Seafood and Cheese

           Happy Remembrance Day!  A day that is not celebrated in Turkey, although I am not quite sure why.  According to my students, Turkey participated in World War I but not in World War II- they had too many internal conflicts to deal with.  From the bits and scraps I can pick up from their broken English, I look forward to having internet in the house so that I can do a little more research into Turkish history.  We have made a fabulous discovery- and by we, I mean ‘I’, but it is a glorious discovery so I will share undeserved glory with Joe.  Beer!  Walking distance from the house!  Not a pub or anything like that, but a shop with a blue sign (oddly enough right outside the mosque but I will take what I can get) that has a friendly shopkeeper and cold beer.  There really isn’t much for excitement here, and although we will probably continue to buy beer in town, it is nice to know that the locations extend outside the city center.

Kunefe- deep fried cheese in syrup.

             

                 I am continuing to ‘babysit’ Buglem twice a week and she is a little cutie.  Her mother obviously is practicing with her quite often because each time I come she has new things to say (I love you teacher is my favourite so far) and since she is only two and a bit, sometimes we have to bribe her with jellybeans to get any English out of her and sometimes she gets very confused.  She threw a mini fit today when Kubra tried to explain that ‘balik’ is ‘fish’ in English.  She kept insisting it was ‘balik’ and did not like being told otherwise.  Technically she was right, so we pulled out some playdough and changed the topic.  True to what I have encountered so far, the hospitality of Kubra and Ali is fabulous.  They always have food or Turkish coffee or something of the like for me, and often send some home for Joe as well.

                

Trout baked in cheese.

               We finally had another outing.  On Friday night Joe and I were exhausted.  We had gone to the gym and then pretty much done nothing the rest of the day.  I was in pajamas, heating up dinner when Joe’s student Ahmet called.  He had invited us for dinner that night, but since it had been a week and we had heard nothing, we assumed it wasn’t happening (this happens quite regularly here).  However this was not the case, and he would be arriving in fifteen minutes to pick us up.  Muttering unpleasantries, I turned off the stove and went to put on proper clothes and head out into the cold to wait.  He and his friend (another student in Joe’s class) who between the two of them can barely string together enough English for a conversation (they are beginners) pulled up.  We headed about 50km outside of Malatya (driving roughly 150km/hr around winding roads- I tried not to watch the speedometer and was silently grateful that Turks don’t generally consume alcohol) to a town called Surgu- famous for their fish restaurants.  We had trout baked deep in cheese (almost ruining the flavour of the fish) and then kunefe for dessert (the best way I can describe it is deep fried cheese soaking in syrup- decently tasty but not something I would order again).  It was a pleasant enough evening for the amount of conversation we could muster, but after tea and a promise to do this again, they drove us home- a good thing as weekends are tediously long and this one was no exception.

                

           

After dinner selfie.

                  I love teaching English- for the most part my students are enthusiastic and interesting.  They love to chat upstairs inbetween classes and practice their English or just generally joke around.  Usually the other teachers are there too, and so Elif will help translate if need be, but usually it isn’t.  I am pretty good at guessing what someone is trying to say after three years of teaching English.  This week they had me doing Turkish tongue twisters (as payback for the English ones I make them do in class) and I do it.  I figure if they struggle through my classes, laughing at me (in good fun of course) is an encouraging way to make them open up more in class.  However, on occasion you get a class where the students as a whole don’t want to speak English.  They are there for exam prep, and I pity them because they don’t realize that they cant learn the language properly without knowing how to speak.  That’s the natural order of language.  Look at children.  I have never encountered students who want to learn grammar and not speaking before.  Usually it’s all, nothing or speaking.  A bit odd.  By the time I am eight classes in out of eight- no time for food of course, I forget how to spell (prompting one of my students to ask me if English was indeed my first language) and my arm feels like it is going to fall off from writing on and erasing the board all day, but despite the busyness of it, I really enjoy the weekends.  I go home feeling like I have accomplished something and that is a satisfying feeling.