Since school lets out early because of finals, I thought this would be a great time to go for a little afternoon trip. Today my teacher friend Munteha and I went to the seashore near Kyrenia in the north. What we hadn’t bargained for when we made our plans last week was the rain. This is an island of sunshine, but goodness, we’ve been getting a lot of rain recently. It rained yesterday during the hash, it sprinkled as I biked to work this morning, and it poured down as we drove through the mountains. Once we got to the water, though, the rain was replaced with wind and mist from the ocean. The waves crashed over the rocks, and the water changed from dark brown to blue to cerulean the further we looked out. What a great break from the city.
I walked into the teachers’ room at school today and noticed that the lights weren’t on. It wasn’t too dark (lots of windows, plenty of sunshine), so I figured perhaps someone decided to save some money.
Then I sat down next to Evren. “The electricity is out,” she said. Wait, what? She continued, “They’re on strike. They don’t like what the government is doing so there’s no electricity.”
The government wants to privatize the electricity, and so in protest, the workers have gone on strike. It started at 3:30pm yesterday, and is supposed to continue indefinitely. The leaders have said that they’ll bring the police to force them to turn the electricity back on, but I don’t know how/when/if that will happen.
This is coming during an abnormal cold spell for the country and during first semester finals in the North. One teacher told me that her children had to study with a lantern last night, while another teacher said that students were posting on Facebook about not being able to study enough because of the lack of light. (Of course students are posting on Facebook with whatever remaining battery power they have on their phones or computers.) Before biking home today I chatted with some of my students. I asked about their exams, but then also about the electricity. They didn’t understand that word, but when I said lights they knew what I meant. All four of them (who live in three different towns outside of Nicosia) were without power at home.
At school, the teachers held a group discussion about supporting or not supporting the strike. The problem with supporting the strike is that it would throw off the exam and reports schedule. We’re at the end of the semester, and there are a certain number of days for the exams. Already they’re using one of the days for the make-up exams because Tuesday was a holiday for Denktash’s funeral. Then the verifying and reporting of grades takes a long time due to certain protocol (grades must be entered by all teachers on one of four official, school computers). (The school reports are far more complicated than I expected and something I’ll try to decipher because it doesn’t make sense to me as I currently understand it–three people evaluating a single exam just in case the parents complain about the grade? Surely that can’t be right…)
I’m not entirely sure what the conclusion was, but I think the teachers are going to continue as normal for the remainder of the semester (which ends 31 January), but in the second semester, which starts 16 February, they’ll consider taking supportive action.
As for me, I have power and have invited my coworkers to visit/stay with me if they want. I don’t think they’ll take me up on the offer, but I do hope a resolution is reached soon.
This has been a good month for reading. I finished Julie Otsuka’s When the Emperor Was Divine, the author’s first novel. I thought The Buddha in the Attic was fantastic, and so I wanted to read more. In both books she doesn’t name characters. In Buddha multiple characters are represented in the story (the women who come from Japan to American to get married). In When the Emperor the mother, daughter, son, and husband remain nameless, while other characters are named, even those who play minor roles. I love that style and all that it says about the experiences of the characters/people she’s writing about (Japanese and Japanese-Americans around the time of World War II).
Ben Mezrich’s Sex on the Moon: The Amazing Story Behind the Most Audacious Heist in History was an entertaining telling of how and why Thad Roberts stole moon rocks from NASA. I finished (for the whateverth time) Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. And of course, I’m still reading The Count of Monte Cristo.
I’ve recently finished reading Wendy and the Lost Boys, a biography of the playwright Wendy Wasserstein. While reading the book was transported to New York, and it took me a few minutes to remember where I was–and then a few more minutes to get over the disappointment of having been interrupted during my reading.
I’m currently reading The Museum of Innocence by Orhan Pamuk, a Turkish writer and winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2006. I saw one of his books on someone’s bookshelf and thought this would be an excellent time to read one of his books. Also, my brother is a fan of his work. I’m sorry to say that I’ve only ever started one of his books (Snow) and then had to return it to the library before I could get too far into it. It’s been great to read the book and know how to pronounce the Turkish names and places and to also learn more about the culture. I’m thinking I’ll have to return to Snow soon and read it as well.
Also, I’ve put up a virtual bookshelf that appears on the right-hand side of the blog (through Shelfari). The books on there are a bit out of order, since I recently added a bunch of books I read ages ago, but soon it’ll reflect what I’m reading now.
Next up will be The Magicians by Lev Grossman.
Richard Peabody has published another fantastic anthology of DC women’s fiction, Amazing Graces. I know some of the authors from my MA program, and I can tell you that they write some fantastic and interesting stuff. You should go buy it. I missed the chance to highlight the reading that was taking place at Politics and Prose, buuuuuut if you ask, maybe I’ll read you an excerpt from my story that’s published in it. (Woohoo!)
I haven’t explained much about the history of Cyprus or why it’s divided, but if you’re interested in a quick overview, the New York Times obituary of Rauf Denktash, the former leader of the Turkish Cypriots, is worth reading.
What is interesting to note is that Cyprus has a history of being occupied, and it wasn’t until 1960 that it achieved independence from Britain. Fast forward to now, when in one week, the leaders of both sides (north and south) are set to meet in New York for peace talks. They were in New York a few months ago as well (these talks have been going on for three years), but there doesn’t seem to be much promise for a solution. Two big issues related to these talks are the natural gas reserves found through off-shore drilling (and the money that will come from it) and Cyprus’s upcoming presidency of the Council of the European Union, which begins July 2012.
It’s a good thing I didn’t make a new year’s resolution about blogging, because it clearly didn’t happen this week. Of course, if I’d made a resolution about it, maybe I would’ve posted something…But moving on.
One of my coworkers asked me to write a few sentences about the students in her class so that she can include my comments in the end-of-term reports. It’s interesting and bizarre to be on the other end of the report card. I’m thinking about what to say and how to say it. I wonder how my choice of words will be interpreted by the teacher, the administration, the parents, and the student. If I say someone is “quiet,” will that be taken as a compliment or a comment? If I write that one student is a pleasure to have in class, will he go tell others and will that create a problematic dynamic in the class? How can I politely say that one student never focuses in class and doesn’t do his in-class work? Or that another student probably spends more time on her hair than she does on her homework?
I’m not responsible for writing much (and my comments may not be used at all), so I’m not too worried about it. Still, evaluating students on paper is a funny and new feeling.
Just want to point out that the New York Times put Oakland fifth on their list of “45 Places to Visit in 2012.” Looks like I’ve got some places to check out next time I’m home.
My roommate here says she doesn’t believe in them. Kyle doesn’t like them. Evren says people here don’t really make them. Me, though? I’m a fan of New Year’s resolutions. I love the idea of focusing on a challenging task and setting up a goal for myself. It’s the chance to start with renewed energy on a project or take on a new task. (Although as Kyle pointed out, my first few goals for the new year are what I have on my everyday to-do list: respond to emails faster, write more, run more.)
Granted, I don’t have the best track record of keeping my resolutions. When I cleaned out my work desk last summer I found my 2010 weekly planner. Above some of the weeks I’d written down foods/meals. It took me a few moments, but then I remembered: in 2010, one of my New Year’s resolutions was to cook a decent meal (i.e., not simply heat something up) at least once a week. Sounds a little lame, but it was going to be an improvement over what I normally did (soup, veggie burger, stove, microwave).
You can tell by my lack of recall that it didn’t go so well, but don’t feel too bad about it. I try to follow the Anne Shirley school of positive thinking: “Tomorrow is fresh, with no mistakes in it yet.” (Is it weird to find solace in the mantra of a fictional character?) I take it to mean that each day gives us the chance to start again, regardless of what happened yesterday.
Okay, getting a little too preachy. Back to my resolutions and goals for 2012: respond to emails faster; write more; run more; learn to drive on the left; read 52 books; work on my Greek and Turkish; find a job (second-half of the year). These aren’t very exciting goals and not many concrete resolutions, but this is good for now. Maybe I’ll renew my resolutions or come up with new ones when I bake Christmas cookies in the middle of summer.
Sigh. What a wonderful vacation in Vienna. I started writing this post on Monday, but some post-vacation and post-SO blues hit, so I’m only finishing this today.
Kyle and I had a fantastic time walking around, taking in museum exhibitions, drinking coffee, and eating our way through the city. It’s a little hard to get back into the swing of things here, but maybe the warmer weather will help. (Despite my most focused wishes, there was no snow in Vienna, just some drizzle when I first arrived.) Highlights of the trip include: drinking gluhwein at Christmas markets, going to the Roman bath in Baden, cheering for the Vienna Capitals hockey team at a home game, waltzing to a song from Die Fledermaus in front of Stephansdom on New Year’s Eve (thereby reaching one of my childhood dreams, inspired by a PBS special, of waltzing in Vienna on New Year’s Eve), and generally just hanging out. (Also awesome? My Christmas gift of four cans of pumpkin! Enough for a pie, bread, pancakes, and more. Mmmm.)
Below are a few photos from the trip, with more in the Picasa album. Hope you had a wonderful holiday, and Happy New Year!
I’m in Vienna now, and it feels like Christmas. It’s about 5 degrees (Celsisus/41F), drizzly, and there’s a chance for snow for tomorrow (fingers crossed). People are out shopping. Christmas market stalls are selling punsch and gluhwein. Large decorations adorn shop fronts and hang over the streets.
Actually, you know what’s exciting me the most really exciting to me about Vienna? All the people biking! And the bike lanes! Holy moly. It’s making me giddy–and I’m not even a biker (minus occasional work commuting). There’s a bikeshare program in the city, and having checked it out (registration for 1 euro, free use for the first hour), I’m thinking we’re going to have to try it later next week.
Before I get all obsessed with Wien… This past week of school was particularly fun, in large part because I did a lesson on winter holidays in America and then showed them either Home Alone or Elf. They didn’t know what elves were. (They didn’t seem to know about the existence of Judaism, either. I don’t know how many times I got the question What’s ‘Jewish’? Really? Really? More on that another time.) I also brought in my camera…
