A couple of weeks ago I had the golden opportunity to visit a city I never knew I wanted to see: Philadelphia. To be honest, it hadn't really occurred to me what a cool town it would be. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the part of town where I was, Center City, was a small town snuggled into the middle of a fairly big city. I was there for the NCTE (National Council of Teachers of English) convention, the annual pilgrimage made by roughly a thousand English teachers each year for
nearly 100 years now. My Singaporean colleague Jamilah joined me on her first trip to the U.S., and we spent three days filling our minds with information and our bellies with American food while spending more money
than could possibly have been necessary. I introduced her to the phenomenon that is Target, allowed her to drag me through clothing and shoe stores that actually had sizes that fit us (difficult and expensive to find in Istanbul), and meandered through the Reading Terminal Market alongside her, taking in all the sights and smells we could in such a short time. Then she went on to New York on her own, and I remained in Philadelphia for a couple of extra days to see the historic district, Italian Market, and Philadelphia Museum of Art with an
old friend who flew in from Minnesota for the occasion. Next I took a train to Baltimore, rediscovering my fondness for East Coast train stations, and spent a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday with some old friends of my family before heading back to Istanbul to recover from my vacation. I concluded yet again that when I do return to the U.S., it will probably be to live on the East Coast somewhere...possibly Philly?
A couple of weeks ago I had the golden opportunity to visit a city I never knew I wanted to see: Philadelphia. To be honest, it hadn't really occurred to me what a cool town it would be. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the part of town where I was, Center City, was a small town snuggled into the middle of a fairly big city. I was there for the NCTE (National Council of Teachers of English) convention, the annual pilgrimage made by roughly a thousand English teachers each year for
nearly 100 years now. My Singaporean colleague Jamilah joined me on her first trip to the U.S., and we spent three days filling our minds with information and our bellies with American food while spending more money 
than could possibly have been necessary. I introduced her to the phenomenon that is Target, allowed her to drag me through clothing and shoe stores that actually had sizes that fit us (difficult and expensive to find in Istanbul), and meandered through the Reading Terminal Market alongside her, taking in all the sights and smells we could in such a short time. Then she went on to New York on her own, and I remained in Philadelphia for a couple of extra days to see the historic district, Italian Market, and Philadelphia Museum of Art with an 
old friend who flew in from Minnesota for the occasion. Next I took a train to Baltimore, rediscovering my fondness for East Coast train stations, and spent a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday with some old friends of my family before heading back to Istanbul to recover from my vacation. I concluded yet again that when I do return to the U.S., it will probably be to live on the East Coast somewhere...possibly Philly?