It's been a busy month & a half or so, though I don't feel like I've really accomplished much. The high point for me was getting out of Malatya for 3 weeks & discovering that I actually DO like Turkey - just not the part of it where I live.
I spent the first part of January preparing my final exams, and my make-up final exams. It turns out that students who fail the final get to take another one. My department head told me it was no big deal, and I could just use the same exam twice. Sadly, I couldn't let myself do that, mainly because I write exams based on what I've taught in my classes - any student who shows up regularly and reads the material will pass my exam. Anyone who fails obviously didn't do one or both of those things, so I made the make-up exams twice as hard as the original finals. Only 3 people showed up for the make-ups, and only one of those passed - interestingly, it was a student who's taking both my 2nd and 3rd year classes. He failed both 2nd year exams, but passed the 3rd year make-up. I'm not quite sure what to make of that.
After I finished grading the first round of finals, I headed for Istanbul to meet a friend, Ellen, who's a Fellow in Armenia this year. We spent a week in Istanbul, seeing the sights & doing some shopping - I found black beans, oatmeal, AND quinoa in a natural foods store there, all of which was more exciting to me than seeing the Blue Mosque. Does that make me a bad tourist?
Interestingly, we met a number of people from Malatya in Istanbul, most notably in a carpet shop. While we were considering what to see first, a Turkish man started talking to us & offered his son's help in navigating around the city a bit. The son mentioned that his family's carpet shop was close by, so we took a look & discovered that virtually everyone working there is from Malatya - one of them offered to take me fishing the next time he visits his family. I did end up buying a kilim (like a carpet but it's woven instead of knotted), which I had planned to do at some point anyway. Why not support the folks from my temporary home town?
Then we headed to Denizli to visit another Fellow, Rachael, so I could feel a little worse about my own site. Rachael lives within 10 minutes (by foot) of her university, and has a nice grocery store & sort-of mall just down the street. It's a really good thing I like her so much, or I would probably hate her. She took us to Pamukkale, which is where they have the calcium deposits on the hillside that look like snow. I neglected to take any pictures, because it was ridiculously cold the day we went there, but here's one I found online.
No, that truly isn't snow and/or ice. And yes, they really do let people walk on them, although you have to take your shoes off. I didn't do it myself - see ridiculously cold above - but Ellen did & Rachael has done it before. Maybe I'll go back in the spring & give it a try.
After a great week of increasing jealousy, the 3 of us headed off to Antalya for our mid-year conference. It was fun to see all the Turkey ELFs again, as well as meet the Fellows from other countries in the region - Syria, Ukraine, Russia, Bosnia/Herzegovina, and possibly others that I'm forgetting. The best part was getting to catch up with my friend Lisa, a Fellow in Bosnia, who I've known since high school. The conference itself was fairly typical, but the hotel was pretty great - a 5-star, all-inclusive resort, right on the Mediterranean. Here's the view from my room:
I know, right? It really didn't suck. My part of the conference was only 3 days, but I decided to stay the whole week, since I didn't feel like rushing back to Malatya.
When I did finally get back, I came down with the Fellow Flu that everyone at the conference had been passing around, so I ended up missing the entire first week of spring semester. It wasn't actually a big deal, since Turkish tradition dictates that the majority of students skip the first week of the term. Additionally, there's a Turkish expression stating that when you have the flu, if you go to the doctor, you'll get better in a week, and if you just stay home and rest, you'll get better in 7 days. I'm just trying to be culturally appropriate!
So now, we're a few weeks into spring term, and I've just about gotten back into the swing of things. I have a couple of trips coming up in the next few months, and I'm working on a side project that I'll talk more about when I have the details ironed out. For now, it's back to life as usual, with the knowledge that I'm living in an amazing country - I just have the misfortune of living in a less amazing section of it.
Sorry this post is so light on pictures, but they take forever to load on here. I'll be putting a lot of them up on Facebook, so check there if you want visuals to go with this post.
I hope everyone is doing well. Please keep in touch!
*Bonus points to anyone who gets the reference in the title (WITHOUT looking it up!).
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