My grandparents

I received this email from my mother today:

We got a phone call from grandma last night. The only time she ever called us before this was when the weather in NC was really bad and Grandpa told her to call and see if we were alright…

She had received the copies of the blogs you sent us and was so happy to receive them that she called to tell us. She read them right away and was almost laughing. We didn't stay on the phone long, about 5 minutes but I thought you'd like to know how happy it made her to hear how you are doing.

That makes me really happy to know that. Seriously, if you had seen my grandmother’s face when I told her I was moving to Turkey, you would have thought what I thought: she looked like she was having a stroke. My mother has already told me she worries less now that she can keep up with my blog entry. I’m sure my 88-year old grandma feels the same way. Hopefully she’s either reading the blogs to my grandfather or she’s letting him read them. I’d like for him to know how I’m doing as well. He doesn’t speak much, but I know he loves me and worries about me.

Today is Moving Day

We’re moving from the 12th floor to the first floor. I’ll try to give the Readers Digest version of why we’re moving, but brevity has never been my strong suit. I blame my mother.

Since day 1, Jessi has been unhappy about the gender segregation of faculty members. The male teachers are in the boy block, we’re in the girl block. My viewpoint was, “Hey, we all chose to move to a secular Islamic country; this is what happens and we will not be placed in the same building on the same floor, whether we’re faculty or not.”

Carly wasn’t thrilled about the living arrangements once she realized that we were put on the same floor as students. She was told in her interview, “You will be away from students.” Clearly, there was some miscommunication. My viewpoint was, “Live and let live. We’re living here rent-free, and the students on our floor are graduate students anyway, so we won’t live on the same floor as the students we see in our classroom from day to day. Plus, we have our own living spaces and are only sharing the kitchen, so I’m good.” I should point out, though, that I recall being told “Faculty will be on the same floor,” which I took to imply, “ONLY faculty will be on the same floor.” However, that could have been my error, so I didn’t feel the need to bring it up.

My deal-breaker happened last week. On Monday night at 7, Carly was going into the kitchen to cook her dinner so that we could eat together and watch Gilmore Girls in my room. (Bonus news: One of my officemates informed me of a free Turkish site that has a bunch of American TV shows on it, Gilmore Girls being one of them. YAY!) The grad students were already in there, cooking dinner, and had commandeered the majority of the stove space, leaving one small burner in the back of the stove available. That made it awkward as they had to sort of do-si-do around each other.

The next night, at 5:30, I thought I’d beat the dinner rush and get in there to wash my breakfast dishes. (Yeah I’m that disgusting and hadn’t washed them that morning.) The kitchen had already been commandeered by this point. Now I found myself wondering, “Exactly how long does it take them to cook dinner? Jeez!”

Carly and I went out for dinner and drinks with Jacob and his girlfriend on Wednesday night, so the kitchen space was a non-issue. Thursday, though, was my half-day. I thought about going into the kitchen to cook my dinner at 3 pm but 1) I was inexplicably wiped out and took a two-hour nap and 2) I don’t want to have to cook dinner in the middle of the afternoon just so that I can have some oven space.

By this point, Carly had already set things in motion by sending a professionally-worded-but-pointed email to the powers that be to let them know that we were unhappy about the situation. Last night, when I returned home from my outing with my coworkers, Jessi informed me “we’re moving tomorrow.” My immediate thought was “CRAP! I had planned to do nothing tomorrow!”

I’m all moved in now, and I’ve put most of my things away. There are a few things I’ll miss about my former room: the counter space in the bathroom and the view of the Ankara skyline. Our new accommodations are on the guest floor, for parents of students and people staying here a brief time. Our new rooms are disabled-friendly and has a lovely view of the parking lot/drive way where taxis drop us off. I have a pine tree right outside my window; I’ll think of Christmas. At least I’ll hopefully have more access to the kitchen. Plus, the morning commute won’t be as bad. I started leaving my room at 7:55 if I planned on hitting Starbucks before starting work at 8:30. I made the mistake of leaving at 8:10 last week and the elevator stopped on
every single floor to pick up students on their way to school. No Café Mocha for me that morning.

Upon closer inspection, however, the first-floor kitchen has one small two-handled pot and that’s it. There was plenty of cookware on the 12th floor, but I don’t know if that stuff had been brought by the girls who live there, so I didn’t want to touch any of it. But if I’m going to have eggs, I’ll need a small frying pan. If I want to cook pasta sauce, I’m going to need something larger than a small saucepan.

I try to sooth myself by singing an appropriate line from one of my least favorite songs from Guns N’ Roses, one of my all-time favorite bands(it’s the whistling solo Axl does in the song; I find it lame and I can’t bear it.)

Said woman take it slow and things will be just fine
You and I'll just use a little patience.

First week of teaching

I received my schedule on Monday. I’ll be teaching 25 contact hours per week or 5 classes of Listening and Speaking. Yay, my favorite class! I’ll teach 4 hours on Monday, 5 hours on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, 3 hours on Thursdays and 8 hours on Fridays. That Friday schedule is going to kick my ass, but I’ll survive. After all, “this too shall pass” and hopefully next semester won’t be as crazy.

We get paid an extra $15 an hour (30 Turkish lira) for all hours we teach over 20 hours. I did the calculations and for my schedule that works out to an extra $300 a month, or $600 Turkish Lira. There are some decent apartments in the city for 800 or 900 Turkish Lira, so with the extra money I’m making, I can pay rent on an apartment and still have enough to tuck away into savings. Yes, that’s right, I’ve already decided that I’d like to move into my own apartment.

While my schedule may not be ideal, I worked just as much when I was teaching high school Spanish full-time for two years. At least now I have more teaching experience under my belt and I feel as though I have a better handle on classroom management. Plus…y’know, I get to live in another country.

Also, at this university, we have a curriculum unit who plans what we will teach each week, right down to the pages in the book and the homework that must be assigned. Therefore, I don’t really have to do a whole lot of lesson planning. However, if we finish a lesson early and they’ve also done all the extra assignments, I’ll be sure to have something up my sleeve where they can practice speaking English.

Because of the way the schedule goes, at the writing of this blog entry, I’ve only taught my students in three of my five classes. I have one class of students who are, at this time, reluctant to speak…in any language. That’s fine with me, because my other two classes are real live wires. They all seem to be good kids, but like most students their age, they LOVE their cell phones. Oy with the poodles, already.

My students chatter and joke with each other in Turkish during their EFL class. So what do I do? I start instructing in Spanish, of course! Then when their eyes glaze over, I say in English, "It's hard when someone's speaking a language you don't understand, isn't it? I’m in a new environment now, teaching English as a foreign language to students who share the same native language and many of the same cultural values. I must continue to educate myself about the best ways to teach my students so that they can get the most out of their education. Well, those who actually CARE to get something out of their education, that is.

Until next time, dear readers. If you have any questions, please email me and I will probably make the answers my next blog entry.

FAQ part 2

Since you are experienced at teaching, do you already know what the first few days will involve?

Sort of. There’s some sort of orientation Powerpoint file, but I don’t know if that’s just for the teachers teaching the lower-level English classes or what. I guess I’ll find out. We do have books for each class, I just haven’t seen mine yet.

I do know this much: I will stand in front of my class on that first day and warn them not to try to break rules in my classroom because I won’t put up with it. I take my job as a teacher seriously; I expect them to take their job as a student seriously.

Have you started your classes yet?

Nope. We just received the list of who’s teaching the elementary and beginning classes. Thankfully, I am not on that list, which means that I will start teaching on Tuesday, September 17.

How many classes do you have to teach?

No idea yet. I’ll post as soon as I know something.

Busy, busy, busy

It’s been a busy couple of days, so settle in with a cup of coffee and prepare to read your butt off.

We received our office assignments on Friday. I have a total of four officemates, but I already knew two of them, Berkay and Maheen, because they were among the English teachers assigned to help the American teachers during our first few days here. Everyone seems really nice.

Yesterday was the preliminary English test to determine the level of English of each of our students. I don’t remember how exactly it works, but if they test low, they won’t move on to the TOEFL test on Monday. The TOEFL, for those of you who don’t know, is the English proficiency test that all non-native speakers of English must take before they are admitted into an American university. However, many English-speaking universities have also started requiring this test as well, which explains why it is required at TOBB.

We were each paired with a native Turkish speaker for the test so that we could both proctor the exam. My partner, Seda, and I had lunch together. Her two officemates joined us and after lunch, the four of us went for coffee, spending a lovely two hours together. At this time, I can’t remember the names of the other two women, but bear with me. I’ve learned a lot of Turkish names in the past two weeks and I’m doing the best I can. Whenever I meet new people here, it seems that I’m constantly answering “Why did you choose Turkey?” I know people are interested to know what made me choose their country over any others. Honestly, I’m just a big history dork and I can’t wait to see all the sites that have been around for centuries.

One cool part of my job is that the other Americans and I are recording the listening sections of upcoming tests. I get in there with my best announcer voice and have so much fun. In fact, I feel safe in saying that I’m having way more fun than the other native English speakers, some of whom seem to see this assignment as a chore.

Last night, Carly and I went to Kızılay, a neighborhood in Ankara with a lot of restaurants, bars, clubs, and shops. We went to dinner at a restaurant where I ordered mantı, a Turkish dumpling dish that is very similar to ravioli, but with a sweeter taste. The sweetness may have to do with the yogurt in the dish as opposed to the ricotta cheese that I’m used to. Anyway, it was dangerously delicious, and I’m not just saying because I was so hungry when my meal arrived.



From the restaurant, Carly and I went on to the Kafka bar for Jessi’s birthday celebration. I’ll say this about it: I’ve spent all day today in recovery and should have stopped at two glasses of whiskey.

Until next time.

Turkish breakfast

The last few days, the Ankara weather has been so beautiful. We’ve typically experienced a high of 90 degrees, but now it’s a high of 75, the skies are still blue, there’s a gentle breeze blowing, and the sun is shining. That’s my kind of weather!

Last Friday, my first full day here in Ankara, which will forever be known to me as Pukey Friday, I went to the campus cafeteria to get something to eat at about 11:00 a.m. After much signing, broken Turkish on my part, and broken English on the part of the guy at the cash register, we collectively decided I should have some breakfast.

“Breakfast” to me usually consists of yogurt, eggs, toast, and coffee. Welcome to Turkey where it’s…much more. When the man let me know my breakfast was ready, I looked at the plate which had an omelet, bread, sliced tomatoes, sliced cucumbers, olives, cheese, jam, honey, and tea. Now that’s breakfast! Sadly, I was only able to eat a few bites before I felt queasy due to the heat and having waited so long to eat, so I asked for a to-go box. (I know, I know. That’s a very American thing to do. If you don’t believe me, watch Eddie Izzard’s comedy special “Circle” and he’ll fill you in.) I finished it off a few hours later once I’d returned to my room, but the delicious breakfast decided to make a cameo appearance at the mall later that evening.

Yesterday, at the store, I decided I was going to get the ingredients to make myself a real Turkish breakfast. I didn’t buy cucumbers or honey, but you’ll see from the photo below that I did have everything else. From what I can gather, Turkish breakfast eggs will either be in the form of an omelet or hard-boiled. I like both, but I really enjoy sunny-side up so that I can dip my toast in the yolks. Also, that is cheese just below the bread. I don’t want anyone thinking that I’ve suddenly taken to eating massive pats of butter by themselves, a revolting idea even to someone who loves butter as much as I do. The butter, by the way, is the dome-shaped container behind the plate, to the immediate right of the raspberry jam.