Turkish Lesson: Dur

This one's pretty easy.

The hexagonal red sign is a universal symbol (although the EU usually has a T with a white stem and a red top, I have also seen hexagonal signs there.

The sign across the road, "KIRALIK," means 'for rent.'

There are a lot of these signs here in Gaziemir, a boom town near Izmir's airport that has a lot of newer buildings. With Turkey's economy in a real downturn, there will continue to be vacancies in malls and shopping centers for the foreseeable future.

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Türkiye in one Photo: Hopes & Fears

The first week of school we went over procedures with the kids. One procedure that caught my attention was the Earthquake Drill. We have to be ready for earthquakes here. The ground often shakes. Here's what we do: a siren sounds for 30 seconds. When it sounds, we duck under our desks and protect our heads. When the siren stops, I lead the class out the front door to the edge of campus and follow a wall to a parking lot, where we wait for ... aftershocks, clearance for return, I haven't figured this out yet. I have experienced one earthquake already, the week before school started. It wasn't much. The building shook for about 15 seconds, and my swivel chair kept moving around under me. But I wasn't knocked around or anything. I saw the tweet below this week. For me, it combines fascination and fear. I'm fascinated by the history and art that has shook this landscape for thousands of years. People moving in and out, empires rising and falling, and art that is anc...

Dürüm: the Turkish burrito

When Americans and western Europeans think of Turkish food, the first word that comes to mind is Döner, that fast-food delicacy of shaved pieces of roasted lamb or chicken, stuffed into a pita with salad and hot sauce. As they say in Deutschland, " Döner ist schöner ," and the truth is that there are few snacks more beautiful or more delicious. But since I've been in Turkey, I have yet to eat Döner as I know it from England and Germany. İnstead, I have found dürüm, which looks like a chicken burrito 🌯 and tastes delicious. Like the burrito, the dürüm is wrapped in a tortilla. İ have seen tortillas for sale in the bread aisle, too. The meat for the dürüm is cut from the same, rotating spit of roasting meat that goes into a Döner. Unlike the burrito, the meat is really yummy. As you can see from the photo, it was served with red sauce that wasn't "peppery hot" as one would find in a Mexican restaurant, but was savory hot. There were small peppers...

Aegean Sunset, Poem 1

Two dimensional, The colors of Aegean sunset Splay the horizon I'm up to most challenges, but Aegean sunsets have me in thrall. I don't know if I'll ever be able to describe them. The poem above was one of my first tries. It may take me years. The most beautiful sunsets I've seen were in Arizona. Those were vivid, 3D spectacles that reached orange-purple arms across the sky and embraced me. I'm not sure if it's the summer haze or a lack of clouds (I asked someone, "When will it rain again?" and they told me, "October."), but the sunsets look like a watercolor painting, back-and-forth swathes of color. Zoom in on this photo and look at the horizon. There are deep-purple mountains (or islands--that's a mystery I WILL uncover personally, I assure you) just above the waves.

Aegean Pearls: My Life in Izmir

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