My life in Orange--

I started teaching an English poetry course last term and taught my students Shakespeare and the British Romantics. My students were a little bit bored with the Romantics by the end of the term, though they kind of got into it at the end, when I had them choose their favorite poem and poet and research them for their final.

I decided I wanted them to really get into poetry in a new way. I'm doing a couple of different things this term and so far am really excited. We're working with the modernists--whose language play is interesting and exciting--and other contemporary poets whose poems they can get fairly easily, or with just a little explanation.

The students also present a poet each class, which helps them have a little more ownership. I also try to mix in an easy to understand contemporary poems with some of the less simple older poets, like Emily Dickinson. For example, we're reading "Taking off Emily Dickinson's clothes" by Billy Collins while reading Dickinson, an event that made my students giggle and blush like twelve year-olds. (One of my students said, "I can't keep reading teacher!" as he read the part where the narrator's hands part the fabric "like a swimmer's dividing water." I mean, read it here. It's SO tame.)

Anyway, at the end of my last class, I did an activity. I cut up a bunch of oranges--which got them really excited (free food!). Then I gave them each a wedge. They were so confused and curious. Then I had them look at the orange and describe it, and think of metaphors, i.e. "this orange is like a smile," "this orange is like the sun," or "this orange is sweet and juicy."

Then I had them eat it and do the same. The metaphors again were pretty weak, but they started to get the hang of it and what I was asking them to do. They started to take risks, which is what the poets we're reading were doing. I was asking them to go outside of themselves, to take leaps, to use their imaginations in ways no one has ever asked them to before.

Turkish students are often very poetic anyway (more than my American students ever were in general). They often surprise me with their metaphors. In response to Emily Dickinson's "Hope is a Thing with Feathers" my students had to write a poem with an opening line that was "_____ is a thing with ____" where they chose an abstract idea such as love, and compared it to an animal or insect. One of my students wrote: "Life is a hungry pig..." which blew me away. Have you ever heard such a comparison? I loved her poem.

Anyway, the exciting part was when we got to the orange peel. Suddenly--I don't know if it was the progression or just the emptiness and inherent melancholy of an empty peel--but their metaphors became fantastic. They were talking about how the orange peel was like a cradle for a baby...and then it was like a family without a baby because the peel was empty. The orange peel was like humanity, a shell we use to protect ourselves to hide our sweetness inside. They went on and on...I wish I could remember them all.

It was so beautiful to be in that room with them, talking about how small things can be breathtakingly beautiful, how the most mundane object can be a metaphor for the most complicated feelings or experiences. It was a new way of thinking for them, and so profound. So now their homework (besides the assigned reading) is to spend their free time looking around at the ordinary things--a lamp post, a piece of trash at the bus stop, a pencil on the floor--and make them extraordinary by looking at them deeply, by seeing what meaning they can give them, what the object can inspire in them.

I think that's going to be my new homework for life.

My trip to Egirdir

Franny (a colleague of mine that lives in Konya) and I went to Egirdir for the weekend, a sweet little lakeside town tucked into the mountains about 40 minutes from my house. We stayed at a pension at the farthest point on the peninsula and the water was a beautiful turquoise blue.

The weather was cold, rainy, and snowy, but we stayed warm by wrapping ourselves in blankets ar our hotel, and gorging ourselves on delicious rock lobster, trout, and sea bass, cooked to perfection. It was nice to get away from my little town and appreciate Turkey's incredible beauty, as well as the beauty of my wonderful friend who just turned 33. It was so nice to chat (and chat and chat--I think we probably frightened the locals with our loud and boisterous talking). We also got to meet the father of one of her students--a restaurant owner who gave us a meal on the house, plus some local fresh apple cider!

Anyway, enjoy the pics...and once again, Happy Birthday, Franny!



You can check out an old post I wrote about Egirdir (plus a nice pic from a distance) here.

Social Entrepreneurship in Egypt

This video from PBS is an awesome story about some change happening in Egypt as a result of social entrepreneurship--something I'm a big fan of. Anyway, the video is about seven and a half minutes, but absolutely fascinating and wonderful. I really encourage you to watch. Enjoy!

Photos of Egypt

Egypt

Like the three sides of the face of a pyramid, I discovered that there were also three sides to Egypt--three distinct experiences that moved me and affected me in distinctly different ways.

There was the ancient monument facet, where I constantly encountered things that are three to five THOUSAND years old (I'm still not sure how to comprehend that). That part of Egypt included seeing and touching the ancient pyramids, viewing the mummies of the pharaohs sealed at constant temperatures under glass coffins, and staring open-jawed at things like the treasures from King Tut's tomb--as well as King Tut himself in Luxor. There's something incomprehensible about viewing the mask of King Tut in person--an icon I grew up with and have seen in photos since I was a little girl. And seeing his mummy--indescribable. This part of Egypt was silent to me--a reverent place that smelled like a musty ancient library, an experience that made me feel like a cross between a nerdy professor and Indiana Jones.

Then there was the Egypt that real Egyptians experience, which was quite hard to see or enter on such a short trip where I was clearly a tourist. There were the slums, that came alive with fire and shouting when Egypt won the African Cup our second night there. There were the women walking home with baskets of food on their heads, slabs of bread stacked high as they walked in perfect balance down chaotic streets. There were children playing near the railroad where the sugar cane stalks bump heads in the wind, flushing the cheeks of Egypt a vibrant green. There were the skinned camel heads swaying in the breeze outside the butcher's shop, and donkeys flicking their tails as they stood on the side of the dusty road, looking bored. There were old men who squatted on their haunches squinting into the sun and staring at us as we walked or drove by.

And then there was that place in between both worlds--the place I dwelled most of the time, even though I hated it. That was the intersection between ancient Egypt and modern Egypt, the place where tourism swelled. That's where the merchants yell at you to buy their scarves, their plastic camels, their glass pyramids, anything! It's so cheap! Come on! Just 5 Egyptian pounds! This shirt is not from Taiwan, and I look like Danny DeVito, don't you think? Just come into my shop! Hassle free! I promise! That's the Egypt where you're staring at a painted wall in Queen Titi's tomb, and a guide comes up to you and wants to tell you what you're looking at so you'll pay him a little baksheesh (tips). You tell him you're not interested and walk away, annoyed that he ruined your sacred moment. You hope another tourist will come along and distract him so he'll leave you alone.

That part of Egypt is intense--you are constantly on guard, learning that you can't trust that anyone is generally interested in having a conversation with you. You may think they are for a second, but soon that friendly greeting is followed by, "Wanna buy...?" That's the part of Egypt where you have to negotiate the price of a water bottle that you purchased the night before. It's overwhelming, and ultimately I couldn't wait to leave that part of Egypt, despite the other two parts that were so beautiful.

I wish I could have gotten beyond that intersection, that middle ground that created a gap wider than the Nile, with me on one side and the people I wanted to connect on the other. I constantly found myself looking longingly into the real Egypt where the day to day life occurs, but knew I was an outsider and that they wanted it that way, really. So instead I explored the little space they cordoned off for me, standing on tip-top to catch what glimpses I could of a world I'll probably never know.