Tag Archives: tea

Weekly Photo Challenge: Reflections … on tea, çay, chai and my personal, globalized reality

Posted on by
11

An American in Paris, with a Turkish-American life partner after teaching in the Netherlands, with a new boiled wool clementine-colored coat crafted in Tunisia, a favorite self-portrait that gets at my #personalglobalizedreality

Source: twitter.com via Liz on Pinterest

;

Early this morning, Esma the hippie puppet woke me with a whisper, saying only “it’s a new day – and you need to reflect on your personal globalized reality.” Helping me to take sips of strong glass of lemony, sugary çay made from Black Sea bred Rize tea bushes she kept repeating “reflection” over and over again. So, I did. And I focused on the muse of the moment, tea. It is not the milky, honeyed tea of my New England youth, usually an Earl Grey, Assam blend or English Breakfast brewed *just so* by my meticulous Mom, obsessed with the rules of proper tea service, even in our eccentric home.

My puppet-delivered çay brings me smooth comfort and a hint of Aegean sun when it is most needed in cold New England months, it has become equal in its comfort currency to the above-mentioned “cuppa” here in this Turkish American household. Deep in the process of sipping shallow swallows from the tiny glass, I consider the other regular teas in my life – the milky-sweet Nepali spiced chai I learned to make from a friend’s Nepali Mum long ago even though the friendship has changed – and the Kenyan chai my brother made, taught firsthand by a Masai family he spent time with in his youth (minus the nip of cow’s blood). Never mind that my bro dubbed that particular chai “the colon blaster” during our mis-spent slacker years…

Turkish Tea

Turkish Tea (Photo credit: joana hard)

And all of this tea reflection reminded me of yet another aspect of my personal, globalized reality. It is much more than the Turkish-American vortex that I have come to reside in – it is much more patchworked and global in nature, as these small sets of words about tea reveal. And that’s when Esma, the hippie puppet with the creative (and hidden competitive edge), hit me with a proposal. “M’lady, she said, “you need to submit to this week’s photo challenge over at WordPress. The theme is reflection. I learned about it on our e-friend Madhu’s blog – you know -The Urge to Wander where she highlights two lovely and engaging photos today.” Shifting in her seat on my shoulder, she pressed on, saying “Remember that photograph you took as a self-portrait last year? You should submit it – it represents your personal globalized reality to a t.” My original caption for this photo was “An ethnically mixed American with a Turkish-American life partner looking at French art deco antiques in a New England market recovering from jetlag after teaching in the Netherlands, wearing a new boiled wool clementine-colored coat crafted in Tunisia” The multiple reflections of me in this photo make this my favorite self-portrait that gets at my #personalglobalizedreality“

And so I got up, looked at Madhu’s latest wonders in photography and here I am entering my photo to a contest for the first time in my life. I suppose this could reflect the new leaf that the puppets encouraged me to take yesterday, during their protest against November.

Related articles

We is Karagöz puppets, worried ’bout M’lady, don’t speak İngilizce good

Posted on by
3

20121109-160432.jpg

20121109-160440.jpg

20121109-160448.jpg

20121109-160454.jpgWe is Karagöz puppets, we worried about m’lady. she sleeping now lots. dr. says good. she depressed a lot so we learn iPhone jumping on pad it’s slippery we fall we like play with phone we like solitaire, sudoku when she sleep.

We would like take picture with iPhone, it takes many of us small puppet to lift iPhone to take picture. We take a picture of what m’lady see out the window from bed. Is pretty fall color, at least she open window some for nice air that blows we across room sometimes for fun.

we walk with m’lady today to Dr. Dr. check on arm problem. We saw garden full of frosty red hot peppers, stopped Karagoz from taking & make mischief at Dr. like he threat to. Dr. Also check m’lady brain problem. Drs. say m’lady going to be okay! M’lady say hope so, soon. We say she need more tea. Lots more, and sulphur spring in Dalyan too. And no more university job, she need be artist. She say, can’t be starving artist.

we think M’lady arm hurts so she cant make tea, takes mind away from feel happy. friend of m’lady make her laugh, make her tea in house today. We happy then. she must have puppets in her house. not ottoman ones though.

friend leave, we make lots of tea and m’lady likes us to keep her company. M’lady came home from brain doctor and nice flower on Step – all fall color rolls together nice like, we take close up because we not good w camera. We like texture, chorus of dancing ladies do flower dance for m’lady. M’lady cry because nice flower present. We puppet don’t understand how cry = happy, we best try on stage? Maybe American thing? Not in ottoman court.

M’lady resting now, looking at blue sky, red leaf out window, while she sleep, we take photo for her.

We helping m’lady get better now. She be just fine.

Of Turkish tea – and t-tests

Posted on by
22

It’s been a grading bonanza this weekend and on into this week.  As I turn the pages, make my comments, labor over assigning grades (I hate them) and figure out how to turn my responses into a meaningful learning moment for some of my struggling students (blow to my ego), I am constantly up and down, refilling my Turkish tea glass  with the strong dark brew hewn of Assam and Rize tea leaves.

I learned this mixture from watching M.’s Teyze (maternal aunt) mix proportions of Rize tea (from the Black sea region) with Assam tea (from, presumably, India).  She swears by the mix, as does M.  Once, I tried to supplement rose-petal infused Assam for just plain old Assam, to no good result and the protests of the aging matriarch who was visiting at the time.  “It tastes like soap,” she was reported to say.  Oh well, so much for creativity.

In any case, this weekend, I am getting the tea myself, instead of relying on the little chorus of dancing ladies, who are usually lovely about delivery, as I have exhausted them – “m’lady,” one of them said the other day, “you are drinking SO much tea, is it healthy?” I finally told them how much I appreciated their efforts, but that I could make tea for myself. After much consternation and debate, the little lady puppets decided to let this be as my skills, they tell me, have improved significantly.  Quipping to them with the best of my statistical humor, I asked them if it was statistically significant.  They drew blank looks.  I reminded them that I am grading exams about “independent samples t-tests” and “paired samples t-tests.”  They again drew blank looks and I let the topic drop, but not before Hacivad Bey asked me if I was referring to the Istatistik-i Umumi Idaresi – the Ottoman Empire-era statistics agency who conducted the census between 1891 and 1914.  I just said – “yes, something like that.”  I teach enough statistics in my university, I’d like to give it a break at home, not going to be teaching these puppets statistics anytime soon unless I get another breath of workaholism.  While my tea consumption during this grading phase might be an indicator of workaholism, I would like to think of it more as an endurance-oriented coping mechanism.

TEA...

A Turkish double tea pot (Photo credit: lorises)

But in any case, back to tea.  Gone are the days when I struggled to execute the perfect brewing of Turkish tea (you can read about one such hilarious learning moment here, where I was caught unawares by an early visitor whilst still in my nightgown, and ended up using once-boiled tea only (Horrors! The yabancı gelin (foreign bride) couldn’t make properly brewed tea).  All I have to say is, for someone like me who hates grading as much as I do, the ability to just run down the stairs to refill my glass is a wonderful option to keep me going.

Any guesses about how many tea glasses worth of tea had to be drunk to get through this stack of tests?

Thirty-two.  More than two per test for this class so far, inşallah it will end soon!

Related articles