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Istanbul life paradigm shift. We're not sure why, but somehow this changes everything...

Cliches and growing up and crap!

Wow. Looking back over all my time in Turkey, I can really see how I've grown and changed as a person. Not only have I changed, but I feel like I changed the people around me for the bet......

er....

Thats just too sarcastic, even for me.

However, its really just my way of making it ok to talk about how I have changed, by first ridiculing myself for doing it. So, cliches in 5, 4, 3,

2,

1,





I drink coffee now, which is kind of strange. I used to avoid it with vehemence, now I can't wait to drink fake nescafe with delicious findik(hazelnut) flavoring. Granted, it is by no means real coffee, but its a step in the right direction.

My hair is short, and I'm considering keeping it so. And I brush it flat against my head, so there is no poof at all. My long haired ways may have been abandoned in favor of short, stylish hair.

I have to wear a shirt and tie to work everyday. The only other uniforms I've had to wear in my life were a bubble island tee that could be covered in sticky bubble solution and still be acceptable, and theater costumes, which mainly included make-up and several times tights. Oh and cowboy boots. I can never forget the cowboy boots. Therefore, I feel somewhat odd that I have graduated so quickly to matching my tie with my shoes on a daily basis.

I feel responsibility to my living space. This may be a given for some other folks, but I'm sure they haven't been living with 6 other dudes for the past 2 years.
Smelly dudes.
Therefore, I've always felt any cleaning or house maintainance was like mowing grass with toenail clippers. But now, when something needs to be done, (and in Istanbul, everything always needs to be done), we grab our trusty crappy power drill/mop/bleach and go to work. Between Kate and I, we've sealed windows, installed shelves, built a bed, installed a washing machine, and repulsed assault after ruthless assault of mold.

I'm wearing a watch, keeping a calender, all the things that real grown-ups do. I don't feel like a grown-up, but I also don't feel like I'm pretending. I just feel kinda, happy.

Thoughts on the Karakoy Iskelesi

The pier in Karakoy floats on the water. It moves. The most disconcerting is when you step off the boat onto what really looks like it should be a solid cobble sidewalk, and yet that too is shifting under you. I had vertigo for a week because of this sensation in September when I first started riding the ferry twice a day.

When you sit near the middle, though, the rocking is only perceptible if you look out the window to see the horizon or waterline rising and falling. If you try to listen very hard to your body, sometimes you can sense the slightly nuanced pressure as inertia pushes your back against the chair, but for the most part it seems as if you are stationary and stable and it's the world outside that can't seem to get a grip. A pleasant illusion, yet unsettling when one realizes its utter improbability.

When you look out the window and can see yet more things on the water, the seemingly causeless shifting of objects relative to one another becomes even more disconcerting. Two identical ferries visible through two seperate panes, rocking, swaying and swelling at two different amplitudes and tempos is like watching a split-screen reality. Things that seem as though they ought to be connected, in fact, when examined through their respective portals, really have nothing to do with one another.

GLOBAL climate changes

So while the temperatures in Michigan have apparently been freakishly warm, things here have also been very bizarre for the season. This should be getting into the coldest part of the year, and we should actually be seeing some snow, or at least rain. However, right now there isn't a cloud in the sky and it's about 50F. Crazy. Of course, our daily lives of long commutes and lack of central heating are made practically much more pleasant, but they are anticipating severe droughts all summer if it doesn't start really really raining, and soon. The economies of both Michigan and Turkey are in jeopardy in slightly different ways, but really for the same reason. Not to mention the bizarre storms that recently swept through central US, and also England (many people died there, as well). Scary.

Happy Holidays: The VanKempens Go to Turkey

What a holiday treat. Mark's parents were able to come for two weeks, and his brother for one, to bring a little of home to us abroad-weary kids in Istanbul. And they provided us with an excuse and some extra resources to do some of the touristy things we couldn't have done otherwise.

Gary and Dorinda arrived two weeks ago yesterday, a few days before Christmas. It was nice for Mark and I to be able to show some people around for once, and to remember how far we have come since we were the painfully new kids on the block. Mark and I both had to work for some of the time they were here, so there was a nice balance of entertaining company and doing our own thing, for us and for them, I think.

Craig came in about 8 hours later than anticipated after missing his plane due to a confusion of departure and arrival times (it will go down in infamy as "Craig's Wii Mistake", by which he had to spend an extra $250 to get here on the next flight and therefore will not be able to purchase that Nintendo Wii anytime soon. Mark's boss was fabulous enough to offer the VKs her apartment for the week of Christmas while she was home in New York. This made for a Christmas in Turkey that definitely defied all my expectations. Dorinda decorated Pam's apartment meagerly but festively, and there were plenty of presents in pretty paper. The presents my parents had sent us were busy making our apartment look like Christmas by sitting under our two-dimensional paper tree and stockings.


No photos of actual Christmas day on our camera. Perhaps Gary has some. But anyway, Dorinda also brought a frozen Thanksgiving/Christmas feast with her, complete with turkey, stuffing, and gravy and completely fabulous. Mark also got to frost Christmas cookies in his new pajama pants, which made entirely too cute. It was overall a very well done affair.

On Christmas Eve we went to a bizarre Italian mass at my favorite Italian Catholic church on Istiklal, Santa Maria. After the formal mass, everyone (all 30 people there) gathered around this strange nativity scene with a blue-sky backdrop and palm trees and sang caroles to a badly tuned guitar in Italian, Spanish, German and French. Since we had been herded to the middle of the group, we felt it rude to leave, so we stuck it out. And it's a good thing we did, because when we had sang all the caroles, in came what seemed to be a much anticipated guest in a very nice suit and with quite the entourage. Everyone seemed very excited, but all we were left to wonder who the hell this guy was. He didn't speak Italian, and the priest didn't speak Turkish, so via hearing his speech once in each language, we understood that all he said was a lengthy Merry Christmas and Happy Bayram. Then the crowd clapped enthusiastically, and the mystery man was whisked out the door by his security people. Very strange. Later we realized who it was when we saw photos of the Mayor of Istanbul on billboards all over town wishing everyone happy holidays. So we kinda met the Mayor. Merry Christmas to us.

After Christmas came the sight-seeing. We went inside the Aya Sofya finally, and though it feels silly and obvious to say, it was fantastic.

Built by the Roman Emperor Justinian some 1500 years ago, it is quite the magnificent (and well-maintained) structure. It has been going through restoration for some years now, and the inside held an unsightly scaffolding, but it was over-lookable with the awesomeness of the history of the building. First an Orthodox Cathedral in the days of Constantinopolis, then a mosque during the reign of the Ottomans, and now made a "secular" museum by Ataturk, there are some very interesting things about this building. One of the most fascinating paradoxes is the retention of many of the exceptionally Christian mosaics, featuring Jesus and Mary and various emperors subsequent to Justinian.

However, all around the second tier of the building there were once carved stone crosses, maybe 150 of them, that someone had gone through the trouble to file them down out to leave only the circular base (though they didn't hide what they were erasing very well). Strange, indeed.

We also visited Dolmabahce Palace, which was the last residency of the Sultan before the empire collapsed and certainly succeeded in its efforts to look rich, decadent, and European. Here are some photos of the grounds and gates.
A weird tree-pond thing in the garden (Dolmabahce means "full garden"), surrounded by the only snowfall we got that Christmas week.

And here is some of the interior.

That ceiling is about 40 feet up. And the chandelier is probably 12 feet in diameter.

The Harem (which the tour guide was very adamant about meaning "private place" and not "concubine hoard" though there were two "Sultan's Wives" apartments and it was described as the place "where the women stayed at all times"...all very interesting) was where Ataturk had his private office, and we even got to see the room where he died. The bed is now covered with a freakish Turkish flag blanket.

We had to wear these funny pink plastic golashes over our shoes when we went in this building. It was funny to see the troupe of maybe 100 school children tromping around in them.

Interestingly enough, this year Kurban Bayram and New Years happen to coincide. Kurban Bayram is the sacrifice holiday where people slaughter goats and sheep and cows, and the family is supposed to eat 1/3 of the meat, give1/3 of it to friends and neighbors, and the last 1/3 to the poor. An interesting concept, but not a spectacle that I really wanted to witness. Fortunately, Mark and I had the five days off, and though Craig had to leave for the states, Gary, Dorinda, Mark and I headed down to Bodrum, a south-western seaside resort town, for the holiday. It was so great to get out of the city and to relax for a bit. The bus ride was about 12 hours, but the coach busses here are surprisingly comfortable and it was relatively painless. Our condo was pretty nice, and since it is about the offest of off-seasons, nobody was around and it was so quiet. The scenery was pretty alright, too. The mountains were almost as plentiful as the olive trees, and the mandolina (Clementine) trees were in full fruit.

For New Year's Eve, we played Euchre and I learned to play Bridge. Super exciting. Just as well if not better, since someone was accidentally shot in the head by celebratory gunfire at the big party in Taksim Square, and, like any city, Istanbul would not have been the place to be. It was nice to have a quite New Years on purpose (and not simply for lack of planning), for once. Taksim was pretty decked out for the holiday though. Here's one Mark snapped before we left.

New Year's Day we went to the castle in Bodrum. Unfortunately, I took all of those pictures with my film camera, so I have nothing to show. We also walked around the town and by the Agaean, which was surprisingly warm (though it was only about 55 degrees outside - no swimming for us). It was a gorgeous day. The town itself was disturbingly reminiscent of Petoskey or Charlevoix: some things, like the trappings of tourist traps, are apparently universal.

The next day, we went to Efes (the beer's namesake), or Ephesus. We had arranged a ride with an English-speaking driver through the consierge at our hotel, which turned out to be an adventure indeed. We were supposed to go in a Ford Connect, which is something like a van. However, that broke down that morning, and we ended up going in a Ford Tempo...with 5 passengers... Needless to say, the 2.5 hour drive both ways was slightly less comfortable than the bus. And the guy managed to take us around to all his friends' places to eat and such. That's how things work here - he brings people with money to his friends and he gets his cut. This is the same way the government opperates. You can imagine how effective that is, and how helpful to the economy. All in all, it was enjoyable, and I never felt unsafe in anyway...just a little swindled, but whatever. Here are some pictures!

We also went to the house where Mary supposedly lived the last bit of her life and died, but again those pictures are on my film camera. Though not thrilling, it was interesting to think of Mary as an old person with an actual house and having to go up and down that huge freaking hill just to get to the town at the bottom. As Dorinda said, it's curious to think of the stories as real people.

Our last day in Bodrum it was raining and cold, which was perfect because we only wanted to sit inside and read. It was wonderful. Then we had the overnight bus ride back to the city, and Mark and I had to work the next morning, but all was well, because the vacation had done us good.

Gary and Dorinda left yesterday after one final dinner at a tucked away Hungarian restaurant that I didn't want to find, but I am glad for Mark's persistence. We are very glad they came, and though I so wish my parents and sister could have been here, too, it was certainly a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Kinks: Kate's Midway Bitching Session

Things are kinda hard here. I may have mentioned this before. I am looking forward to going home. This has not been my absolutely most favorite few months of all time. However, Mark and I are surviving (and I will confess that Mark has been much more steadfast about this whole thing than I have, in case you hadn't guessed that to be the situation). We struggle with missing family and friends, which will hopefully be rectified to some extent when we get home. We miss college (or at least I do), which will probably be words I eat next fall when both Mark and I are back in school.

We also have some issues with our current living situation: incessant dampness due to our lack of heating and the humidity, which consequentially breeds mold in various and inopportune places, including our dish cabinets, our bedroom walls, my favorite satchel-type thingy from Harry's Army Surplus, and I am sure new and exciting places we haven't discovered yet. And the cockroaches have come back (indicated by the one I found in our silverware drawer this morning).

And our roommates are...well, they're roommates (including the two cats, who are cute but sometimes irksome), and therefore they have this knack for being inconsiderate and annoying in various ways that deny us sleep or general sanctuary in our own home (I find myself spending my free time when Mark is working either at the Starbucks near our house - horror or horrors, but the closest place of refuge to read or study or whatever - or the internet cafe, just to avoid being interrupted by unwelcome socializers coming through the curtain that separates our bedroom from the kitchen).

Our kitchen light is broken again, but Mark and I can't do much because we can't talk to the landlord. Actually, our kitchen pretty generally sucks.

Our clothes, once we wash them, take about 4 or 5 days to "dry" in our cold, damp apartment, which means that with 4 of us using the same drying space, we can do laundry about every 3 weeks and therefore our clothes get rather dirty in the rather dirty city.

There is a ton of smog in this city, and dirt and grime and dust in general. There is also a distinct lack of green spaces, and a painful lack of libraries. And we can't really exercise because you can't really run on the streets in our neighborhood (for logistical, safety, and social reasons) and the health clubs cost a fortune.

* * *

However, despite the many difficulties, as of yet I cannot see a reason that we might regret this ordeal...once we get home. Meanwhile, we are half-way through our 10-month sojourn, and there are many things yet to look forward to. Mark and I are going to Lisbon for a week at the beginning of February. Ian, Jason, and Judy are coming to visit two weeks after that. And there are certainly some things we haven't seen yet in the city. And, hopefully, spring will come and we will be able to open our windows and air out our lives a bit.

Also, this venture has given me insight as to what I want my life to be like when we return. It's a long laundry list, and a lot of it is probably just daydreams, but hopefully some of it will be useful. And at the very least, we've gotten some kick-ass pictures out of it, and certainly the have earned the right to the stories that start "When we lived in Istanbul..." for the rest of our lives.

...And In with the New Job

My new job is in two locations, Caddebostan and Erenkoy, each a branch of the same school. The commute is a bit longer, but it doesn't bother me much as I no longer have any sort of lesson planning or grading to do and so the journey to work no longer stresses me out. I am much happier at my new school. There are fewer teachers and fewer people in general, and all of the people speak English who work there, at least to some extent, which is actually really nice (many of the employees at the other school I could not communicate with). Everything is of the highest quality because their greatest concern, in fact their business model in general, is based upon repeat customers and referrals, and so the students have to be satisfied with their experience, and I believe that they generally are. The maximum class size is 4, and while you don't see the same students every day, you see a lot of the same ones pretty regularly, and the time you do spend with them is of a higher and more communicative quality, and so I don't find any lack of getting to know students.

The system is really nice for teachers because it is dependent upon student motivation for individual study and preparation. It is mostly computer-based in that the students work in the computer lab go through a tutorial including a CD-ROM video to cover grammar, functions, and vocabulary in somewhat real-life scenarios. This is an interactive system that helps them work on both listening and speaking, as they are required to fill in blanks in dialogues and to repeat things into the computer and then listen to themselves and their own pronunciation. Then there is a practice workbook and a grammar guide that the students must complete before coming to a class, which they schedule individually. So, by the time they get to the class, the theory is that they have already learned the material (with whatever help they may have gotten from the Turkish teachers or whoever is around the center while they are studying - there is a lot of informal teaching that goes on, which I like). Therefore our job in the class (what the school calls an "encounter) is to clarify points, solidify understanding, provide opportunity for practice in a small group, and to evaluate whether the student is ready to move on or not.

Some teachers who don't work there have said that this seems like an impersonal system and that the students are left out to dry and the teachers are useless. I completely disagree. The teachers are there to provide encouragement, tips and to allow for the practice of English. Perhaps we are not imparting the knowledge directly, as some teachers really seem to prefer in order to feel satisfied - being the fount of English wisdom or something - but the students learn better because they learn it of their own efforts and own volition. The fact that a level 2 student at my new school is more fluent than most level 4s at the old one says something. These people are actually learning to speak English and not just being pushed through a system, and that, I think, is a huge difference.

Out With the Old Job...

As some of you may or may not know, I have left the school where I was first employed in September and gone to work at the school where Mark works (though not the same branch - we are not that ridiculous). The switch happened over the course of the month of December, as my contract with my old schoo l required that I give full months notice before quitting. I left for a lot of reasons. The hours weren't very good (8am-7pm on Saturday and Sunday - not including the hour commute either way - and some weekdays, with lots of unpaid lesson planning and grading on top of it all). Also, I have found that, while I love being in a classroom to learn, there is something about facing 15 people who don't really want to be there and being forced to entertain them for four hours at a time and also to make them learn something when you're bored and they are bored. And all this was true even before the administration of this school implemented its "revolutionary" and horrible new pedagogical system.
Let me emphasize that this is definitely a profit-driven company that has very little of it's students' interests at heart. It is really like the Wal-Mart of Istanbul English "schools" - they have an incredibly high turn-over of employees, both teachers and management, as well as a huge turnover in customers/students. However, their advertising budget and familiarity around the city manage to keep enough new victims coming in. That said, I would also like to emphasize that the teachers, for the most part, really do have great consideration for the students' needs, and I feel particular sympathy for the head teachers who must liaise between the well-meaning teachers and the tight-fisted management (including the Director of Studies, who we will come back to).
So in an effort to drive up profits as this school begins to fall from grace in the Istanbul language school market, "Head Office" (the term for the rather unscrupulous entity that runs the institution, much like the Head Quarters of some malignant organization on some 70s action/spy show) demanded that all of its head teachers be removed from their classes and put to work writing a New Book and creating a New System which would set this school apart from the probably 15 other schools (it's a big market, as you can see). However, due to the top-down nature of this project and the lack of a real need for new materials when there are so many tried and true English teaching resources available which, in my opinion, the Director of Studies was too stubborn to give a chance, the thing was doomed from the start.
Innovative as it might be, being original alone doesn't make something better. The system is quite radical. In an 8 week course, the students study their level's worth of English in four blocks: grammar, reading, writing, and (finally) listening & speaking. The idea is that they will be introduced to all of the grammar topics on some cursory level, and then will review them four more times while looking at different skills and different vocabulary. An interesting idea, but, as we all could guess and then found with certainty upon practice, it was utterly non-functional. For the two week grammar block, students and teachers are dangerously bored while grammar is forced down throats at a break-neck pace with no time for games, conversation, or even really any sort of practice, other than the weekly examinations - now there is a HUGE flaw. I felt it was something out of Dickens - students either silently writing notes or chatting ceaselessly in Turkish while I stood with my back to them writing rules on the board for hours and telling them they simply had to memorize it all because it would be on the test. Talk about demoralizing. It may not be surprising that I was the first of no less than 6 teachers (out of a staff of 15 total) to quit in December.
My favorite part of the story I just learned last night when hanging out with some teachers who are still at this school. There is a website for ESL teaching called Dave's ESL Cafe, where teachers and students can go for information and there are lots of forums and everything. There is much discussion there of this whole kerfuffle, and I heard (second hand) of a post from the Director of Studies that said something along these lines: "The new system is not the problem, it is the people who like the old system. Once we get rid of all the old teachers and all the old students, everything will start to work smoothly." This frightens me slightly, and I find it vague remeniscent or something that I can't quite put my finger on...perhaps Animal Farm or something similar?
But, this is not to say that the whole experience at the school who must not be named was a total wash. I definitely discovered that I do not want to be a classroom teacher (an idea I was entertaining upon embarking on this journey), and I gained tons of empathy for those in the world who do. I also did get a lot of teaching practice which has helped me immensely in my new job at the Much Better Institute (I am attempting to keep my nose clean, should anybody google search these schools). I was moved enough to take some pictures of the school on my last night.

My glorious classroom, "New Jersey"

My level 4 class that I battled partly through the new book with. Some of them were in my very first class four months ago. They're troopers.

My friend Michelle. She's from Salt Lake, though not a Mormon. She also just graduated this spring and wanted to just go somewhere exciting where she could find a job (this, of course, is not the stock explanation we give to students when facing the inevitable "Why to Turkey did came you?" - we all have a szpiel about fascination with historical and cultural crossroads and all that jazz).

And this is the teacher's room. I almost miss it...almost...

Also I made some very enjoyable acquaintances, and a few that I would venture to call good friends at this point. On what happened to be my last night at the school, we had a Christmas party at the opening of a bar owned by the boyfriend of one of the teachers. It was wonderfully fun. Here are some of the pictures.


This is Helen and Marty (and our buddy, Efes). Well, it's Marty's Christmas hat, anyway...

This is Helen and Michelle (and Elton John). These three kids - commonly referred to as the Marty, the Michelle, and the Helen, (all roommates, rather by chance and rather conveniently) have become quite dear to me. Martin/Marty is Irish and comes to us from a year of teaching in North Korea. Martin means "seagull" in Turkish, which is far from fitting and yet totally appropriate. Helen's a New Zealander with a sarcasm so deep that I sometimes wonder if it is really just genuine disdain for the world. And Michelle you already met. They're crazy and fabulous.

Here are some of the other teachers. Joan, the foxy blonde, is originally Irish but has been here for about 25 years (she doesn't look her age in the picture). Between Michelle and Helen is Natalie. She's from Trinidad and totally hilarious. The party is at her boyfriend's bar, so she was completely stressed out because of the huge crowds, but stopped running around for a photo opportunity, nevertheless.

The guy to my right here you may recognize, though his hair is pretty short and the hat makes for a good disguise. The guy on my left is Jim, from Brisbon, Australia. He is absolutely the most talkative person I have ever met. Sometimes it...gets old, but you can't help but love him anyway.

This is Josh, your typical ex-army whiteboy thug from Hawaii. He is self-dubbed "the asshole", and lives up to it, though somehow I can't manage to hate him.

And that was my last night, so really that's about all to say about the old job in Kadikoy.

Renewed Dedication: Prelude to a Deluge

So it turns out Mark and I aren't very good at keeping people (well, this blog, anyway) updated. Number 4 on my list of New Years Resolutions 2007 is to keep in better touch, and also I would like to just keep a better record of all the goings on here. What are blogs for if not for somewhat inane details of daily life that every once in a while make a very interesting observation or point. So, from this point forward, I hope to be more diligent in my blogging, and to keep my entries more topical than they have been for ease in reading and archiving. Hopefully my indulgence won't be too excessive...