Big Frère is watching...

I spent a LOT of money, and I am going to Paris for the winter break.

Nothing about this trip has been so far. The planning process included having to tell my parents in Turkey that no matter how much closer I would be to them in the world while I travel in France, and no matter how much they wanted to see me, this was my trip, for me alone. They finally understood because they are cool like that, but it was a hard conversation. It does not end (or even begin) there, though.

When you're from Turkey, you look up visa requirements for countries even before you dream of going anywhere. The French Consulate has a page that mentions a huge list of countries; if your country is on there, you do not need a visa. There are so many countries on the list that I am planning to go back and see what countries other than Iraq and Turkey are not there. Iran, yes. Was Israel on there? Was South Africa? Anyhow, that I need a visa is no surprise, of course. I need a visa to go to Mexico and Canada. Why not to France?

The requirement that got me was having to show confirmed reservations for every single day I will be there...which goes entirely against the "style" and purpose of my trip: I am, and I want to be a spontaneous traveler. After many emails and faxes and phone calls to France (they don't reserve rooms for more than seven days, and I am going for two weeks), I got three youth hostels to send me emails confirming reservations. I figured, once I get there, I can cancel reservations and go day by day. Less than a week before my trip, I canceled one of the reservations; in my panic, I had made two reservations that overlapped with each other. This morning, I got the following email:

bonjour.

reservation had been canceled as requested.
NOTE : due to new policy this cancellation had been sent to the French authority.
merci


Big Frère is watching...

Add to the list of things I get paid for:

...seeing my friends’ band for free on a Monday morning.

Ever since I first saw Shotgun Wedding Quintet, I knew that the kids would love them, and thought it was such a shame the kids did not have access to the music since they could not go to Bruno’s on a Tuesday night. So finally, I had Shotgun come perform at Urban. Brendan and Tommy freestyled (I decided that is a legit verb), Carlos did some beatboxing, Sarah and Jim played the trombone, and Justin (whom I specifically had in mind when I asked Adam if he would come perform at our all school meeting) talked to DJ Aspect for a while. In addition to Justin, a student I have never taught and rarely ever talked to before came up to me and thanked me after the show. I don’t even know how she knew to thank me.

I get such pleasure out of seeing my friends do their thing in front of my students; it’s like two parts of my world coming together, like a best friend and a lover finally meeting each other and getting along. All my friends in the Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, Marcus Shelby, Adam and the rest of Shotgun have made me so happy by giving me the opportunity to see the awe on my students’ faces, the same awe that I feel when I look at my friends. I am a lucky, lucky woman. I love my job.

Thank you

Some of my students say "thank you" after every class, even after I have just given them an in-class essay for which they did not have enough time. I wonder how they learned to thank their teachers, and did they always have something for which to be thankful, or is it just a virtue of the school they go to now? I was often thankful for my English classes when I was in high school; I was thankful for reading Kafka and other existentialist writers in a world lit. unit of my English literature class (whereas the Turkish lit. classes often sucked; we frequently learned about authors rather than read books by them). I was thankful for being able to do an I-search project on pornography in Izmir (since then, since I interviewed a sex toy shop owner in a grungy industrial area of the city, my English teacher has decided to request parent signatures on the I-search interview site contract). I was thankful for reading "Macbeth." It took me about seven years to go back to Turkey and thank my teachers in person, however. It took me being a high school English teacher myself to say "Thank you" -- way after class.

I wonder where my students will be seven years from now.

Such a sleepy Tuesday.

Three of my students just walked into "my" office (I share it with 10 others) and they're being goofy, fascinated by the most mundane details of our lives right now. Once again, I feel like a celebrity. Seeing me at Ross on a weekend is as newsworthy to these girls as seeing Madonna there.

My lips are numb from practicing the trumpet. I kinda like it.