Tales from a Broad ... and a Gent: T-Minus 3 Days - We'll probably be home before anybody reads this...

So, because I always forget about this part of the blogger system, this post goes backward in chronology. Oh well. I'm really just trying to put a lot of this stuff up here so that we can start deleting everything from the computer, since we're selling it to Mark's boss.

This will probably be my last post before we leave. Well, I'll probably add another photo post, but this will be my last text, I suppose. I wish I had some profound words, but we're trying to pack and trying to hang out with all of our friends before we go, and thinking about very practical things at this point. But, I guess I can try for posterity's sake.

It's very strange to be leaving. I am relieved to be going home, but it's a bit unfortunate to have really just started to have friends (having moved past the "making friends" phase) and now to be going. Of course, we're thrilled to be going home to our old friends, and I am definitely ready to leave Turkey. There has been increasing political unrest recently, and last week a center of WSI (the school for which Mark and I have been working) in Izmit got raided by the police and all their not-so-legal foreign teachers were taken to jail. Now, this was not in Istanbul, but in a much smaller city where the police don't have so much to do - it's a bit akin to Petoskey police expending huge efforts to break up high school parties. However, it doesn't exactly make me more comfortable.

So, I think it's been worthwhile, and I think we've rather accomplished something just by riding it out, but I know that I'm ready to go home.

Meanwhile, here's some images as we're winding down.

The Galata Tower dog pack, curled up in a sort of formation outside the Dia supermarket near our house. It's like they planned the cuteness, and I'll say that it worked. Mark and I bought them food.

This is the Turkish Mackinac Island. It's called Buyukada, or "Big Island," and it's part of the Islands, or Prince's Islands as they used to be called. It's a fresh-air paradise after being in Istanbul (the smog has been getting worse the last two weeks or so). There are no cars - they use horses, just like Mackinac, and you can rent bikes, though we chose to play it cheap and walk. There are also a bunch of touristy camera/sunscreen/postcard shops, and ice cream stores galore. This street actually looks a lot like Charlevoix, eh?

Mark and I, coming down from the giant hill we hiked on Buyukada.

The monastery on top of the hill. Not particularly exciting or historically important, but kinda pretty.

The view from the top of the hill. Really, it was just great to be in some real outdoors again, and to be pseudo-hiking in some pleasurable scenery.

There is also a strange Beverly Hills/Bay Harbor-type atmosphere on Buyukada, the whole place covered in giant mansions like this one for the rich of Turkey and the Middle East who require summer homes that they may or may not visit for a week every year. The season hasn't really started yet, so it was really just an exceptionally decadent ghost town.

One of the horse carriage taxis.

The ferry pier on Buyukada.

And now on to a bit about my work place. I didn't manage to get any pictures of my co-workers, because it was all busy on my last day, and everybody forgot I was leaving and they kinda went home. Sigh. Oh well. After work, my friend Jeff and I and my replacement, Kris, went up on the roof and drank a couple of beers. Anticlimatic, maybe, but alright, I guess.

These are a good example of the cards we use for exercises in our "Encounter" classes. The students a "unit" for a week or so, and then they meet with the teachers to practice and to be evaluated on whether they should move on or keep working on that unit using these exercises.

Each Encounter has it's own folder, of which there are a total of 68. Notice the snazzy graphic that our shelf space has made a little less exciting.

This is our office, which I spent two days cleaning last week. It used to be a disaster. No surprise, since I was the first female "native" teacher they've had in 4 years. At least I've left one tangible improvement in my wake.