Denial... It's not a river in Egypt
I am trying my hardest not to think about the fact that I am leaving in 12 days. I keep myself very distracted with errands and hanging out with friends. There are moments when the stress and anxiety knot up my stomach, but mostly I forbid myself from considering life in Turkey. I will be greeted at the airport by a fellow teacher, taken somewhere to sleep, shown around the next day and given the opportunity to meet my two flatmates. That is as far as I've cared to think.

Six degrees of separation
The woman who works at the post office inside our little local grocery store knows everyone. So when mom went to her the other day to find out about mailing things to Turkey, Sylvia piped up: "Oh, there's a Turkish guy who's always coming in here. You should give me your phone number and I'll put him in touch with J. He's really nice."

I got a phone call from him today. We decided to meet at a local cafe and talk about Turkey. He brought and gave me a great map of the country for free; talked to me about how to dress and shake hands modestly; gave me the rundown of all the things that I should never discuss, or that I should feign ignorance about (including but not limited to Ataturk, George Bush and the war, voting, religion, and sports [apparently, Turks are just as crazy and easily-riled about soccer as other Europeans]). Though I had thought otherwise, he said that my coloring is not too light and, if I can keep my mouth shut, I might just pass for a Turk.

Northward
Tomorrow morning I'm driving to Canada to visit my family for a week. After all of the energy I've been spending getting health insurance, dealing with bank and credit card accounts, and tens of other necessary yet tedious tasks, I will be glad to relax for a few days. I've had a notebook filled with to-do lists, and then updated to-do lists. As of today, there are only a couple of manageable items left. It seems like an epic accomplishment but I will think of more things to do. It's my nature.

I will be sorry to be gone for the Republican National Convention (after the DNC, it's sure to be an interesting sight). Guess I'll have to watch it rebroadcast on YouTube.

T minus 20 days. The anxiety has waned. I'm doing everything I can (studying Turkish, taking care of everything, planning neurotically)--there's no point in worrying anymore. One way or another, I'll get there.

Things that I am worried about:
- jet lag
- getting sick
- getting lost
- getting in trouble at work
- not knowing enough Turkish
- packing too much stuff
- not packing enough stuff
- being utterly lonely
- a host of neurotic theories that the universe is against me:
--- Lufthansa not actually having a seat booked for me ("I'm sorry miss but that computer printout is not a real ticket... I have a James Burgess listed here but not a J Bira. No, there's nothing you can do.");
--- my employer not actually existing (Day 1: "Mom, it's me. Yeah, I'm in Izmir. No one showed up to get me from the airport."; Day 2: "Mom? Yeah, I made it through the night. I got a cab to take to me to the school's address but there's nothing there but a McDonald's serving kebabs...");
--- electrical plug converters being a hoax ("There's definitely no way to get that weird plug on your computer to fit into this outlet.").

A friend had said to me earlier, "You're leaving pretty quick, huh? You ready?"

Are you kidding me?! I had my first little panic attack yesterday (stomach-churning combined with the sensation that the temperature just rose 10 degrees and the overwhelming urge to cry and curl into the fetal position). No I'm not ready.

Would I ever be fully comfortable with this plan, when the point is to be uncomfortable? There's no option but to just take the plunge.

If I learned anything from going skydiving a few years ago, it's that letting go of the plane was the absolute hardest part. Falling was surprisingly calming because by that point, I was completely out of control. Gone were the opportunities to second guess myself, to to change my mind. The only option was to ride it out.

But first I had to get out of the plane. When we had gotten to thousands of feet above the ground and the little airplane door rolled back and the earth stretched huge and wide; when the sky stretched even wider and I realized that it was empty and thin; when I knew that I belonged to gravity in an intimate way--then my stomach seized up and my arms and legs got that wiggly-weak feeling. If it hadn't been for the jump-master who I was buckled and strapped onto stepping out into nothingness, I never could have done it. I needed someone to jump me out of the plane for myself.

And the CELTA course, my contract, my plane ticket, they're all buckles and straps attaching me to The Ticking Clock that will pull me out into the sky and force me to dive as best I can. Otherwise I would just stand here gaping at the world--terrified and anchored to comfort.

I just hope that Turkey is even remotely like skydiving. But deep down, this is the only thing in the world that I want to do with my life right now, and even if it's not like skydiving, I'll figure it out.

Life consists of...

• learning Turkish. I've been spending 2 or 3 hours a day on it. Between the Rosetta Stone (a computer program) and a Turkish grammar book, I'm starting to get the hang of it--theoretically. The Rosetta Stone helps a ton with my pronunciation.
• tying up odds and ends (i.e. dealing with my cell phone contract, driver's license renewal, voting registration, health insurance, blah blah blah).
• taking business casual to the next level. What will I wear in İzmir?!?! I guess the same stuff that I wear in the States, but maybe a little more conservative so that I don't look so glaringly young. According to one of the teachers I've been emailing with, "İzmir is about as relaxed as you get here. Many of the female students wear beach gear in the classes in summer- we can't do that as we are teachers but you get the idea. Of course you may on occasion have a student who wears a headscarf in your class." So no burkas, ok?
  
• seeing friends and saying goodbye (T minus 30 days).
• writing lists of everything I need to remember to take with me.
• laughing for no apparent reason. I realize in the middle of mundane tasks that my life is about to change in so many ways that I can't even begin to count. And I feel crazy and naive and all I can do is laugh because I have no idea what's about to happen.
  
• and finally, being anxious every time I get in a car for a trip over 20 minutes away. I'm always worried that something will happen and I won't make it to Turkey... And not without reason. Taking my brother to the airport yesterday, we saw this:

Yup, that's a Subaru Forrester lying on its roof with its wheels bent in. Can you believe the driver didn't die?!?! Blurb from the local paper:

Two people suffered minor injures in a spectacular accident Monday at the busy intersection of Highway 49 and Combie Road in southern Nevada County.

Jesse Maclean, 33, of Sacramento was northbound on Highway 49 in his Subaru when he failed to notice the light was red. Janice Mitsuda, 47, of Auburn was going across the highway from Combie to Wolf Road when she noticed the Subaru approaching at a high rate of speed and slammed the brakes of her BMW, Wright said.

At that point, Maclean swerved to the left, but still collided with the BMW, causing his Subaru to overturn, Wright said. His vehicle eventually ended up on its top, blocking the southbound lanes of the highway.

Maclean was transported from the scene by ambulance to Sierra Nevada Memorial Hospital in Grass Valley, where he was treated and released for a cut to the head. Mitsuda complained of pain to the right leg but was not hospitalized.

First Pangs of Trepidation
I woke up this morning realizing that I'm going to have to figure out how to barter in Turkish. I already hate bartering in English, and doing it in a foreign language will only be harder.

Basics of Turkey and İzmir
Turkey is casually divided into various regions (like how we have the Pacific Northwest, the South, the Midwest, etc). Here's a really great clickable map with lots of great pictures. More formally, Turkey is divided into 81 provinces. Each province is then broken up into districts, which I think are like our counties within states.

I'm going to be in the Aegean region, in the province of İzmir and in the district of Konak (the little pale yellow district towards the center of this map). In other words, I'll be on the western coast of Turkey, close to Greece and Eastern Europe, but tucked away and protected by the peninsula surrounding the Gulf of İzmir. Typical weather is gorgeous--hot, dry summers and mild, "wet" winters (ok, an average of 4" of rain a month is nothing compared to Portland's incessant drizzle).

İzmir, the capital city of the province, is the third largest city in Turkey with about 2.5 million people (beat by İstanbul's 18 million and Ankara's 3 million). The city encompasses a few metropolitan districts, of which Konak is one, so it's a bustling place! See pictures here.

Sites to see in the province of İzmir include: the ancient Grecian/Roman city, Efes (a.k.a. Ephesus) where the ruins of the huge Library of Celsus still stand; sections of old Roman aqueducts; various mosques dating back to the 15oos.

Oh dear, I'm so excited I'm jealous of myself.

Flight Confirmed

I just got my email confirmation for my flight to Turkey. It's so surreal. I. Am. Going.

I got a great deal on a flight with Lufthansa the entire way with only one layover in Munich. I fly out at 9:30pm on Thursday, September 11th (I know, a little creepy but I'm sure the fear is more irrational than anything else) and will arrive at 11pm on Friday, the 12th. I'll start orientation and training on Monday.

So this means that I officially have 35 days left in the States. Wow.

*takes a deep breath*

Home Again, Home Again

The most noteworthy sight of the trip was the Coloradan (sp?!) RV dealership offering $10,000 gas cards on select models. Also interesting was the distinct lack of bugs on the windshield. Perhaps global warming is killing more than just bees?!?! (*tongue in cheek*)

As always, Utah's Bonneville Salt Flats are white and crispy. I don't know if you've ever been, but it's the flattest place in the States (beat that, Kansas!) and it stretches for miles and miles. The litter also stretches for miles. Last night I noticed lots of beer bottles glinting in the setting sun. People clearly go out to the flats to party and drive their cars around in the salt--there are track marks winding all over the salt--and then someone decides to take a bunch of the beer bottles and arrange them into messages in the sand. Good times.

P.S. Nevada is the most rejected piece of land between Utah and California. You can't do anything lucrative with it but put casinos on it. I don't know the history of the state borders, but I'm willing to bet that all of the flat-lying scrub brush was pitched into one lot and sold super cheap to Nevada. The only green spot along I-80 is Verdi and it's about half a mile from the California border. Oops! I'm sure the surveyor made a mistake when he was drawing the lines and meant to put Verdi in California... That or it's a consolation prize...

CELTA Culminates

It's over. After the last assignments, the final lesson on grammar on Thursday (which went super well--ask me if you ever want to know how to do a rocking Guided Discovery for Quantifiers [a few, a couple, none, all]), the nitpicky form-filling in my CELTA 5 official document, the juggling of CELTA and reviewing my contract for working at Posh English École in İzmir (EEZ-meer), it's over. I am tired.

It was sad to leave everyone on Friday evening. We all stood around, not really knowing how to depart. After four insane weeks with each other, we know each other--but we don't know each other. Some of us have made promises to visit wherever (everyone is stoked to have a floor to sleep on in Turkey), but who knows if we'll actually come through. One of the girls had these really fabulous t-shirts made with a CELTA joke on them: "I CCQ. Do you?" (** See explanation of CCQ below**) We all bought one and got them as surprises for the trainers, too. All the trainees wore them on Friday morning and when the trainers walked into the room, they laughed. When we gave them their own shirts, they were like, "Oh I'm totally wearing that to the next conference..." Group photos in the shirt were obligatory. Check it out. We look like we belong in a cult.

CCQ's Defined
CCQ stands for Concept Checking Question, and it's the bane of every CELTA trainee's life. We are supposed to CCQ our students whenever we are teaching them new vocabulary or grammatical structures in order to make sure that they understand. We are NOT supposed to ask, "Do you understand?" or "Does that make sense?" because they often don't have the language skills required to answer. In essence, you have to trick them into answering with easy-to-answer questions.

Correct way to use CCQ: "He used to smoke. Did he smoke in the past? Did he smoke regularly? Does he smoke now?"

Incorrect way to use CCQ: "He didn't know whether he was coming or going. Was he coming? Was he going? Did he know?"


Miscellaneous Maundering
I hope that everything works out with my contract. I am afraid to think it will come off flawlessly. I would begin on September 15th--a date that is close enough to know is real. I don't know when I would get a plane ticket but hopefully for a few days before that so that I can settle in and regain my humanity after grueling international travel.

I'm driving back to California on Monday--wish I could be there sooner. For now I will enjoy my last days (or first days, in some ways...) in Denver. I went to a great bookstore this morning and found a Turkish/English dictionary--a rare item. Maybe I'll get back in the saddle with the Rosetta Stone and Turkish. Or catch up on Turkish current events. Or go to a park and read my humdrum history books in the shade. I know, I'm such a bore.