comfy sofas.

Doom at 6.250.000TL which is FAR TOO MUCH and it is on my way home. Doom.

My diet this weekend consisted of rice, peas, cherries and chocolate. I'm sure it's justifiable somehow.

And Troy in fifteen minutes. (full of spoilers, obviously. And the first scene is tres amusing. Unlike in the actual film.)

* posted by nat 10:11 AM

Tuesday, May 18, 2004

Oooooh. Troy. Men in skirts. Oooooh. Thighs.

I mean, even Paris recognised the power of Hector's legs. Yum. (Lots more screencaps from where this one came from, too.)

I had several major problems with this film (eg. the direction, the casting, the cinematography, the music (argh, the music!) the script, the total lack of gods, and... er, that about covers everything.

But the men in skirts pretty much made up for it. I really rather enjoyed it. Glug.

* posted by nat 8:39 PM

Monday, May 17, 2004

I got sucked in. Not quite into buying all the FB paraphenalia (I recommend not having any money) - but the carnival atmosphere was rather fun. I have a kosko or whatever-it's-called - a yellow-blue-and-white bit of rope to tie round my head, and I was nearly decapitated by several flags. As long as you were back from the street it was fine.

Yasmin and I had a couple of quick drinks then decided there was not much point watching it on the TV when we were only a two minute walk away, so we went up to the traffic lights; half the staff were up on the balcony jumping up and down and going insane; the streets were busy and noisy and the FBTV helicopter was circling ever lower. Everyone was standing on top of their cars, their balconies, the underpass entrance, MacDonalds, flying flags and letting off rockets and fireworks (safety precautions? What're they?) and several more people lit up hand-held flares and the whole street glowed bright red and then descended into smoke. Then out of all that smoke crawled the open-top bus, with all the players on top jumping up and down and screaming fit to bust, and the crowd around just erupted - I've never heard anything quite so loud.

The bus was mobbed by flag-waving frenzied fans, so it was moving incredibly slowly, and about another dozen people were trying to cling on to the back of the bus as it moved along. There was an ambulance directly behind it with its siren going but you could hardly hear it. The bus went past and a whole mass of people swept down the pavement, so we sheltered in a flat doorway to avoid getting dragged along. Then we went to Caddebostan and played tavla.

This morning I wake up and find that there were small bombs in Göztepe and Kadıköy at the HBSC, at about ten o'clock last night, which I find slightly hard to believe. Caddebostan is all of two minutes from Göztepe and I left the bar at around ten o'clock, and fine, I was walking in the opposite direction from HSBC, but I never heard or saw a thing, apart from a few too many happy football fans. (We reckon someone left a few too many fireworks in the back of their car!)

ETA: The interesting thing about these bombs is the total lack of reporting on this on the Turkish news. Since this morning we've been looking and haven't seen a single thing, apart from a footnote way down on an internet news site. I think someone has made it all up!

* posted by nat 8:53 AM

Sunday, May 16, 2004

The internet is working again. We're not entirely sure how long it hasn't been working, but yesterday our lovely sysadmin changed the server and didn't change the computers over to the other server, so there has been much ranting and raving, particularly as there only seem to be two teachers who know how to go and uncheck the proxy box, and one of them is me.

Anyhow, the Fenerbahçe mayhem continues. There are humungous flags everywhere, and most of the weekend has had anything from cavalcades of motorbikes to fans sitting on top of their cars flying massive flags to floats of dancers to lorries with large advertising hoardings going up Bagdat Caddesi, which has been mildly disruptive as it has been accompanied by blaring stereos and constant horn action, so the kids and I have had a geography weekend and learnt all of the countries in the Eurovision Song Contest, because it doesn't require too much concentration. They were very good on flags but not so great at pinpointing places on a map. However, four hours of work later and they know the difference between the UK and the USA, and have insisted on calling our street 'Baghdad Street' all afternoon. They can also do a passable imitation of the dancers doing the Ukranian song. Or dance. Or whatever it was. They have also attempted their first joke in English:
Question: How many?
Answer: Germany.
... You probably had to be there, but it was quite funny!

In order to get through Eurovision, it being L&J's first, we finished up the Tanqueray and I wasted a lot of kontours voting for Greece to win (and I still maintain that if the bloke had got a bit more of his kit off, they probably would have!). My favourite part though was definitely Anadolu Atesi in the interval, because Black Sea dancing is just that cool.

I was on a boat on Friday night cruising up the Bosphorus trying, and failing, to learn one of the calmer forms of the Halay - which is what the dance where everyone stands in a big long line and jumps up and down sticking their feet out at various intervals is called.

* posted by nat 2:59 PM

Thursday, May 13, 2004

I got back from Starbucks, having sunk into a sofa vaguely trying to write stories for the kids, and Okan arrived and said "I know something that's going to cheer you up!" and just I was grumbling about how everyone seems to think I look ill today (changes in pressure Not Good, urgh) he opened his bag and inside there was a packet of jammy dodgers.

I completely disgraced myself by squealing very loudly in the middle of the teachers' room. Fortunately it did not bring everyone else running, so I got to eat two. Delicious!

* posted by nat 3:30 PM

Thursdays are turning out to be a little bit excessive, in that it takes a lot of time to get not much done.

My 1-2-1 literally bounced in this morning (inasmuch as an introverted man in his late thirties can bounce in) - I thought he was all excited about Fenerbahçe being a 3 star team now (five championships gets you a star, and this one was their fifteenth) and he was excited, but he was far more desperate to tell me about how he'd been round to a bunch of his customers with his English boss (so some way up the food chain in the company) and had spoken English all day to him - and said boss was impressed and offered to send him off on a course in England when he so wished. So we both bounced around for a bit.

So that was 8-10am sorted out. Now I am getting some planning and admin out of the way before I take Conversation Class at 13:30 for an hour. After that I will probably have to leave due to the presence in the Teacher's Room of someone highly annoying, then I teach the two cotton-socks businessmen (I am learning about being a Design Engineer which as far as I can work out involves putting electrical wiring in windows - it's all a bit beyond me) from 19-21. Then I go home. It's just all rather bitty. But it involves lovely students, so not too much complaining there.

Apart from finishing the frog jigsaw (yay!) I achieved very little over the weekend except managing to stop myself from buying out half of the bookshop; I just got one audiobook, and frankly given the way the exchange rate has jumped up in the past week, I really shouldn't have bought it at all. Never mind.

I am also suffering from a serious lack of balcony, but I pull open the windows at the end of my room and at least have a bit of a breeze to sit in. I get more sun sitting by the window just here, typing along. They are putting up a load of Yellow and Navy Blue bunting along the street. They don't call this the Fenerbahçe Republic for nothing!

* posted by nat 9:29 AM

Monday, May 10, 2004

SAMPIYON FENERBAHÇE!

Argh. Lack of S-cedillas.
I hear Bagdat Caddesi went mental last night. No - I heard it - the horns and the shouting, and I saw the flares and the mad partying on the television, on the split screen on MTV, while reporters chased the players and the manager round the pitch at Denizli.

We stayed in, played tavla, and had plenty of beer, while watching the scores up in the corner of the screen (the matches were on Digiturk, and the pub was full of idiots, so we just watched the scoreline, and mostly we listened to bleepy bouncy music. I cannot remember the name of the album, but it's from Iceland.

I had a text from my 1-2-1: I'm not coming tomorrow. Fenerbahçe are champion.

Which was nice.

* posted by nat 9:43 AM

Sunday, May 09, 2004

Oh, the weather is beautiful! Sunny and gorgeouse, and the kids are all in t-shirts and sleeveless dresses and they all have the hugest scars from TB jabs on their arms. I showed them mine, which is almost invisible, and they refused to believe it was the same thing. "It must be a Turkish illness, you don't have it," was how they rationalised it. After a few minutes I stopped worrying about it.

So we got on with learning the past tense, most of which we have cleared up over the course of the weekend, finished watching the Lion King and sang "Hakuna Matata." A lot.

My hips are still in failure mode (slow walking, slow is good), but I am off to the pub anyway.

* posted by nat 3:14 PM

Friday, May 07, 2004

The weather is too nice to work. Unfortunately, it is also too nice to sit outside, as I got sunburnt on a ten minute walk yesterday afternoon. Bother.

Cinematic news: I saw Girl with a Pearl Earring in the Pera cinema on Wednesday afternoon, which has to have some of the oldest film-playing equipment I've ever seen. Complete antiques! They're set up with glass around them so you can see, and as I walked out when the credits were playing the little man in there was happily turning the spool around by hand. Bizarre.

Troy is out on May 14th, and the posters are everywhere. Yum, I say.

* posted by nat 12:06 PM

Thursday, May 06, 2004

*bursts back onto the page in sparkles of light*

Aha! I am back, and if not rested, at least sufficiently pickled in gin to be quite happy. Also sunburnt. Whoops.

So Eleanor has been here, and when we have not been planning our great and at this point in time entirely hypothetical coast-to-coast travel across America (all camper vans gratefully received) - which has become slightly less imaginary now we actually know where Colorado is - we have been out and about and El has been scaring the locals.

At the start they were scaring her, completely ignoring me and yelling out to her "Are you from Australia?" "You have nice eyes!" and my personal favourite, in the Grand Bazaar, a very polite "Excuse me, can I hassle you?" Anyway, she got over it.

So there have been yet more trips around Sultanahmet: Aya Sofya, Sultanahmet Mosque, lots of bazaars, and even Topkapı Palace this time, where we saw the Prince and Princess of Belgium, the latter being rather hard to miss as she was in a bright pink trouser suit and followed around by a cloud of photographers. We travelled up the Bosphorus, ate yoghurt in Kanlıca, stared out at the Black Sea from Anadolu Kavagı; we played far too much backgammon everywhere, drank a lot of apple tea, smoked strawberry nargile, and I very nearly bought a kilim. We bought jewellery and ate kumpir and waffles in Ortaköy, had a candlelit fish dinner in Nevizade - there was a power cut - and nearly killed ourselves cycling around Büyükada where we were almost attacked by a very large and scary rooster who wanted to eat either our crisps of our backgammon pieces. Anyhow I have now discovered why I have not been on a bike in a long time and why I quite possibly will not be getting on one ever again: my hips are very messed up.

So now I am back at work, and have said for definite what I will not be back after the summer, which is very scary. Wah. There are 5 more weeks of regular classes, and then the summer courses, and the weather has finally started to look reasonably summery. My 1-2-1 businessman didn't stop talking for the whole lesson. Hurrah!

* posted by nat 9:16 AM