lookalikes and raspberries

much to my obvious amusement - for this new term i am teaching two students, one on sunday and one on monday - who happen to be the spitting images of two celebrities.

the sunday lookalike is the exact copy of ryan gosling in "lars and the real girl" - a surreal movie telling the story of lars... a social reject who starts a relationship with an inflatable lifelike doll he buys on the internet from an adult website. he brings her home, feeds her, clothes her and treats her like a real person, also giving her a name: bianca. it is an odd cookie of a movie - and the usually charming ryan gosling has a totally different look to portray lars lindstrom, the main character -- namely, a hideous moustache, long hair primly parted to the side and a constant, half asleep smile never leaving his face.

well - on sunday i am teaching somebody who looks and acts like that...to the point i am starting to expect him to show up at some point with anatomically correct doll bianca and her huge purple lips. adding to the comedy - he seems to have a passion for hyperlinguism... answering simple questions like "so...how was your week? and what did you do over the weekend?" with sentences like: "i would declare my week was satisfactory, yet it did not yield any remarkable outcome. in addition...yesterday night we congregated with my friends for a futile event" which, i am sure, to him sound like the dandiest way of speaking (or perhaps he just reads some old dictionary as goodnight material) -- but is received by the rest of the class as if he is speaking in sanskrit... which might be the case, after all.

last sunday i tried to explain how to pronounce best "th" (a sound that turkish speakers find hard to master) as opposed to "f"...while the rest of the students were laughing at my monkeying about with choruses like "i THHHHHHink FFFFFFrank has a THHHHHin FFFFace"...he kept on beaming at me and then raised his hand to say, sherlock holmes style: "teacher, i suspect you have attained this type of phonological information whilst completing your education as interpreter". i suspect you are right, lars -- i felt like answering.

more fashionably, my monday lookalike must be the secret turkish daughter of bollywood superstar and model aishwarya rai. a rather different case from my sunday's hyperlinguist -- when you enter her class you notice that around this girl there is a glow of beauty and sweetness. beauty in a woman is a rare thing: it does not only take looks, but is a complex mix of attractiveness, poise, mystery and kindness. granted that, aishwarya's photocopy is - in this sense - some kind of creature belonging to another planet. add to this a very gentle temper and very good manners -- and you kind of feel like wondering whether she is real, or perhaps just a painting from the italian renaissance.

weather is changing slowly here -- and even though the temperature still lingers around 23 - 25 degrees... i seem to have a clock inside telling me it is time to go back to two things: indoor swimming and baking. the first one i did yesterday -- with immense joy. as to the second one...
the whole house smelt like vanilla last night. how lovely, i thought while tucking under the covers, to fall asleep with such a divine, comforting scent. cannot eat the cake now, sure -- but smelling it seems scrumptious enough, really.

back to reading robert frost. apart from great poetry -- he did manage to leave us a couple of absolutely exquisite sentences like:
"In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on."

when i read this yesterday -- i kind of smile and immediately thought i could produce something equally immortal and perhaps state...

in nine words i can sum up everything i've lately learned about life:

turkish rasperry jam for diabetics gives you the runs