R&R - recap and resolutions

2009 has been a wonderful year for me because:

• I travelled a lot and visited Amsterdam, Bulgaria, Malaysia, Singapore, Budapest, Denmark and Rome. Still dreaming of India, Japan, Portugal, New Zealand...

• I realised that PLN is not actually PLN having joined Twitter

• I started DELTA and read one million books about teaching and learning (more or less ;)

• My blog was born in October!

• Thanks to Videojug, I began experimenting with Indian cuisine and can now make delicious Chicken Tikka Masala 

• I spoke at two ELT conferences - in Stara Zagora, Bulgaria and Budapest, Hungary and met some fantastic people there

• I wrote 3 guest posts for Ken Wilson, Lindsay Clandfield and Nick Jaworski and talked about my experiences in Poland on Barbara Sakamoto’s blog 

• After months of struggle I finally got a credit card and became a proud member of IATEFL

• Lindsay Clandfield wrote a guest post for me 

• I finally bought ‘How to teach English with technology’ and started getting prepared for future debates with Gavin Dudeney

• Many people found my ideas interesting enough and posted comments on my blog so here are my thanks to: Darren Elliott, Karenne Sylvester, Ken Wilson, Alan Tait, Marisa Constantinides, Nick Jaworski, Rupert (Videojug Director), Agata Zgarda, Alex Case, Lindsay Clandfield, Prof. Nelba Quintana, Nicky, Julian Gilbert, Samccoy, Victro Hugo Rojas, Peter Fenton, Miss Shonah, Vicky Loras, Shelly Terrell, Callie Wilkinson, Melania Paduraru, The TEFL Tradesman... and all of you who stop by at my blog from time to time!

• Last but not least, I spent way too much on new shoes. Has it become a dangerous addiction?

My New Year's Resolutions and wishes for 2010 are below, disguised in a Wordle cloud.

Hope they will all come true and wish the same to you :)

20 Xmas Cartoons

There might be a teaching point in most of the cartoons but...

Because it's Christmas just scroll down and enjoy! :)

Warning - adult content ;)

Which one is your favourite?

Nostalgically about Christmas

I fell in love with Turkey the first time I visited it in summer 2006. 

A year later, I was doing my CELTA in Istanbul and got my first job there. Although I had a chance to work in Shanghai and Madrid something was dragging me to Anatolia.

Living the life of an expat is a very enriching experience. You make new friends, get to know different cultures and opinions, learn the mother tongue of the locals.

Having lived in Istanbul for over two years now I’ve done it all. Yet there is something I miss here most – Christmas.

Don’t get me wrong. Turkish people know about Christmas. You can see Xmas decorations in shops while you stroll along the malls looking for presents to the tune of ‘Jingle Bells’. You even start praising Americans for building Starbucks. The majority of Turks I know decorate Christmas trees, called here ‘the New Year’s Trees’ and give each other presents on December 31st.

Still the most important thing is generally missing – the Christmas spirit. Those of you who are Christians or were raised in a Christian country should get my point. The feeling of anxiety, the desire to be kind to people, the shopping frenzy and the overeating I disliked before are all absent. The worst thing is that it is a regular working day for a great majority of people.

I don’t blame Turks for that. In the end, Christmas is not part of their culture. It reminds of my own attitude to Halloween – a tradition absent from Polish culture. No matter how hard I try, I simply cannot start getting excited about it.

A South African colleague of mine has been living in Istanbul for over 14 years with a Turkish husband and two daughters. One of them is 13, the other - 11 years old. Believe it or not, these two girls still think Santa is real J Although all the kids in their school have been telling them that it is parents who actually buy the presents, Aybüke and Kardelen refuse to accept. Surprising?

My friend Yolanda is a wise lady. ‘Your friends don’t get presents from Santa because they don’t believe in him. Santa comes to you because you wait for him’, she always says. In a country where Christmas spirit is rare, the one you can find melts even the coldest hearts.

Merry Christmas everyone J