Tuesday, April 17, 2012

VDay 2013: One Billion Women Rising Globally & .... Dancing!

Istanbul cast of the 2012 English-language version
of "The Vagina Monologues"
What a delight it was to gather one last time with my fellow cast members of the 2012 Istanbul English-language "Vagina Monologues" and meet their families, boyfriends, and friends at our cast dinner. We reunited at an Indian restaurant near Taksim Square in the Tamirhane area.
Musafir Indian Restaurant
in the Tamirhane Neighborhood
Near Taksim

This doesn't strike me
as an evil eye, how about you?
Surprisingly, our beautiful waitress
was not Indian,
she was Turkish.
Fooled you, didn't she?

Harika and her beau were off on a
photography safari of Nepal after the play.


We enjoyed delicious Indian food. Most importantly, we enjoyed each other's company and discussed what was next for each of us. Harika was off to photograph Nepal. Tara was leaving for scuba in Egypt the next day. One cast member was flying back to Rome where she lived full-time. I must admit, the more I read about Eve Ensler and her cause the more involved I wanted to become in the future. I wasn't ready to let go of the VDay cause.

"The Vagina Monologues" is coming up on its 15th anniversary next year. It makes a statement, it has been produced in over 140 countries and raised money for local charities (over $100 million since it was first written), yet still the world if full of violence against women. If anything, it's become worse. What will change the paradigm, Eve asks? What would make everyone in our buildings, on our streets, in our cities, in our nations wake up and not take it anymore? To demand a safer world for all women? Something even bigger, even bolder is needed! Listen to her yourself (prepare yourself, its an awfully tough listen):

Eve Ensler
on Democracy Now
discussing "1BillionRising"

Eve Ensler says:
"V-Day is calling the 1 billion survivors of violence on every continent of the planet to join and RISE. On February 14, 2013, we are inviting, challenging, and calling women and the people who love them to walk out of their homes, schools, jobs to strike and dance. To dance with our bodies, our lives, our heart. To dance with our rage and our joy and love. To dance with whoever we want, wherever we can until the violence stops. We know our brothers, husbands, sons and lovers will join us in the dancing. Imagine 1 billion women and those that love them dancing. Imagine us taking up space, expanding our borders and possibilities, expressing the depth of our desire for peace and change. Dancing, 1 Billion Dancing. The earth will surely move and violence against women and girls will end. Because it can."
Imagine trying to organize one billion people to end violence against half the population of the world! I love the scope and breadth of her ambition. What audacity! I can only ask myself "what can I do to help make this happen?" I ask you, is there something you can do as well in your corner of the world to help Eve reach her goal? Can we help Eve make the earth move together?

Here is one thing we can do immediately:

 follow #1BillionRising on Twitter

Here is a second thing we can do immediately:

 sign up to receive email about her goal

Here is a third thing we can do longterm:

 organize some sort of dancing for February 14, 2013

And lastly, on VDay 2013 we can DANCE!

C'mon. It will be fun.

Sunday, April 15, 2012

My First Turkish Movie -‘Kurtuluş Son Durak’

One night I was invited to a gal's night out with about six Turkish married women. My friends were organizing themselves to see a new Turkish movie with an all-female cast called ‘Kurtuluş Son Durak.’

I hadn't even yet seen the inside of our local movie theatre and was pleasantly surprised by the deluxe leather or leather-like Lazy-Boy style chairs. It was a beautiful theatre and very, very comfortable. I bought a giant popcorn to complete the experience and sat down not knowing what to expect. I didn't even know what the movie would be about.

This movie, a comedy with a theme of domestic violence, was adorable! The story starts when a glamorous woman, recently dumped by her boyfriend, moves into an Istanbul building. All of the other ladies in the building are, of course, curious about her but she resists their friendship.

The women all have their own struggles. One woman has devoted her life to her bedridden father; another has resigned herself to daily beatings from her husband so long as he doesn't touch the kids; another is facing the reality that her Mafioso boyfriend won't marry her, a young teenager hates seeing her mother beaten. Eventually, the ladies unite through their struggles, and become empowered to solve their problems. Most importantly, they have adopted a motto to "oppose all forms of violence."

The movie showcases
six skilled Turkish actresses
What I loved about the movie is that it showed absolutely beautiful parts of Turkish female culture. A Turkish woman will never let anyone starve. If food could cure cancer, there would be no cancer in Turkey! Even if a Turkish woman doesn't do the cooking herself, she has immense pride in her country's cuisine and is always quick to offer it. Turkish hospitality is awe-inspiring. They eventually wear down their new neighbor with their amazing food!

Typical Turkish Dinner with Rakı
(Turkish anise-flavored liquor),
good fellowship,
and good music
Secondly, Turkish women, actually Turkish people in general, are quick to share joy through music and dance. Have I met a bad Turkish dancer yet? I have not! Since childhood, folks in Turkey have been learning about music and folk dancing, belly dancing, and traditional dancing from their elders.

This movie was written by a man named Barış Pirhasan and directed by his son Yusuf Pirhasan. I need to give special appreciation to them as a viewer for creating this hilarious, uplifting script. Domestic violence seems like it wouldn't be a good subject for a movie, because it could seem so hopeless and dreary. There is a real accelerating problem with domestic violence in Turkey with domestic murders of women up 1400% in the last seven years. This movie seems like such a healthy way to create conversation about the problem and eliminate denial about the topic. Isn't that what is great about artists? They are always challenging us to do better, notice this, address that! Kudos, gentlemen.

This movie was a fun playful revenge fantasy similar in spirit to Dolly Parton's, Lily Tomlin's, and Jane Fonda's "9 to 5," the American movie about the glass ceiling women encounter at work. I didn't need much help during the movie to understand it since it was about the universal theme of relationships and friendship. The creators should be invited to appear at film festivals everywhere! Click on my title to visit the film's website.

Friday, April 13, 2012

Breaking the Silence on Street Harassment in Istanbul



Sessizliği Sen Boz,
Break the Silence
about Street Harassment

Street harassment is a human rights issue. It's also a business issue because street harassment costs businesses big money. I haven't felt harassed on the streets of Istanbul. I know, however, that I am not the target demographic as most young people harassed are ages 16-24. I have young friends who have experienced both rude, disgusting comments and groping.

If you think about it, street harassment is probably the number one reason women would not contemplate becoming an "Empty Nest Expat." It's an informal ghettoization of women that keeps them home: whether it be in their actual dwelling, their city, or their country because exploring their world looks too scary.

While fear of harassment has not kept me from exploring my world, street harassment still effects my spending decisions, which is why I emphasize the business consequences of street harassment in this post.

In 2011, I wanted to go to a New Year's Eve party at a friend's flat in the central Taksim area of Istanbul. When my Turkish male friends heard this, they resoundingly said, "you absolutely must not go." Why?

They said, "on New Year's Eve all the village yokels come into Istanbul. They've never seen a foreigner, they are drinking, they assume all sorts of things, and our news the next morning is filled with foreigners who were treated inappropriately on New Year's Eve because of this. Your smiling foreign face would be misunderstood by villagers."

So two hours before I was to leave, I made the decision to stay home and miss my friend's party. Between taxis and hostess gifts of wine and such, the amount I would have spent that night had I gone adds up to about $100. I am just one woman. Think of that decision multiplied by thousands of women. It becomes very easy to see what street harassment costs an economy.

In many ways, Istanbul is benefitting because street harassment is so much worse in other places. One of my friends recently moved here to Istanbul from Cairo. My friend, a highly educated and successful Arab author, said after living in Cairo for two years that it feels completely lawless. She would never move about Cairo proper using a regular taxi. It had to be her regularly-used taxi service, because a woman couldn't even trust licensed cabs in Cairo to keep her safe.

Another story of Cairo street harassment that stunned me comes from one of my favorite blog writers on Islamic spirituality. What are the business implications for a country like Egypt with so little control of its own streets?

For starters, a lot less tourists. At one time, Turkish and Egyptian populations and economies were roughly equal. But now, Turkey receives more than double the tourists Egypt does even though Egypt has the sphyinx and the pyramids and the Nile to offer.

There's a website called Hollaback! that works to document street harassment all over the world so that women know places to avoid within a city. It is also localized to document cases within Istanbul itself so people can see where most harassment occurs.

Avoiding places is a 20th century solution. Women won't settle for that anymore. Women deserve, demand, and will work for safe streets all around the world. We are half of the world's population. We aren't going to remain silent anymore.

Tourist and retail business people should appreciate and fund activists like the Istanbul Hollaback! team because they are working to create an environment safe for people and frankly, local businesses, to thrive.

Click on my title to check out the Istanbul Hollaback! website. You can share your story, check the map of harassment locations, and learn Turkish to help defend yourself. You can also learn how you can be a badass bystander who helps diffuse situations!

It's exciting to see tools like this develop to help women go out and explore their world. We didn't have something like this when I was in my twenties. A worldwide network of Hollaback websites helps give women courage. Set sail, explore, see parts unknown! Don't let street harassment keep you from exploring beyond your street, your city, or your country just like anybody else.

Monday, April 2, 2012

Vagina Monologues: We Did It!

Some of our fabulous cast
for "The Vagina Monologues"
Pictured left to right: Tara, Demet, Yasemin, me,
Monique, Harika, and Kendra
The play poster

One of my fellow cast members in DreamTree's production of "The Vagina Monologues," remarked at what an amazing feat it was for Donna M.E. Banks, an American and Kendra Tyre, a Canadian to move to Istanbul and within six months start up a theatre production company and put on Eve Ensler's play. These two ladies had known each other as teachers in Korea, and then discovered they were both living in Istanbul. "Why not create a VDay event?" they thought.

VDay is the movement to wake up the world to the gender-based violence women experience. It was started by American Eve Ensler.
The name of our
adorable neighborhood theatre
was Mekan.artı
It was just down the street from the entrance
of the Istanbul Hilton in Harbiye.
As I said in my last post, acting has not ever been one of my dreams. I was in this production because I believed in the cause. I walked away from the experience with new insight and respect for actors and actresses. For one thing, it takes a lot of time to learn dialogue.  As the oldest cast member, I joked that 'act' stood for 'Alzheimer's Cognitive Testing.' It seemed odd to me to devote so much time to something I would use all of three times.  At least if I was studying a school subject - say osmosis, or something, I could use it forever. I also had no idea the amount of time that actors need to devote to rehearsals. My goodness, it's like a part-time job to go to rehearsals every week.
But is this space not endearing?
It's like a little neighborhood clubhouse.
It held just under 100 seats.

As I was whining to a friend about how much more work it is to be in a play than I realized, he said, "yes, but you'll forget all that pain when you perform it." I was scared to death to act in this play, and as we prepared I felt wave after wave of vulnerability engulf me. My friends carried  me through though, and lifted me up with joy and support as I got ready. When we put the tickets on sale, it took less than a week for them to sell out. The last few days before the play all of us in the cast were fielding calls from all kinds of people asking, "please just four more seats?"

Opening night was full of drama for the cast: one member was in the hospital hoping to get discharged by 6 p.m. for our 8:30 curtain time, another went through three or four babysitters before finding one that would commit and stick. The second night, the lights were bright and I flubbed a couple of my lines. I quickly found my way back but it was a bit unnerving. The third night, one cast member forgot to get her suitcase out of the taxi trunk with all the costumes inside. Luckily, the cabbie realized it and brought it around in time for the show. Donna and Kendra goodnaturedly rolled with all of it.

The power of art to transform and cause us to think and grow is incredible. During our rehearsals, I faced my own intolerance of the transgender character in the show, and realized I was repulsed by the ambiguity everytime I heard the monologue. I didn't want to be, but I was. I don't know anyone in that situation. I always have to think, "now, are these the people who dress in the other gender's clothes? Or the people who want sex-change surgery? Or people who have had sex-change surgery?" I can never keep it straight.

"Wow, in real life, people with that issue, are a walking violence target," I realized. If I was repulsed and was doing my best to be compassionate and still struggling, I could imagine there are plenty of people who don't even bother to struggle. I just sat with my own feelings and felt the discomfort of not understanding. The play taught me how damn hard it must be to be one of those people. May they find kindness out there in the world. May I not be indifferent to the hate crimes they experience.

I hope to post more pictures and information about how much money was raised for Turkish nonprofits, but I'll end here saying how amazingly proud I am of my friends. Their biggest accomplishment was to use art to create conversations about difficult subjects. Among the cast we had fascinating discussions about what our mothers and grandmothers had taught us about avoiding gender-based violence, we discussed what monologues we identified with and what ones we did not, we talked about what part of the female experience isn't represented. We were privleged to help create the same kind of conversations among our audiences. I felt wondrous community develop full of love and support among the English-language speakers of Istanbul around this play. It was a privlege to be a part of it - next time though - I'm signing up for the publicity team - anything but acting!

A splendid story in "Today's Zaman" newspaper about our efforts and in "Milliyet" newspaper

Wednesday, March 28, 2012

First Rehearsals - Vagina Monologues in Istanbul

Great movements often start in coffee shops.
Vaclav Havel famously met
with his fellow Czech dissidents
in the Cafe Slavia across from
the National Theatre in Prague.

My expatriate American friends,
Donna and Kendra,
newly arrived in Turkey,
had decided to organize a VDay event
with both expatriate and Turkish women.
They decided to produce the play
"The Vagina Monologues"
in Istanbul.
Auditions were over.
Our first rehearsal
was at an Istanbul coffee shop.
We shyly came together,
that day in February.
I was struck by the beauty of the women there.
Each one wanted to help other women
through her own personal participation
in Eve Ensler's famous play.
 I had heard about the "Vagina Monologues" for years
and finally saw them in Madison, Wisconsin.

Eve Ensler, the writer of the play, wants to end
the great global silence
about the ongoing epidemic of violence
perpetrated against women and girls
around the world.

The play represents the experiences of women
all around the globe,
most notably, women in the Congo.
Each year, a new monologue is added
reflecting the news of the day.
I wish that wasn't necessary.
I didn't know about performing a play
like this in a conservative country,
but I took faith from the courage of our
producer/directors and the other women present.
 I have no interest in acting.
I don't have that bug at all.
But I do want to support
everything Eve Ensler does.

Her life's mission is
to wipe out violence against women worldwide.
Yes, I know.
You probably think she's crazy.

Yet the impossible happens every day.
Do you think Vaclav Havel and his Czech friends
believed the Berlin wall would eventually fall?

the NACCP expected they would be so wildly successful
in seeking change that less than 100 years later
there's a black man in the White House?

I am not sure they would have dreamed it.
They just started with the first step.

Can't you just imagine how
hopeless those situations
looked at the time?

I wonder what it will be like for women
100 years from now if all of us just take that first step
toward ending the culture of violence.
VDay believes the reason for the global silence
about what women are experiencing is
 the indifference of authorities worldwide,
 the instinct of denial within families,
 and the lack of public outrage
about the violence
that millions of women experience every day.
But on this first day,
it was just interesting to learn about the play
and to meet the other women.
Kendra, one of our producer/directors
listening intently to a first reading.
V-Day dreams of a world in which
women and girls will be free to thrive,
rather than merely survive.

Friday, March 23, 2012

Africa Day @ the Global Minds Book Club

On the first stunning weekend of Spring
we met to discuss an amazing book
in a beautiful home
overlooking the Bosphorus.
Knowing that my Ghanian friend Clarence wouldn't be in Istanbul forever, I asked him if we could read an African book and have him moderate our discussion at our Global Minds Book Club, which he founded.

My view of Africa from Istanbul was completely different than the view I had back home. In America, the only thing one reads about Africa in the media is generally aid, AIDS, drought, and other negative stories. Think of the most recent American media firestorm about Africa: the KONY video. It's a simplified African story told by non-native white people with motives that are hotly debated. 

In Istanbul, however, I see TV commercials aimed at African consumers. These commercials  made me realize there is a large middle class there. Clarence says there are over 50 million middle-class consumers in Africa right now.

Clarence, who founded the popular Istanbul "Global Minds" book club over a year ago, usually runs the group as a complete democracy with a 'majority rules' vote on each title, but in this case, there might have been a bit of enlighted and beneavolent leadership. 

Clarence suggested Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's novel "Half of a Yellow Sun" based on this wonderful TED video of her warning all of us as people to beware the "single story" we have in our heads about other nationalities, races, and classes of people. It's really worth 18:49 minutes of your time.
I picked up a copy of her book and noticed the cover had a sticker denoting it as the 2007 Orange Prize for fiction winner. I was intrigued to learn the Orange Prize for Fiction is a fairly new prize started in 1996 (which you can "like" on Facebook for more information) that honors the best book published by a female in a given year in Britain. The announcement of the long list of candidate titles for the prize coincides with International Woman's Day.

It stunned me to realize that this was the first book I had ever read by a black African author EVER in my life. I found that sobering. I've read books about Africa, such as "Out of Africa" by Isak Dinesen (a European expat living in Kenya), but here I am, in my 50s, and this is the first time I've ever heard a black African voice in novel form. Even though I'm a librarian, a life-long avid reader, and a life-long book club attender, I hadn't even gotten to the point where I had the limiting "single story" about a people, I realized, I had NO story from their point-of-view. That means every single thing I've ever read or heard about black Africans to date was not through their eyes, but someone else's.

I do think that's changing now in America as many high schools are having their students read "Things Fall Apart" by Nigerian author Chinua Achebe. I want to read that as my next African title.  Of course, like many American women, the most recent stories I've had about Africa have all come through Oprah's eyes.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie wrote her book about middle-class Igbo people struggling to survive in the Biafran war when she was just 29 years old (note to self - my only previous knowledge of Biafra - again from an outsider - a George Harrison album cover devoted to starving children in Biafra). It was such a riveting story. I want to read everything she writes!

I absolutely loved this book. An introduction to a new author, a new place, a new people are what makes book clubs such a powerful tool for sharing ideas and life-long learning. It was my book club that got me to pick this book up.

After I finished the book, I read more about the Nigerian Civil War on Wikipedia and was frankly astounded and reminded of the evils of colonialism. 
Norah is from Kenya and was our gracious hostess.
 She said "feel free like a housefly,"
a Kenyan aphorism of welcome telling us to be comfortable.

I told her we call it "refrigerator rights"
in America.
Good friends have "refrigerator rights,"
they can just walk in your house and open the refrigerator.
Clarence and a new member from America.

True to form, Clarence used the title
 as a launching pad to discuss all things African:
 politics, gender relationships, tribal customs,
 superstitions, economics.
It was a fantastic, frank, fearless exchange of views.
Nationalities represented for this book:
 Kenya (2), Ghana, Canada, America (3),
 Ireland (2), New Zealand.

 We all wondered where our Turkish voices were that day -
we were dying to know what they thought of the book. 
Norah's ambience included both beautiful African art,
this piece represented the Masai tribe,
and tribal music playing softly in the background.
I loved hearing Norah's perspective!
Ana, a Kiwi, me, a Yank, and Jackie, an Irish lass
We had planned to watch a Ghanian movie afterwards
but we had a four-hour book discussion,
our longest ever!
It was delightful watching twilight
descend over the bridge as we talked.
Pausing to watch the ship go under the bridge,
from Norah's balcony,
I felt so blessed.
It was a magnificent way to spend the day.

I can promise author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
I will not stop at this "single story."
I want to read more African fiction and stories.
Her outstanding book made me care about people
I never heard of before.
It also made me want to know more.

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Wednesday, March 21, 2012

Discussing Books with the Istanbul Global Minds Book Club

I was proud to moderate
George Orwell's brilliant book
"Animal Farm"
at Global Minds Book Club
One of the Istanbul-based groups advertised on the Internations expatriate social network that attracted my attention was the fairly new “Global Minds Book Club.” I love reading and discussing books and have belonged to several book clubs over the years. The organizing mission of this group was to read books from all around the world and discuss them with people from all around the world who were currently residing in Istanbul.
Sinan, second from left,
moderated our discussion
of Harper Lee's
"To Kill A Mockingbird"
Global minds discussing global books: what an exciting idea! That was different than most book clubs organized in our home countries which feature friends of similar demographics discussing titles that are often targeted at that demographic. Those can often be a “great minds think alike” club.

I knew it would be a different type of book club when the first meeting I went to started with shots of melon liquor. While we may not have educational diversity (many members have graduate degrees) we do have national, religious, racial, ethnic, tribal and sect diversity.
Stalwart members
Matt and Işil
For the Turkish people who come to the meetings, it is often their first book club experience as there is no tradition of book club discussions in Turkey. There are many reasons for that. Widespread literacy is less than 100 years old in Turkey due to the change in alphabet. Stories in this part of the world are often shared orally rather than on the written page. The idea of discussing art, culture, politics, and life in a good-natured way with all kinds of different people that one doesn’t know very well is often considered a new and very foreign idea, especially when the premise is that the discussion takes place over a book. I tip my hat in appreciation to people of all nationalities who come to the club to discuss a book in English, frequently their second or third language.
Clarence Nartey, Founder
Global Minds Book Club
leading our discussion of
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's
"Half of a Yellow Sun"
Clarence Nartey, the man from Ghana who started the “Global Minds Book Club” is uniquely suited for the role.  As a marketing manager for a multinational corporation he has traveled all over the globe in his professional roles with visits to 20 countries (Ivory Coast, Nigeria, Togo, South Africa, Singapore, Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia,Vietnam, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, India, Turkey, UAE, France, UK , Spain and Israel), sometimes living in a country for a month at a time, and other times living there for a couple years. I remember when I got my first emails from him detailing how the group was organized, what we were reading, and when. I thought “this is MBA-level organization for a mere book club.”  Joyfully, our book club is both relaxed - often meeting poolside or in a picnic venue, and organized within an inch of its life!
We met under the gazebo
at my place
last summer to discuss
Haruki Murakami's
"After Dark"
We frequently meet in our different homes. This has prompted our members to travel all over Istanbul and gets us into neighborhoods we would not have a reason to visit otherwise. The club has become so successful that Clarence has considered dividing us into two groups, with a meeting simultaneously held on each continent. There are over 240 people on the email list, with around 15 responding positively that they will come, and a usual 8-10 actually making it. Not bad considering that coming to a discussion can involve up to a two-hour trip each way as people cross continents!
We were supposed to go swimming
after this meeting
but the discussion was so good
we never got in the pool
Clarence says, “what thrills me about reading now is not the act of reading a book, but now reading a book, organizing friends to share it and using the book as a springboard to elicit multiple and diverse perspectives from fellow readers.”  He has done that so beautifully and created such a lively community of book lovers here in Istanbul . Wanting to extract every bit of value from the experience, he has also asked the members to donate the books after the discussion to interested libraries or groups to help them broaden their reading horizons too.

Eventually, even the expatriates we rely on the most, like Clarence, must leave. That’s the nature of the expatriate experience – a short time together of meaningful intensity.

He has told the Global Minds Book Club that within a month or two he will be transferred to the continent of Africa. He is excited about returning to his home continent, but oh, will we miss him! In keeping with his tradition of stellar management, Clarence already has his replacement “Global Minds Book Club” organizer lined up. 

Our reading list to date:
Global Citizens - Mark Gerzon ( non-fiction)
Little Bee / The Other Hand - Chris Cleave (fiction)
Tipping Point - Malcolm Gladwell ( non-fiction) I joined here
Life of Pi - Yann Martel (fiction)
To Kill a Mocking Bird - Harper Lee (fiction)
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close - Jonathan S. Foer (fiction)
After Dark - Haruki Murakami ( fiction)
The Gambler - Fyodor Dostoevsky( fiction)
Animal Farm - George Orwell (fiction)

The White Tiger -Aravind Adiga (fiction)
Catcher in the Rye - J D Salinger (fiction)
Shah of Shahs- Ryszard Kapuscinski (non-fiction)
Half of a Yellow Sun -  Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (fiction)

 This book is easily my favorite discovery through the club!
Future Titles:
New York Trilogy - Paul Auster (fiction)
Cairo Modern - Naguib Mahfouz (fiction)
Sammarkand - Amin Maalouf  (fiction)
Homage to Catalonia - George Orwell (non-fiction)
Do you have an expat book club? Or a book club devoted to reading international titles? What has made it fun? Do you have a book recommendation for our club that your group enjoyed?

You may also like these posts:

Making Expat Friends Through Internations

Africa Day @ Global Minds Book Club

All my posts on books

 


Monday, March 19, 2012

Making Expat Friends through Internations Expat Social Network

Friends having fun!
That's how we spell it: Y-M-C-A
How was anyone an expat before the Internet? That was when people really left home and immersed themselves completely in another country. No TV shows from home, no news from home, only snail mail, and a new culture where English was not the global language it is today.  That was expat commitment on a whole other level.
Enjoying new Internations friends in Turkey
Gratefully, these days, the Internet provides us not only the comforts of our familiar media, but also tools to help us make the most of our new overseas city as quickly as possible. Before I left to go overseas, I made my first Prague friends through blogging. I started a blog and connected with expats in Prague that were also already blogging. That seems quite a slow, laborious way to make friends now that I think about it. At the time, in 2008, I thought I was high tech!
The Turkish gesture for sincerity:
A hand over the heart
What do all the people who are too busy or lazy to write a blog do? There are new, quicker ways to make friends before arrival in a new city. I first discovered couchsurfing as a way to meet locals as I travelled, and as a way to experience amazing events with fellow expats.  Couchsurfing participants skew fairly young demographically. What has been a wonderful resource for me in Istanbul is the expatriate professional's social network called Internations. It's designed to connect global minds in over 250 communities worldwide.

To use Internations, you first need an invitation from an expat who is already a member. That's easy enough to secure. They can send you an email invitation and then you too are a basic member. I've enjoyed my free basic membership for a couple of years now. Through that basic membership, I have access to all kinds of relevant information like city and relocation guides and an expat magazine. Those resources are highly valuable if first starting out or daydreaming about "hmmm, where should I go next?" I've occasionally used the forum feature in the Istanbul section of Internations where people post their job openings or 'positions wanted' listings, their moving sales, and their color commentary. I find that valuable. I've mostly used it to source books.
Sampling Turkish wine together
There is also an Internations paid membership, called the Albatross membership, which has a small monthly cost. It allows people to send unlimited messages to others in the network. I could imagine that would be useful to someone who organizes lots of activities or does business with other professionals. The Albatross membership would be useful for anyone who does business with expats because there is an advanced search feature that allows people to search by nationality, organization, or interests. Albatross membership also provides people free entry into the monthly megaparty held in each city. I find those parties to be meat-market-like and skippable even though they are often in beautiful and interesting locations. It's hard to have an in-depth conversation with anyone at one of those events.


The feature on Internations that has been a Godsend to me is the local events section.  Nice people all over the city organize outings and/or actual groups that meet on an ongoing basis. My hike to the Belgrad Forest was an event advertised on Internations by my friend Yasemin. I've also joined two different groups on Internations that have been so fun and so full of terrific, delightful people that I keep coming back to them again and again. I will write about my Internations book group and travel group both in later posts. I also appreciate that the basic Internations membership allows me to organize my connections with new friends in a different place than Facebook. That's useful if I'm not ready to make someone a Facebook friend.
Chilled Out in a Cappadochian Cave
I'm always surprised when sheer visits to a site don't translate into enough traffic to generate revenue. For example, I thought reader's consistent daily visits to the New York Times were enough for them to go out and sell advertising based on high viewership. I thought my consistent return to Internations was too.  Apparently not though, because both organizations have demanded a new monthly fee for a specific level of service beyond the minimum. I hate it when that happens! Aren't my eyeballs enough?
Dinner at Meze by Lemon Tree,
Frequently rated #1 restaurant in Istanbul
on Tripadvisor
Reluctantly, due to the new fees, my groups on Internations have concluded that we will go elsewhere for our organization and communication. My book group had set up an entire alternative communication method as we were limited to only five messages a month each on Internations (imagine how frequently we'd have visited if we could have done all of our communication with each other through the site - that limit made us create backup plans) and my travel group has already migrated to Facebook. Will Internations stay interesting if access becomes so restricted that people move their energy elsewhere?

Have you become a member of Internations? What's been your experience? What have you valued the most?

Thursday, March 15, 2012

A Review of LiveMocha.Com : The Internet's Largest Language Learning Website

This review originally appeared as a guest post on the Everyday Language Learner's Blog. Thanks to language coach Aaron G. Myers for his encouragement! You can go to the original review on Aaron's blog for additional user feedback on LiveMocha.com. Do you have experience with LiveMocha.com? I'd love to know how it has worked for you!


I’m an American expatriate bursting with enthusiasm to get out and experience our globe! When my two children graduated from high school, I saw that as my opportunity to see and hear the world from alternative points-of-view by moving overseas. I sold everything and moved to Prague, Czech Republic. Now I’m living in Istanbul, Turkey. I enjoy it so much I’ve decided to put down some expat roots and learn the local language.

As Aaron G. Myers is also an Istanbul, Turkey resident, it wasn’t long before I ran across his Everyday Language Learner’s blog. Aaron coaches people from all over the world on self-directed language learning. I started his free ten-week journey of emailed inspiration, resources, and advice on how to do just that. In Week Two, he recommended a resource for language-learning that was new to me: LiveMocha. Since LiveMocha billed itself as THE largest language-learning website on the internet, and it was free to boot, I immediately started an account.

The best thing about the site is its intuitive design. There is no mystery to how to work the site, everything is clearly labeled and easy to figure out. When I logged in, I could immediately switch the site to English and choose between working on my language courses, exploring the culture of my new language, or practicing Turkish with native Turkish speakers. Livemocha offers over 38 possible languages, with 12 million registered users, from 196 countries. The website itself is just five years old!

The genius of the design is using social networking to help people learn languages. Native speakers of one language grade the work of people trying to learn their language. That favor is reciprocated when the ‘teachers’ become students in the language of their choice! Native speakers will not only grade each other’s work, they will offer tips to understand the grammar, and practice speaking live.

LiveMocha courses are divided into three sets of five lessons. I like this. It reminded me of marathon courses. Marathon runners don’t like one long, linear course instead preferring short distances with lots of turns that add up over time. It helps the runner visualize not the entire path, but just the next step. I chose as my first course, Turkish 101, on March 7, 2011 and finished the entire 51-set of Turkish lessons in four courses on January 24, 2012. I was always excited to see what the next lesson would be and to finish a set. Those steps, repeated over and over, made it all seem so doable.

Each individual lesson began with up to 40 Turkish words or phrases. The large number of new phrases and words surprised me, because I had been taught in my TEFL teacher’s certification course, that a language lesson should never be more than eight words, as eight is the maximum a student can remember from each lesson. Maybe online lessons are different, I don’t know. I remembered them.

First I would learn the words devoted to a theme, say “clothing,” and then immediately get quizzed on them via a review session, a listening session, and a reading session. Frequent quizzing has been shown to aid short-term retention. I liked getting all of those answers right! Each lesson required me to do a writing and speaking sample. I would always put that off because they were harder to do. Finally, to complete the lesson, I would take the quiz on that individual lesson. It was fun to take the quiz multiple times and track my improvements in time. How quickly could I finish it?

I can think of four very easy improvements to the site. I was asked by users to be friends in language-learning, but finding someone to grade your samples and be possible language-learning partners seemed so random. Sure, other users would rate us on our teaching ability (I had quite a bit of ego in my 100% useful rating) but toward the end I happened upon a teacher whose answers were truly more complete and educational than others. Sure enough, his profile showed he had been recognized as a Top 10 Teacher in Turkish. Why doesn’t the site show us exactly which teachers are rated highest so we can pick them? I found my favorite teacher when I was on my last five lessons. Finding him earlier would have increased my trust of the site.

Another feature I would add to the site is to not make students guess at the pronunciation of a passage. While I would learn terms or words in a lesson, for the speaking practice attached to each lesson (usually a whole paragraph), I would often have to go outside the site to figure out how I should pronounce the words. It would be so easy to have other users actually create a sample hand-crafted audio for us to mimic. Instead, I inputted my sentences into Google Translate to figure out how to say them.

Users could criticize a phrase in a useful tip left for those learning. This was not always helpful. The lesson would try and teach a phrase and the sidebar featured someone saying, “we don’t say that!” When someone has a specific criticism of the lesson, I think site administrators should use that criticism to change the ‘slide’ and then delete the teacher’s tip. It would be one more way to create a friction-free site.

One area that I did not explore well because I didn’t see the benefit of it was flash cards. Why would I use a flash card set, when there existed a beautiful lesson with visual and audios that I could access again and again? Why would I even try someone’s top-rated flashcard set? Since we all had the exact same opportunity to create flashcards based on the lesson, I couldn’t see how someone’s flash cards could be more interesting than the lesson itself. That was not self-evident.

Lastly, I would ask LiveMocha to put verb work closer to the front of the courses. Even after 51 lessons, I could occasionally pull off a small conversation. However, I would characterize what I knew as words and phrases that were the building blocks of future conversations. I believe if verb work was closer to the front, people would be able to make sentences faster.

I remember the weekend I started to understand the signage around me. I remember the weekend I had my first 10-minute conservation with someone at the bus stop. It’s exciting to become more comfortable in a second culture and examine new ways of thinking about my world in a second language. Thank you, Aaron, for the recommendation. Thank you, Live Mocha, for getting me started in Turkish. I was sad to finish my last lesson and I wished for more and more lessons.

What better recommendation is there than that?

You may also like the post: Time Out for Turkish

Thursday, March 8, 2012

Heath Lowry's "Ongoing Affair" with Turkey

This is a fun, charming memoir of a Peace Corp volunteer's time early in the Peace Corp program serving in a rural village in Western Anatolia. Mr. Lowry paints a loving portrait of Bereketli's characters and culture. This book describes what must be the beginning of his "ongoing affair" with Turkey as he now holds the Kemal Ataturk Professor Chair of Ottoman and Modern Turkish Studies at Princeton University.

One thing that he speaks of frequently in this book, which is also frequently mentioned in today's literature about the Peace Corps, is how Americans are sent abroad with little or no direction of what it is they are supposed to accomplish. It is to Mr. Lowry's credit that he was able to help bring about positive change working with the locals while still knowing his place. He represented his own country very well as a Peace Corps worker.

Sunday, February 19, 2012

Understanding Iran: The Power of One Graphic Novel called 'Persepolis'


Persepolis, Volume One
by Marjane Satrapi
Americans have been miscommunicating with Iranians for 60 years. Rather than continue to be a part of the problem, I "sought first to understand" rather than "asking to be understood" by reading this book. It is a profound, moving, and shocking graphic novel. I was continually in awe of the author's insight at such a young age; Marjane Satrapi wrote her book in her early thirties. I was also impressed by how many different ideas were presented in what is esentially a comic book that could be read in a couple of hours.

"Persepolis" helped me to understand how powerful people misuse the fear created by outside events to consolidate power for their own ends. This book starts with a reminder of how America and Great Britain interferred with Iran, causing the events that eventually led to the removal of the Shah from power (America overthrew a democratically-elected government in Iran in the 1950s).

The power of the book lies in how personally the story is told and its effect on a sophisticated, young, globally-oriented child who is age 6 to 14 in the story. While my country's wrong-doing is presented matter-of-factly, Ms. Satrapi saves her biggest impact for the self-imposed stupidity of constant war and constant death created by the Iranian regime during its war with Iraq. Her genius and wondrous courage is helping us, the readers, feel the stunned horror of one's country badly run through a series of vignettes from her childhood.



Author Marjane Satrapi
I would like to read Persepolis 2, to find out what happens to the author. Ms. Satrapi is an incredibly valuable woman to a country that most probably isn't ready to appreciate that fact. She seems like a creative visionary who will be read by all Iranians 50 years from now because she told the truth. While the status quo continues, I assume her work will probably be denounced by the powers that be.

Extrapolating the lessons learned from finishing this book back to my own country, I see how the events of 9/11 have also enabled American leaders, particularly the executive branch, to consolidate power in a way that doesn't bode well for the citizenry: the Patriot Act, indefinite detention of citizens, the end of "probable cause" requirements for internal spying, and new Presidential authority to take the lives of citizens without judicial oversight. Each externally-inflicted harm creates, causes, and enables worse internally-inflicted harm.

Interested in reading another book about governmental abuse of power?

You might like this post:

The Restoration of Order: The Normalization of Czechoslovakia

or if you're interested in books about the general region, I recommend this post:

The Ottoman Empire from the other side as told in "The Bridge on the Drina"

Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Time Out for Turkish

Maiden's Tower on the Bosphorus

I haven't blogged here for awhile.  It is not because I don't have a million things to say; I do. I have had to choose - between spending time learning Turkish - or blogging. Turkish won. It's not like I have a staff who can help me keep my blog going while I study: gidiyorum, gidiyorsun, gidiyor. The authenticity of my blog is that it is merely me, myself, and I.

I've had so much fun learning Turkish, I've put "learning another language" on my bucket list. Before becoming an "Empty Nest Expat" I was a typical American who could only speak English. I took 7th grade French, but I didn't learn much and never had any opportunity to use it.  These days in America, a child could at least practice his Spanish with a native speaker on a daily basis. Like many in America, I found it hard to justify the time investment of learning another language with only the typical two weeks of vacation each year, usually spent within the continental United States. Take a look at this infographic before embarking on a language journey.

Part of being an "Empty Nest Expat" though is to meet people on their turf and attempt to communicate with them in their language and hear, see and feel their point-of-view. My time in the Czech Republic rid me of the intimidation factor many Americans feel toward learning a foreign language because I met plenty of people who had learned not one, but two, and sometimes three or more foreign languages.  If they could do it, why not me?  This was such a perfect example of the importance of role models in our learning environment. Even though I came from a highly educated environment (my hometown is among the top three American cities for number of Ph.D.'s per capita), I don't often meet Americans who have learned a lot of languages, so it is easy to say and think,"I'll never learn." Nonsense.

America's political climate also encourages America to stay ignorant of the languages and world outside of America.  When I was younger, if a politician made fun of another politician for knowing a foreign language, it wouldn't have occured to me to wonder "why does that politician want to keep Americans afraid of and ignorant of the greater world? Is he afraid we'd all discover that our country is getting outperformed on several metrics?" This downscale English-only attitude may appeal to some aspects of the American public but only furthers to make the nation less competitive globally. Plus, when our citizens don't know other languages, we really do have to rely on our own political leaders for interpretation of events.  It's healthy to have points of interaction with other countries at many levels, including citizen-to-citizen, and not just in our native language.
The first week I was in Turkey, I went to YouTube to look up "10 words of survival Turkish." The two words for "thank you" take six syllables to say. YouTube was censored at the time in Turkey so I found this instead: the 100 most useful words in Turkish. I learned them. My goal was to learn three words a day. Next came this resource, the free part of the website called "Funky Turkish." I've also been using a book called "Turkish in Three Months." I've lived here a year-and-a-half and I'm about halfway through.

The person who has really propelled me forward on my language learning journey is Aaron G. Myers, writer of the Everyday Language Learner blog.  Aaron is a former English language teacher who now is a self-employed language-learning coach. I signed up to take his free 10-week course on self-directed language learning.  I also won an hour of coaching from him through his Facebook page.  These two wonderful educational tools have helped me realize and maintain my own enthusiasm for learning Turkish.

It doesn't hurt that Aaron also lives in Istanbul, and has taken the exact same journey I'm on - learning Turkish! He's created, for example, his own handcrafted audio site for people learning Turkish language to listen to again and again.  It's called the Turkish Listening Library. It would be fun to contribute my own Turkish audio someday.

Aaron Myer's blog and advice are suitable for any language.  He has taught me about fun online language-learning resources that I did not know about. So far, I haven't spent a dime on the Turkish I have learned. I also have invested only the amount of time I would not regret spending on it while living here.

I started with a resource Aaron suggested as part of his 10-week journey: LiveMocha.com. It's the largest language-learning website on the Internet. I first logged on on March 7th, 2011 and finished my final and 51st lesson on January 24, 2012.

Now I am beginning with a second online resource he recommended called LingQ.com which will help me graduate from phrases to conversations. I am still a beginner but I can make myself understood with people who don't know English, even with my rudimentary grammer.

The first year of language learning is the hardest. I watched with interest as Yearlyglot tried to learn Turkish in one year from Italy.  I lived here in Turkey and I wasn't near that fast! At the end of the year, he admitted, "ok, so maybe that wasn't doable." But in watching people learn, I learned too. I also learned not to think of language as something binary: not knowing or flown-blown fluency.  One of my Czech students told me he had a fine vacation in North American on 150 words of English. Getting to that level with online resources is fun and easy.

Did you know, when the creators of Esperanto were looking around the world for a suitable grammar for their newly-created language they chose Turkish grammar as the most logical?  I found that, in itself, motivating!
 
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