Türkiye - Europa

Table Talk

Yazar bot | 08.07.2008 | Kategori Turizm

Our living room table is awash with cables and devices - and that’s with the scanner being put away in the cupboard. I did have my sewing machine on there too but, well …

So then I took the kitchen table out of the kitchen and set it up in the spare room - now my ’sewing room’ - and although the table is small, and round, I found that I had more room for my sewing than when I used the main table in the living room.

However, every time we come home with shopping Peter stands and pines for our kitchen table to put the shopping onto (not that he has ever sat there to eat …)

So we have been on the lookout for another table. Over the last few days we have

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Fun with Students

Yazar bot | 08.07.2008 | Kategori Turizm

You could say that living in Turkey isn’t all that different from Australia. Well, no, that’s not really true.

We are still teaching - we were teaching in Australia. No, that’s different too.

One of the really nice things about this job is the students that we teach.

That’s Gözde and Merve, a couple of the girls in my morning weekday class. As you can see, they are very studious - I never have to say, “Sit down! Be quiet! Gözde don’t steal Merve’s book!” and things like that.

Most of our lessons are four hours long. The best bit is the ten minute breaks every hour. Then the students head downstairs to the courtyard for a smoke and a cup of çay (Turkish tea). We are free to have a coffee in our staff room, or join them.

This is Cenk and Yiğit, a haberin devamı »

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A slight miscalculation

Yazar bot | 08.07.2008 | Kategori Turizm

I heard on the news that the funeral for Dink - the journalist who was shot the other day - would be on Tuesday, and I made a mental note to stay at home on Tuesday.

However said piece of information must be very small, because it slid right through the sieve of my mind. So when Charlotte appeared at my door on Monday evening asking me to come with her (and Jordanian Ali and New Girl Sarah) to see Dolmabahce Palace, I agreed. Peter couldn’t come - he was teaching a class.

So in the morning I was up and dressed and ready, and Charlotte was here in the flat waiting for Ali and Sarah. At the moment when he should have been ringing the doorbell, Ali rang, and said he couldn’t come because he had no money.

That wasn’t useful. Not coming because of Dink’s funeral would have been a better haberin devamı »

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Climbing the (glass) wall

Yazar bot | 08.07.2008 | Kategori Turizm

There are lots of famous walls around the world - the Great Wall of China, Hadrian’s Wall, the Berlin Wall … And now:

The Glass Wall

Obviously this one doesn’t have the strength of those other walls, so it must be symbolic.

We have been very puzzled about its meaning and purpose. It all started …

When we first arrived at this school, there was a partial glass wall separating off the small section of the teachers’ room where the Teachers’ Assistant had her desk. This was her little place - she held the keys to the various cupboards, and occasionally did photocopying, and guarded the paper … one or two packets at the most. She still found time to do her makeup, sit on the radiator, and chat online with friends. She was a pretty girl, but her youthfulness, haberin devamı »

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Mosquiality

Yazar bot | 08.07.2008 | Kategori Turizm

I was walking down one of the narrow streets of Bakırköy when I noticed this:

Well, I don’t know.
Rocket ship?
Some kind of missile?
A heating unit?
Art - a sculpture?

I was surprised that no one else had stopped to look. A gypsy lady took advantage of my inactivity to try to sell me some “Evil Eye” trinkets. As I fumbled for my camera I told her several times (in Turkish) that I didn’t understand and only spoke English, and she finally wandered off in disgust muttering to herself.

That was when I started thinking about “mosquiality“, or maybe it should be “mosqueness“.

Do you know what a mosque looks like? There are a few mosques in Australia - you can mostly notice them by their dome shape.
We saw quite a few haberin devamı »

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The Flood of 07

Yazar bot | 08.07.2008 | Kategori Turizm

I did notice that the little piece of wire holding the washing machine hose in the bath had come loose, and I had the thought that I should do something about it - soon. But I got distracted, and forgot all about it.

We were watching one of my favourite CSI programmes, and it had just got to the good part, but Peter suddenly had to go to the bathroom.

When I heard him yell, I suddenly remembered about the hose.

There is about a 1cm lip at the bathroom door, so naturally the whole bathroom was under water to that level. There is no floor drain in the bathroom.

Escaping from the bathroom, the water had first headed into the second toilet, the old-fashioned ’squat’ toilet in the next room. Because of the smell that emanates from this fixture, we had

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Frustration and the Golden Rule

Yazar bot | 08.07.2008 | Kategori Turizm

We have finished working with Dilko English here is Istanbul - a little earlier than we originally intended. The how and why is a story for another day.

So here is another little story that just gives a hint of what it’s been like working here.

It’s July now, and most of the teachers have already left or gone on holiday for the summer. Charlotte has gone back to England for a month. Dilko didn’t pay her as she left what they owed for her previous month of work because “that’s not how it’s done” - payment is always on the 15th of the following month and she left at the end of the month. So she asked them to give her pay to her flatmate, Stephanie, on the 15th. That was ok, they said, they could do that.

However Stephanie was flying back to the States for a haberin devamı »

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Hair do

Yazar bot | 08.07.2008 | Kategori Turizm

It’s all very well having ‘adventures’ in a foreign land, but most of us are not so keen when it comes to someone messing with our hair. An Australian friend of ours in China went in for a haircut and came out with an embarrassing mullet - which ended up with her having to have her hair cut really short. I had my own haircut hassles in China, as you can read here.

All of the Turkish women I’ve seen - those who don’t have their heads covered - have beautiful hair, they are obviously very particular about what happens to their hair, so that should give me a great deal of confidence about getting my hair done.

The one slightly odd thing here in Turkey is that all services are pretty much men’s domain. For instance, there are no waitresses - only waiters - and the hairdressers are haberin devamı »

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How about that Czech food?

Yazar bot | 08.07.2008 | Kategori Turizm

Our first taste of food in Prague was a bit sad. But it was all uphill after that.

The hotel provided breakfast, a simple buffet of cereals, breads, cold meat, cheeses, salad, creamy yoghurt, tea and coffee.

At the metro station there was the little kiosk and a couple of small restaurants.

Well, the words look tasty.

But just down the road a little way there is a restaurant called Cerreto. We went there every chance we got, because we wanted to taste all of their dishes. Italian food, served by a delightful young waitress with a stunning personality and good English.

Peter tried the scallopini, washed down with a big beer, Czech style.

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True Lies

Yazar bot | 08.07.2008 | Kategori Turizm

Our students in China mostly wanted to learn English so that they could get out of China, to go and study overseas and maybe even make a life for themselves overseas.

But not the Turks. They seem to love their country and have no desire to leave, they just want to learn English so that they can get better jobs or do better at their present jobs here.

One of the places that we have heard the best standard of English here in İstanbul is the Grand Bazaar. After all, that is where all of the tourists go, and that is where the tourist dollars flow.

What really intrigued us was the way the sellers in the Grand Bazaar tried to win our custom.

“Ah there you are! You are the customer I have been waiting for all day!”

“I have been waiting for you for a whole month …”

“Welcome! Come in! I am here haberin devamı »

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