Christmas/New Years party at work

Last week we had a Christmas/New Years party at work (same holiday according to the Turks...). A couple of weeks ago we pulled names out of a hat to do a Secret Santa gift exchange; the day of the party we revealed ourselves and gave our gift. I gave a pretty straightforward gift to my person, one of the Turkish teachers - just an orchid (but quite pretty). The gift given to me was PERFECT - it is a cookbook titled "500 Years of Ottoman Cuisine" How perfect is that? There is a lot of history and also artwork and interesting recipes - I can't wait to try it.



Many of the people I work with - all very nice and helpful.



Me with Nazim, the clever guy who gave me the book. He's a great guy to work with too, we all love him.



Now we're at the party for the students. They can be a little awkward for everyone so we all had to bring games. My idea was limbo but only about 3 people did it. I should have gotten them to make a line, then make them do the limbo. They enjoyed watching it though.



This is Tara, another native teacher, from Portland, Oregon. Her game contribution was to be a fortune teller so the students have to ask her questions and she predicts their future.



Students looking on with curiosity.



Gavin, instructing a student on how to play the classic game, pin the nose on Rudolph.



Pretty good picture of Rudolph, drawn by Gavin.

It was my idea to have an area where people could do some coloring, to sort of escape the awkward mingling and also to have a place where you can talk, but also be busy with your hands. They really liked it and it was very cute to walk into the room because it felt like walking into a preschool, with everyone hard at work on their coloring.








A couple of days ago I felt like doing some cooking, so I tried to make one of the Turkish mezes (appetizer or dip) which has fried eggplants and potatoes with a tomato sauce on it. It didn't turn out like in the restaurants but it made a nice snack. For some reason I felt like making deviled eggs, because I've started to like hardboiled eggs and I wanted to try them. Pretty good!