Straight from the Pan...Yum!

Today in the bazaar, a local friend encouraged me to try the Kazandibi, Turkish rice pudding.

She shipped around, turning up her nose at servings in plastic boxes. She found what she was looking for at Süt Cilcepi, a shop not far from the mosque.

They gave is a whole pan with two servings left in it. My friend sprinkled it with cinnamon, and she, Elyas and I dove in. I love rice pudding, but I don't remember liking it enough to scrape from the bowl.

It gave me yet another chance to practice my newest Turkish word: lezzetli. Delicious!

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Two-month Anniversary: Life at School

I have been wanting to post an update on teaching and tonight feels like the right time: it was parent-teacher conference time on Google Meet, and today is my two-month anniversary in Turkey. I landed in Izmir two months ago this afternoon, and I was immediately whisked away by my principal and the school driver to his home and a warm Izmiri welcome. I remember the details so well. We had chicken dürüm for supper, and I went for a walk along the harbor and witnessed my first Aegean sunset . I'll never forget it. It's filed away with my first Arizona sunset (1994) among my most cherished memories. But this is a blog about my new school, so enough flashbacks. Happy anniversary to me! Describing MEF MEF Izmir (the acronym is words in Turkish) is a school that I was prepared for, but it still yielded a lot of surprises. The student count is 152, and that's across preschool through Grade 12. I estimate that there are 30-40 kids in the preschool/kindergarten program. The scho...

Book Review: My Father's House / The Idle Years

A few weeks ago I went through my monthly book binge. The school secretary, a Turk named Ipek, had asked me if I was teaching any Turkish writers in my literature classes. I have spent the years since my first visit to Turkey reading Turkish writers, most notably Nobel laureate, Orhan Pamuk. But I remain ignorant of the breadth of Turkish literature. Ipek set me aright. She wrote down ten authors I needed to check out. I immediately went home, hoping to find them translated into English. It took some work--so did finding English titles in a Turkish bookstore. Finally someone mentioned a store with English books on Konak Pier, and I went the next Sunday to check it out. The English titles they had were mostly classics--Frankenstein, Kafka, stuff like that. I found two books by Turkish writers: a history of the Ottomans and Orhan Kemal's My Father's House . Kemal had been one of the writers on Ipek's list. The book begins as a novel--another man telling his story to the writ...

Sunday at the İzmir Archeological Museum

After church today, I resolved to beat the heat and go to a museum. My target: the İzmir Archeological Museum , just south of the bazaar in the Konak district. My friend, Jen, had told me about a slogan she had seen: "Turkey, it's the world's largest museum." It's true. At any given place where I might stand, especially at an important harbor like Izmir, I may have seven millenia of history at my feet! I quickly learned, upon entering the gallery that ancient history is a pretty broad topic to examine. When we think of Ancient Rome, we think of a specific civilization that endured for 500 years. Ancient Greece casts our minds to Socrates and Alexander. But Ancient Turkey? There is really no one thing. I don't want to go into much detail here. I have years of living in and exploring this fascinating country ahead of me. So I have plenty of time to figure it out for myself. I'll just write that before the Greek civilizations, known as Ionians and Aeolians, ...

Aegean Pearls: My Life in Izmir

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