Leigh in Azerbaijan

I can’t work out how to place this in a sidebar. In the mean time I’ll place it here.
Mmm. It’s now June 4th and nothing is registering - it’s broken.
Oh! It’s now June 10th and it’s working.  I can recognise some of the dots.

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I’ve had an interview by phone with an international school in Azerbaijan but won’t hear for another week or so if I get the job. I’ve also recently applied to Cambodia, Shanghai and Hong Kong.  Every now and again schools will actually acknowledge your application, which is always a pleasant surprise. I did hear that [...]

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I’ve just discovered The Turkish Economy Blog, which has a side-bar of bloggers including me telling their Turkish story. My short foray into it gives some good insights into a foreigner’s life in Turkey.

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This is something every teacher could make a poster of for their classroom.
Daniel Pennac’s The Reader’s Bill of Rights
I.    The right to not read
II.   The right to skip pages
III. The right to not finish
IV.  The right to reread
V.    The right to read anything
VI.   The right to escapism
VII.  The right to read anywhere
VIII. The right to browse
IX.    [...]

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Late this afteroon foreign teachers living on campus were told to leave at 3pm to go home and wait for census data collectors who would be knocking on our door.  We were informed of fines for not having your data collected and there were heavier fines for giving false information.   This was a strange [...]

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Apparently this disease is Anatolia and we have every reason to avoid contact with paddock grasses.  Here is the info:
Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever (CCHF) is caused by infection with a tick-borne virus (Nairovirus) in the family Bunyaviridae. The disease was first characterized in the Crimea in 1944 and given [...]

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While ever-wanting to improve my teaching practice, it’s good to read articles like this that make observations on teacher practice.  Sadly, I figure too often in the negative statistics mentioned, which is not to say I’m a terrible teacher - I think I’m doing okay - it’s a gigantic challenge to remain encouraging of students, [...]

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My latest application is to American International School, Lusaka, Zambia. Earlier in the year I applied for another school that the same school was being parent-school to, in a far flung mining centre but as the only way in was by company plane, which wasn’t happy to take spouses, it didn’t sound like an attractive [...]

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Yesterday (Sat) I took a ferry to Balat to see some more ancient history.

Taking a ferry up the Golden Horn I went as far as Balat, a small suburb on the south side. Looking from the ferry it was just an uninterrupted wall of apartments.

I had been told to walk uphill [...]

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Having done some music recording and always being frustrated by the lack of perfection it was fun to listen to The Beatle’s recording anomalies. As a teenager listening to the songs, I had thought that all the pops, squeaks, faint talking etc. were evidence of their arranging brilliance, however this site points out [...]

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