"The problem was that their were always problems."

This was one of the transition sentences for one of my students when they were writing survival stories. In English class, we are working about writing stories using complete sentences, that for my sake, don’t begin each sentence with the word “then.” They are at the age where KFC stands for “Kids Farting Club” and their favorite part of the Science book is the pictures about the digestive system. While they are at school, talking to one another and sports are the most important parts of their life. When they are home, it sounds like all but one boy spend most of their time playing video games. During our first parent-teacher meetings, I had one parent concerned that their child was not doing his homework because he watched too much TV and played too many video games (unfortunately, not letting their son watch TV or play video games was not an option for their son finishing his homework). Many of them also like WWF wrestling and I frequently walk into class or see them on the playground as they are “play fighting.”

The twenty-seven boys are all between nine and eleven years old. All but one of the students are Muslim. The class is a little over half Arab and half from elsewhere (with students from India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Ethiopia). Of the Arab students, they are about half from elsewhere in the Arab world and half locals. Since Wesgreen International School (where I teach) is growing in size very rapidly. Many of the teachers and parents are complaining that it is too rapidly. For instance, the school was hoping to have two new sections completed at the Boys School and neither were totally ready for the school year. So right now, half of the school and playground are an active construction area. With the increase in size there are quite a few new students at the school. All of the students do speak English although some students speak a lot stronger than others. So in addition to students divergent learning capacities, there is a definite language imbalance between the different students. I imagine it is similar to a school in the U.S. with a large Hispanic population, where the learning gaps are accentuated by the students differing linguistic abilities.

After our Eid Holiday, I moved the students to table groups instead of rows. Although they’ve been talking more, its allowed me to keep them more quiet when I need and work with students who need additional help. I’ve also got even more of a sense of my student’s personalities. Most of the time this has been for the better and it’s been fun learning more about what makes these ten-year-old boys tick. It was more unfortunate to learn that one of my students is the first ten-year-old narcissist that I think I have ever met. I was talking to one of my students who said that this other student makes all of his decisions by doing whatever he wants to do at that moment (which includes sleeI’m gradually working on finding different techniques to manage my classroom more effectively. ping in class, rarely paying attention, and throwing an eraser at my back in class today). Luckily, I asked the student who told me about this narcissist how he thought it was to live his life that way. He quickly responded that he didn’t think it was a very good way to live his life and it wouldn’t make him very happy.

"Who needs John McCain when you have John McClane?"

While I’m sure I have not gotten as much of the election frenzy as in the U.S., a lot has trickled down in one way or another since I‘ve been here. The following are a few of my favorite election anecdotes that I’ve heard either here or in Turkey over the past few weeks. When we had elections at school for Headboy and Chairs of the sports and academic clubs, the students would come around and campaign in each class and put posters up in the hallway. My favorite said “Vote Obama” and the Obama was crossed out and replaced by Saud Al-Qasimi. The highlight from TV was from Dubai One. It started by showing several clips of John McCain speaking followed by several Fox News pundits responding to his campaign. Then the ad begins, “Who needs John McCain when we have John McClane?” The McCain political clips are quickly replaced by clips of Bruce Willis in the Die Hard movies. As John McClane kills a couple villains, the ad continues, “He knows how to negotiate with terrorists.” The ad finishes asking again “Who needs John McCain when we have John McClane? Watch the Die Hard movies, every night this week.” The last occurrence took place at a small pide restaurant in Eyup in Istanbul where the owners spoke no English (and we spoke no Turkish). Afterwards, when we were walking away and thanking them for a delicious lunch , one of them said, “I am Barack Obama.” So that’s what the election season has been looking like so far. The international news has covered the campaigns extensively, including re-broadcasting the debates. Anyways, I’ll hopefully be blogging about this topic right after the election itself.

Istanbul has even more mosques...

A couple of weeks ago, Julie and I and our friends Sarah and Sayeed went to Istanbul. We were staying just south of the Blue Mosque, a short walk up from the Sea of Marmara. We had a great time seeing the lots of mosques, the Aya Sofia, the Grand Bazaar, the Topkapi Palace, the Basilica Cistern, and the other museums and sights in the historic Sultanahmet area. We also had some great daytrips around the city taking a boat up the Bosphorus, exploring the old city walls in the pouring rain at the castle-like Yedikule Museum, walking around with the hoards of people in Taksim, seeing the Eyup Mosque and the Byzantine mosaics and frescoes at the Kariye Museum, and learning more about Istanbul’s history and visual culture at the Istanbul Modern Art Museum. Throughout the whole week, the weather was about as perfect as it could have been, a nice 23 C with one day of very pleasant rain.

The most interesting part about being in Istanbul was seeing how the old and the new would interact in the city’s cultural, political, and religious heritage. The most expressive example of this were at the churches-turned-mosques. At the Kariye Museum (formerly the Church of St. Savior in Chora), the narthex and the funerary chapel were filled with beautiful mosaics and frescoes depicting everything from the life of Christ to the Resurrection and the Second Coming where the Unquenchable Fire, the Outer Darkness, and the Gnashing of Teeth were all depicted in graphic detail. However, in the sanctuary itself (which would have been used for worship by Muslims), all of the iconography had been plastered over and was unrecoverable. In the Aya Sofia, there were several spots where the Muslim motifs were fading from the Ottoman-era to expose the washed-out crosses from the even earlier Byzantine time.

It was also interesting being there with Sarah and Sayeed. Sarah had lots of people comment about the fact that she was Muslim and was “closed” (meaning that she wore a hijab). It seems like more than anywhere else in the world, the hijab serves as a major fault line for your identity. You are either living in Turkey’s traditional past or trying to move forward into the globalizing world. From the short time we were there, it seemed like people viewed themselves as living on one side or the other of this ever-present divide that separates the traditional and the modern. Since Sarah didn’t fall between these two categories, she had lots of people asking for her life-story and how, as an American, she became a Muslim. It was interesting to see and hear. Traveling with the two of them, Julie and I went to places we probably would not have visited otherwise. The most interesting of which was the mosque in Eyup, which is the fourth holiest site in Islam since the tomb of the Prophet’s standard-bearer is located here. Julie and I met a very friendly man who gave Julie bird-food for the pigeons in the courtyard and explained more about why Eyup was special and what he did in the area. It was a definite highlight of the trip.

The other highlights of the trip ranged from everything to feeding fish at the ancient Basilica Cistern to drinking water out of copper cups that were next to rudimentary drinking fountains throughout the city. The day we went to the Yedikule Museum was probably my favorite part of the week. We took the train down the Sea to the museum. Even on a Saturday, we were virtually the only ones at this huge enclosure that looked and seemed just like an ancient castle. We walked up and down the dimly-lit stairs to the top of the walls where we could see all of western Istanbul and the storm coming in from the sea. After thinking it might circle around us, the skies just opened up right over the castle. After being in the Middle East for the past couple month, however, it was more than pleasant to be rained on for a while. When we were coming up the last of the towers, over 30 mosques (that we counted) in the nearby areas all sounded their adan for mid-day prayer. They sounded like dogs barking at one another in the middle of the night, all trying to be the one that was heard. Afterwards, already soaking wet, we walked around looking for the remains of the Church of St. John of Studius that was built in 463. Although there was no one around to let us into the church, we found four puppies just under the fence of the old church. My favorite, Maximilion, came right under the fence to greet us. After some nice petting and drying him off a bit, I put him back with his more shy brothers and we walked back to the train.

The other story that I wanted to tell was in the Basilica Cistern. In the back of the chamber there were two marble carvings of Medusa’s head that were supporting the cistern’s pillars. The first was turned sideways and in the second one she was turned upside down. The second sculpture reminded me of an evocative story that Terry Tempest Williams once told. She talked about a statue in downtown Santa Fe of a St. Francis and a prairie dog. St. Francis is looking down at the prairie dog as the prairie dog looks at St. Francis from his hind legs. If you look down at the prairie dog‘s head, you can see how the copper has the gold-tint from being rubbed down over and over. Since the prairie dog is at ground level, you have to pause and bend over to rub his head. The same things happened with the Medusa sculpture in the cistern. The rest of the marble was dirty from the moisture that constantly enclosed this space. However, her chin (since she was upside down), had been rubbed clean. It just makes you think of how many people took the time to pause, bend down, and reach over the water to touch her chin.

Overall, we had a great time. We came back with some very pretty iznik ceramics and two very nice prints from the Istanbul Modern Art Museum (one of which we just got on the wall last night). I'll hopefully be posting more about my life here in Sharjah throughout the next couple of weeks.