Friday Night - Cuma Akşam

I went to dinner with Josh and some of his Elementary students on Friday night. I promised them I would post the pictures here, so here they are! Click on this pic and you can see the rest of them on Flickr.



Resimler burda! Resime tıkla ötekileri görebilirsin.

Rubbish Cart Men

I just asked the people in the teachers' room "What's interesting
about being in Turkey?" First answer was the rubbish cart men. What
are the rubbish cart men? These are random guys, who walk around the
city going through the dumpsters and collecting stuff. I know, most
cities have the equivalent, but here it's a bit different. Upon
further discussion, we've determined that there are actually two
types. There's the old junk man, who collects literally anything -
pieces of wood, wire, metal, old light switches, and other random
stuff. His cart is more like a table with big wheels, and it appears
that all his stuff is for resale. He also walks down the street
shouting "ESKIJI!", somehow managing to make that word into 6 or 7
syllables. I guess at that point people would go outside with their
old stuff and give (sell?) it to him. Eskici (pronounced es-kee-jee)
means "old-stuff man" literally. In Turkish you add ci (jee) to the
end of stuff to mean "the person who sells/makes", So "dondurma" is
ice cream, and you go to a dondurmaci to buy it. Ekmek is bread and
the ekmekci sells it. Those of us here who speak English, quickly
adopt this convention and we start talking about people like the
juice-ci who sells fresh squeezed orange juice, and the telephone-ci
who will help you with a sim card for your cellphone....
Anyway the other rubbish cart men are the ones who go through the
dumpsters removing recyclables. Ok, so in most places you sort the
trash BEFORE you put it in the dumpster. Here there are guys with huge
bags, like the kind they use at sugar factories that hold a metric ton
of sugar (which we used in Israel for the equvalent amount of potting
mix), somehow attached to a dolly so it can be pushed around. I think
there are different categories, one guy who collects cardboard,
another plastic bottles, another glass. They are all over the place. I
think if the separate dumpsters concept were introduced here, a lot of
recycle-cis would be out of work!

The grainiest photo ever.

At the end of the beginner course, one of the students took some pics.
I was surprised to see a camera that had film! It's been a while. Even
more startling was that it needed to be wound after each pic. When was
the last time I have seen one of those!!! Geesh. The result, the
grainiest photo ever! I won't bother to name the people, you can't see
them anyway. I'm the black one! ;o)

Changing Schedule

My schedule changed this week. One of the teachers had a death in the
family and had to return to the US. Two new teachers joined us,
another put in her notice. Sum total of all this change is that my
schedule is completely different. OK, not completely. Fortunately, I
still have my weekend afternoon Elementary class, my favourites. Did I
mention that they all passed their end of beginner exam with flying
colours? Only 2 students (of 13 who took the exam) got under 85%, and
the majority got over 95%. Impressive? I think so. I was so proud of
them!!!

So now, I still have Mondays and Wednesdays off. Tuesdays I teach for
only 2 hours! That means that in 3 days, I only teach a total of 2
hours. I like that! I'm considering Tuesday as my planning day, so I
can plan my classes for the week and get ready. Because I teach so few
hours in 3 days, it means that all the other 25 or so hours are
condensed into 4 days. Pretty hectic. But cool. I have 2 company
classes now. So I take a minibus to the company and teach them. They
are both in a place called Umraniye, about 30 minutes away from the
school. One company is a communications network company. They have a
couple of months a year when they don't work (although I don't know
why this is) and instead they do English classes every morning. I'm
sharing this class with another teacher, Eda. I had them for the first
time today, and they seem really nice. Since the job is paying for the
class, and they have nothing else to do during that time, their
attendance is really good, and they really work hard. That's nice to
deal with. The other company does something else, I'm not sure what, I
believe it's something to do with medical equipment. Maybe as a
speaking exercise I can get them to tell me what the company does!
They are also really nice and Intermediate students. So that's cool
because I can plan once, and since one company is a couple of weeks
behind the other in the material, I can use the same lesson plan for
the other in a couple of weeks. I also have an Intermediate private
student on weekend mornings. I will meet her on Saturday for the first
time.

The other class I have is a PreIntermediate class on Friday evenings.
I taught them their first 2 classes, while my flatmate, Lydia, was out
sick. Apparently, one of the students (rather tactlessly) suggested to
Lydia that she teach my class (at the time I had 2 private advanced
students) and I teach hers. Oops. I think they like me a lot. Lydia
was kind of upset about that for a while, and it didn't help to find
out that she would be teaching them Mondays and Wednesdays and I have
them on Fridays!

On the home front things are going well. Lydia and I have settled into
our new flat. I'm getting to know the neighbourhood. There is a small
group of boys who play in the street every day. They like talking to
me and have started calling me "abla" which means big sister. One
asked me yesterday what my name is and I told him Kris, so now when I
leave home they all say "Hello Kris Abla! How are you?" In Turkish of
course! It's so cute. They're between about 7 and 10 years old. The
man in the shop on the corner is also very friendly, as are the
neighbours. I make sure and say hello to everyone. There is one old
lady who gets on my nerves though, every time she sees me, she calls
to the kids in the next lane to come and look at me. As if I don't get
stared at enough already! geesh! She means well though, and told me
the other day that I was very cute and had a nice smile - maybe
because I was purposely not smiling at the time? hmmm.

I've been exploring the neighbourhood. We live on a small road
parallel to the main road. There are about 4 apartment buildings on
each side of the street, and thw two roads at each end intersect ours
perpendicularly, forming and H shape, with our street being the short
cross line. At each end of the street we have a small grocery store,
and since we are just about in the middle, they are both about 25
seconds' walk away. Very convenient! At the top of the road on the
left, there is a university, high school and primary school. Because
of the university, there are also a lot of cafes and restaurants. But
to get there, it's a short walk up a very steep hill. At the bottom of
said hill there is a mosque. From the living room balcony there's a
great view of its only minaret. Luckily the volume on the loudspeaker
system is not overly loud, like many I've heard, so the call to prayer
is more pleasant than disruptive. However, I've noticed that all the
dogs in the neighbourhood howl during the prayers. It's kind of like
they are singing along. Kind of funny in a very irreverent way! It
freaks Lydia out a bit....

The weather is warming up. I've never been one who is anxious for
summer to come, though so this isn't huge news for me. I wish it could
stay like it is now, about 24 or so during the day, dropping to the
mid to upper teens at night. Is there anywhere that is like that all
year round? Nothing compares to Hamsin in Haifa though! Dude! I don't
miss that at all!