Mapping the Rabbit Warren, 1

An old postcard of Kemeraltı

     Yesterday the new train station in my district opened.  I used to take buses downtown, and most of the time I couldn't be bothered, because one could never get a seat on the return trip.  It doesn't take much to get me excited, and when I woke up this morning my toes were tingling.  "Tingling with excitement" is just a turn of phrase to many people.  Not to me.  
     I think that if the school will let me, I will get an aquarium for my class, so that my kids can have a fish to name, to care for, to rally around and to cheer them up.  Going to Kemeraltı is much more of an adventure than finding one at the local pet store, and a lot cheaper besides.  It also means Turkish practice.  After a year, I no longer have to carry a dictionary around with me.  I still sound like a seven-year-old, but it makes people smile.  They open their hearts quickly, it seems, when they see me flailing about for verbs.

Look at my new fish

     Kemeraltı is over four hundred years old, but I get the feeling that it has not changed much.  It teems with as many people as it ever has.  You feel like an extra in a movie.  It still sells anything one could imagine.  Today I saw a man selling harpoons. People still lose their way. I have been here about ten times, and have managed to do this on every occasion.  No longer.  You see, I have decided to map this rabbit warren.  Kemeraltı covers only a couple of square kilometers, but is filled with small and confusing passageways.  Today I finished the southwest corner and found everything I wanted, including an inflatable airplane for the Year 1 teacher.  For lunch, I had pan-fried oysters and mackerel on white bread.  He was serving a restaurant full of customers, but my waiter stopped to chat with some boys about a goldfish they had just bought.  To be around things like this makes me happy. 
     More tomorrow.

The Graveyard of Hurtful Words

     It is too easy to forget things, and I thought I would start writing to you and that I would try to post a photograph every day to show you what my life here is like. I will try my best.  It will be my way of someday being able to tell you that you were always in my thoughts, even though I was half a world away and only got to see you a few weeks in a year.

     As a teacher, I get to do a lot of neat things. Yesterday I saw a Year 8 boy who spoke no English (only French) who was in tears because he couldn't find his classroom. I took him aside and asked him to throw cold water on his face and then took him where he needed to be.  He was grateful and I felt like a hero.  I get to do heroic things every day; that is the best part of my job.  I get hugs every day from the kids.  I had lunch today with the kindergartners and I had a French boy on my right side and a Norwegian boy on my left, and I was carrying on a conversation in two languages.  My job rules.

     This is a picture of my Year 4 class. Today we did something that I cooked up on the spur of the moment. Last year the boys in this class were fighting a lot, so one of the first things I did (today was the second day of school) was to ask them to write down all of the things that had been said to them that hurt their feelings. Then I took them to the schoolyard, asked them to crumple their sheets of paper and throw them into a hole. Then we replaced the dirt and they jumped on the mound to make sure the earth was packed down! One of the kids came up with a great name to call it: "The Graveyard of Hurtful Words." (In the picture you can see some of the crumpled-up sheets.)  We all promised to try our best never to use them.

     That is it for now; love to you and your moms.