Life Update...Doors style! (Apologies to Jim Morrison for liberties taken)

Wow, only one post in February so far? Guess it's time to LIGHT MY FIRE...

Strange Days In My Stomach- "Really, Bucky, after you ate raw, spiced beef (çiğ köfte)?" Yup, it's true, I once again managed to give myself gastrointestinal sensations previously known only at the Skowhegan Fairgrounds and in Darien, Panama, before the cook stopped holding a grudge against me. From here on out, I am only eating baby food and cookies.

Love Him Madly- "We will remember that there is something happening in America, that we are not as divided as our politics suggest, that we are one people, that we are one nation, and that together we will begin the next great chapter in the American story with three words that will ring from coast to coast, from sea to shining sea: YES WE CAN!" (Check out the Yes We Can remix by Will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas on YouTube, especially if this phrase isn't already stuck in your head)

Break On Through To The Third Course- I got moved up a level again to "Upper Intermediate" for the next eight weeks, and have some of my students from the first course again now. This time around most of them are much improved, so even though they have access to my (limited) facebook account, things are overall better in the classroom. My Friday classes illustrate the different types of students here pretty well: one of them is comprised of three scholarship students studying math and computer engineering, all of whom reminded me of different, awkward parts of myself in middle school and early high school. They were all obviously pretty smart, but we'll be doing a lot of work on eye-contact. I managed to get them all to laugh by the end of our second hour together, without even telling any jokes about how lumberjacks make good mathematicians because of their natural logarithms. The other Friday class has an econ student who plays for the TurkTelecom developmental basketball team and a law student who also plays basketball, along with a managment student with a girlfriend (not ugly) who hangs around outside class waiting for him, and a fourth fellow in internal design who keeps teasing him. They are very smooth and confident but attentive, intelligent and curious at the same time. Both groups are fun to work with and energize me at the end of the week, but in very different ways that have given me a new perspective on the school and hope for bringing away more positive memories of higher education in Turkey. More on the reasons to be cynical another time.

Waiting For The Sun No More- It's been almost months since the solstice, which means sometimes it's still light out when I get home! On the downside, the snow on those pine trees outside my window is a gone, which is a wonder, because they are so close to each other they are all shaded most of the day. Seriously, the landscaping here has some catching up to do with the transportation industry. If you know anyone who is looking to expand their landscaping business, this is the place to come. I've heard stories about trees being planted in the tea cans that they were sold in. Yes, that sounds like something I would do. It's not a good sign for the landscapers. I'm the fellow who worked at a flower farm for three years and still had to be reminded not to walk through the poison ivy to get the soil.