Days 35 & 36: My African Legacy

( This template doesn’t make it very obvious, but I’ve linked a lot of things in this post with pictures so you can see where I’m going. So if it's a link I put an asterisk next to it - just click and enjoy! )

Africa left me with a lot of things. Most of them were wonderful: cherished memories, new family, wonderful friends, fun and adventure. But it also left me with the world’s most unpredictable and volatile digestive system. I’m lactose intolerant now, thanks to my doctor’s incompetent treatment of an intestinal parasite, but there are also other things that set me off. Anyway, I’ll spare you the gory details but after spending a sleepless night battling heat (it’s become so hot here) and my own body, I decided to stay home from school today.

Having a day “off” did allow me to finish my itinerary for post-teaching travel as best as I could. Of course something will inevitably go awry along the way and throw the whole plan off, but at least I have some idea of where I’m going and what I want to see. The timeline will work itself out along the way…I hope. I left myself a few days of cushion in case I got stuck somewhere, although I can’t imagine I’ll even begin to run into the sort of transportation nightmares that beset you in Africa.

From Gümüşhane, I’ll head to nearby Erzurum*. Compared to the town I’ve been in for the past month, it’s a booming metropolis. It also happens to be quite historic, and it’s the regional transportation hub. I’ll spend a day there to see a mosque with twin minarets, some famous madrassa and whatever else is around. You can throw a rock and hit something important/historical in Turkey, so I’m sure I can stay occupied.

From Erzurum I’ll head south to Diyarbakir*, the largest city in the southeast (1.5 million) and power base for the Turkish Kurds. The Kurds, God bless them, are the largest ethnic group without a home country – they’re scattered across Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran and lost out on creating Kurdistan. They tried and they would have succeeded, too, if it weren’t for those meddling colonial powers, which exercise an entirely different type of meddling than the gang from Scoobie Doo (although come to think of it Daphne is a French name and Fred’s ascot is decidedly British).

If you’re aware of the troubles between the Kurdish PKK (a “terrorist” group) and the Turkish government then you might think traveling in the southeast of Turkey is inadvisable. On the contrary! It’s actually quite safe if you aren’t a Turkish soldier, and I like to think that while there are a lot of things I can be and have been mistaken for, a Turkish soldier is not amongst them.

From the famed black basalt walls of Diyarbakir, I’ll set out for Sanliurfa* (or just Urfa), which used to be called Edessa back in Crusader times. In fact, the Crusaders set up an entire Crusader state based around Edessa and held on to it for a good while. Urfa is also considered the birthplace of Abraham and a whole host of other things.

I’ll use Urfa as my base to visit nearby Nemrut Dagi* near the foot of Mt. Nemrut*. It has giant head statues constructed by some crazy ass king that ruled this area hundreds of years ago. Apparently he was kind of big on himself, so he had enormous statues of himself constructed standing next to the Gods to show that he was their equal. I’d never heard of him before, so I guess he wasn’t all that. The popular thing to do here is to arrive either slightly before sunrise or sunset – I think you can guess which one I’m opting for. Urfa will also be my base for the “Long Harran Tour” that takes in a number of sights down by the border of Syria, including the remains of an ancient university* and traditional beehive houses*.

Then I’ll head on to Midyat*, which is famous for its monasteries and filigreed silver jewelry. I’ll also visit nearby Hasankeyf*, a town that features amazing homes carved into the side of a sandstone mountain along the banks of the Tigris River. Unfortunately it’s scheduled to be completely flooded when a nearby dam is brought online in a couple of years, so I thought I should take advantage of its above-water state while I could.

I’m not going to lie – the proximity to Kurdish Iraq was seriously tempting. The route to Erbil*, a very famous, beautiful and historic city in northern Iraq, is supposedly very safe and the Kurdish authorities let Americans in without having to pay for a visa. But…it is Iraq. I mean, there’s kind of a war there even if it has left the northern Kurdish territories relatively unscathed. I guess I’m getting old or something because my sense of self-preservation outweighed the desire to gain bragging rights and experience some adventure. So I had to cut out Kurdistan, along with the Turkish cities of Van*, Dogubeyazit*, Kars* and the former Armenian capital of Ani*. I’ll be heading back north to Trabzon after Hasankeyf in order to catch a bus to the Georgian border.

God willing I can catch a bus to Tbilisi*, the Georgian capital, from Trabzon. It’s a long haul, but I’d much rather stick with one bus than piece together a bunch of minibus trips. Tbilisi is supposed to be a very beautiful city in and of itself, and I’ll be doing one of the famous Caucasian homestays while I’m there (you live with a family, they feed you, and you pay them).

In Georgia I’ll also visit Kazbegi*, a stunning mountain location famous for its Tsiminda Sameba Church*. Only 25km from Tbilisi is Mtskheta*, the spiritual heart of Georgia, which boasts all manner of churches, cathedrals and monasteries. The fact that it’s nearby makes it really nice to do it as a daytrip from the capital. And finally I want to visit the Cave City of Vardzia*.

Armenia got dropped altogether from the itinerary, and there were a ton of other things I wanted to see and do in Georgia. But there’s only so much time, and I wanted to leave some wiggle room for myself before I needed to head back to Trabzon to catch a flight to Istanbul. I sure as hell don’t want to miss my flight back home.

I can’t wait to get home, but I’m so excited about my trip. I love taking the road less traveled, and I think this itinerary is different far away from the Black Sea & Mediterranean resorts that most tourists frequent. The only foreseeable problem is the Georgian language. This is what their alphabet looks like, and I’m not even kidding:

Days 28-34: Question Time with the Kaiser

A couple of weeks ago, I gave one of my classes a writing assignment. I thought it would be simple and easy. I listed nine famous and infamous world leaders on the board, and I asked the students to select three of them. They were supposed to write down one question per leader that they would ask if they had an opportunity to meet the leader. So imagine my surprise when two students pick Hitler and asked a nearly identical question: “Why didn’t you finish killing all the Jews when you had the chance? Now look what they’ve done – they created Israel.”

Oh. My. God.

I just let it go. There was no sense in calling them out individually. However, I decided a lesson in tolerance was in order, but you can’t just come out and discuss anti-Semitism. You probably couldn’t even come out and discuss tolerance and discrimination. So instead I decided to teach a lesson on stereotypes. I gave them 35 adjectives and made them look the words up in the English-Turkish dictionaries so they were certain of the meaning. Then I made “American,” “British,” “Japanese,” and “Turkish” categories. We went through the adjectives one by one, and they assigned it to the people they thought it best fit. Americans fared better than the British, but naturally the Turks came out on top.

In order to teach them about perspective, I told them I was going to go through the Turkish list and mark off the ones I thought were not true. I eliminated “friendly,” “respectful,” “lazy,” and “tolerant.” Of course this caused a huge uproar. For a minute I thought I might lose control of them. When I got them to settle down, I explained that my experience was not that people were friendly because people glared at me when I walked down the street; they weren’t respectful because my students were rude to me in class; they weren’t lazy people because work hard here; and then we came to tolerance. I asked them, “What if I told you I’m Jewish?”

They looked panicked and confused. They exchanged uncertain glances. “Well?” I asked. One of them said, “I would kill you.” But then clarified later that he meant, “They would kill you,” whoever “they” is. I asked, “Am I not the same person I was before? Didn’t you all like me? Wasn’t I your friend and your teacher? So what’s different now?” I tried to explain to them that stereotypes are good things and bad things, and that you shouldn’t judge people based on ridiculous things like that. In the end, I think they understood that anti-Semitism is not a hallmark of a tolerant society.

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On Friday, someone finally invited me to their house for dinner! The headmaster of our school asked if I would join him, the other remaining American and Dr. Bayrak at his home for dinner. I was ecstatic! Finally, no more eating at the school or restaurants – I could actually sit down and enjoy a meal in someone’s home with their family. Sort of.

Dr. B drove us over to his house, which was actually an apartment. Apartment living seems to be the way to go here, but that’s not really a huge surprise because this is a mountain valley with somewhat limited space. The headmaster’s wife, children and father-in-law greeted us at the door, and they all seemed really excited to see us. We slipped our shoes off, and we were shown into the living room. Then Dr. Bayrak had to leave to go meet some member of Parliament for something, so we sat there for 1 ½ hours staring at each other and making limited small talk.

The living room doubled as the headmaster’s library, and he had an entire wall covered with bookcases full of hardback books. Of course my eyes immediately fall on the ten or so volumes written by Sayid Qutb, the foaming-at-the-mouth anti-American Muslim writer whose writings form the foundation for the Muslim Brotherhood. I don’t necessarily have a problem with Qutb or the Brotherhood, but they often seem to have a problem with us. Qutb’s time in American in particular seemed to fill him with a special sort of virulent anti-Americanism (and that was the America of the 1950’s!).

Dr. B finally arrived from his meeting with the MP, and the headmaster’s neighbor and best friend, who despite being a teacher didn’t seem to speak a lick of English, also joined us. The headmaster spread out a tablecloth on the floor and then put a low table on top of it. We all sat down around the table and tucked our feet under the tablecloth so that it functioned more like a bib/napkin and prevented things from dropping on the floor. I soon realized this was going to be quite a tradition meal, as in the men would sit at the table and eat while the women and children were relegated to the kitchen. We didn’t lack for conversation at our floor-table but they were much more lively – occasionally I could hear the sounds of their laughter and chatter drifting into the living room.

Turkish Lentil Soup

The meal started off with the traditional salad of shredded lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, lemon and…something else that I couldn’t identify, along with lentil soup. In my mind, when he put the lentil soup in front of me, I screamed, “Oh, Jesus Christ, not another bowl of lentil soup. I CAN’T TAKE IT ANYMORE,” flew into a rage and flipped the table over. In reality, I just sat there and ate the soup. God was merciful in that his wife turned out to be an excellent cook and the soup was spiced so well that I suffered through it without making a face. Along with the salad/soup, we also had fresh cherry juice, and it was absolutely divine.

Pepper & Tomato Dolmeh

Next came the dolmeh, my all-time favorite Middle Eastern dish. When his wife brought the plates to the table, I think I might have actually squealed a little bit. There are all sorts of dolmeh, but it’s basically a vegetable stuffed with a meat/rice mixture and steamed. My favorite kind is wrapped in grape leaves, and we happened to be treated to those. But the other dolmeh was a bell pepper looking thing. In the back of my head, I freaked because I hate bell peppers. But I couldn’t sit there and not eat it, so I sucked it up and ate it – turns out it wasn’t a bell pepper but some kind of Turkish pepper that tasted nothing like a bell pepper. It was delicious!

Following the dolmeh was manti, my favorite Turkish dish. Manti are mini-dumplings stuffed with lamb meat, and they’re covered in a garlic yogurt sauce. On top of the yogurt they pour a butter/red pepper mixture, which at first I thought was grease because that’s what it looks like. Our host controlled the portions, so our bowls were heaping with manti! After that came fried chicken and rice, which I thought would surely be the last dish. But no. I forgot about dessert!

Manti - Turkish dumplings in yogurt sauce

Dessert was two huge pieces of some kind of baklava I’ve never seen, a big scoop of ice cream and two little cloves. After finishing the meal, you’re supposed to chew on the cloves for a bit to freshen your breath and then swallow them to help with digestion. And that concluded the meal….for a little bit.

We sat around and talked about this and that before turning our attention to my post-teaching travel plans. They were all giving me advice on where to go and what to see. I decided to just travel in southeastern Turkey, Georgia and Armenia and forgo the rest of the country. My luggage was somewhat of a barrier because I thought I’d have to leave it in Gümüşhane, which meant I would have to come back here to collect it before catching my flight to Istanbul from Trabzon. Having none of that, the headmaster made a call and summoned the services of his best friend in Trabzon, who agreed to store my luggage and then collect me from the bus station, give me my luggage and drive me to the airport to see me safely off to Istanbul. He also made a few calls and discovered a way to cross into Armenia even though the border is supposedly sealed (I’ll give it a try before going the more traditional route through Georgia).

Çay (Turkish tea)

Then the tea arrived! Of course no occasion is complete without five cups of çay (we each literally drank five cups). We also had watermelon and honeydew to go along with it, which, thankfully, was the last food we saw in the evening. We rolled ourselves down to the car and when Dr. B forgot to take off the parking brake he made a joke about the car being weighed down by our full stomachs.

Hands down the best evening I’ve had here – ever!

Days 22-27: Holy Mountain Hiking, Batman! (Gümüşhane/Sümela/Trabzon)

CLICK FOR PICTURES!

Late Friday night I happened to wander outside and bump into the other volunteers and Dr. B chatting in front of the hotel. We found out that there was a mid-term exam on Monday that we knew nothing about. And the authors of that exam? Us. There was plenty of time to do it but it was the principle of the thing! So I spent most of Saturday trying to remember what I’d taught the students and coming up with ways to test their knowledge. I feel like I haven’t taught them nearly as much as I could or should have but I guess it’s better than nothing. The nicest thing about Saturday was that some kind of cold front moved in; the cold and rain were a nice change of pace from warm and sunshine (strange, I know, but I think Americans are addicted to variety).

Today we had a very full day. We visited Sümela Monastery and the city of Trabzon. I’d seen pictures of the monastery so I knew it was literally attached to the side of a mountain, but it was my understanding that there were two ways of reaching it: hiking from the bottom of the mountain to the top or driving up to the carpark and going about 5 minutes by foot from there. When we arrive I found out we’re hiking. “Oh Jesus,” I thought, which was quite appropriate given we were going to a monastery and all. So basically the trail is several 45 degree sections up the side of the mountain. I’m so embarrassingly out of shape, but my students are wonderful. There was always one of them with me, and several of them insisted on trying to carry my backpack for me. It was shockingly embarrassing but when I reached the top they all clapped for me. Dr. B and I had a moment of levity when I struggled over to him, told him I hated him and that he was the Devil and then tried to punch him. We had a good laugh over it.

The monastery was built in 386 AD during the time of the Byzantine Empire and then enlarged during the 6th- and 13th-centuries. When the Greeks and Turks booted out one another’s people during the Treaty of Lausanne then the monastery was abandoned.

After the monastery hike, I think everyone was quite hungry. We headed to Trabzon and had a huge meal together at a restaurant on the Black Sea. It was truly lovely. We had köfte (meatballs), chicken, chickpea salad, pickled vegetables and some pastry thing for dessert. Then they brought out the customary watermelon and tea. The best thing about it for me was the breeze coming off the Black Sea; I’ve really missed sitting next to a huge body of water and just enjoying the breeze.

The real highlight of Trabzon was a massive mall called The Forum. And by mall, I mean a real mall – as in it could have come straight out of America. I was really looking forward to hitting the bookstore in the hopes of finding a travel book on the Caucusus. But when I found the bookstore they only had three English books and Newsweek. So I bought a fiction book about the Ottoman Empire and the latest edition of Newsweek. Oh well.

The rest of the time I spent with the kids because the movie theater was also a bust. The only movies in English were some Tom Cruise/Cameron Diaz flick and the new Twilight, neither of which I was tripping over myself to see. I ate ice cream with some of them, wandered around the bookstore with others and watched a couple of games of billiards. I had a minor argument with some of them about the origins of the word “simulator,” which they swore up and down was a Turkish word. Well. It might be, but it was originally an English word. You run into this occasionally where the Turkish and English are the same or similar – their assumption is that we took the word from them, not the other way around. Anyway, the mall had what they claimed was a 5-D simulator. I didn’t dare try it, being concerned about a machine that can manipulate space-time. The most hilarious thing was the bull riding machine they had, which one of the cockier students claimed he was expert at. Well. The man at the controls was a bit more expert, and I had a good laugh out of watching him being bucked off time and time again.

In incredibly creepy news, undercover police are following us now. The other two Americans go out in the evenings more often than me, and it seems they run into trouble on occasion with jeering/sneering locals. There have also been an increasing number of random gunshots in town, and an increased military presence because of trouble with the You Know Who not too far away from here. I’m not too worried about it, but it is kind of disturbing.

Ah well, 35 more days until I’m home.

Days 19-21: Batman! (Gümüşhane)

Let’s see. What have I been up to the past few days? Well, I visited a gold & silver mine. I put together fairly coherent lessons for my classes this week. I caught up on my own assignments. AND OH YEAH – I WAS ATTACKED BY A BAT!

Some people go abroad and they have a nice package holiday experience. This isn’t my idea of fun, but sometimes things get a little too adventurous for me. So, two nights ago I was getting ready to go to bed a bit after midnight. I took my evening shower, slipped into bed, opened the window because it’s always hot in my room and then lay down. I reach over to turn off the light and just as I’m putting my head back down on the pillow – BAM! A bat flies through the open window and lands DIRECTLY on my face.

At first, I thought it was a moth. Well, I should say at first I didn’t think I just swatted wildly at it and then I wondered what it might have been. I must have really smacked the mess out of it because it went sailing across the room, smacked the wall and then slid down onto my backpack. I flipped the light on and there sitting on my backpack was a bat. Not a moth or a piece of debris as I originally thought, but a bat. A furry, horrible, fanged bat.

I immediately freaked out. I hate bats. Not only do I hate them but I’m also afraid of them. I eventually managed to corner the bat, throw a towel on it, scoop it up and fling it out the window. But not before I spent an hour freaking out about it with Celia online.I vacillated between killing it, setting it free or capturing it. I don’t know why but all my knowledge of science went right out the window. Only after I’d thrown the actual bat out the window did it return and I realized I should have kept it in case it needed to be tested for rabies. Scouring the Internet kept me up until 3:00 AM worried about undetected bat bites, rabies and everything else under the sun (much like the State Department’s Travel Warnings, the CDC’s Health Warnings will freak you out in a heartbeat). But now I’ve just convinced myself it didn’t bite me. Denial wards off rabies, right?

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Yesterday, we visited a gold mine owned by the only Turkish mining company operating in the country. They have half a dozen or so mines spread across the country but the rest of the mining industry is controlled by foreigners (strange, considering how nationalist Turks are). When we arrived at the mine site, one of the students sidled up next to me and motioned to the bare mountainside with a smug look on his face. “This is high technology, eh?” he said, impressing upon me the great accomplishments of the Turkish people. I started to shoot back, “Yeah, kid, strip mining a mountain-side and extracting gold with cyanide is real advanced technology – I bet nobody’s thought of that before,” but instead I smiled and nodded.

I’ll admit that it was interesting to see an actual gold mine but the trip dragged on a bit long for my tastes. The company’s PR lady took about 50 pictures of us, but at least we got a hat a T-shirt out of it!

=-=

Both of the other volunteers have been sick, and I’ve had a bit of a cold. Today was the first day I actually called in sick. I was just feeling beat down and exhausted so I wanted to take a day to rest and recuperate. One of the volunteers claims to feel like he’s not really safe here anymore, but I think that’s slightly over exaggerated. However, things here certainly are a bit…hostile.

Somewhere in the province there was a pretty violent riot by a certain oppressed ethnic minority (no sense in asking for trouble by mentioning their name) a couple of days ago; Gülçe said she heard gunshots and saw the police chasing some people near the school the other night; and I’d have sworn that upon being introduced to some random guy on the street by the headmaster I was called an imperialist. Supposed Dr. B is under pressure from several quarters over the school. It seems that some people are not particularly happy about him bringing Americans here to teach English. Some people think we’re here to promote American culture, Christianity, etc. and given the recent row between Turkey & Israel over the Gaza aid flotilla shootings aboard the MV Blue Marmara, anti-Americanism seems to be at a high.

Unfortunately, this is small town Turkey. And with small towns come small town mentalities, like the inability to separate the United States from Israel or American citizens from the American government. I assumed because I was coming to a small place that people would be friendlier than usual; however, I found people in Istanbul to be exponentially friendlier than they are here. All you get in Gümüşhane are cold stares that border on being downright malicious. It certainly makes you appreciate the students more. They scream your name at the top of their lungs and bound across the street with a big smile on their face, happy to see you out and about in town.

Even so I’m back home in 41 days, and I’m counting them down.

Ten Things I've Noticed About Turkey (Türkiye)

1. Turkish people are inherently curious. For instance, they will go out of their way to see what you’re doing on your laptop. This includes purposely sitting behind you to get a better view, walking up beside you and leaning over the top of your laptop screen and pretending to stretch and yawn to get a look at what you’re up to. They will then proceed to discuss what you’re doing with other people around them as if you weren’t even there. I assume this inherent curiosity helps explain the expansionism of the Ottoman Empire. Those weren’t really invading armies but rather large, roving bands of Turks who were curious about the Balkans, Central/Eastern Europe and the rest of the Middle East – “Hey, let’s go see what those guys are up to!” Oh, and they just happened to be armed. Heavily.

2. You’ll never be able to tell a Turk’s age. The combination of chain smoking, hair, prolonged exposure to the sun and pollution (if in Istanbul or Ankara) makes this an impossible task. Furthermore, as Gülçe once pointed out to me, Turkish men look like they’re 40 the second they hit puberty. This is a clear exaggeration but for some people it’s disturbingly on point. For instance, I have two students in my beginner basic class that look like they’re pushing 40 even though they’re probably only in their early twenties. On the other hand, a small minority of students is perpetually baby-faced.

3. Turkish driving is both terrifying and inventive. The terrifying part comes from a complete disregard for all safety regulations and traffic laws, as well as a national embrace of all the “Fast and Furious” movies (Turks don’t even need a curve to “drift”). The inventive part is a bit more amusing, although no less dangerous by any means. Examples include my taxi driver using the tram tracks in Istanbul as a short cut to my hostel; driving backwards; and speeding up when pedestrians are crossing the road in front of you. I didn’t really believe Gülçe when she told me that people will drive backwards until less than 5 minutes after she explained it a taxi driver passed us in reverse. I haven’t quite determined in what instance driving backwards is superior to driving forward but I’ll continue my research in hopes of finding the answer. Finally, when crossing the street, you’re likely to hear a revving engine. I’m not sure if people are trying to run me over because I’m a foreigner or because I’ve dared to actually cross the street a quarter of a mile down the road from them.

4. There is a certain Turkish subculture that glorifies the mullet and the Jersey Shore. They’re generally young men of questionable worth and intelligence who travel in packs and, I suspect, use the Turkish equivalents of “Huh-huh, duuude” and “That’s what she said.” Gülçe told me what they’re called in Turkish (karpaçi?) and explained that they are like men from the Jersey Shore, complete with their own version of fist-pump dancing. They enjoy congregating on street corners and around their “pimped” rides trying desperately to strike poses fit for an Abercrombie ad campaign and stare you down with so much malice (see #7).

5. Turkish weddings generate more noise than Manhattan on a Saturday night. It’s not just the 200 people that show up or the music that violates even the most liberal noise ordinances, but it’s really the car horn honking. I hate the sound of a ringing phone and a car horn honking, and the tradition seems to be for the bride and groom to parade around town in a procession of cars, all of which honk their horns over and over and over again. This can continue up to midnight right outside your hotel, because it’s important to let people know at 11:59 PM someone you don’t know or care about has been married.

6. Turks congregate in herds. Whether it’s on the sidewalk or street corner, you have an 80% chance to find a grouping of no less than 4 people strategically placed to block your way. Even if they aren’t engaged in conversation or otherwise distracted, they will make no move to get out of your way. Instead they will stare you down (see below). You will inevitably be forced to divert into the street to go around them, at which point in time you subject yourself to #3. Along the same lines, most old Turkish women have grown eyes in the back of their head so that they can bob and weave along the sidewalk in such a way that they’ll block every move you make to pass them. Again, you’re forced into the street and again you’re subjected to #3.

7. People will stare you down like you’ve committed heinous crimes against humanity. If you’re accustomed to the warm smiling faces of sub-Saharan Africa or the American South then just forget about it. You won’t find it in Turkey. What you will find is that everyone is more than willing to stare you down. It might be because you’re a foreigner that people are willing to let their gaze linger but it’s more likely part of male machismo and the need to look tough because, according to Gülçe, “there’s nothing better to do around here than try to act tough.” If you can manage to actually form some sort of relationship with a Turk then you’re golden – all that staring goes out the window and suddenly you’re like family. But until you can crack that cold, hard exterior then expect to be looked at like everyone’s worst enemy.

8. Tea goes with everything. You WILL drink tea with everything. The Turkish nation is powered by caffeine. Occasionally, tea will be replaced with coffee but for the most part you’ll be drinking çay (tea). Some like it sweet, some like it hot. But if you don’t like it at all, then you’d better go somewhere else. You cannot refuse it. I’ve had it so often that I’ve managed to develop my own strong preference: four cubes of sugar and a small wedge of lemon. This presents somewhat of a problem for me since they usually only bring you two cubes of sugar if it isn’t sitting out and free on the table, so I have to mangle the pronunciation for sugar (seker), which is mostly me yelling “SHAKER, SHAKER, SHAKER” and pointing at the sugar cubes.

9. Turkish people are a commercial people. Istanbul has a strong maritime trade tradition, but the commercial culture extends to the rest of the country, as well. You’ll never see so many shops in all your life. They’re everywhere, and they sell everything. Every main thoroughfare is completely lined with shops. Fruits, vegetables, home appliances, restaurants, pastry shops, candy shops, furniture stores, department stores, clothing stores… On and on it goes! Even in Gümüshane it feels like there’s one shop for every 10 people. Maybe it feels overwhelming because they’re so condensed into commercial districts but I’d swear Turkey has the highest store to population ratio anywhere!

10. Turkish people are incredibly ethnocentric. Today in class, a student argued with me that the two main languages of Iraq were not Arabic and Kurdish but rather Arabic and Turkish. The students also reported that Turkish was a significant enough language in Germany, Belgium, Iran and Syria that it should also be listed in addition to the native languages. Turkey should also be listed amongst Western European countries because it’s European, but it should also be listed amongst Middle Eastern countries because it belongs there, too. Also, you should include it with Asia, too, because Anatolia is in Asia. Oh, and if you’re listing North American countries then also put Turkey down because they’re friends with the US and Canada. Basically, if there’s a list then you need to include Turkey, okay? It’s important.

Days 17 & 18: How I Nearly Died in the Mountains of Eastern Turkey (Gümüshane/Kent Ormani)

Today started off pleasant enough. No activities were scheduled until the afternoon, so I was able to sleep in. Sort of. The maids are apparently illiterate or otherwise just don’t care about the “Do Not Disturb” sign hanging from the doorknob, even though it’s written in English, Turkish and Russian. Every time I put it up they still come in my room to try to clean, but this time around I managed to foil their attempts to catch me butt naked running around the room. If I leave my key in the lock from the inside, then their key on the outside won’t work. In your face, perverted Turkish maids! (As an update, they just waited for me to leave the hotel to eat and then rushed in and cleaned in. I think they monitor my movements: “Dust Buster to Clean Sheets– come in Clean Sheets – subject spotted and he’s on the move. Recommend immediate implementation of Operation Filth-B-Gone in Room 117, over.”)

I dragged my butt out of bed long enough to go downstairs for breakfast and then I slept in some more. It was so nice. It was like…heaven on earth! But then it was time to prepare and go to the school for our afternoon activity, which was supposedly hiking to the ruins of Old Gümüshane. If you’ve been following the blog then it should come as absolutely no surprise to you whatsoever that the plan changed no less than three times in the span of one hour. Whenever we began to board the buses, I still had no idea where the hell we were going.

Dr. B saw fit to divide the students into groups of five and assign a group to each of us. My group was composed of the older, more mature students so thankfully I didn’t have to herd them around like a bunch of infants. It turns out our destination was a forest called Kent Ormani, which had been much talked up by my students. Well. It’s a forest, I guess. I’ve seen a lot better, though. The most impressive thing is the mountainous setting, which has absolutely nothing to do with the forest itself. The problem with traveling a lot might be that you get jaded and so only mildly appealing locales become pretty mediocre. The watermelon we all shared on a blanket really rocked, though!

The hilarious (irritating?) thing about Turkey is that people here are SO narrow-minded that they think that everything in Turkey is the absolute best thing in the world. This forest is the best forest. Their food is the best food. Their army is the best army. Istanbul is the best city. The Turkish lira is the best currency. The Turkish unibrow is the most distinguished unibrow in the world. Turkish chauvinism is the best chauvinism. The Turkish language is the best language. Turkey is the best country. UGH. You’ll never encounter more thorough or misguided nationalism as you will in this country. It’s like a showcase for the horrors of national brainwashing. They’ve certainly built a strong nation (at the expense of a certain ethnic minority that rhymes with “herds”), but they’ve also gone overboard doing it.

A few evenings ago, we went to an event at the local university that I knew had something to do with the European Union. It turned out to be a visit by an envoy from the European Commission who was holding a “town hall meeting” with the Gümüshane area concerning Turkey’s application for entry into the European Union. I thought it was interesting to note that the Commission sent a Greek national as an envoy to speak with rural Turks given the history between the two countries. And it was deeply amusing to hear his comments, which were thankfully delivered in English before being translated into Turkish.

The guy’s position was clear, if somewhat condescending: it’s up to Turkey to gain entry into the European Union, not the other way around. He was extremely diplomatic about saying so but it wasn’t hard to read between the lines. He said that the negotiations between Turkey and the EU weren’t negotiations in the traditional sense, but rather it was designed to determine the steps that Turkey needed to take (and any financial assistance they might require) to meet the requirements laid out by the European Union. He emphasized several times that all 27 member states needed to agree on everything before Turkey would be allowed to enter.

At first, I thought the guy was being a jerk. And before I got here, I went along with the line that relatively racist countries like France were blocking Turkey’s entry over issues of Islam and immigration. However, now that I’m here, I see how far Turkey has to go. The ball really is in Turkey’s court. Restrictions on basic human rights are kind of appalling and as another example, the envoy pointed to waste water treatment. That isn’t something I’d have even thought of but it’s true – the town I’m living in seems to literally dump its untreated sewage directly into the river running through the town. Call me crazy, but those aren’t the sorts of standards I think of when I think of the European Union.

Back to the point. Whenever we visited the forest, the headmaster decided we should climb a mountain. There’s no two ways about it: I’m overweight and out of shape. C’est la vie. I assumed the trail might be steep in places but then level off to give you a bit of a breather but no. It was pretty much straight uphill all the way. About halfway up the trail, I decided I wasn’t going to do it anymore. It probably didn’t help that we were like 7,000 feet above sea level or that the trail had zero maintenance and clung to the side of the mountain like it was hanging on for dear life. The fact was I just couldn’t make it, and I felt like I was about to die from oxygen deprivation or something. Pssh. A wake up call, I know. I was becoming much healthier in Chicago and then I went back South and within a few weeks my healthy persona was found floating face down in a pool of gravy.

=-=

Today we were supposed to take a trip to the Santa Ruins. I’d been told Sundays were free days, so I was a little miffed. At no point did anyone tell me it was an optional trip. So I woke up at 7:00 AM, got ready, had breakfast and trekked to the school. I dutifully boarded the bus, noting the absence of the two other American volunteers, and shared complaints with Gülçe, who I was sharing the front seat with. When we met up with Dr. B, she encouraged me to try to save myself. I asked if the trip was optional after he seemed astonished not to find the other two volunteers. “Yes, of course,” he replied. All I could envision was all the extra sleep I lost.

I flew out of the bus. I think I nearly crushed Gülçe trying to escape. It’s not that I don’t want to see the Santa Ruins, it’s just that I don’t want to hike 11 kilometers (~6.8 miles) up a mountain to see them and spend all day of my free day doing it. I was so happy to get back to the hotel, and even happier to see that Celia was still awake. So I chatted with her for a bit and then there was a knock on my door as I was getting ready to go out for lunch. It was one of the other American volunteers, and he explained that he went to the school and it was locked. So it turns out that no one even told them that we were leaving to go to Santa Ruins at 8:00 AM. The only reason I knew was because I asked. He seemed bummed out because he’d actually wanted to go, but instead he decided to go to Trabzon with the other volunteers. I declined to accompany them because I was looking forward to a lazy day, taking a quick nap and catching up on the piles of homework that have been accumulating but don’t think I wasn’t extremely tempted by the prospect of a movie and Burger King/Popeye’s Chicken/Sbarro. But I’m absolutely beyond the shadow of a doubt going to Trabzon next Sunday.

I’ve enjoyed the day of dining out at restaurants, catching up on things on the Internet, sending e-mails and doing my homework. Also I slipped a nap in there that was prematurely interrupted by the most beautiful adhan (call to prayer) that I’ve heard since arriving. I can think of worse ways to be woken up (the top of the list being my mother’s perennially cheery “RISE AND SHINE!”).

Tomorrow begins a new week, and that’s about all I have to say about that.

Day 16: Who Killed Gülçe? (Gümüshane)

Every day I hate waking up because I know the first thing I’m going to do at school is start my day off with the basic beginner class. All of us dread having them. But we’ve discovered one of the ways to really motivate them to work together properly (instead of just cheating) is to break them up into groups and give them the same worksheet to complete. Whichever team completes it first doesn’t have to do homework. You’ve never seen people with such dedication and zeal to complete a task!

We have such horrible problems with cheating in that class. It’s getting out of control. Their homework generally consists of writing sentences that cover the materials we learned about in class, such as articles or prepositions. I guess they think that Gülçe and me are so stupid that we’ll never catch on to their brilliant game of changing the subject of the sentence but leaving everything else the same. Sometimes they just outright turn in a carbon copy of one student’s work. So everyone that cheats receives an F on their homework. If they keep doing it then I’m going to start assigning those people more homework, which probably won’t work since we have a couple of students who have just refused to do their homework since the beginning of school. According to Gülçe, “Turkish people are just like that.”

I generally teach the same lesson with the basic beginners and basic advanced. The difference is that since the basic advanced are such good kids they actually do their work and want to learn. I can go more in-depth with the lesson and we can practice more, which means their command of English increases. There are really only two problem kids in the class: the boy is a know-it-all and there’s a 30 year old student in there who argues with you about every correction you make to her work.

Today for the intermediate class I found a really fun game called “Guilty.” It’s like a murder mystery. You give them a scenario (I said that someone strangled my co-teacher, Gülçe, in the middle of the night) and they split up into pairs. Each pair has to come up with an alibi and then you write the alibi on the board. Then each group comes up with a set number of questions to ask the pair. You call each pair up and then dismiss one of them into the hall. The students ask their questions to that person and then they go out into the hall and the students ask the same questions to the other person who comes in. Whichever team had the most discrepancies in their answers to the questions is the “guilty” pair. The students really took to it much faster than I thought they would, and by the end of class they were really into it.

The food at the school is starting to wear me down despite the fact that it’s free. It's always the same: some variation on meat and eggplant; some variation on lentil soup; some variation on a yogurt-based desert; and some variation on rice or French fries. The quality is low, which I think is the real problem. We generally ate the same sort of Persian food in Africa and I never got tired of that, so I’m guessing quality is the problem here.

Anyway, the food is wearing down Gülçe, too, so we agreed to go eat lahmacun for lunch. We stood out in the sun so long trying to convince one of the other volunteers to come with us and then talking to Dr. B that we lost our appetites. The sun here is really starting to get brutal! So instead of going to eat, we went to one of the plethora of silver shops in the city to browse around. I bought two silver necklaces and a ring for much less than $100; it’s so cheap because silver is mined right here in Gümüshane so you get it for bargain-basement prices.

A couple of days ago I wrote a 500-word essay on gender equality, women’s empowerment and the Millennium Development Goals in order to apply for the Ford Global Scholars program that’s run in tandem with the internship program I’m attending in the fall. It comes with a $3,000 scholarship that I could really use, so I’m hopeful about the outcome. I think the essay was decent enough!

Since I didn’t get to go out for lunch, I decided to have dinner out at this restaurant called Sevenin Yeri. They sell lahmacun, really flat and really crispy pizza type things; pide, oval shaped calzones stuffed with cheese or meat and with an open slit running along the top of it; as well as “pizza” and a few other things. I usually eat lahmacun here but this time I decided to go with the cheese pide. One of the other volunteers warned me that it comes “with a stick of butter on it,” but I thought I don’t mind a little butter. However, it turns out he was being literal. The thing comes out with an actual stick of butter on top of it. The butter quickly melts into the cheese and bread to make it nice and delicious, but I couldn’t help laughing when it first came out. I think the Turkish Paula Deen runs this restaurant.

This weekend is a little busy. On Saturday we’re visiting the ruins of Old Gümüshane, which was the first attempt to build the town in the mountains until an earthquake destroyed it. Like an idiot, I asked Dr. B when we would be leaving to hike up there. At first he said he didn’t know. Then he said, “What time did the announcement say?” even though there was no announcement. And finally he consulted with someone and delivered the most precise of answers: “In the afternoon.” I took this to mean simply, “You can sleep in a bit.”

On Sunday, which we were told would always be a free day, we’re going to the Santa Ruins. I had assumed this was the remnant’s of Santa Claus’s ill-fated attempt at establishing a base south of the North Pole, but it turns out it was a settlement built by Greeks fleeing sea pirates in the 1600’s. We have the option of hiking to the ruins with Dr. B or taking the bus with the students. Since I’m not trying to die of heat stroke, I think I’ll be taking the bus.

One of the other volunteers revolted at the mention of the Sunday expedition. I think he might be handling this place worse than even me, and he had his heart set on going to Trabzon. Apparently there’s a huge mall there that has American food, like Popeye’s Chicken & Sbarro, as well as some people that speak English. He calls it “International Day,” and I feel pretty bad that he might have to miss it. He told Dr. B flat out that he was going to Trabzon, but we’ll have to see how that pans out.

Some guy just walked into the restaurant arm-in-arm with his friend wearing a shirt that says, “Sometimes you have to kiss a lot of frogs to find a Prince.” This is a good demonstration of why I don’t wear shirts that have something in a foreign language written on them that I don’t understand.

Days 14-15: Brain the Terrible Becomes Bi-Polar (Gümüshane)

I don’t know what it is about this place but I feel like it’s making me bi-polar. One minute, I’m happy as a clam and the next I’m ready to throw a chair through the window and try to break out of Turkey. It even affects my mood in class! I’ll be praising a student and then I hear someone talking over me and I start yelling at him/her like a mental patient.

Despite my mood swings, some of my beginner students continue to refuse to do their assignments or turn in their homework. I have one student who hasn’t done a single homework assignment since the first day of class. You’d think he’d just quit coming. Others just get up and walk around while I’m talking or writing something on the board. Some have to be asked individually to copy down what’s on the board – a blanket “Please copy down what’s written on the board” just isn’t good enough for them. Today I had to throw a student out of my class because he was just sitting there staring at me the whole time. Apparently he found that a better use of his time than doing the assignment. Others were forced to stay behind after class to finish the assignment.

Advanced beginner is becoming a favorite of mine. The class is all girls except for one very smart boy that always finishes his work ahead of everyone else. They all participate. They all turn in their homework. They’re all actively engaged in learning.

Today in the intermediate/advanced class we had two new students and both of them speak considerably more English than the other students. One of them is a wealthy girl who attends a private school where there must be an American teacher because she has an almost perfect American accent and an exceptional command of English. We had a debate today about whether or not Israel should apologize to Turkey over the Blue Marmara incident; she so quickly dominated the debate that the rest of her team refused to speak out of embarrassment. Later one of them said to me, “I heard her and I just shut up! Why should I even try to talk in English in front of her?” Hopefully they’ll adjust to her, otherwise I don’t know what I’m going to do.

Yesterday I spent more time than usual with the students. I got schooled in chess three different times. I mean, not just schooled – I was crushed, destroyed. By 13 year olds. They seemed to get a kick out of it, though, so I don’t mind too much. And today our afternoon activity was trying to give me heat stroke. But actually we walked together to one of the local museums. It displays the traditional style of housing in this region, which is actually very nice, and it has a number of artifacts inside. This weekend we’ll be traveling to two sets of ruins, which I’m pretty excited about!

In the absence of much else to write, I’ll give you a glimpse of what my students turn in for their homework. The first one is sentence writing practice and the rest are from a writing assignment that asked, “If you had unlimited money but you knew you would die in 3 days, what would you do?”. Enjoy!

“World War II happened between 1919 and 1969.” (In Turkish history books, WW2 got off the ground a little early and it took us slightly longer to deal with Hitler. =P)

“Another thing that I want to do is find my ex-girlfriend (it’s first) and I want to apologize to her for the old days.” (I said “Aww” to this until he started hitting on my co-teacher. He got over that other girl awfully fast.)

“I would buy Hollywood. I would build the most beautiful grave for myself. I would buy an F-16 and drive all over the world.” (Beware of someone driving an F-16 around Hollywood.)

“I would donate $100 billion to UNICEF. I would help African people. I would try to make the world a better place.” (This one is clearly trying to suck up to me.)

“I would go to America. I would buy the Los Angeles Lakers basketball team. I would meet Obama. I would play basketball in Staples Center. I would get married to Beyonce. I would buy two thousand BMWs. Last day, I throw myself from an airplane.” (This sounds like an excellent plan!)

“I would meet my favorite football player and I would go shopping. I would buy all of the clothes.” (This is from the only girl in the class.)

“I would save myself from this illness. I would develop technology. I would buy a TV channel. I would say ‘bye bye’ to all the people on TV. I would buy all the factories. Last day I would drink sleep medicines. I would sleep. I would not feel the death.” (This guy puts all his money into factories. And I would not want to feel the death either. Good thinking!)

Days 10-13: “Braaaaaaain.” (Gümüshane/Karaca)

My students are zombies. Not only because they come stumbling into class bleary-eyed, speak English at a zombie-equivalent level and have questionable fashion taste but really it’s because they call me “Brain.” No matter how many times I correct them, they still call me Brain. They don’t even get close. And they do this with things all the time – they select the nearest English word that they know and assign it to whatever we’re talking about. They don’t know how to say my surname either, so they selected “Terrible” as a replacement for it. That makes me Brain Geoffrey Terrible.

On Saturday, we were supposed to go to Karaca Cave (pronounced “Karaja”) at 9:30 AM so naturally we left at 10:15. I move slowly in the mornings so I always reach a point where I start to panic and rush to get ready, only to remember that I’m in Turkey. In some ways, Turkish time is worse than African time. Also I don’t know where Dr. B came up with the figure of 50 miles since it was almost literally right down the road. The cave is located HIGH in the mountains, so we were offered some spectacular views once we arrived. On the way up we stopped at a little fountain that delivered fresh spring water – nice!

Only 500,000 people have visited the cave since it opened in 1996 so it’s a little off the beaten path. Nevertheless, I was shocked at the state of the tourist facilities. I don’t know why Africa has become my measuring stick for such things but the facilities they had at the cave were pretty amazing. There was a café/restaurant with an overlook over the valley and mountains; several souvenir shops and stalls; and a smaller café up the mountainside where the actual cave entrance was. There was a wooden walkway inside the cave, which I guess was impressive in its own right but it kind of paled in comparison to some of the caves I’ve visited in the United States. When I told the students there are many caves in the US they were astounded, as if Turkey has sole claim on caves or something.

I had Sunday to myself; Dr. Bayrak describes them as “off days.” The other two volunteers and my co-teacher went to the nearby city of Trabzon but I was more interested in having a lazy Sunday to myself. It’s a good thing I didn’t go because it turns out they went to the mall and the movie theater to see “Eclipse,” which if I may say so is a bit of a lame way to spend a day in a foreign city that you’ve never visited before. I slept in, had some Turkish fast food and walked around the city to take pictures before coming back to finish up some homework (maybe an equally lame day, right?).

Monday was another trying day at school. Dr. B revealed that he’d like us to spend the afternoons with the students, which essentially means a 10-12 hour work day. “To hell with that,” I said in the back of my head. I’ve decided to teach, have lunch with the students and spend about 2 hours or so with them in the afternoon before heading back to my room or wherever. I come back to the school for dinner and then hang around for an hour or so for their study hour before going back to the hotel. I guess it doesn’t bother me so much that we’re being asked to spend so much time with the kids, it’s just this is so radically different from the way the program was presented to me.

Today we finally managed to convince Dr. B to restructure the classes. Having one kid in the advanced class was ridiculous, especially since he wasn’t all that advanced. He also had a bit of an attitude problem. He asked me to write neater even though my writing isn’t that sloppy. I wanted to respond with “lrn2read, n00b” but instead I just went about my business. It’s incredible the way the students think they can speak to you sometimes!

Our classes are now structured thusly: “A” class is basic beginner, “B” class is basic advanced and “C” class is intermediate. The intermediate class remains my favorite in that I don’t have to stop to explain the meaning of “dig” and “cost” and “hello, how are you?”. The basic beginner class is like hell on earth. You just can’t break down “Please write 5 sentences using these words” any more than that, and yet they still don’t understand the instructions. If I didn’t have Gülçe to help me with translating everything, we’d just be sitting there staring at each other the entire class period. They also cheat. I don’t want to keep them from working together but it’s remarkable when I ask them to use five specific words in sentences that they all seem to come up with sentences that are a slight variation on one another.

Basic advanced is a bit better. Today we reviewed irregular verbs and they did remarkably well. Dr. B took my intermediate class today to teach them computer science (I wish I was a fly on the wall during that) so I bummed around the school until lunch time.

School is improving, I’ll admit. If I could manage to get more prepared for classes then I think my teaching experience would go better. It’s hard to be organized when you aren’t an English teacher, though. I don’t even remember what half this grammar stuff means – like present progressive, etc. I know how to speak English and I know how to write well but I just don’t remember all the rules – I think you reach a point where your command of the language is good enough that the individual rules become irrelevant.

The more time I spend with the students, the more I enjoy their company. A new group of students arrived this week, and I’m feeling much better about them. I wouldn’t necessarily call them nerds but they’re definitely not the jock-type students that dominated the first week. They want to talk about books and video games and things of the like, stuff I can actually carry on a conversation about. I’ve played chess with one of them (and barely won) and today a group of them escorted me through the weekly bazaar. They’re all quite young so they like to make silly jokes (such as giggling when we passed the women’s underwear section in the bazaar – although to be fair I laughed also, those were some huge bras) but they’re all good kids. They’re not afraid to laugh and enjoy themselves, which is a nice departure from the stone-faced townsfolk.

After our stroll through the bazaar, we went to an ice cream shop and they insisted on buying water and ice cream for me. Turkish people are hospitable to the point of almost being irrational about it but I didn’t want to make a scene. They were showing me some of their favorite Turkish singers on TV and talking about the best football teams in Turkey. Later we stopped into a candy shop. They asked me about George Washington and George Bush on the way to the shop, and they seemed very amused about my reason for liking Barack Obama: “Because he’s not George Bush.” In the shop, they explained to the shopkeeper that I’m an American teaching English in the town, and he asked me if I liked Obama. I thought, “Oh hell…this could go anywhere…” I went with my gut and said “yes,” so he gave me a thumbs up, a big smile and offered me some free pestil – a local candy made out of mulberry and walnuts. The students also managed to get a discount on our bill at the ice cream shop with the same American spiel. It’s nice to see that we still have some credibility around the world, even in Turkey!

Day 9: Jesus Mercy, What The Hell Have I Done? (Gümüshane)

When I first arrived in Tanzania and the plane was landing, I could see across the city from the window because our approach was very low. For as far as I could see, there wasn’t a single paved road. I panicked. The first thought to race through my head was, “Jesus mercy, what the hell have I done?”. That’s the way I’ve felt almost since I arrived here. The feeling is waning but I always have a hard time adjusting to the places I travel to because I’m not like an ordinary person. My academic focus and preference for a nice dinner and conversation seems like it leaves me a pariah!

Teaching today… It was a little better. My co-teacher, Gülçe, has arrived from San Diego. I was under the impression she was a college student. But no. She’s a junior in high school. Thankfully she seems to be pretty on top of things, and she’s taught at the summer school in the past so she has a pretty good idea of the things that are going on. Unfortunately, she’s only here for 15 days. I don’t know who is going to be my co-teacher after that. It’s just one of a million unanswered questions around here.

“A” class this morning… Geez. When Gülçe arrived she was shocked to find that I was supposed to teach them international relations. As she put it, “How can you teach them international relations when they don’t even know what a T-shirt is?” Yeah, good question. So we scrapped my lesson plans and relied on some of the teaching English workbooks that she brought along with her. Today we worked on the past tense of verbs dealing with money and shopping, and I gave them homework on writing sentences.

The problem with the class is that most of the kids are young, and they just don’t care. One kid just outright told me “No” when I told him to do the assignment. I didn’t even know what to do. What kind of kid just sits there and tells the teacher “no”? There’s also a know-it-all in the class; God bless him, he is really trying and he’s usually even right. He really shouldn’t even be in the beginner class but he’s really young, like 15. The rest of them seem altogether uninterested. Frankly, I’m not even sure what they’re doing here.

After “A” class, “B” class comes as a breath of fresh air. I decided to actually try to teach the lesson I had prepared on the structure of the international community. It went relatively well. I don’t know if they fully understood everything I was talking to them about but they were able to grasp concepts and things. The lesson went by a lot faster than I thought it would, so I tried to give them a writing assignment on what they thought the best form of government would be. And that was a total flop. I felt like they didn’t know enough about government in English terms to be able to work with the assignment, so for the rest of the session we discussed government: the three branches, checks and balances, etc. About half of the class was engaged and they were all boys – the girls just sat on the other side of the room with this empty smile on their faces. I don’t know how to get them to participate.

Even though I think “B” class could handle actual curriculum, I don’t think it would be to their advantage. If they’re at the school to learn English then I should teach them English. I’m going to try to give it an international slant whenever I can but that’s a challenge when everyone tells you they’d never leave Turkey even if they could. However, there was one promising “international” note during class. I asked them all to pick a country so that for homework they could read a piece of news about the country and come back to share it with the class the next session. They all readily volunteered the country they would like to be, and they picked good countries like the United Kingdom, Japan, Egypt and Germany.

I met with “C” class today, the advanced students, which turns out to be advanced student. There’s one guy in there. The other two teachers have complained about him, and he does seem to have a little bit of an attitude problem. None of us really feel his English is good enough to be at the advanced level but we’ll just have to work around it (unless we can convince Dr. Bayrak otherwise). Thankfully I was able to do the introduction thing with him because I didn’t meet with him yesterday. The latter portion of the class we read a story together out of one of Gülçe’s books, and during the process I determined that his pronunciation was pretty good but his reading comprehension was pretty bad. He says he wants to be able to speak better, so we’ll be focusing a lot of conversational English, I guess.

After classes, Gülçe and I went with one of the other teachers to a local restaurant where we had “Turkish ravioli” in a kind of garlic yogurt sauce. It was heavenly compared to the school food, which isn’t bad but this was pretty amazing. We received a call from Dr. B asking us to report to this café/entertainment center facility near the river clear on the other side of the town, which admittedly isn’t a huge distance but still a bit of a walk. We had quite a lot of çay and I watched games of backgammon and foosball (maybe I’m a frump but I’m always more comfortable and enjoy myself more as the spectator). We then headed back to the school where a bit of a scheduling mixup mildly infuriated me.

Tomorrow we’re heading to a cave about 50 miles away from the town. Even though I’m claustrophobic and scared of bats, I’m still looking forward to it. It will be a nice chance to interact with the kids that doesn’t involve them hassling me to play volleyball, football, basketball or some other kind of damned ball.

Days 7 & 8: Teachin’ Ain’t Easy (Gümüshane)

Yesterday we went with Dr. Bayrak to see the school and look around Gümüshane a bit. The town is relatively small, although not as small as I thought it would be. I’ll try to go around in the afternoon tomorrow to take some pictures. Going around the town with Dr. Bayrak reminds you of how small the place actually is since it seems like everyone knows him.

The summer school is housed in a building that functions as a normal school during the school year. There are chalkboards, projectors and the most uncomfortable desks in the world inside each classroom. This morning we had a meeting in the auditorium where Dr. Bayrak explained the rules and the agenda to everyone, first in English and then in Turkish since not everyone was catching on.

There are three classes: A (beginners), B (intermediate) and C (advanced). We begin teaching at 8:30 AM and go until 12:00 Noon when we break for lunch. Then we have an afternoon activity of some sort and at 6:00 PM we have dinner. Afterwards, there’s an hour worth of time called “study hour” where we hang around to help the students with their homework.

I start my day with the A class, which is composed of some serious beginners in English. I mean…wow. My definition of “beginner” must be way off because I’d have called the class “no English.” To compound the problem, I still don’t have a Turkish co-teacher. Thankfully one of the other Turkish teachers that I met yesterday came to my rescue. Even basic things like introductions need translation. I knew immediately that I was not cut out to teach English, but I’ll try. Teaching international relations is going to be just absolutely ridiculous with this group. To make it worse, they told me they all hate geography and that they have no interest in ever leaving Turkey. It boggles the mind to be in a room full of a dozen people and not a single one of them wants to leave their own country. I don’t even know how you make international relations interesting to a group like that!

A class also has some troublemakers in it, who immediately clustered up together in the corner. There’s also a know-it-all that speaks out of turn, but I’d have him over the corner kids. I guess some of them have decided that they just won’t ever understand me, so they shut down and drift off into their own little world. For the most part I let them be today – I don’t want to make my first impression one of a disciplinarian – but tomorrow may be different if they persist.

After an hour of instruction with A class and a fifteen-minute break, I move on to B class. There are seemingly light years between A and B class in terms of language comprehension. Whereas I could barely get A class to tell me what city they were from, B class could discuss why “Lost” started to suck after Season 3. I spent so much less time worrying over simplifying my English with them that we ran out of things to talk about! We discussed what they liked to do, their music tastes, movie tastes, relationships, academic interests and a bunch of other stuff. The only problem with this class is that some students are much better at English than others; in fact, they’re kind of all over the board and it makes it somewhat difficult to teach to people who aren’t on the same level.

Supposedly C class consists of only one student, but more may come tomorrow. I didn’t get a chance to speak with them today because we started late (big surprise).

After class is dismissed, the students seem to split up into boys and girls. This is really irritating to me but as one of the girls explained, “We have nothing in common. Boys don’t like to gossip. Well. They do gossip. But they don’t make a special time for gossip.” I don’t know if we’re supposed to spend time with them or not since that wasn’t made clear to me. The other two teachers went with the boys to play basketball; however, I can’t think of anything in this world less interesting to me so I took a mini-tour of the town with some of the girls and then I came back to my room for the afternoon.

We reconvene at the school for dinner at 6:00 PM. So far the food has been excellent, but my stomach doesn’t necessarily care too much for it. I don’t think the problem is the food; in fact, I’m pretty sure the problem is my stomach. Africa has made my stomach FUBAR probably for the rest of my life. Oh well.

Tomorrow I’ll teach an actual lesson on the structure of the international community. For my beginners I guess that will just be vocabulary.