Turkye

Spring Break finally arrived at school, and my parents arrived in Israel to take their first visit to the Middle East. They took a week to see the local sights while I taught my final week, then we took off for Istanbul, Turkey.

Turkey is a history junkie's dream country. Istanbul recently found settlements and artifacts ranging back to 5,500 BCE, and the sheer depth of the history and culture is astonishing to someone from the United States, or even from Israel, which today is celebrating its nascent 61st year of existence as a state.

Here is an aerial photo of Istanbul. On the left side is Europe, and on the right side is Asia. The divider is the Bosphorus Strait, which connects the Black Sea and the Sea of Marmara. The city is home to 12 million people. For comparison, this is 20 times as many as the city of Seattle, half again as many as New York City, and half the size of Tokyo.


Istanbul is hilly and covered with buildings. When looking from a plane at low altitude, it is an undulating sea of red roofs punctuated with the occasional pair of minarets sticking up like buoys. It is intense, but only in the fast-tempo way that an ancient metropolis needs to be; the people are wonderfully kind.

Here is a good example of the synthesis of historical and modern in Istanbul: An old mosque framed on top of a light-rail train, stacked over a car tunnel:


On our first day, we went on a seafaring tour of the Bosphorus. Lots of interesting sights along the way. The weather was still very chilly, but beginning to warm up:



Check out the density -- I think this is a neighborhood for the extraordinarily wealthy:


Palace on the water. Perhaps now a hotel:


The strait is a major shipping channel. Note the boat traffic around us.


Outside of one of the Mosques, men wash their feet before entering:


The next day, we visited the Topkapi Palace, home of the Ottoman sultans from the mid-15th until the mid-19th centuries -- A compound with some amazing detail inside. The first set of photos are from the Harem, or the inner sanctum of the Sultan and his living quarters. Click to enlarge and see the detail:






Outside the harem, on the corner of the palace wall, comes an unexpected and breathtaking view of the Bosphorus, definitely fit for a ruler:


A scale model of the palace and its location on the Golden Horn. I love stuff like this.


Next up was Hagia Sofia and the Blue Mosque, two very important religious sites, but first, a quick detour into the cisterns beneath Hagia Sofia:

There once was a woman who lived near Hagia Sofia, and she drew her drinking water from a well. One day, the water bucket contained a fish. After alerting the authorities who explored further, it was discovered there was an elaborate and ancient underground cistern. Pictured is a strange column with Medusa's head in this place. The cisterns were gothic and damp, and felt like a crypt:


Hagia Sofia, considered by many to be one of the most beautiful buildings in the world, was originally a basilica constructed by the Byzantines in 532AD. In 1453, the Ottoman Turks conquered the city and converted it into a mosque. It is now a museum, and is being restored. My favorite feature of the building (besides its cavernous proportions) are the enormous discs with the Arabic designs:


And here is the Blue Mosque, the beauty of which, for me, outstripped Hagia Sophia. Built in 1616, it has a consistent and thematic use of turquoise (which, I was shocked to learn, literally derives from "color of the Turks" -- credit: Dad). The pictures don't come close to expressing the depth of field in this place:




And, finally, Istiklal Cadessi. This street is a miracle. After an earthquake in the late 1800s devastated a section of town near Taksim Square, the government wisely took the opportunity to rebuild it as a pedestrian-and-streetcar thoroughfare. I wish I had more pictures, but it is like a commercial street like Broadway in NYC writ narrower, taller, more tasteful, and celebratory like a year-round carnival. Restaurants, retailers large and small, movie theaters, music, street vendors, coffee shops, churches, schools, and it gently slopes downhill. Mom and Dad and I stopped for coffee just so we could watch the people:


After five days in Istanbul, we caught a one-hour flight to Antalya, on the southern coast of Turkey. More of a resort town, but also loaded with history and mountains. Here is a pedestrian path that runs along the Mediterranean:


If you follow the path long enough, it comes to a cliff where there is a beer stand and some small tables. Here are some dudes discussing serious business:


I had local beer for $4 a liter and listened to some music here. Bliss.


In the center of old town there was a building that had housed four separate religions over time:


Columns on the coast:


An ancient coliseum in the countryside:


Aquaducts:


And, one of the most transcendent parts of the trip: after looking around the shops near the aquaduct, I wandered down a country road for about a half-kilometer. The pictures don't do it justice, but Spring was just beginning to arrive, and the sense of peaceful and quiet verdant life was unusually strong -- an intense kind of peace. I sat under an almond tree and heard the Muslim call to prayer echoing across the valley.




Finally, a stop at a national park with the bluest and clearest water. A fine finish to a graceful and fascinating trip.

Oiseaux Exotiques

Small green birds usually roost in the trees surrounding my apartment. During a heavy rain today, one perched on the window ledge under the eave, and I snapped this photo before it flew away:


Also, a record of weather for this time of year -- We're neck-in-neck with London for dreariest weekend afternoons this week.

Singapore Strings

"Stop me if you've heard this one: a Korean, an American, and a German are on a plane..."

Last week, two string students and I flew to Singapore for the AMIS Honor Orchestra festival. The festival is organized by an association dedicated solely for the promotion of music in the international schools, and is essentially our version of an all-state ensemble, if you imagine the world as a state, and each country as a city or district. I was mildy bummed to be going to an orchestra event instead of a band event, as I'm not a "string guy", but the trip was marvelous and educational all the same...

Here is a blurry photo of the circumnavigational and indirect route our plane took to Bangkok en route to Singapore. Luckily, nobody with surface-to-air missiles lives in the Red Sea.

Now, I think the food on long-haul foreign flights is great (basically all variations on chicken with rice and vegetables. What's not to like?) However, if you haven't seen it yet, check out this extraordinary and funny complaint letter to Richard Branson of Virgin Air from a customer who didn't like his in-flight meal. Branson recently offered the author a job as a food tester for subsequent menus on the airline.

The terminal in the Bangkok airport feels as long as the span of the 520 bridge and has kingly and gloriously excessive stores. Here is a bottle of special-edition Johnnie Walker Blue Label (normally $700-$800 USD a regular bottle) that is bigger than my chest cavity:


Here is a Bangkok terminal sculpture display. Click to enlarge:



Once in Singapore, we were met at the airport by school staff and I took a taxi to a local hotel while my students were homestayed near the school. The next morning we had an opening ceremony at Singapore American School where we saw a traditional "Lion Dance", rife with comedy and jarring percussion (The "lions" are fed plates of lettuce and oranges, only to disgorge them violently and messily to the lion wrangler. They also wander around the audience causing havoc.


This lion produces a scroll from its mouth... (reminds me of that great Onion headline: "Fountain Simulates Vomiting Lion")


Which was then given to our guest conductors for the Festival, Mr. Lorraine Davis and Mr. Philip Green, both of whom were really great educators:


Afterward, we heard a performance by the T'ang Quartet, the hippest string quartet this side of Kronos. They played Beethoven, Haydn, and Fritz Kreisler, and had extraordinary communication (I later found out the cellist and violist were brothers.) Watching them count and look at one another for cues was a great lesson in musicianship. Here, the cellist MCs the event:


Singapore American School has about 3,800 students K-12, which is about five or six times as many as my school in Israel. Their campus is an enormous fortress divided into three sections, one for each school, including a wonderful performing arts center with two theaters. Here is a shot of our kids at the entrance with three teachers in the foreground (one from Mexico City, one from Tokyo, one from Kuala Lumpur):

The students rehearsed all day while we performed chaperoning duties and attended workshops, one of which was a talk by the T'ang cellist. He talked about the difficulties of being a professional string quartet in the East -- London would like to have you, but airfare is 6000 British pounds, and they have plenty of string players in England right down the street. China likes soloists, not quartets, and usually wants a Caucasian soloist anyway. However, they have been together for 10 years and are getting gigs without being bonded to the Singapore orchestra (which is an 8-year commitment) and are getting to play many 20th-century composers and new works, which they love to sink their teeth into.

After a day of rehearsing and chaperoning, we all take off to the Night Safari -- a kind of nocturnal wildlife preserve including lions, tapirs (amazing), giraffes, elephants, bats (I felt them whizzing by my face) leopards, and other extraordinary species. I didn't get pictures because flashes were forbidden, and it was night, and all my pictures look like they were taken by a crackpot trying to prove the existence of aliens in his backyard.

However, there was one thing I could photograph that was something I never heard of -- for 10 Singapore dollars (about $6.50 USD) you could submerge your feet in an aquarium for five minutes and there were little fish who would swarm around you and gently eat the dead skin off of your feet. It was amazing. It felt like electricity. I'm sorry I only got five minutes. Here I am in mid-soak:


There were some Singaporean fire-breathers and acrobats also.


This is the SAS middle school band room. They have a window with a view and a projector for the front. I got to talk with the band directors at length and observe some classes, which might have been the most valuable part of the trip for me. I keep forgetting how much I miss networking and sharing ideas.

The next day, another performance: this time by the abnormally brilliant Jack Glatzer, who performed the demonically complex caprices of Paganini. This was playing the likes of which I had never heard before -- during one piece ("The Hunt") he made the violin sound realistically like hunting horns and flutes by using sophisticated harmonics and bowing techniques. His virtuosity was so stunning that I felt the same combination of feelings as when I saw the opening of the 2008 Beijing Olympics: disbelief and awe, with a pinch of envy and anger that someone would spend so much time learning to do one thing flawlessly. And it was fantastic. Here is Glazer with a slide show of Paganini behind him:


After the Paganini concert, the students went back to rehearsal, while I got to realize a lifelong dream: playing Javanese gamelan. SAS has a complete gamelan set made by a master and installed in a complex ceremony. Here are a few photos of the various gongs, drums, xylophones and metallophones that comprise the set:


And here is a westernized diagram of Gamelan notation (in Java, it is taught entirely through individual instruction of rote repetition.) It's both more and less complex than it first appears; each number and color combination refers to a different instrument in the ensemble:


Singapore is an immaculate, island microstate on the southern tip of Malaysia. It has all kinds of cultural influences, some of which can be readily seen in the landscape, which is flat and verdant. It lies almost exactly on the equator, so the weather is always fairly hot and humid. Here is the view from my hotel room -- rare small row houses surrounded by huge high-density housing structures and offices:



How hip is this(?):


Here's a good example of the density and scope of Singaporean housing. If you're familiar with the UW campus, imagine McMahon hall writ large and a little more visually pleasing and you're pretty close. I think this one is small- to medium-sized by Singapore standards:


Here's a little more of a colonial flavor to a house not far from the school:


The final rehearsal with the combined Junior and Senior orchestras. Here is a sea of bass scrolls:


Mr. Green schools the cellos:

Everyone, as seen from the balcony. The synchronized bow movement from a sea of string instruments makes it look like a living organism -- much more fun to watch visually than a wind band.

No students allowed:

The teachers from International School in Zurich try three different flavors of Corn Nuts. I tell them that you can find these at any gas station display counter in the continental United States.

Warming up outside, shortly before a tropical rain.

The theater lobby at SAS has enormous vertical windows that can be opened to the elements:

My students and I, after the concert:

And finally, after the concert, drinking Singapore Slings on Orchard Road. Clockwise from left:

Lorraine, American School in London (originally from Virginia)
Your Narrator
Hanrich, Shanghai American School (originally from South Africa)
Anna, American School in London (originally from Finland)
Melica, Zurich Internaional School (originally from Serbia)
Jeffrey, JFK school Berlin (originally from Tennessee, taking the picture)

The Gaza Situation, and other less important things

Hey, all.

Sorry for the long interval between posts. It's been a few weeks of getting settled in and geared back into teaching mode after a fantastic holiday in the States.

First of all, Gaza -- I am sure you are curious about what it is like over here with a major military operation happening just down the highway. The military offensive began while I was still in Seattle, so I watched the news footage of things exploding and collapsing and people being rushed to hospitals before I came back.

Since I returned to Israel, I haven't seen or heard a single piece of evidence that we're militarily involved with anyone. No rockets, no sirens, no curfews. Granted, I haven't been further south than Tel Aviv, but were there no media, I would have no idea anything was different. So, please be advised that framing devices used in the media make things out to be much more dangerous to everyone than they actually are. I have no doubt that things in Gaza are absolutely hellish, but anyone who is not in the actual theater of combat has a life to lead, and they do.

Israeli reservists are being called up and dispatched, which is terrifying for some. One of our P.E. teachers who is taller than I am (hard to do in Israel) got called up, but his duty was to knock on doors and find malingering reservists who weren't reporting (and, believe me, if Doron knocked on your door, you'd probably do what he asked you.) However, he's back and teaching now.

As far as my personal take on the situation, I have a very mixed opinion on the effectiveness and the methods of the Israeli Defense Forces. However, I do believe from talking with the lovely people I've met, both reservists and civilians, that Israel wants peace and stability more than anything whereas Hamas just wants to destroy the opposition entirely, so I support Israel's intentions, though it means odious and continual fighting. War in general is tremendously more complex than anyone can imagine, so I apologize if this seems jingoistic, but I honestly don't want to follow the story too closely.

Anyway, onto other topics. As I mentioned earlier, I had a fantastic time back in Seattle. The feeling of living in two places is exactly that of watching two different movies concurrently -- pause one, start another . . . wait, where was I . . .? -- pause the other, resume the first. I look forward to an entire month home in the summer. Among the things I miss from the US:

Pumping my own gas
Ziploc bags
Drive-thru
Mexican food in any form
Choosing my own seat at the movie theater
Not having to be ultra-aggressive to get things done
Buying things on Saturday
Other band teachers
Coniferous trees
My friends and family

And, to be fair, things I will miss about Israel:

Spelling anything the way I want
The world's greatest yogurt (honestly!)
Uniformly gorgeous women
January here feels like April
People who are usually gregarious if and once you get to know them
Bauhaus architecture
Krembo (a winter confection with national treasure status -- kind of like a Ding Dong)
Free coffee machine in the staff lounge in Hebrew so you don't know what kind of coffee you're getting (button #5 from the top is pretty good)

There will be more eventually, but now back to getting settled in.

Hip-Hip-Hooray for Christmas Vacation

I will be in Seattle from the 20th until the 31st. Happy Holidays!