Introduction to Istanbul

Ok. I no longer live in Izmir. I moved to Istanbul. Long and complicated story. Too boring to be repeated, so here are new things to nibble on.

I arrived a month ago and settled, in this sprawling city of 15 million, in the heart of the old Istanbul itself: Sultanahmet (technically on the European continent). A three minute walk from my house is the Blue Mosque, and across from the Blue Mosque is the Aya Sofia, and just behind that is Topkapi Palace, which housed the Ottoman sultans for 400 years. Or a three minute walk in the other direction takes me to the Bosporus where I can wander along the ruined walls of the Ottoman fortress. This is the true, cliche, original Istanbul. So naturally, it's become the mecca of ultra-high-powered-in-your-face-Hey!-you-tourist-who's-here-for-two-days-and-you-want-to-experience-the-capital-of-the-Ottoman-Empire-so-we're-gonna-fucking-show-it-to-you Istanbul.

The Blue Mosque

The Aya Sofia

So I live in Istanbul, but it's the Istanbul that is the face of All Things Turkish. My street is a strange pocket of Turkish life within the larger bubble of Sultanahmet, an area largely inhabited by tourists. Many of the old, Greek buildings have been renovated into swanky hotels and restaurants. The concentration of hand-woven carpets per square meter is probably higher in Sultanahmet than anywhere else in Turkey.

But if you wander just past the train tracks of Sultanahmet, you'll find a few streets which haven't yet been absorbed by tourism. And here, in an old crumbling Greek building surrounded by other old crumbling Greek buildings, packed with Turkish families--women hanging out the window to shake laundry or chat with a neighbor who's also hanging out her window; kids playing in the street; mopeds zipping over cobblestones; men roaming the streets pushing

carts full of pastries or fresh vegetables--I live.

My apartment isn't modern. The windows are old and I can hear everything on the street. But it has this incredible, beautiful charm to me. High ceilings with huge crown molding which has been painted light blue. The living room has a raised wood geometric pattern of squares, hexagons and stars in it. A heavy front door with big brass door handles and an old-fashioned keyhole above the newer one that locks securely.

And I leave from here and go to work. I lock my door. I walk past the cluster of teenage boys on the corner, duck under the elevated train tracks, walk through the hoards of street sellers convinced I'm another tourist until I blow them off in Turkish, between the Aya Sofia and the Blue Mosque, and get on the tram. I cross the Golden Horn and, at the end of the line--still in Europe, but further north--I scuttle down into a tunnel that gives me a transfer connection to the bustling hub, Taksim. If I chose to go aboveground here, I would be spit out at a shopping avenue that could be likened to Times Square in New York... maybe. But instead, I stay underground, and go further north, still in Europe. After the quiet, predictable precision of the metro, I arrive above-ground in a shiny, sky-scraper-packed business district. Men and women in sharper clothes than I hurry by. We pick our way through the cars. The cobblestones of Sultanahmet are long gone; traffic crawls over smooth asphalt. I stand at a bus stop and wait to be picked up. The bus zips down hills and grinds up other ones. Finally we reach a toll bridge and we're crossing the Bosporous.

I love this part--because even on the steamy, tropical, condensation-saturated bus, even here, I find myself in awe, looking through the fog-blanket at the fancy estates that dot the hill around the 600-year old Rumeli Fortress. And then, we're in Asia, technically. But it's an event that every bus-goer is extremely oblivious to. They're going to work. And it's 8 o clock in the morning. And the drooping eyelids show how they wish they were back in bed. Europe?! Asia?! There's very little glamour. We take an exit off the freeway and we find ourselves again in a glass and polished steel world of baby sky-scrapers five to fifteen stories tall. Corporations waiting to grow big and strong.

Here, in a city within Istanbul, I work. Again, teaching English, but this time private lessons rather than classes like in Izmir. The change of pace is very appreciated and my students are growing on me. My boss is flexible (I can have a holiday) as well as generous (she's offered to give me free Turkish lessons). She arranged for one of her friends to give me private tutoring twice a week.

Tuesdays and Thursdays, I sit across the table from Aylin, my tutor. She's a 35-year old mother of two and she's gone back to school to get her MBA. A smart, busy, ambitious lady, this one, but she patiently sits with me and plows through the endless field of Turkish with me. We communicate in a mixture of 85% Turkish, 15% English. She speaks quickly, and I've given up trying to get her to slow down. I get the gist.

Yesterday, at the beginning of our lesson, she was filling out a survey about life in Istanbul, so after I peered at hers, she gave me my own.

Name. Age. Occupation. District where you live. Do you like Istanbul? Do you miss Istanbul when you leave the city? Do you own, rent or free-load? Ok. Easy enough. I ticked off my answers.

Do you feel like yourself in Istanbul? Uh... Myself. I played with word in my mind. Do I feel like myself?! What kind of question is that? I don't even know where to begin. Ok, next question.

What kind of city do you want Istanbul to be in the future? Again, I'm stymied. But now not because I don't know the answer, but rather because it's not my city. I tried to explain my conundrum to Aylin--"But I'm just here; I'm just watching; this isn't my city..."

I don't remember what I ticked. But God! The questions that nagged me. On such a rainy, foggy, mundane, unglamorous Tuesday afternoon in Istanbul, here I was reminded that I am still, and little more than, a visitor. No matter if it's Europe or Asia.

Change of Pace

Change of Pace
I found an apartment in the student neighborhood--it's a quiet neighborhood with a limited view of some trees and a building with a sweet red-tiled roof, and a mosque with a beautiful garden across the street. The cross ventilation is fabulous. It feels like it's in village BUT it's only 7 minutes from the metro and 3 minutes from bars and a fabulous nightlife. I'm so excited!

I signed the lease two days ago on Saturday. I'm moving my stuff this next Saturday. Hiring movers to negotiate a washer, two couches, a fridge, a bed, blah blah blah blah up and down the stairs. Like I have time or energy to manhandle it myself.

So begins the voyage into dealing with this stuff more independently. It's a little intimidating to think about whether or not I can cope with bills and paying bills in Turkish, but it'll be a learning experience. I haven't died yet.

I teach dead people...
The students in one of my summer classes barely have a pulse. I say hello, they stare at me. I teach them grammar, they stare at me. I give them instructions to practice said grammar, they stare at me. I say goodbye, they stare at me.

On a good day, I can make them laugh for a few minutes, but then they remember how much they are supposed to hate English and they're back to being dead.

On a bad day, they're just dead. It's like trying to prop a giant, 1600 pound puppet (a rough calculation of their collective weight [12 fit twenty-somethings at roughly 130 lbs apiece) made entirely of Jello, and convince the puppet to talk. It just flops over and lays there, staring at you. Hating you. Silently. Is their silence the only thing between them and a cathartic grammar-induced killing spree?!?!

On Friday, however, I started to hate them. Here's what happened, Lola (the other teacher who I share the class with--classes that meet for 4.5 hours a day, 5 days a week NEED two teachers) and I had a miscommunication about one of the supplementary exercises she had used with the class the day before. Basically, I go in to practice Present Continuous with them--get my picture of a crazy beach scene (people playing volleyball, swimming away from a shark, building a sandcastle, blah blah blah) on the overhead project, go about teaching them the vocabulary to talk about it, and get to the point of giving them their own copy of the worksheet when... an ASTOUNDING six minutes after I begin this activity, they tell me that Lola already did it with them.

"What?" my voice is sharp.

"Yesterday, Lola... We write names... Finished..."

I stop dead, staring at them.

"Finished?" I echo. I probably got that crazy I'm-About-To-Knife-Someone edge to my voice, because, despite their deadness, they nod. Sullenly.

"You did this yesterday?"

They nod again. I blink angrily a few times. I'm not angry at Lola. I'm angry at their deadness. Their watching me repeat something for minutes and minutes, and the slow dawn of consciousness that eventually seeped over them.

"I'm happy you told me," my voice is like slow steel pushing into their deadness. "Thank you for telling me six minutes after I started... It's good to know you finished it... Now."

I stare at them. They stare at me. Guiltily.

"Ten minute break," I announce. Though it's usually a relief for them, the reward for finishing something, it became a punishment.

They tried to explain when I came back to class but I didn't even care. And when class finished, and I said goodbye, they stared. So what am I going to do tomorrow? Stare back. Damn straight.

Did I Make Myself Clear?

I didn't even have to confiscate mobiles.

My mobile-talking, carpet-peeing puppy of a student didn't even come to class tonight. A co-worker of his told me that for whatever reason, he is unable to attend future classes. What a shame. Really, my heart aches.

Maybe I'm becoming an authority.

Thy Will Be Done...

Tonight one of my idiotic students--the kind who can't handle being back in school because he's not actually in charge--and to be bossed about by a young yabancı in a skirt, no less--surreptitiously answered his mobile in class while I was doing an exercise. I noticed him, just stopped mid-sentence, looked at him, caused the entire class of eleven to look at him hunched over his desk, hand cupped around the mouthpiece to muffle his voice, waited till he noticed us, ended his call, walked over to us to participate, apologized but said he was very busy and important with work, looked me in the eye and received his "No," from me, like he was a puppy who had just peed on the rug.

Tomorrow I will confiscate everyone's mobiles at the beginning of class as punishment. :-P

I have eight words for you:

Conversation class for 16- and 17-year olds.

Eight hours a week. For eight weeks. What the hell would you talk about with them?! Oh god... At least I can pretend to be a good ten years older than them.

They Grow Up So Fast *sniff sniff*

I had my final K24 class tonight. That's it. As of tonight, the complete path has officially been forged. I can teach two consecutive years of general English.

The final, seventy-minute exam doesn't let you off lightly. My seven students were deep in thought when I called twenty minutes remaining. They barely shifted when I called ten minutes remaining. I expected ferocious sighs when I called five minutes, two minutes, one minute, but they were absorbed: tackling English.

When they finished, and I had collected their exams, they just stood there awkwardly. No one wanted to be the first to leave. There was foot shuffling and weight shifting and words started and stopped. How to say goodbye?

I inherited the group at K16--they were my first class at PEÉ and they've been both my favorite and most-feared class (favorite because they are adults with life experience and they are serious about studying; most-feared because they are adults with life experience and they are serious about studying). I was so challenged by them. There were days I absolutely dreaded teaching them grammar because they would argue with me about it. However, it forced me to a level of preparedness that I otherwise would have been too lazy to achieve. They made me better.

"Thank you," they said to each other and to me.

"My pleasure," I returned with a smile.


P.S. I've been here 256 days.


P.P.S. I've got four new mosquito bites. *sigh*


P.P.P.S. I've already got a class starting to replace my K24. It's K1. From discussing complex hypothetical situations in the past to "Hi, my name is..."

She Has Got Fire Hair

I Don't Write The Exam, I Just Give It
One of my classes just had their exam to mark the end of the fifth month of English classes. Every exam has a writing topic, some of which are dreadfully boring. But the K5 topic is mildly entertaining in that it serves my vain self-interest: describe your teacher (clothes and appearance); talk about her past, present and future life.

It's an awkward exam to proctor since they keep peering at me, studying my face and clothes while I try to ignore them. They think the more they flatter me, the higher their grade will be. False. Here are the gems:

• In this day she looks fit like be everytime. [Thanks, I do try to stay slim.]
• She is a good teacher, really. [Really?!] She wants to be more good teacher and I think; she is trying for it. [I am. This is true and I'm thrilled you noticed.]
• She don't make up but she looks nice. She isn't tall. She is medium and she isn't fat.
• She has got fire hair (dark yellow). [That would just be bad-ass.]
• She isn't a pants. [Correct. She is a teacher.]

Word travels fast at PEÉ. Students from different classes and across levels are friends. They talk. These students [exam results above] found out weeks ago that I'd hung out with a different class and demanded equal treatment.

"When you finish K6," I told them. "Finish Elementary and we can go somewhere." That was the deal with the other class.

Their ideas for "hanging out" have morphed over the weeks. What started as dinner at a fasıl restaurant [traditional Turkish music] became going to a waterfront cafe and smoking hookah became, most recently, paint-balling. To which I flat out refused. I have to maintain my dignity somehow and running around some field getting shot at by my students isn't the way to do it.


Yobancı Like Me
Tonight I was walking home when I paused for a bus to drive by. A woman standing on my left peered at me and asked in slow, overly-articulated syllables: "Soo-per market?"

"Do you need help in English?" I asked, pulling off my headphones.

Her eyes got wide, her face lit up and she gripped my arm. "Oh bless you! Where are you from?!"

"America."

"Well yeah. Where?"

"California. You?"

"New Jersey."

"Why are you here?"

"Tour." We had a boring conversation not worth recounting. Anyway, I helped her across the street and took her to the soo-per market which was right there but she never would have known it. I didn't bother telling her that no one would have understood her "soo-per market" because it's not a Turkish word. I mean, seriously. What the hell would you do if someone tugged on your sleeve on the sidewalk and clearly enunciated: manav?!??! You'd blink a few times, look at them like they were a fucking crack-pot and walk off, that's what.

Long-Overdue Update

Practice Makes Perfect
I feel like I'm doing something naughty. A whole Wednesday/ Thursday without any work. It's the first time in six months that I haven't brought books home to plan for my classes over the weekend.

You see, I've finally reached the point where I've taught all the levels of English-- my classes are starting to overlap and cover ground that I've already taught. My elementary students, who, six months ago, could only say their names, are now discussing life experiences in K7. And my other classes are embarking on new and exciting grammatical adventures (only a bit of sarcasm there).

The only remaining uncharted territory is the last six weeks of Upper Intermediate. I am triumphant. This has seemed like the longest, most agonizing learning curve. I've easily worked 50 hours a week for the past few months, carving my path through the wilderness of English. But I suddenly find myself on a familiar path--and the work load has dropped significantly.

So here I am, on my two days off, and feeling sort of off-balance because I only had to spend thirty minutes looking at my class for tomorrow night. Is it too good to be true? Will my laziness catch up with me tomorrow? I am holding my breath a bit.

**Update after teaching** It wasn't too good to be true. Wow. Now that I have time for a life, what am I going to do with it?! Study Turkish, of course... Ok, I'm not entirely that boring. Exploration is occurring.

Local Adventures
Sondra and I wandered into the markets of Kemeraltı to find the fabled marbled paper, ebru. In a crowded, dusty bookshop we found the very sweet old proprietor--Ali. Ali sits at his cramped desk, a cardboard box of kittens at his feet, and a stack of creamy paper on his desk, silver pen in hand. He is commissioned to do the calligraphy for place cards and invitations for fancy Izmir events.

As Sondra and I pour over stacks of ebru, looking for beautiful, frame-able pieces, Ali chats with us. Through some belabored conversation-making, we learn that Ali knows Turkish, Ottoman (Turkish before it was converted to the Roman alphabet and purged of many of its Arabic cognates), Arabic, and French. He points to a nearby shelf of books and I find ancient, crumbling texts in Arabic and Ottoman--some of them handwritten.

"Shouldn't these be in museums?" I want to ask him. Hindered by my language, I simply hold them and delicately, humbly turn the yellowed pages. I want one. No, I'd never be able to read it, but the dead language is beautiful. Ottoman, like Arabic is a flowing script with swooping, scooping letters and elegant dots.

After expressing my general love for the aesthetics of the language, Ali took a creamy white card and asked me my name. He translated the sounds into Ottoman and wrote my first and last name in calligraphy.

Kicking Ass and Taking Names

Tuesday was a long day, but it was triumphant. I am working like none other, but it is paying off. I haven't felt the legitimate rise of panic/stress in at least a couple months. Amazing. What's happening to me?! I got so stressed in college where I was graded, and there was maybe a sense of absolute perfection that I strove to attain. With teaching, however, there is a constantly moving target, and perfection is impossible because a) there simply isn't time and b) you can't possibly anticipate all of the problems your students will encounter with a given subject.

It's a novel experience for me to be so laid back about everything. We'll see how long it lasts. I mean, there are times when I find myself legitimately concerned about my abilities. For the most part, however, I am keeping my head above water.

I had two triumphant moments today. It's especially gratifying considering that they occurred during a 12-hour day on my fifth consecutive day of work.

The first:
I've been having one-to-one lessons with a student who recently completed K6, but wanted a review of the entire Elementary level. It was our penultimate lesson this morning and I was breaching the Present Perfect.

I was asking her if she had ever been to Istanbul. Yes, she had. So then I followed up with how many times (in her life) she had been to Istanbul. She kept thinking that I wanted to know how long her last stay had been. Three days, was her answer, and when I kept asking how many times she'd been, I could sense her frustration of failure mounting.

"No problem! No problem," I assured her with a smile, squeezing her arm gently. "There's no problem." But there was a problem. I had no idea what to do besides repeat the question. I sat for a moment, trying to figure out another way around the problem. It suddenly dawned on me.

"Neşe, ask me the question."

"How many times have you been to Istanbul?"

"I've never been to Istanbul," I said, holding up the fingers of my right hand in the shape of an O for zero. "I've been zero times."

She got it. That flicker of understanding flashed across Nese's face. Amazing how that transcends language.

We grinned hugely at each other. I solved the problem. A triumph that seems so small, but was so epic at the moment.

"How many times have you been to Istanbul?" I asked again.

"Seven," she answered.

The second:
My Upper Intermediate students will soon be taking their K21 exam. They are more than a year past Neşe's studies. Though they still struggle with the Perfect tenses, tonight our challenge was cleft sentences (Normal sentence: You lost all your credit cards and I found them. Cleft sentence for added emphasis: It was you who lost all your credit cards and it was me who found them).

Due to some complacency on my part, I misjudged how much time I had left before the exam to cover the last bit of a chapter. What looked like only a page in the book was actually packed with grammar--far more than could comfortably fit into an hour and half, if I meandered through the material like I normally like to. Oops.

Tonight was going to require some significant hand-holding to get my students through the thicket of cleft sentences without them losing confidence in themselves or me before the review session next class. When I could feel that the triage task was beyond my capacity, I asked for help.

After admitting my error to my boss, and being reprimanded mildly, he sat me down and gave me a quick and dirty run through of cleft sentences, outlining what I needed to cover in my lesson. I ran through my presentation with him to get feedback and suggestions.

It's awkward giving a fake lesson to my Director of Studies. Much easier is performing in front of my students--and teaching is a performance of sorts. Especially with something difficult and obscure, each sentence needs to be contextualized so that they understand why the hell people would even say something like "What I really feel like is a nice hot bath," or "It was you who slept through the play," in the first place.

Anyway, it was one of those lessons where I flawlessly completed my juggling routine in front of my businessmen (though there are now three women in the class, it still has a very serious, professional, mature vibe which unnerves me if I think too much about how 9 legitimate adults are looking to a 23 year old to explain a giant mess). I left class positively elated.

Light at the end of the tunnel:
My own level of confidence plays a huge role in their trust in me. I'm horrible at bullshitting this confidence but it is coming with almost six months of teaching English at every level. My ability to explain obscure grammar points on the spot is growing. I feel butch.

In a couple of months I will know how to teach two consecutive years of English. There's going to be more than one celebratory drink at the end of that day.

Cleft sentence fun
Rearrange the words to make cleft sentences. The first word is bolded.

1. grandmother -- gave -- was -- who -- awful -- It -- that -- my -- me -- picture
2. like -- hot -- What -- a -- bath -- feel -- is -- nice -- I -- really
3. It -- crashed -- me -- car -- who -- the -- wasn't
4. designs -- I've -- are -- latest -- got -- our -- What -- here
5. who -- play -- through -- It -- slept -- the -- was -- all -- you
6. who -- was -- 1998 -- It -- won -- World Cup -- France -- the -- in
7. about -- impressed -- was -- enthusiasm -- me -- his -- What -- Sam

Yobanca Blood

Ayşa and I finally found the right door. We pushed it open into a room--empty save for a single man in a long dark rain jacket. Ayşa said something to him and he got up to find the nurse. With Ayşa translating for me, I experienced everything with a five second delay. It turned out that the man was the father of the baby that needed blood.

I couldn't speak Turkish so I just looked at the father. His face was taut with anxiety. I hadn't expected to see him but now I was glad. Ayşa and I were in the children's hospital across the street from PEÉ. A few minutes before, someone had been wandering through local businesses, pleading for anyone with AB+ blood to come and donate to a premature newborn whose mother was experiencing a bout of hypertension--or something like that. The family didn't have enough money to buy blood.

"I have AB blood," I'd said in the teacher's room at PEÉ when a secretary from the front office came through. "Could they test it to find out if I'm positive or negative?"

And so off I had gone with Ayşa, skittering down the five flights of stairs, and weaving between a massive line of traffic to the other side of the block. The hospital is a sprawling mess of rooms, corridors and waiting rooms. Electronic number boards were high on the walls, keeping track of the endless queue of people waiting to get medical attention. We were batted around like a ping-pong ball between different stations in the hospital. Finally we found the right door, and discovered the father of the baby, who summoned a male nurse.

As the male nurse was motioning me to sit in one of the chairs, I was stripping off my jacket to roll my sleeve up, and Ayşa was explaining that I wasn't sure if I were positive or negative. But then the nurse stopped dead in his tracks.

"Yobanca?" He asked, finally noticing that this pale little girl hadn't spoken a word for herself yet. Yep. She's a foreigner all right.

He asked Ayşa if I had a drivers' license. Negative. I tried to offer him my residency documents in lieu but he wouldn't take them. I stood amongst the three of them--Ayşa, the nurse, and the shaking father--trying to follow the ensuing conversation, but in vain. Of course.

From the way Ayşa inched back towards the door we'd come through, and from the way the father kept saying to us, "Çok teşekkürler, canım, çok teşekkürler (Thank you so much, dear, thank you so much)," it became apparent that we were leaving.

What about the baby?! I was trapped in helpless silence so I just took one last look at the father before we pulled the door shut behind us. I wanted to cry.

Back in the corridor, Ayşa began explaining, trying to soften the blow. I learned I was the second person to try to give blood. The mother didn't know that the baby was in danger because she was having hypertension.

"But why don't they accept yobanca blood?" I asked as we crossed the tree-lined parking lot.

"Maybe it's something about genetics, that they won't take your blood. Maybe they want a Turkish person. I don't know."

But my students that night were furious. "That nurse should be sacked. If you told the manager of the hospital, he would be sacked. The baby needs blood. That is so stupid. There is no law. If you'd had a drivers' license you could have proved that you'd done a blood test and been tested negative for AIDS... but the nurse made a story."

"Maybe he didn't think I would be disease-free? Or maybe they didn't have the money to test the blood before the transfusion," I offered. What point was there getting mad about something in which I had so, so little influence? Better to accept and move on.

"They should test the blood anyway before a baby gets it."

I could hardly argue with them about it. It was now about three hours since I had gone to the hospital with Ayşa. My students and I sat around the table in PEÉ's in-house cafe for a silent moment, wondering if the baby was still alive.

I took a deep breath and stood up. "Ok, our ten minute break is over. Let's get back to class." I led the way back to the classroom, the only place for thousands of miles where I am ever in control.

They are my children and I love them...
But I don't love them all the same. Some classes are better than others. I particularly love the Elementary and Upper-Intermediate students--the ones at the beginning and the end of English, so to speak. Something about the middle levels is a buzz-kill.

But God how I love my Elementary students. They're vulnerable, nearly helpless is the vast sea of English words, grammar, rules, exceptions, and pronunciation. When they start to take their first steps with English, pride literally swells in my heart--they are learning how to speak. And I am their teacher. It's like watching children, only they are adults. They're empowered and I'm proud as hell.

And I love my Upper Ints--why? Because they have the language to carve out an identity in English. Over the years that they have studied, they have been exposed to a tremendous amount of language. And they have so, so, so much stored in their passive knowledge ("Teacher, why do we use 'By the way?'" "What is the difference between empathy and sympathy?" "Am I using teepee correctly?"). For them, it is mostly a matter of activating their passive knowledge--of allowing them to develop themselves in English.

Pre Int and Int students are trapped somewhere in the gray zone. They are growing, but self-consciously--like gangly adolescents who refuse to talk with anyone at the family reunion and sit in the corner, glowering at the buffet table.

My relationship with my students defies easy categorization. They must respect and trust me to teach them, but I also need a certain amount of room to make mistakes with them. The new car has to get that first scratch. And though there are moments when I am utterly serious and/or peeved with them ("Cağlar, I am not your mother--stop talking.") and when they must listen to me, I am also their clown. I have become ActorArtistSynonymProducer3000.

You try drawing a farm on the whiteboard without looking like a fool. You will probably moo and attempt some scythe-swinging action at least once before you finish. And try explaining excited to a room of non-English speakers without jumping up and down with a look of glee on your face. Or dangerous. That's right, slide that seventh-story window open, climb up on the chairs in the back row, and make like you're going to jump. "Teacher!" they cry. Exactly. That is dangerous.

And when they succeed at some monumentally difficult reading, or when they actually take the time to memorize a seemingly-hopeless list of irregular past simple verb tenses, someone has to be their cheerleader. I regularly tell my students that I love them. And I do.

... Except the ones who are truly stupid...

My new Elementary class began last weekend. The class, primarily men in their early twenties, is a rowdy handful. They demand constant attention, but they do obey me and repeat everything I tell them to. They are fast learners, for the most part.

One woman, the friend of PEÉ's owner's ex-wife, who it seems has been done a favor, didn't attend the first two classes. I was consequently requested to teach private makeup lessons throughout the week to prepare her for this weekend. All well and good, since I get a little extra cash, but it turns out that she is far from being a natural language learner. It's ok. Some people are. But for God's sake, be on time about it.

She was late for our second private appointment on Friday afternoon, so I had the secretaries call her. Oops! Sorry, she said, she forgot. Can we reschedule for later Friday afternoon? Fine, I grumble, 3 o'clock works. But dammit I had to rearrange my planning, so I wasn't happy about it. And when the wench still hadn't showed up at 3:08, and I had the secretaries call her again, she swore left and right that she was in the lobby six flights down, just getting in the lift. Good, I said, as the secretary got off the phone with her.

So I stood and waited for her in the foyer as three elevators came and went to our floor. Out she finally tumbled, a mess of apologies in Turkish and English when she saw me standing there with all of my materials in hand.

It's fine, I said with a terse smile. Are you ok? She was, and she's a lawyer so maybe she had some important legal battle to win--like a Turkish Eric Brokovich--and that was why she was late. I tried to forget about it. And off we trooped to class, me leading the way before my "42" year old (Honey, you have to be lying, you've got to be more like 50) student.

And then Saturday's elementary lesson rolled around. I bet with the other teachers that my lawyer-student would be late. She seems to love, love, love attention. And oh, was she ever late. Try 50-something minutes late. She knocked on the door (after interrupting every other class on the floor to find my room, I discovered from teachers later) and scampered into class before I could send her to the canteen to wait until I called 10-minute break. It turns out that the main secretaries also told her not to go to class, but to wait in the canteen. Wench. I lectured the class sternly about interruptions more than 15 minutes after class starts.

So today she was only 10 minutes late. But the icing on the cake was that she didn't have any of her English books--the English books that I saw on two previous occasions had been mysteriously replaced by--and I am NOT making this up--something that looked suspiciously like (when I peered at it from upside-down in a most teacherly fashion as I instructed them to turn to page 16, and nothing on her page 16 looked like my page 16) a German textbook. German. Let me repeat that: German.

Are. You. Kidding. Me?!!?!??!?!?!

I don't even know what we're going to do about her but I doubt it will be pretty.

But everyone else gives me the warm tingles.

Converse Considerations

Turkish Retribution
Tonight I've finally gone and done it. I've created the long-warned-of Turkish Punishment Masks of Shame. My students are not supposed to speak Turkish in the classroom but making them comply with this is challenging. English teachers at PEÉ are constantly creating new and creative punishments for Turkish chatter (including hopping around the room on one foot, meowing like a cat, "losing points", etc.). As Sondra and I walked home tonight we hypothesized that if females could be made to feel unattractive, and males feminine, we might create an effective incentive to shut up.

So I dug through my trash and found an empty milk carton (now washed), and an old oatmeal box. They have been split open and given eye holes. I also found some hideous red tinsel in our original Turkish bathroom-turned storage closet, and sewed it onto a barrette. Tomorrow morning I'll fix some rubber bands on the sides of the milk and oatmeal boxes, so that they can be worn on the face for the duration of an activity. A lot of the guys here have pretty short hair, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed that the barrette will have enough to grab onto...

Behold the trinity's beauty!

Though I'll never tell them, my students would be glad to know that I sliced my finger while cutting the eye holes... Karma, yeah?

Cultural Imperialism
And God said, "Let there be English." And there was, and God saw that it was good. And English spread across the land, and grew through time until it was a complicated tangle.

Finally, hundreds of years later--when English had become the vehicle of economics and of the globalized, competitive business; when what people knew about their jobs and their cultures was no longer enough--students in countries worldwide toiled many a long hour in language schools to learn this disastrous monster that God called English. These students strove to decipher the inconsistent mess (Too, two or to? Their, they're or there? Should we use "a," "the," or "one?" before this particular noun?!). And these students spent many hundreds, nay sometimes even thousands of dollars to compensate for their unfortunate upbringing in a language foreign to English.

God created a chosen people who were blessed to speak English from childhood. Among them was J. She went to Turkey, where the original language bespoke a logic and beautiful simplicity, and she tried to teach English.

Some of her students had already been brought into the tangle of English, and she led them ever deeper. Other students were utter tyros and began outside the tangle, on the fringes. She led them slowly into the wild forest of English grammar--a place where there are more exceptions than there are rules--a place where you're lucky to grow up so that you don't have to meet the horrible beasts later in life.

J watched some students succeed. She watched others falter, and the occasional one fail. For 23 classes out of 24, she did the song and dance (grammar, grammar, grammar, and lots and lots of vocabulary). But for the last class of the 24, she sat and watched her students during their exams: they gnawed their erasers; they snuck glances at their neighbor's answer sheet; they mumbled memorized phrases and tried to remember which preposition followed which verb. They agonized and sweat as they tried to answer the multitude of questions that assessed and quantified their knowledge. In the end, no one ever got 100%.

And though God saw that it was good, J wondered...

Teach, Taught, Taught
I finally had a good day. My Pre-Int class--the ones who have been complaining about me (a.k.a. The Weekend Wankers [British slang is infusing my own])--seems to have turned around. Every few months each teacher is evaluated by their students and though I didn't get stunning results from them, I did receive a solid level of satisfaction. I guess they see me trying, and perhaps felt bad about having the Director of Studies looming in class during the particularly painful lesson a few weekends ago. Anyway, I needed a boost in confidence since the morale of virtually everyone at work has been in the toilet for the past bit.

Tomorrow night my Business Men will complete Intermediate and I will be shepherding them into the wild world of Upper Intermediate where future present continuous and other beastly points of the English language will be encountered. It is exciting because they are my first students and I am glad to find out where the end of the grammatical rainbow at Posh English leads to. After this level, students are finished, and would only be continuing in exam classes to take TOEFL or TOEIC--which thankfully I don't teach yet.

Indoctrination
I have noticed the textbooks we use are a subtle vehicle for brainwashing. Every textbook that I'm using is peppered with sentences in exercises that guilt students into acknowledging their teachers. Here's a smattering:

• My new English teacher is Simon. He's very funny and nice. We all like him a lot.
• The students all respect and admire their teacher.
• Their teacher's funnier than ours. Our lessons are more interesting than theirs.
• "Do you like your teacher?" "Yes, she's very nice."
  
• (and my personal favorite:) "Do you want to be a teacher when you grow up?" " No. They work very hard but they don't earn a lot." Amen.
  

Staying Alive, Staying Alive

Teaching—Black Like My Soul
Ugh teaching is brutal! I got complaints from my Pre-Int class a couple weeks in a row—they thought I was doing an unsatisfactory job presenting grammar, but then they all scored amazingly well on the exam they had just taken. Despite the good results, my class was observed today to try to identify and remedy my perceived shortcomings. BUT! According to the Rules of the Universe, this means that a mediocre lesson became worse—imagine a glowering, Director of Studies looming like a white elephant in the corner of the room—only instead of being white, he was clad entirely in black and therefore incredibly, incredibly intimidating. Sort of like the Grim Reaper of Lesson Failure.

My students clammed up and kept sneaking looks at the DoS out of the corner of their eye. As a result, my energy plummeted, and from there, the lesson just slid into an abyss. But wouldn’t you know it, as soon as my DoS left, students perked up and we were able to have a good time again. *shakes fist angrily at the god of irony* It’s ok, though. I’m being melodramatic. Well, sort of. Truthfully, I’m learning to climb out of failure relatively quickly. I have to. I have too many lessons to teach to sit around feeling like a reject.

Teaching in a language school is challenging because, especially with the economy going bezerk and students wanting their money’s worth, there’s so much stress to get it right. Constantly. I’m working my ass off, and it only seems to get me so far. Though I have nearly impeccable rapport with my students, I think that my age has ended up being part of the reason that this one class has questioned my authority. *sigh sigh sigh*

Another One Bites the Dust
A combination of factors (long hours, poor food selection in Izmir, crap wage, being the only young guy, etc, etc) has led George has to quit and go back to The Island. Come December or January, Sondra and I will be inhabiting our flat all by our lonesomes. Of course, George must be replaced by a new teacher, but hopefully whoever it is won’t live with us. One guy being interviewed right now already lives in Izmir and has a flat—and an unlikable smoking habit. This means that my food and travel companion is disappearing. I don’t know what I’m going to do. I clearly need to make friends.

Holiday. Just in the nick of time.
In a couple weeks all the teachers get off four days for holiday. George and I are going to Kapadokya. We have our bus tickets. We’re leaving at night on Sunday December 7th and arriving Monday morning. We’ll explore the vast and wonderful world of Kapadokya until Thursday night when we’ll get on another bus and be whisked back to Izmir in time to teach classes Friday afternoon. A little risky, I know, especially considering the snow, but it’s our one opportunity to actually get far enough away from Izmir, and we’re taking it. I don’t care if I’m dead on my feet from exhaustion. I will see something beautiful and awe-inspiring.

Ben Türkçe ögrenmek istiyorum! (I want to learn Turkish!)
I have begun studying Turkish. One of the teachers at school, Nigel, has lived in Izmir for almost 15 years and has a substantial social network. When we were out getting beers a couple weeks ago, I met one of his Turkish friends, Fahri (far-EE), whose English is quite good. I mentioned that I wanted to learn Turkish—seriously, not just enough to order something in a restaurant—and Fahri decided to become my teacher.

The lessons are essentially free, although I do provide him substantial opportunity to practice his English whilst regaling me with endless stories of cultural clashes on his business trips to China. He’s not particularly interested in Americans—I tried talking politics with him but the subject immediately went back to some anecdote about China—so I get a little bored during his monologues, but he is able to explain Turkish grammar. I can’t complain. Fahri also has REAL, AUTHENTIC Turkish friends, who invited me to their home, provided me with slippers to wear when I removed my shoes, served me wonderful tea, coffee, cookies, Turkish Delight, and more little biscuits.

In short, Turks are every bit as generous as I was led to believe, and then some.

I have managed to find some time at night to study Turkish over the past week. Flash cards with adjectives live in my jacket pocket and I study on my walk to work. I am actually learning words and try to practice with REAL, AUTHENTIC Turks whenever possible. It has become a Saturday ritual for us flatmates to eat dinner at the restaurant right outside the entrance to our flat. The owner Gazi (GAH-zee) is super generous, often giving us extra mezes (appetizers) and special deserts to nibble on. Some distant male family relations are his chefs and they consistently make us amazing food and try to talk with us. None of us can speak the other’s language particularly well—if grammar were acrobatics, we would all be falling on the mat, too crippled to get back up to the high beam. But we muddle through with lots of smiling and head nodding to gloss over the attempts to perform grammatical miracles.

Some days I think how it’s going to be a long year. On the other hand, I’ve already been here for over two months…

Obama Victory!

Obama Victory!
I was wandering through morning dream land before 7am when I rolled over and heard clapping and cheering coming from the TV. I leaped out of bed and ran to the living room. Streaming live to the world--the BBC's coverage of the American election. Obama had won. Already. I was so excited I hopped around the living room (Kenyans were hopping around their towns, too, in celebration--it's a global party!).

Then I sat on the couch and was enraptured by Obama's live acceptance speech to Chicago. I laughed when he made a shout-out to "all of you overseas, huddled around radios." Not quite... But I was ever so huddled, ever so stunned, ever, ever, ever so proud. My two favorite parts: 1) Obama telling his daughters that he loved them and that they had really earned the new puppy that was going with them to the White House; 2) when Biden's family came out and 90-year old Mama Biden stood on the stage with the "Oh my God, I can't fucking believe I'm here" look.

It is surreal to me, too, but for different reasons--this world is becoming smaller than it has been. Technology is so incredible. I've been following it for weeks on satellite TV and I watched the acceptance speech live thousands of miles from home. I logged onto Facebook soon after I found out the election results and probably 50 or 60 of my friends had updated their current status to say something about the fact that Obama had just won the presidency. The Internet and the youth vote are going to change the way politics happen in this country--they already have.

A lot of people are euphoric, perhaps too euphoric given the limitations of the wars, the global financial crisis, our own national debt, the climate crisis, and on and on. But... We'll see. We've got eight years.

Manifesting the Law
My students were better behaved last night than they have been. A few strategies:

• not being as friendly towards them at the beginning of the lesson;
  
• hovering in their space rather than towards the front of the classroom and standing closer to them when I told them not to speak Turkish whilst giving long, reprimanding stares;
• determining which students would work with each other to break up the perpetrators;
• hanging out with them during the 10 minute break (when they are allowed to speak Turkish) and allowing them to translate for each other as they asked me questions about America and my time in Turkey; upon returning to the classroom I said Turkish on break was fine but now it's back to English.

So we'll see how it goes. The chatty and flirtatious girl was out last night, so it's possible that my success was due to her absence... *sigh* Friday will be another battle.

Becoming the Law

Today will be eventful. I'm biting my nails about the American election. I plan on waking up tomorrow morning and watching CNN's constant election coverage with Sondra and George. But I have to finish the week first--which currently includes a battle between me and my Elementary students.

The six of them are becoming a pain in my ass. Of the two men in class, one of them is a fatherly policeman who often chatters in Turkish; the other is eye candy and is making ripples (I am pretty sure that my perception of flirting transcends the language barrier--this one girl sits next to him and bats her eyes and giggles in Turkish). The students had been speaking some Turkish, translating things I was saying in class. It hadn't really become a problem until last night when they got more disrespectful about it and laughter ensued--it's no longer acceptable but it's like trying to put out a fire that's already started. Tonight I'm dragging out the hose. Normally I jump around and act and make them laugh--anything to get the English across. I'm at war with my age, my gender, my friendliness, my inexperience at telling people what to do and exacting results.

I've got to dig around in my closet and find the Stern Bitch clothes that match my new attitude.

American Elections in Izmir

It is Sunday night. On Tuesday, America will know who its next president will be. Well. Not likely. I predict some last-minute drama about hanging chads, faulty voting machines and whatnot. But regardless, we're all pretty damn excited over here in Turkey. Sondra, George and I are planning on plunking in front of our TV Wednesday to watch the BBC's election coverage and drink beer--we're going to need it to either celebrate or mourn the outcome.

My students have been asking me about the election. Even the elementary students who can hardly string words together: "Teacher. President? Obama? McCain?" Like I can answer and have you understand me, so I just shrug and shake my head with a huge grin in my face. In the staff room today we were talking about the election and another teacher mentioned that when he organized a class competition and asked the two groups of students to choose team names for themselves, "Obama" and "McCain" were the picks. So there you have it.

America, the world is watching.

Spread Thin

Work has been busy! I'm now the proud owner of four classes--two elementary ones, one pre intermediate and one intermediate. Prep time has decreased dramatically over the past week, since there simply isn't enough time to indulge in hours and hours for each class. I do worry about my new schedule stretching me too thin. I feel like a measly teaspoon of butter spread over an increasingly large piece of bread. One of my Businessmen commented tonight that I looked tired--does that mean I don't look 18 anymore?! Maybe I'm finally getting some wrinkles.

Baby Steps to English

So it starts with handing out nametags, smiling at students, maintaining silence and then finally saying slowly, "Hi. My name's J. What's your name?" They are tentative at first. We repeat things a lot. I write simple sentences on the board. I gesture with my hands. There's a decent amount of confusion, but often the student who understands what is going on will chatter a word or two of Turkish translation and the others nod in understanding. Pronunciation must be drilled ad nauseum. "Vere's" is corrected to be pronounced as "where's"; minutes are spent coaxing them to fit their tongue under their front teeth to make a convincing "th" sound that doesn't sound like "tr." And somehow, magically, they begin speaking English.

"Where are you from?" "I'm from Turkey. I'm Turkish." "What's your job?" "I'm a student." "What's this?" "It's an apple." "How do you spell apple?"

Yesterday was my first K1 class. I had massive loads of adrenaline coursing through me when I finished my hour and a half with them. I had a ten minute break to switch tracks and get ready to teach my Intermediate students at K17 (made all the more difficult since I stay in the same room for both classes). By the time my business men were sitting in front of me and I realized that I could talk to them, I was relieved and exhausted.

K1 students are excited and energetic, but also get exhausted. From my brief immersions in Japanese and Turkish for the sake of learning how to teach English, I empathize. Your brain feels squeezed dry. Tonight, at the end of the second class I had them organize a short conversation exchange between two friends. A lot of the vocabulary was new to them, but they worked in two teams of 3 to order the sentences. When they stopped shifting paper around, I played the accompanying CD that read the dialogue so they could check their work. Both teams had gotten the conversation ordered correctly and the look of triumph on their faces was unavoidable. I gave a thumbs up and down sign while asking if they got it correct. They all nodded yes and I yelled "Yay!" which only made them smile more.

I am creating them. I am becoming a teacher. I fucking love it!

The Water's Heating Up Under My Kettle

Damn Youth
Next door to Posh English École is a bakery where I bought a poacha this morning. The woman behind the counter spoke a little English and asked me where I was from (Oh! America!), what did I do (Oh! Teacher!), how old I was (Oh! 25! [Yes, I am still lying. To everyone.]). She sullied my mood when she said sweetly, "But you look so young! Maybe 18!" It's hard to mutter that maybe I just seem so young because she's so old, when she's smiling hugely at me. So I just shrugged and said, "Thank you!"

Damn Classes
J is... busier than a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest. This week is busy, busy.

I found out Friday that I have a new class starting on Monday--brand new, Elementary students so I'll be starting the first lesson with "Hi. My name's J. What's your name?" When I look at the textbook for the class, I experience mild panic. How do you communicate with people who have basically NO English skills? I haven't had to do that yet. All will be revealed tomorrow. At least I'll finally be getting paid for 15 hours a week. I might be able to afford a beer once in a while. :-P

Saturday morning I redeemed myself with my Pre Int class--the ones I screwed up teaching "but," "although," and "however" with last week. Yeah. I obviously know grammar--but explaining it in simple English when 16 eyes are watching my every move is challenging to say the least.

But THEN I found out Saturday that I had been placed on a surprise rota to cover for a teacher who had to go take care of her babies/sick mother somewhere in Turkey. I get paid for covering her class, which she had already planned. So I showed up to teach her Upper Intermediate class how to use the Future Perfect properly. *sigh* It was so half-assed. Honestly, it's such a pain to decipher someone's notes, stacks of photocopies, etc. I don't know how anyone could WANT to be a substitute teacher and put up with unenthusiastic students who are like, "When's so-and-so coming back? You're sure she's only out for one day?"

Hanging out with my own students is superior.

Damn Food Prices
Observed recently at a large chain store comparable to Walmart:

• Oats, 500g: 4YTL
• American Maple syrup, 8 ounces: 27YTL
• Smirnoff Vodka, 750mL: 50YTL