Holiday! Part One: The University

Hazırlık Christmas Party

A cultural experience complete with tinsel, caroling, and homemade cookies 

(that lasted about thirty-two seconds) brought to you by the American teachers.

Some Yabancı Diller (foreign language) faculty spirit.
(Is the guy in the red sweater not the jolliest man you've ever seen?! He most definitely lives up to his visage. Also, Wally [front left] definitely initiated the, as he put it, "sorority girl squat" for this photo.)

American English teachers showing notably more enthusiasm for caroling than...

...our English-language-learning students in attendance.

With some of my kiddos. (They rocked the caroling, by the way. I traced the lyrics for them a few times and they had The Twelve Days of Christmas DOWN.)

This one needs explaining: these are a few of our Iraqi students at Gaziantep Ü. They wanted to take lots of photos with the ETAs, but they insisted on serious faces. They understood the humor of the stereotypical Arab mobster look, and we all laughed about the range of typical cultural photo taking faces (Asian peace signs, American cheesing, the drunk American college girl lip pucker, etc.). This photo was taken on the road to some eventual ninja stance pics!

American holiday party eventually digressed into Turkish folk tunes played on my popcorn bowl.

Medical faculty "surprise" 

Christmas celebration

Ryan and I teach a group of doctors/medical faculty members who want to begin lecturing in English. They threw us a bash to celebrate our "most important cultural holiday" (that's how I always pitch it to them). So sweet!

Some typical Turkish treats (always eaten with endless cups of tea) and a New Years cake (it's the closest they could get) that I was given the honor of cutting. My faculty students asked me, "What song do you sing when you cut a Christmas cake?" Me: "Umm, we don't really sing songs when we cut cakes..." A brief whispered conference with Ryan led into a Jingle Bells duet any Turkish cake-cutting tradition enforcer would be proud of.

With the gang! (Ryan's the tall one on the left. He sort of looks Turkish so thought I'd give ya a head's up. Not like me. Blondie-bright-colors over there. Not even trying to blend in anymore.)

The absurdly thoughtful and BEAutiful gift. The candies are essentially are essentially jewel and metallic colored peanut M&Ms--but WAY more delicious. The serving dish is a traditional Gaziantep hand-carved copper piece. Hands down the most amazing gift I received this year. (Although I did score a packet of Polaroid film at a later white elephant exchange. So, two awesome gifts.)

My class and some tunes. Gotta say, thank goodness Ryan is a musician. This event would have surely diverged into an awkward religious convo (they're a verrry curious bunch when it comes to Christianity) without *more* caroling  (AKA Ryan and me belting Frosty and Rudolph and other secular faves).

My student playing his bağlama, a sort of Turkish guitar (according to my outrageously unmusical understanding).

A beautiful exchange moment.