SKOOL!

First day of school! I was going to put here a whole description of our new flatmate, Ramin, but since I can't get to the picture, it's just not as good. So we'll save that for later. Damn confusing interenet/computers that don't work right.

Today we had our first day of classes at Kent English, and it turns out this course is going to be pretty intense. Mark having been away from classes for 8 months and myself for 3, it was a bit of a shock to get back into the mode. It was good, though, to have something to really do for the day, 9:30-6. It’s unfortunate that we’ll have so much less time for exploring now, but one can only do so much wandering before it becomes a little bit more like drifting. Anyway, it seems that it will be plenty of work and tons of learning on our feet, but for me it’s almost like being at home just to be in school again, even if it’s a very different kind of school. We have four instructors: Bengü, who is also the course coordinator; Mehtap; Işmael, the Big Cheese, as it were; and John (whom we have yet to meet because he lives and teaches in İzmit – which is about an hour bus ride from İstanbul - though we’re going to have class with him there next Thursday, so that’ll be nice to get to see even more of the country (don’t worry, you parent-types, it’s still very west and safe and all that). They all seem to be very knowledgeable and good teachers, after one day’s assessment. This would seem key, since they’re teaching us how to be good teachers, so it’s a two-fold necessity for them to be teach well…or something.

Oh, and it’s amazing how much we don’t know about English grammar. Oy.

Our four classmates seem great, too. Ercan and Işun are both Istanbullus, and so can help us with our Turkish as well and to understand the learners we’ll be dealing with and Turks in general. Sasha is Australian, and she’s been teaching English in Istanbul for the last two years without any formal credentials and is doing the course so as to get a formal working visa, so she knows a lot about the TEFL market in the city and about they way Turks (especially kids) respond to English teaching. So, it seems everyone has something super helpful to bring to the table for the others (Mark and I can really only offer our American pronunciation, but I guess that’s something). It really seems like the most ideal situation we could’ve asked for. Well, so far…

So I’m finally starting to feel a little bit settled, now that we’ve got a base of something to do and some wonderful associates. All classes are, obviously, in English, so we’re not furthering our Turkish there at all, but it is really nice to be able to just use English and communicate with other people to socialize and share ideas. I’m feeling much more comfortable, more at home.

Yes, I think I shall sleep well tonight, indeed.