Iyi Senerler!

Happy New Year! Although Christmas is ignored by most Turks as just another working day, New Year's Day is celebrated with great fanfare and revelry. Most of the lights strung around town at the malls, in front of the hotels, and across pedestrian streets are referred to as New Year's lights, not Christmas lights (even if they happen to feature an occasional Santa or snowman). I even spotted Santa at the mall closest to my home, Akmerkez, while shopping on New Year's Eve. He and his elves (all female, dressed in very chic elf costumes) were distributing New Year's presents around the mall and raising people's spirits, thus ending once and for all the long-standing mystery about what it is he does after Christmas.

Here at Robert College, while the boarding students froze their little tushies off at a bonfire in the cold rain, the grown-ups divided their time between two very different types of parties: the formal event hosted by one of the art teachers and his wife (one of his two sons wore a bow tie and acted as consierge), and the far-from formal birthday party of one of the English teachers who had another fellow English teacher as dj for a rather unruly dance party. Many of us, myself included, opted to begin with the more dignified scene and then shift to the other when we'd warmed up a bit and had our fill of the copious amounts of hors d'oevres that filled the tables at the formal party. At midnight, the students gathered on the plateau while few of the adults did the same-at a safe distance- to watch the fireworks over the Bosphorus. A good time was had by all, and the New Year arrived here a tidy eight hours earlier than it has for me in most years past.