Safranbolu Turkish Restaurant, and Shared Culture

Safranbolu Turkish Restaurant
#60 Nanjing E. Road Sec 2
(corner of Nanjing and Jilin Roads)
Zhongshan District, Taipei Taiwan
02-2522-2939

Pictures on this will come later, as I only had my phone with me and haven't uploaded the photos yet.

Anyway, I was quite excited to hear about Safranbolu, which as far as I know is the only Turkish restaurant currently operating in Taipei. Middle Eastern food exists, but until now, I couldn't find Turkish. As someone of Armenian descent - Armenian from Turkey - this is like a godsend to me.

The atmosphere is quite good - well lit (perhaps a little too brightly lit for a romantic dinner, but not overly dim as a lot of restaurants are), with the sort of lanterns one might find in the Istanbul Grand Bazaar hanging from the ceiling, Turkish coffee sets and evil eye charms for sale and Turkish music piped in.

We got hummus, ezme (a finely chopped salad of tomato, bell pepper, parsley, lemon juice, walnuts and pomegranate molasses), ayran (a savory Turkish yoghurt drink), lahmacun and Iskender kebab (my favorite kebab), Turkish coffee and two desserts (a custard and a rice pudding).

The food came quickly which we appreciated, and the ezme was perfect - exactly like I used to eat in Turkey after long days on the CELTA course - I would put it on thick slices of Turkish bread spread with soft cheese and eat it with a bowl of olives and local wine (Ancyra Okuzgozu), occasionally with some kofte. The hummus was chunkier and grainier than I prefer - I think this might be a regional difference. My ancestors' homeland is in the deep south of Turkey, near Antakya (Antioch) and the Syrian border. Around there they make their hummus silky smooth, doused in olive oil, garnished with parsley, cumin and cayenne pepper and served with bread, tomato slices and pickled vegetables (usually turnips or beets). When we had hummus in Patara, a little further west, it was chunky with nearly whole chickpeas and didn't have the same seasonings. This hummus was more like what we had in Patara. It was fine - though I still haven't found anyone in Taipei who makes hummus the way I like it - although we were a bit annoyed that the bread took awhile to arrive and was not very substantial. The bread was, however, good. I hope that they can sort out this service snafu and remember that bread comes at the same time as the hummus, and should be adequate to eat all of the hummus on the plate.

The lahmacun was excellent - the bread was not as thin as you can get it in Turkey but they got the flavors just right. My only comment here is that in Turkey lahmacun usually comes with a lightly dressed side salad of onion, tomato, possibly lettuce, cilantro or cucumber and you wrap the salad in with the lahmacun, and no salad was provided. On the other hand, I feel I should not be quite so picky: there is nowhere else in all of Taiwan to get decent lahmacun.

Iskender kebab is from the city of Iskenderiya just north of Antakya - it's the closest "regional kebab" to Musa Dagh, where my ancestors are from. While my family has apparently had a long-running feud with the Iskenderians, an Armenian family most likely from Iskenderiya (I don't really subscribe to the "old family feud" school of thought though), Iskender kebab remains my favorite. It's thin slices of grilled meat over chopped flatbread, doused in tomato sauce and served with yoghurt and rice. This Iskender kebab was pretty good, though it doesn't hold a candle to the huge heap of perfectly cooked lamb I had at a Turkish restaurant in New York not to mention the delicious Iskender kebab I had in Sanliurfa or Antakya. But, it was pretty good...I guess I just wish lamb had been an option (they only had chicken or beef).

The ayran was served in Moscow mule mugs, which I liked, and tasted basically like ayran, so yay!

All in all though I would say they hit the mark on all the flavor combinations - the tastes were all just like we had in Turkey - the other issues are just small kinks to work out.

The desserts were quite good - both fairly Turkish and tasty. We had them with Turkish coffee, which came in lovely cups with Iznik tile designs on them (not real, of course) and a pistachio Turkish delight. They don't do different sugar levels though - you can't say you want your coffee sweet or not. But, the way it's made, it's basically perfect so I'm not complaining.

Prices were not cheap, but then for good foreign food in Taipei you will usually pay a premium. The lahmacun (which is a light meal) was about 260NT, the Iskender kebab topped out in the 400s and the appetizers were about 60-90NT each. For the two of us - coffee, appetizers, ayran, meals, dessert - we paid about NT1800.

Oh, no alcohol on the menu. That's one major downside.

Before I finish this, I'd like to add something on a personal note. As an Armenian whose ancestors lived in Turkey before the genocide (the 100th anniversary of which just passed), it's kind of weird for me to eat Turkish food, because that's OUR food. The food of my family. The food of my ancestors. It's integral to our culture as Armenians...but that food is Turkish. But, it's also Armenian. I want to claim it as my cultural heritage, but I do not want to claim Turkish as my heritage, as I am not Turkish, I am Armenian by ancestry. It comes across as - this is our food! So, you're Turkish? No, we're Armenian. But this is our food too. But it's Turkish food. It's also Armenian. Armenian from Turkey? Well, yes, but food in Armenia proper isn't that different. So if they lived in Turkey, weren't they technically also Turkish? Not under the Ottoman Empire they weren't - there were Turks and then there were millets, or ethnic minorities under Ottoman control.

But a lot of the words of Western Armenian (the Armenian variant spoken by Armenians in Turkey) are Turkish borrowings, the food is the same, the culture is essentially the same, the tea and the games are the same, but we're not exactly the same. So on one hand I'm claiming my own heritage, on the other, I feel like I'm claiming one that is not entirely mine. Or, by claiming it, people make assumptions about my heritage that are not true.

All this to say, I understand how a lot of Taiwanese feel, wanting to claim aspects of Chinese culture that are also Taiwanese, that the two groups share (with the added aspect that they are ethnically the same), but wanting to remain culturally distinct. Wanting to say, yes, this is our heritage, we have this too - but we are not "Chinese", or, in the ways that we are, that is not the same as being from China. We share cultural touchstones, but we are distinct, and having that claiming of cultural heritage confused by the world at large for identifying as "Chinese".
I mean, I can never fully "get it", but I get it well enough, I think.

Double Triple Culture Shock

I've written before about reverse culture shock, something Kath at [insert suitably snappy title here] has described as feeling like "something has grown and it no longer fits like it used to, like a favourite t-shirt you used to wear all the time that accidentally got shrunk in the wash".

I could swear I wrote another post on the topic more recently, where I talked about how going home felt like watching all sorts of once familiar things that I once interacted with, but seeing them through a pane of glass, or Bubble Boy. You're there, you can see, hear and talk to people, but you're somehow separate.

I can't find that post now, but if I do I'll link back to it.

Well, since I've been back in Taiwan from our extended stay in Turkey, I can say that something along the lines of a double reverse culture shock has started to sink in. I'm sure it'll dissipate soon enough; it also only seems to have affected me to the point of me, myself noticing it. Nobody else seems to have.

It doesn't seem like this feeling is terribly common - seems it would be rather rare for someone to move abroad to one country, go through the usual culture shock, and then leave to spend long enough time in another, third country that they'd come back to their second country and culture shock about it all over again, from an entirely different angle. In this way, I'm probably writing about this more for myself and  the perspective that chronicling and describing this brings, but who knows, maybe someone out there in Internetland feels the same way and will stumble across this post.

I also kind of felt that this was strange about my experience in Turkey. I didn't feel  culture shock regarding Turkish ways of life vs. American; I felt it regarding Turkish ways of life vs. Taiwanese.

So of course when I then returned to the USA for a visit I had no fundamental frame of reference for anything at all, and was very confused indeed!

It would be great to be able to articulate exactly why I feel this way, but I can't really. What I can do is give some examples.

 First, I feel that same odd "looking at everything through the skin of a soap bubble" feeling I often get in the US, where I can see just fine, and interact and all that, but there's some barrier there that wasn't there before. I feel I've been relating to my friends differently, but I can't describe exactly how. My values have changed a bit, from being fine with living in a crummy apartment with crummy things but traveling fantastically, to being willing to scale back the travel a little bit and compromise on a nicer apartment and nicer things. I've also become more productive and in some ways, I think more cheerful, even when I'm in one of my fairly common cynical, curmudgeonly, critical moods. The  strict, unending and rapidly-approaching deadlines of our course were such that I've now trained myself - hopefully permanently - to be better with deadlines. I've proven that I can do so, if they're truly important. That's why I always had my class prep done on time but rarely had my reports done on time in the past.

Weather in Taipei is more miserable than I remember it; this is probably due to a month of sunny Turkish skies raising my expectations. Things that either didn't bother me or only nominally annoyed me before - people walking too slowly, especially if they're hogging the sidewalk or dawdling just inside MRT train doors (so nobody can get on quickly behind them! Argh!) or just outside turnstiles or doorways. The habit of pretending to understand something said in English when really, that person doesn't understand. The habit of not just asking when you don't understand - which Turkish students had no problem doing. The tendency to over-adhere to process over usefulness, feeling that keeping with a strict process is enough to feel like one is accomplishing something. I don't see this all the time in Taiwan, but just enough - especially at work - to annoy me. Listening to one's boss as though his or her words are the words of God.  Over-devotion to work: when someone in Turkey says "I have to leave class for a meeting, after that I'll have to go back to the office to finish up a few things", you can assume that once he's done with the meeting he's probably just going to cut out of there and head home if he can. In Taiwan, you can assume that he really is going to go to the meeting then do some work afterwards. Which is fine, doesn't affect me, but it's not how I roll.

I'm not nearly as interested in nightlife, and I don't think that's a function of age. Istanbul reeked of stuff to do at night. Entire neighborhoods were given over to nightlife. The tackiest, but arguably most "lose yourself in the crowd and have fun" of them all was Taksim, walking distance from our apartment. It was as big or bigger than the Xinyi Shopping District and packed bottom floor to top, building-against-building with bars, clubs, restaurants, live music, cafes, lounges, shops and pubs. You quite literally had all the choice in the world, from hippie lounging on beanbags outside among curls of incense with raki and hookahs to hip, red-lit booty-short-tacular dance clubs to fancy dinner at a bistro to coffee with friends in a bookshop. Taipei has most of that, but it's spread out and sometimes hard to find and no one neighborhood has enough of it to have a nightlife vibe.  As a result, I just haven't been going out much: one late night, total, since I've been back (late for me means "out past 2am").

This really isn't hitting the heart of it, though, which shows you that I don't really know where the heart of it is. Taipei is the same; I'm different. I went to Turkey with Brendan, so it feels like we're both just different enough after the trip that we've maintained the same dynamic. I feel different around everyone else, though.

It could be because going to my ancestral homeland of Musa Dagh was an inwardly emotional experience for me, even if it was a relatively quiet trip and quiet day. The full impact of the trip I'd made, the first in my family to do so since the Armenians were killed or forced out of Turkey, has been hitting me in stages. It may well have made me both more sanguine and more maudlin, possibly a bit more phlegmatic than before. I'm more irritated by things I'd previously gotten used to in Taiwan, but my temper flares over it less.

The new apartment could also have something to do with it - I've written before about how it's impacted my life and even my habits and personality a bit. I don't know though; our return from Turkey and our move happened so close together that in terms of emotion, the entirety of November and December is one big, murky pool.

In sum, I just don't know.

Something's shifted. Something's different. I'm definitely feeling that ineffable separation from my surroundings that I get when I culture shock. I can't articulate why in any clear way. I can't even clearly tell if anyone else has noticed the change. All I can say is that it's there and I'm hoping I figure it out or work through it soon.

My Experience Getting a CELTA Pass A

As many of you know, I recently took (and survived) the Cambridge CELTA course - I took it despite having taught for over five years because I no longer wished to be a very good “corporate trainer” (translation: teacher in a suit) who happened to not be certified. I wanted to be a fantastic teacher with a real qualification.  I chose CELTA because it was the only certification program that I felt I would really learn from after five years of teaching.

And I did – I felt that besides learning some new ideas and techniques for good teaching, that teaching 8 lessons and being critically assessed on all of them was extremely good for me. I went into the course thinking that timing and half-assed lesson planning were my problems, but learned that it’s in fact timing and Teacher Talking Time that I need to work on. Simply having a qualified person assess my teaching and give me action points was an immensely helpful learning experience. No other certification program would have given me that.

So, yes, all you other CELTA folks out there, I did get a Pass A (provisionally, but I have every reason to believe that that will be my final grade as well). After five years of experience and knowing from feedback, the clients I was given and their subsequent renewals that I was good – if not great – at my job, I’m happy to see that my grade reflects that (although I would have been fine with a B – that was the grade I was prepared to receive). For those who don’t know, about 70% of everyone who takes the CELTA gets a regular “Pass”. 25-27% get a Pass B and 3-5% get a Pass A.

There are a lot of personal experiences scattered about the Interwebs on taking the CELTA, especially the gruelling four-week course. At least one good post on the topic covers the writer’sexperience getting a Pass B, with tips on how readers can attempt the same. There are none chronicling the experience of someone who got a Pass A, which is why I’m writing this at all.

I can’t tell you “how” to get a Pass A, because even having got one, I don’t really know how it’s done. The criteria for the various grades are never clearly outlined – there is no (known) formula that says “if you get this many Above Standards on your lessons” or something, that automatically translates into a Pass A or B”. *

What I can say is that it was extraordinarily difficult, despite having come in with a lot of experience. I’ll be honest: I found the input sessions mostly easy (although I did learn a few things and pick up lots of ideas and techniques, broadening my repertoire), the written assignments not difficult in their content but certainly difficult in terms of the time and attention to detail it took to turn in something truly great. I did find the actual teaching to be a challenge – partly because my own style was a bit higher on the Teacher Talking Time that CELTA so rails against, and partly because being assessed and critiqued in great detail on a relatively short lesson that comes between two other lessons that other trainees planned is quite different indeed from how I teach at my actual job.

Basically, even with experience I had to work extraordinarily hard to hand in work and perform at a level that eventually earned me the A, and I don’t see how I could have done it without prior experience. I’d attend class all day, come home and work for up to four hours straight. In every other aspect of life I reverted to someone who has the mentality of a five-year-old because I was just so mentally shot to hell from how hard I was working. I ate kids’ food and drank a lot of whiskey. I worked all weekend almost every weekend (on the final weekend I managed to take Sunday off). I obsessed over lesson plans and nearly get headaches just thinking aout the level of detail I included in my Procedure pages. I stopped blogging, I stopped reading, I stopped watching TV and didn’t even check e-mail all that often – I did keep Facebook open in the background at all times though.

I highly doubt that someone on the CELTA course with zero teaching experience could get a Pass A unless they were preternaturally talented or had some indirect experience (ie one of their parents was a teacher or some such – that kind of exposure does have value). A Pass B would be possible, but a person with no experience who managed that would still have to be exceptionally talented.

I did note a few things that might have helped bump me from a B to an A. While there’s no set number of Above Standards that one needs in order to get an A or B, clearly the more you get, the better your chances are. The poster in the link above got 6 out of 9 Above Standards and got a B. I got 5 out of 8. Another trainee in my group – who was extremely good and actually had a teaching certificate already, just not for TEFL – got 6 out of 8, but I’m not sure what his final grade was. Another girl in another group also got 6 out of 8, but I’m not sure of her final grade, either. If more than half of your TPs are Above Standard, you’ll probably make it into the upper grades…or you’re far more likely, at least.

They tell you that as long as you pass all of your written assignments, it doesn’t matter how well you do on them, because it’s an overall Pass/Fail (and it is clearly announced that if you fail one assignment, you can pass the course but you can’t get a Pass A). That said, my final report noted that all of my written assignments were “of a very high standard” and that I passed all of them with no resubmissions. The fact that this was noted makes me believe that it had some impact on getting the A.

The tutors look in great detail at lesson plans, and this is one area in which I excelled – I mentioned above how I would give myself headaches over the level of detail I included. Every stage had ICQs and CCQs mapped out. If I was going to model instructions, I noted that, and how I would model them (with a student, with the board etc.).  I was very detailed in writing out what the students would do in each stage and I was very careful to check my Interaction Patterns to make sure there was as little T-Ss as possible. If your Procedure page for a 40-minute lesson reaches 3 or even 4 pages, you know you’re on the right track.

I was careful to use any new thing from a recent input session as soon as it was appropriate, and note that in my lesson plans, as well. In the real world you don’t need to do this, but if you If you’re really trying to excel, listen carefully to little things the tutors say: if you hear a tutor mention that using “teach” and “learn” in your aims or stage aims is a bad idea (and it is – “teach” is too teacher-centered and “learn” is too general), then don’t use those verbs in your aims. If they say “for any language focus, create a context and cover meaning, form and pronunciation”, well, do that. Every time. Even if you have to write that down on a piece of scrap paper and tape it over your computer.

Which, yes, boils down to “do what the tutors tell you”, but hey. Oh well. They’re tutors for a reason.

Other things that I felt worked in my favor: strong language awareness**, good rapport with students, confidence, good instructions, ability to adapt and create materials, good anticipation of problems, participation in input sessions and “professionalism” (be on time, don’t look skeevy, get on well with other trainees and coordinate lesson flow with those in your group, show leadership skills), and strong self-reflection and reaction to feedback.

Of course, a lot of this is easier said than done. I can say “oh you should cultivate a strong rapport with students” – yeah, great, but how do you do that? I can’t tell you. I know what works for me, but everyone’s style is different. This is why teaching is a lot harder than people give it credit for (and the profession has a surprisingly high number of detractors). There are no easy answers to things like “how to improve rapport” – it’s very touchy-feely. There are fewer clear answers in education than in other professions.

No guarantees or promises that doing all of this will get you an A, or even a B (like I said, I can’t tell you how to do that), but these are things tutors noted as my strengths, and a few of them were things that tutors openly said were important – for example, one tutor said quite clearly that a Pass A trainee “shows a high degree of professionalism, which includes being on time” (there were some late students).

It’s also quite clearly possible to get a Pass A while still having areas requiring improvement – even serious ones. I personally need to reduce my Teacher Talking Time. It’s hard for me to do, because I’m a naturally chatty person and I do have a strong personality. I like to really get to know my students, and I like for them to really get to know me, which often translates into my being more talkative and more at the front of the class than I really should be. If you know you have a similarly serious action point, but have shown clearly that you are taking steps to improve, are aware of the problem and are open to feedback on it, then it is still possible to finish the course while still needing to work on the issue, and get an A nonetheless.

I could also stand to work on my timing, and my lead-ins tend to take too long. I tend to latch on to a few great ideas and over-use them, for example doing similar lead-ins for each class (not on any report, I just know that I do that). When I get nervous, my eye contact shoots to hell and at least in the beginning my board work was a mess (much improved, still not perfect).

Basically, I’m far from a perfect teacher. I’m good, and I’m not shy about the fact that I’m good – I am so totally not into the paradigm where women and people in professions dominated by women are shot down if they are anything less than humble, if not self-deprecating, and goodness forbid you be confident or (gasp) self-promoting. I’m not perfect, though, and I could be a hell of a lot better. If someone like me who still has a lot to work on can get an A, clearly it is a goal that need not be dismissed as impossible (although if you have no experience at all, you are probably better off shooting for a B).

So, what real advice can I give? Not much, except this: if you set up your goal as “I’m gonna gits me an A!” then, well, it’s a worthy goal and all, but you’ll probably give yourself an ulcer, and stress so much about whether you’re doing enough or doing well enough that your freaky-outy stress will cause you to lose focus and actually do worse. Don’t look for a magic bullet or secret formula – there is none, and trying to guess at the magical combination of factors that leads to an A will just cause you to get even more freaky-outy. Always remember that it’s not a competition, so if you see someone who seems to be doing better than you, hey, you’re in it for four weeks with that person and you are quite possibly friendly with them – you are not in a race. There is not just one gold medal. Their good work does not mean you’ll get edged out for the one top spot, because there is no “one” top spot.

It sounds like a cliché but it’s really true: just work your ass off, do the best work you can do and don’t freak out (because that will affect your work).  Remember that the course is designed for people with no experience. Things you can do immediately, that take no innate or learned skill are to participate as much as you can in input, do your damnedest to provide as much detail as you can in your lesson plans, be on time and be receptive to feedback (defend yourself if you feel something said was really unfair, or explain your rationale, but don’t get defensive or argumentative).  If you are given a language focus to teach, learn everything you can about it (especially if it’s grammar), beyond what the textbook says. Even if you don’t plan to teach every aspect, know everything you can to better cope with questions or issues that may arise.

*One tutor said something along the lines of "We know we're not turning out perfect teachers, that's impossible in four weeks. After the CELTA you'll still need training. A Pass A tells employers that you can start teaching immediately with basically no training and little support. A Pass B tells them that you will need a lot less training than most new hires, but still require some. A Pass tells them that you are an average passing trainee, will need further training and support, but you did absorb the fundamentals taught on the CELTA."

**About that language awareness thing – yeah. It’s tough, even with experience and especially with no experience. Don’t be afraid – when I started teaching, I was all “modal? WTF is a modal?” – which of course meant that I was not the best teacher. I learned, though, and I got better. I picked up my language awareness because I had to teach it. Actually teaching it did far more for my own in-depth language awareness than reading a grammar book ever could have done. If you find yourself, the night before a lesson, flipping through web pages or reference books going “WTF is a modal?”, don’t worry, you’re not the only one, and the next time you have to teach it, you’ll know it. You’ll get better. You’ll learn it in far more depth and detail than you ever thought possible because having to teach it does that – it forces you to learn it in a somewhat high-pressure situation. So go out and buy yourself a good grammar reference, pour yourself a drink and relax.

Some more photos from Istanbul

I do apologize for not having time to write a real blog entry. I'm on the intensive CELTA course right now and everyone who's taken it knows that you just do. not. have. time. to do ANYTHING else while on that course. 

So, here are a few good photos from Istanbul, before we signed our life away!

Including photos from the Grand Bazaar, the Spice Bazaar, the Hagia Sophia, the Chora Church, Galata Tower, several historic mosques and more...

Hatay (Antioch) to Patara: A Journey in Photos

I'm working on a blog post in conjunction with what Brendan wrote about our Tea Garden Altercation, but it's taking me awhile to say what I want to say so it will come later.

For now, enjoy some photos of a few of our stops in Turkey!

The top three photos here are from the ruins at Patara - birthplace of St. Nicholas (better known as Santa Claus). My camera batteries were crapping out, but I got a few shots of the theater, which is still in fairly good condition (a little clean-up and they could probably hold performances there).

Below, a few photos from Anamur, our stop before Patara - there is a fine pebble beach here (no sand means no need for a beach blanket) with clear aqua blue water. There are also the ruins of an extensive city - once Anamurium - destroyed sometime around the 5th or 6th century AD. The ruins run right to the beach, so to swim you often have to climb over remains of walls and building blocks of marble that were probably some guy's house 1,500 years ago.

Here you can see the remains of a Roman mosaic, in situ, within the ruins. Below, a popular swimming hole in the late afternoon in Anamurium, as seen from a vantage point on the citadel of the Old City wall.

To get from Anamur to Patara, you have to transfer in Antalya. From there you take a minibus which can either go on the winding road along the coast (nausea-inducing) or take the route we took, over the mountains and through the backcountry. Beautiful, but if you get a driver who drops people off not just at their village but at their own house it can add an hour or two to your trip.

Below, a few photos from Kalkan, known as an upmarket Mediterranean tourist hotspot with great food (and the food really was great). It wasn't my cup of tea but fine for a day.

And now, some photos from Hatay, near Musa Dagh. We stayed in Hatay as it was the most convenient base from which to make the trip to Musa Dagh, and has a lot to recommend it on its own. Not quite enough to fill up three days, but the world's first known church (the Cave Church of St. Peter), a fine bazaar, an orthodox church, a lovely shopping and nightlife strip and a fine mosaic museum are all there to enjoy.