School Daze

I haven't written since classes began over a week ago.  It's been an incredibly busy 10 days, both work and socially.

First on the social side:  The gatherings continue apace.  Before classes began, but with all faculty back, there was an opening "dinner" for faculty, staff and families.  Once again on the Konak Terrace overlooking the Bosphorus. (I'll put a picture of the fabulous view up soon.)  I put dinner in quotes because though it was billed as dinner the "dinner" consisted of finger food.  There was plenty of wine and beer, though.  Which meant many folks were a bit under the weather the following day and blaming it on false advertising.

A few nights later there was another pot luck barbecue on the Terrace.  Over the seker bayram (candy holiday)  which marks the end of Ramazan, we had another cookout hosted by Graham and Metin who live side by side in Blue House, which has a garden, also with a great Bosphorous view.  The 2 bachelors have invested heavily in barbeque:  a gas grill and a Weber kettle.  This party also had plenty of alcohol but there was a ton of great food to go with it. Sim and I were ready to go when we were pressed to stay by Maura.  She really likes Sim and is interested in stories of our hippie past. When we got home, Cecile and Cengiz were on their terrace drinking wine and pressed us to join them.  Luckily, the next day was a holiday

 The middle of last week the new people and a few others had another dish to pass at Metin's place, then 2 days later on Friday was the English department party on the spectacular terrace of the spectacular apartment of Maria Orhon, the academic dean.  Sim and  I left that gathering to go downstairs to Maura's where we talked books with Maura and Felicia, the wife of another English dept. person and one of our new best friends.

Saturday night we had drinks at Andy and Felicia's (where we discovered their guestroom is heavily decorated in Yankee stuff, thus he and Sim are simpactico), then took the bus to Taksim, quite the scene on any night of the week.  We had dinner at a very cheap, very Turkish place.  Kind of like a Brazilian steak house.  They've got lamb, chicken and liver grilled on skewers. Ordering involves letting them know if you want one, two or all three.  (We skipped the liver, though later a friend of F's said it's great)  They bring a pile of something resembling tortillas, something like salsa, grilled veggies and you pig out.  With water our bill was 18 lira each, 12 bucks and it was delicious.

After dinner we went over to Molly's cafe.  A great little  spot run by a woman from Toronto that's kind if an ex-pat cafe.  She's got a wide variety of music and there are regular readings, some done by RC faculty.

On Sunday Sim and I walked over to Ortakoy with Felicia and she showed us places to buy cat food, the  good butcher, the bean place, the best restaurants along the Bosphorous.  We bought a rotisserie chicken at the chicken place... about 5 bucks, delicious and enough for 2 meals.

Later Sunday afternoon I did some schoolwork (after doing the Times crossword puzzle online).  But it seems like it wasn't enough.  Both yesterday and today I've spent hours on planning and getting organized.  Haven't yet tackled grading the first papers I collected.  I went to bed exhausted at 9:30 last night, planning on getting up early but hit snooze and didn't get up until 7:20.  Starting classes at 8:10 again after the shift to 9:00 at IHS has been tough.  Today was my busiest day... 6 periods of classes.  I also am dealing with new tech stuff that's been time-consuming.  But, those struggles aside, the work is very good.  The kids are mostly wonderful.  To my surprise I'm really loving the 9th graders.

Sim and I are sitting at Cecile's right now.  I came home at 7:00 to a note that Sim was across the hall babysitting for Kaya.  He's not clear where Cecile is, but Cengiz is supposed to be here soon.  We're sitting here drinking their wine. Sim's reading his 4th book in the last week, I think.