Back Home

For years of returning home to Berkeley from New York during my university, I've felt my hometown slipping away from me, feeling less and less like home. I would fall into a standstill where my life acquired abroad had no impact on the life I lead back home. I would fall into old lazy habits and spend my time reminiscing instead of progressing. Creativity would slow up and procrastination would rule - which is okay when I'm on vacation but still distanced me from that feeling of home sweet home and introduced the feeling of having nowhere that held the special place in my heart.

As I said before, Istanbul started feeling like a home to me before I left. I felt entirely comfortable there. And yet as I return to Berkeley I feel the same about this place as well, more at home than I've felt here in years. Maybe it's because I was gone for so long, about 8 months longer than I've ever been gone before. But either way, despite being afraid that returning to America would be a let-down, I'm glad to be back.

Goodbye Istanbul

Tomorrow I say goodbye to Istanbul. It's very bittersweet, but I know I'll be back. Next time I write, I'll be back in my birth home...

Inception Revisited

Today was the last day of school, and the least emotional last day of anything-child-related I've ever seen. Everyone's worn out, everyone's ready for summer, and no one is missing anyone else to the point of tears - the only tears I saw came when report cards were handed out. I did get a bouquet of yellow flowers from a 4th grader, but most of my things are in boxes now and I had nowhere to put them, so I gave them to a friend after school. Later today a good handful of us English teachers are getting together for an expensive dinner with canlı müzik to say goodbye to the 8-strong of us who aren't returning.

At the beginning of my stay in Turkey, before school had even started, I wrote a post comparing teaching with the hit film "Inception." I essentially argued that the characters' nearly impossible goal of planting an idea in someone else's head in a way that feels authentic and original to that person was a teacher's daily job. Our task is to help students understand new meanings on their own terms, meaning we can't spell things out for them or feed them a steady stream of facts, but instead we must allow new information to enter our students in the way they learn best; in other words, they take knowledge and make it their own. The teacher is just a guide.

When I made it into the classroom and thrust myself into a full year of teaching at this school, all the theories evaporated into the idealistic past. In the reality of the classroom in this school (as Turkish teachers complain as well) was constant noise, disrespect, and essentially anarchy. A successful lesson wasn't one where students truly learned something new but one where they all just shut up and stopped throwing things for a few minutes, providing for just a brief moment the environment that makes it possible to learn. Anyway, I could go on and on about how difficult "teaching" was (the Turkish teachers agree with me when I say we aren't teachers because they actually stop us from teaching - they say it's like day care, but I've worked day care before where students allowed themselves to learn). I think I must have in other posts even though I've held off criticizing my school publicly while I was working there.

So did I perform inception this year? Surely I didn't do it every day as I'd hoped would happen. I certainly gained a new appreciation from one of "Inception's" character's belief that the mind can always trace the genesis of an idea to its source and therefore expel a planted idea. Because I taught 12 and 13 year old students I quickly got used to my words and ideas being rejected simply because they were mine. Many of my students really wouldn't have let themselves retain anything if they thought I was the source. Here's an example: at the end of the year we watched a film adaptation of a book we read, and one girl complained every class as if she'd rather have done worksheets than watch this film. But once the picture started she couldn't look away, even though I gave her permission to do a quiet activity instead. Even if she subconsciously enjoyed it, her conscious mind would never let her admit this to her friends or herself.

Sometimes an idea gains its power because the mind knows where it came from. Sometimes a thought who comes from a person you deeply admire or a friend or maybe even someone you don't even know but had a particularly provocative thought can be incorporated into a life. And it is argued of course no idea is completely original to begin with, so even if we're not quite sure where a thought came from that doesn't mean it's unique. And there were a handful of students who were, thank goodness, inspired to excel in their English lessons - not the ones who needed it the most, sadly - either by family tradition, personal diligence, interest in English language entertainment media, or, as was the case for a couple, because of me.

So I guess I did perform inception... to an extent. I never actively put forth the idea that English is fun and interesting in such a direct manner to anyone but their parents; such a proclamation would instantly trigger a classroom full of pre-teen rebellious instincts. But my energy and youth (not tooting my own horn - those are my two strongest attributes as a teacher that almost make up for my inexperience) brought a couple of students - just a couple - to that conclusion all on their own. A couple of specific grammar points came through by way of inception as well, but that was rare. It's true: inception is hard! Maybe not as hard as was dramatized in the film, but still hard. And it does impart knowledge that stays with a student in an emotional process - that's why it has to be the teacher's goal, even if at times it feels out of reach.

Sunset Photos

I know I said in my previous post that I won't be posting again until I get back to California, but for some reason my in-home internet that had been inexplicably off for the past few months has now turned inexplicably back on. Therefore I can post again.

I think this is because I returned my cat to the vet today. I couldn't find anyone to take him, so Socrates is back in his cage, waiting for someone who can stay in the country longer to adopt him. I really asked everyone I knew if they could take him - I even introduced myself to a neighbor today before heading to the vet and asked her in broken Turkish if she wanted him. I'm not particularly sad to be rid of him - people who know him know he's an annoying little creature - but he does deserve a home. But I'm looking forward to closing out my time in Istanbul with uninterrupted nights' sleeps.

Now, the reason I'm posting again today is that we had a stunning sunset this evening and I took pictures. I've tried many times before, but this is the first time I'm really happy with the pictures of clouds I took. I wanted to ask my faithful 2 or 3 readers to vote in the comments section on which photo they like the most. Remember, click on the pictures if you want to see them bigger.

Okay? Here goes:

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Semester Holiday, Part III: Kapaokya

I just realized that I still haven't posted about the third and best leg of my semester holiday back in February, so here goes nothing. I'll try to relive the magic I felt in the strange land of Kapadokya, in the middle of the country, as best I can. But be forewarned: I don't really remember who took which of the pictures that you're about to see: me or Courtney.


Courtney making a snow angel

I think one of Turkey's best-kept secrets is Kapadokya in the winter. When I talked to Jorge, owner of the Chocolate Hotel in Antalya, he said he'd been told never to go to Kapadokya in the wintertime - it's too cold, the weather's awful, everything's closed, falan filan. Courtney and I had lucked out. Arrived a few days after the last serious winter blizzard so the sky was beautiful and the snow was fresh. We got to climb around in the snow around the bizarre natural rock formations, get hit by a couple snowballs, make snow angels, wear hats and gloves; for this California boy it was indescribably otherworldly.


A group of fairy chimneys at sunset

Kapadokya, despite being uniquely beautiful in its strangeness, is a terribly difficult place to navigate, especially for those who don't have a car. The 4-gate airport in the city Kayseri was full of people giving contradictory advice about how to get to the otogar (bus terminal) or if such a way truly existed. In the end, we took a taxi to the city center, then a public bus with the help of a kind local also on his way to the otogar for business. He also helped us buy our tickets for the bus to Göreme, the Kapadokyan city where we were staying, so we wouldn't have to be confused about the complex bus network throughout the vast country area. On the bus they served tea and I spilled it all over myself when the bus hit a bump in the road.

Ironically, the hotel provided a shuttle back to the airport, a much simpler and cheaper solution.


Abandoned monk's abodes

We stayed in Göreme (meaning "can't be seen" in Turkish) for 3 days, site of the famous Göreme Open Air Museum. Such a museum can exist because the Göreme valley is where the erosion of the nearby hills create unique rock formations called fairy chimneys. some of the early Christians came to escape prosecution, and they carved homes into the fairy chimneys and lived ascetic lives there, keeping themselves largely out of sight. In fact people still carve buildings into the rocks today, like most hotels - our hotel was built into a rock face and was naturally insulated. We wandered around for hours just outside the town area where there were plenty of fairy chimneys to climb around in and explore, an experience that was even more gratifying than the famous museum was. The only advantage of the museum was that the churches had well-preserved Christian mosaics on the walls.


Me looking out over Kapadokya. Courtney took this picture, needless to say.

We tried to follow a sign to the Saklı Kilesi but never found the church. Courtney found out why: Saklı turns out to mean "hidden."


A fairy chimney at night

It felt almost like coming to a place I knew existed but never thought I'd come to myself, like the incredible arches in the Utah desert or the tidal-wave feeling of being up against Rhine Falls or the first time I swam in the simultaneously clear and blue Mediterranean Sea. It was as if I was living in the imagination of my childhood, from the sci-fi fantasies where I flew spaceships to embattled planets to keep them from the forces of evil and I drempt up crazy landscapes suitable for the epic clashes in my mind. It was unbelievable that the place was so empty, that we had it almost all to ourselves in the off-road snow.


From inside a monk's abode at the Göreme Open Air Museum

One recurring theme of the trip was the presence or absence of light. In the churches in and near the Open Air Museum, light could only come in through the door (or eroded holes in the ceiling like in the above picture), which created ghastly shadows along the floors.


Kapadokya as seen from the hot air balloon. You can really see the curvature of the earth in this photo.

To make the experience even more beautifully unreal, I rode in my first ever hot air balloon. The hotel had a deal offering a 50 euro discount on one company which cut some of the bite out of the cost. It turns out that the tour companies tend to team up, so by staying in one hotel we got discounts for one particular hot air balloon company and a Turkish bath house, and we got a discount on a tour of Kapadokya through the bus we took to Selçuk from Pamukkale.


Looking down from our balloon

To ride a balloon, the company's van picks you up from your hotel at 6:30 in the morning - apparently this time of day presents ideal flight conditions. They take you to a field where you can see workers setting up and lighting up balloons, and as you watch and try to take pictures that capture the whole gigantic spectacle they feed you little breakfast cakes that taste like food you'd imagine eating in a spaceship. Eventually an organizer calls you out of the crowd of a couple hundred that have gathered (not all to ourselves anymore) and leads you to your balloon. When the flight is over 45 - 60 minutes later they give you ludicrously pompous certificates of completion and serve champagne. Then they drive you back to your hotel and you get there at about 8:30, just in time to have the hotel breakfast before a nap.


Our balloon pilot. The man whose head we can see the back off seemed to be his apprentice.

Our pilot was especially good, we could tell. He was the only one in a sky filled with balloons who was able to land us directly on the back of our loading truck at the end of the day - everyone else's balloons landed in the snow and were then lifted onto their trucks. I wanted to ask how one becomes a balloon pilot, but my Turkish wasn't good enough at the time. But the man whose head we can see the back of in this photo was most likely the pilot's apprentice, judging by the way he studied the pilot and helped him out here and there.


Göreme and Uçhisar

We ended up flying at something like 700 meters at one point, watching the sun rise over Göreme valley. It produced unreal shadows.


Me and Courtney in the balloon

Sadly, about mid-way through the flight Courtney's stomach started acting up and she couldn't really enjoy the rest of the flight. She liked what she could stomach, though. She said it wasn't vertigo, and I'm guessing it was the crappy spaceship breakfast cakes we ate. When we landed the first thing we looked for was a W.C.


The underside of our balloon


Our pilot took us so close to the fairy chimneys we thought we could reach out and touch them! At one point we actually feared we would crash...

We road the balloon with a group of high school exchange students from countries all over the world - at the end of the flight they took pictures of themselves holding their countries' flags by the deflating balloon. We got in a conversation with them when one of them overheard me talking about Avatar, the Last Airbender - I don't remember why exactly, but probably how the hot air balloon invented in the TV show was used first as a weapon where in the brief history of hot air balloons we were given on our completion certificates never once mentioned hot air balloon weaponry. The high schoolers knew more Turkish than me, which made me green with jealousy.


Uçhisar Castle


Deflating a balloon


The sky is decorated at 7:30 in the morning. Those hills in the background will someday become new fairy chimneys.


Looking out over Kapadokya before our tour

One day we took what NeşeTour calls the "Green Tour." Because transportation is so difficult in Kapadokya for non-Turks (my limited Turkish was able to get us on the local bus to Avanos for an afternoon), the tour agencies also pick you up from your hotel.


Derinkuyu's namesake, an 8-story well

Our first stop was Derinkuyu ("Deep well"), a famous 8-story underground city that had been inhabited for centuries off and on. Its first inhabitants were early Christians who used it to hide out for weeks, sometimes even months at a time, from persecution. The well was used as a well to collect water from an underground stream, but also to provide ventilation throughout the cramped and dark city.


The wine area. Despite being locked in these deep tunnels for months on end, they still managed to make fine wines.

Most of the logic behind Derinkuyu's construction was to keep out enemies. The narrow, low ceilinged corridors were to prevent enemies from being able to run effectively, and there were many secret passages leading to stone doors used to trap unsuspecting trespassers. Long and dark hallways were used to lead enemies on an endless chase, and at least one of these long tunnels eventually connected to another underground city something like 7 kilometers away.


Lights guiding us through the dark Derinkuyu

It was something of a lesson in what human beings are capable of. These people were faced with a the difficult situation of the constant reality of persecution, and they managed to persevere in a both creative and practical way. Despite the hardships they were forced through, they managed to preserve the lifestyle they wanted. It's amazing to face the crushing pressures of all the world around you and push through them.






The three above pictures are the Ihlara Valley

Our next stop was the Ihlara Valley, the place I was most excited to visit because I'd heard it described as being like the Grand Canyon but with ascetic churches carved into the cliffs. I was honestly a little disappointed, but it was relaxing to hike along the riverside and listen to the water trickling by. I was most astounded at how different each step might be: in the places that got sunshine spring was showing its first signs, while places in the shade were still blanketed in winter snow. We hiked through the melting snow and tried our best not to fall, and I tried my best not to fall behind the group taking too many pictures.


Me at the Selime Monastery. Courtney took this one, too.

Our final stop (I'm not going to count our jade-carving bonus stop that ended up being really boring) was the grand Selime Monastery, a gigantic cathedral complex built in the face of a rock outcropping, a little like Uçhisar Castle from the pictures above. People think that the complex was something like a monastic school to train new monks.


Courtney in the Selime Monastery

It's difficult to describe the scale of this place. It wasn't tall like a mountain or particularly wide, but the juxtaposition of the rock with all the buildings carved into it, including a two story cathedral the size of a small church, gave the impression of gigantism. Or, rather it made me feel small. It made me feel like I could build every place I would ever need in the space of this rock and still have much more rock to go before I'd used it all up. You could build a school, a hospital, a group of houses for you and your friends, a sports center, a grocery store, a shopping center, and a music theater all within the confining space of this one rock. And yet I had to come here from the other end of the world just to see it. It was the first time I felt like many people in New York, that they never have a need to leave New York City because they feel New York is all-encompassing.




I think Courtney took this picture of the Selime Monastery

The monastery was also one of the best places for hide-and-seek I've ever seen. Being able to climb around it released my inner 6-year-old.


Courtney in the 2-story cathedral. It's not a great picture, but it's the only one I've got.

Göreme is a very touristy town. Everyone spoke English and they spoke it very well. It made me wonder if any Turks ever visit Kapadokya. When I started speaking what little Turkish I knew it would make anyone friendly towards me, like the potter in Avanos, a little city famous for its pottery. The man, who had learned the trade from his father, gave us a "free" demonstration ("free" because it was assuming we'd buy something, which we did) of the craft. We were skeptical at first, but watching the way he could spin the wheel and, with the simple touch of his finger inside the clay lip, bring the clay to flow outwards like water poured gently onto a table. It was mesmerizing how the blob of Avanos River clay (a unique type of red clay) danced and twirled for him to the point where it was disappointing when the flower vase took its final shape. Courtney bought a couple plates for her friends which the store owner took so long to wrap that we nearly missed our bus back to Göreme. Still, the 200 lira plate we'd talked down to 80 broke in two on her flight home.



In one Ottoman-style restaurant where we ate on pillows with our shoes off and legs crossed, we met a woman teaching English in China who'd been forced to change her plans to visit Egypt after the political upheaval that had just started, and at the last second found herself in Turkey, all alone. Courtney had been teaching me how to recognize people who, like myself sometimes, are hoping someone will invite them to join a group but are too self-conscious to ask. We had a lively dinner conversation comparing education systems with me - and, like so many teachers in the world, bemoaning education's infatuation with over-testing - and travel stories with Courtney. Those of you who know me know I've traveled a lot in my life, but Courtney's traveled even more than me, and she's rarely been to Europe, so together we cover a lot of ground. On the restaurant's speakers we heard a dark rap song and I made sure to ask the waiter who performed it, so I took the name Sagopa Kajmer to the internet at the end of the night (the song's dark name was "Aşk Yok Artık," or "There's no love anymore").

On another night we had dinner with a Brazilian man we'd met on our Green Tour. Amazingly, Brazil is a place neither I nor Courtney have been, so together the three of us expressed out cultural curiosity. It eventually turned to politics and voting - at the time I had fallen out of the loop of current events, so it was a little hard for me to keep up. I know Courtney was in the same boat as me, but she's so brilliant and unafraid of admitting what she doesn't know that she covered for me like a champ. Of course, if you've been reading what I've posted lately about the New York Times, you know that I've regained my vigor for current events, thanks to the high-stakes election that just happened (I have one friend at the school who says the AK Parti did so well in Sunday's election that she wants to move out of Turkey so her daughter doesn't grow up in a violent place). In fact, when I met my friend Paola's husband on the way to Bursa the other day, he said he was impressed with how much I knew about Turkish politics. That was a moment of great pride for me.



All right, two more things before I sign off:

1) I just read the acclaimed Turkish young adult novel The Missing Rose (Kayıp Gül), by Serdar Özkan. I saw enough of my students reading it during class, not to mention a Turkish book report about it, to want to check it out for myself. I didn't know it was translated, though, and got a pleasant surprise when I saw an English version in a window as I was walking through Sultanahmet the other day. It turns out that the book has been translated into some 30 languages, and the publishers are very proud of this fact - besides Orhan Pamuk, I don't know of any other Turkish literature that's so widely disseminated.



It's a really good book, and I recommend it for an easy read. The premise is simple enough but enchanting: a woman's mother has just passed away, leaving behind the information that her father is not dead as she had thought and that he is living with her twin. She is sent on a mission to find this twin with scant information: a couple names she doesn't understand and the mention of Topkapı Palace. It reads like a more age-appropriate version of Jonathan Safran Foer's Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, about a young boy whose father, killed in 9/11, left him mysterious a puzzle to solve. Actually, the two books read very similarly in terms of story arc and concepts. Anyhow, I'm glad I read it. I only wish I could have read it at the same time as my students so I had a better idea of what they were experiencing. Perhaps I could have used it in a lesson - that would have been great.

2) The last day of school is tomorrow, and school has been the place where I go for internet. What this means is that as I get close to leaving Istanbul and returning home at long, bittersweet last, I won't be able to make another blog post. The next time you hear from me I'll probably be back in California. Don't hold your breath.

Kendine iyi bak.

All Along the Golden Horn

The election came and went, and AK Parti won 49.9 percent of the vote, incredibly close to being just the third time in history a Turkish party had won more than 50 percent of the vote. More importantly, the AK Parti secured 326 seats in Parliament, just barely short of the 330 they needed to circumvent a popular vote in order to push through a constitutional referendum. It's possible they can pick up those 4 extra seats of support from independent candidates, but I doubt it because of how terribly the party had been treating minority parties leading up to the vote. It looks like we barely avoided disaster, but everyone in the teacher's room today is a little more solemn than you'd expect a group headed for summer vacation soon.

Also worth noting, a Christian politician, backed by the Kurdish party, won a seat in Parliament, the first time this has happened since Ottoman times according to the local paper.



Yesterday I went on a long and gratifying walk which turned my arms red in the annual remember-sunscreen-exists first day of real summer. I started in Topkapı and walked along the city walls to the Golden Horn, then to the Pierre Lotti Café near the end of the Golden Horn, then back down to Eminönü and the Spice Bazaar, then up through Sultanahmet and finishing at Aksaray where I could meet the bus again. All in all the walk was about 10 kilometers.


The back of the Palace of the Porphyrogenitus, whatever that is. It had a nice park and a gatekeeper who'll let you in if you pay, which I didn't.


This the Eyüp Sultan Mosque, famous as a place of pilgrimage for Muslims because it houses the tomb of Eyüp Sultan, the standard bearer for the Prophet Mohammed. I wasn't able to go inside the tomb itself because the line was too long and I figured it wasn't as important for a tourist to see as it was for a pilgrim.


Women have their own entrance that leads to the cramped upstairs of the mosque. They aren't allowed to pray at the same level as men.


Eyüp Sultan Mosque


When I was looking at this view from the Pierre Lotti Café, I realized that I'm really going to miss Istanbul. I've been waiting for so long to come home because my job has kept me very frustrated, and it's been hard to notice the immense beauty of where I live. Turkey the country and Istanbul the city really are feeling like home now as I'm less than a week away from leaving. I could see myself coming back and living here for another extended period of time. It's so magnificent, open, and welcoming, and maybe if I weren't stuck in Bahçeşehir teaching spoiled rich kids every day then I wouldn't be homesick. I know already that I have to come back and I'm already planning the rough outline of when that will be. I wonder how I'll feel about all this once I'm back home.


Eyüp Sultan mosque below and the Mihrimah Mosque at the top and the Zal Mahmut Paşa Mosque on the left


The tram you ride to get to the Pierre Lotti Café


A flower garden shop outside the Zal Mahmut Paşa Mosque


Boats in the Golden Horn with children playing in the water at a distance. I think this water's unhealthy, but they're still swimming.


View from the Pierre Lotti Café. The man is wearing Fenerbahçe colors, the football team that won the Turkish league championship.


Watching a pair of boys swimming in the Golden Horn


Those boys really wanted me to take a picture of them jumping into the Golden Horn, so I did. Turks seem really eager to be photographed. They really liked this one, and I like Galata Tower in the background on the right. When I left I realized I'd talked with the two boys completely in Turkish, finally achieving one of my year-long goals to have a full conversation without stammering, stalling, or using any English at all.


The Church of St. Stephens, made completely out of iron


Inside the Rüstem Paşa Mosque, built by the famous architect Sinan


The dome of the Rüstem Paşa Mosque

One final note: This morning, with my students on a field trip, me and the other teachers who are leaving have been emptying our closets and looking through old activities and some student work, choosing what should be thrown out and what should be saved. Looking at these pieces makes me think that maybe I had more of an impact on these students than I've given myself credit for. They seem so stubborn and unwilling to learn sometimes, but looking at the games they made and the fortune telling cards and the cookbooks... they really did work hard, despite groaning all the while. There are good memories to be had even in this difficult job, too.