An Economic School Assembly

At 12:55 today I learned that I would not have my 4th graders for class. Grades 3 - 5 were meeting for an assembly at 1:00 p.m. in the Conference Hall on the 5th floor. Many thoughts raced through my head: 1) Yeah, now I don't have to write lessons plans for tomorrow...2) Maybe there will be some fun music or dance to entertain us... 3)Maybe the principal is finally going to crack down on discipline... or 4)Maybe something really bad happened and that's why we learned about this assembly 5 minutes before the start...Whatever the reason for the assembly, I was happy that one of my most difficult yet cutest 4th grade boys invited me to sit beside him. I wouldn't appear "unpopular" among the sea of noisy students.

I settled into my chair, pulled out my notebook to jot down words to look up later and prepared to have fun. Seated at a table on the stage were 2 men and 1 women. (No puppets, musical instruments, science experiments, nothing.) However, there was a Power Point slide open on the screen and I thought to myself, "Oh good. Some visuals." They really help me with my comprehension. I slowly read through the paragraph of text (way too many words for a title page I thought to myself ) but I was able to pick out the word "economik". I figured that its meaning might be close to "economic" or "money" or something like that. Then I looked around at the 300 + students ages 10 - 12 who were throwing spit wads, pencils, water bottles (a teacher finally stopped that one) and paper, and I tried to imagine what could possibly be interesting about "economik" to this particular audience..My mind drew a blank but I was keeping an open mind because I'm never sure about my translations and I didn't have my dictionary.

Several minutes later, the woman rose to speak. She welcomed the teachers, the students, the staff, the friends, the principal, the business manager, the assistant principal, etc. to the presentation and thanked us for being there...relatively short and sweet and to the point. And, I understood it all.

Then speaker number two began to speak. He welcomed all the same people for being there in the same order and with the same amount of graciousness but he read everything from a well- used, dog eared notebook. And then he continued to read from this same notebook for about 15 minutes. I was feebly trying to do the international ssshhh sign to the understandably bored students. Most of the teachers were texting on their cell phones and the principal was struggling to be the lone disciplinarian. As soon he passed, they started up with the noise, the throwing, the kicking again. Speaker number two, even though I understand little of what he said, was a really bad, really boring reader. I don't think his nose ever left his well-loved notebook. After he finished with his "thank you, thank you very much, again, thank you" we, the audience, struggled to wake ourselves up with clapping.

Next to the microphone was speaker number three. Things were looking up. He brought along the remote control for the slide show and advanced the slide to our first picture, a collage of transmission lines, bridges, parks, and buses. OK, so I'm trying to relate "economic" to "public works" and my brain is thinking 1) this is a Rotary Club presentation by the city managers or 2)this is a Kiwanas Club presentation by the city managers or 3) both clubs already have speakers for today, so why not stop by a school.

At this point the speaker is fast forwarding through all the financial slides (there are no more pictures) until he comes to a slide with some big numbers. Don't quote me on this but it was something like 3,499,000,000tl to 4,500,000,000tl. Based upon the order of the numbers, I would guess that there might be a shortage of about 100,000,000 tl. And based upon the one word (taxes) that appeared on every slide and the dates (27 February - 9 March) I think the assembly was to tell kids that it is National Pay Your Taxes week and that the students should go home and remind their parents to pay their taxes so that they can drive across the bridges, use electricity from the power lines, and play in the parks. And he was really polite about it: thank you, thank you very much, again, thank you and thank you all. (in Turkish, or course.)

Review of a Turkish Blockbuster

In celebration of the Academy Awards, which I won't be able to watch live, I thought I'd try my first Turkish movie with no English subtitles. I chose Fetih 1453 because it's the biggest budget, biggest blockbuster in the Turkish film industry and I thought it might be fun to be part of this history. It opened last weekend and it's been a sell out on about 14 of the 18 screens in town and today was no exception. In preparation for seeing this film I read a brief five page history of the Battle of Constantinople hoping that would give me enough background of the battle to get the gist of the film. The cinematography, the handsome actors and beautiful actresses, and the scenes of 15th century Istanbul (then Constantinople) made the 2:45 minute film a worthwhile Sunday afternoon escape.

Watching this pre-battle preparations, especially the process of making the world's largest canon at that time in history by melting of the donated coins, pots, and broken shields of the Sultan's followers was very interesting. Seeing the thousands of arrows of the Sultan Muhammed II's 90,000 troops flying over the city walls to attack Constantine's 7000 soldiers plus 700 knights was epic. Considering the grossly outnumbered Byzantines it's pretty amazing they held on to the city for over 50 days.

For the hopeless romantic there are plenty of handsome, talented swordsmen with beautiful women at their sides to keep your attention. The Sultan's best swordsman/fighting companion spends the entire movie scantily clad in only chain mail vest or shirtless to show off his big muscles and sweat during the fighting scenes. He has a beautiful, intelligent woman at his side who just happens to also be coveted by Constantine's best knight. They both pine over her from different sides of the city wall. This girl is so intelligent that she cuts her hair beautiful, long hair so she can work by her father's side designing and shooting the amazing 27 foot long canon that pierced the canon walls. Her short hair doesn't get caught in the furnaces. The addition of the love triangle is actually one part of the story that I think strayed a bit from historical accuracy, especially when her swordsman dies at the end but she rubs her stomach to indicate she's probably pregnant by him, and I don't think they were married.

The scenes of 15th century Constantinople (now Istanbul) are beautiful and really put into perspective the ruins I've been seeing for the past five months. I didn't realize the city walls were actually three rows thick and had successfully defended the city for over 1100 years. As a matter of fact, they were holding up pretty well in this movie too and I think that's why the Sultan has to devise the good plan to have some of his 90,000 troops carry his ships across land and attack from the back of the city where the wall is less heavily guarded and he might have a better chance at winning the battle.

I was really enjoying the film until the director took a little too much artistic license at the end. First, the Sultan's handsome swordsman battled Constantine's best swordsman's for about 7 minutes. It was a good, albeit a little long, fight and they both survived more strikes than is humanly possible. But when the Sultan's swordsman finally prevails and then runs up to the rampart with the Sultan's flag, takes six arrows in his chest, and gets one glimpse of the beautiful female canon maker which, in turn, gives him enough energy to raise the flag and hold it up with his dead body, I stifled a giggle. And then at the end when the Sultan Mohammed II walks into the Hagia Sophia and finds thousands of women and children cowering in the corner but he reassures them that everything is going to be OK and he kisses a little girl and she kisses him back, I think there is some propaganda going on here. My history sources say that Turks actually went "berzerk." There was looting and pillaging, the 50,000 remaining citizens were enslaved and Eastern Christianity fell after more than 1,100 years.

So, if you like epic battles with handsome actors and actresses, great scenery, and a twist of history, then this film is for you. I give it 4 out of 5 swords.

Notes from my Turkish Kitchen

Choosing to cook or to eat out pose equally challenging problems but I usually opt for eating in to avoid the stares of a single woman dining alone in the almost entirely male dominated restaurants (except for the food court at the mall). But cooking presents its own problems.

Here are a few I've encountered in the past week:

1) Saran Wrap - It's like a nightmare trying to find the edge, cut a piece because the box doesn't have a metal strip, and to keep it from sticking into a giant snake before stretching it across a container.

2) Nesting containers with lids - Due to problem number 1, I bought a set only to walk home and discover that one of the lids is missing. I don't have time or the vocabulary to explain the problem and I know for a fact I took the last box on the counter.

3) Coffee Press - A random lid fell out of my cabinet and broke my Istanbul Starbucks coffee press the day after I bought 1 kilo of coffee. (2.2 pounds). And, the man who sold me the coffee was incredulous that I would buy a kilo of coffee for myself. I never thought it would be a problem.

4) Coffee Press # 2 - Found a coffee press at a designer kitchen store and splurged today. It would be a shame to waste the coffee. Walked the 45 minutes home from the mall only to discover that the pot in the nice gift pack they gave me is broken.

5) Baked my first chicken today in my little oven. (I usually cook on the stove top.) It sure made the house smell good. It still smells good. So do all the walls, the windows, the carpets, the door, the two drip pans in the oven, my clothes, the computer..you name it. Not only is this NOT a self-cleaning oven, I suspect that it's not properly vented oven either.

6) Cabinet door knobs - or lack thereof. The bolts are stripped so I just leave all the drawers cracked open.

7) Dish pan hands - Getting worse due to a)no microwave which leads to many extra pots to wash. b) no dishwasher c)empty bottle of hand lotion and lack of reading glasses (this is another story) to read the fine print at the store to find a new bottle of hand lotion.

But, behind every cloud there is a silver lining and here are today's:

1) Found some delicious brown bread at 5 Migros (Turkish Walmart) that will make excellent toast for breakfast tomorrow.

2) Have been gorging on delicious winter vegetables, broccoli and brussel sprouts ( I wonder if they're from Brussels?)

3) Have plenty of leftovers so I won't have to cook for several days.