After spending most of yesterday feeling proud of myself for
sleeping through the night and beating jet lag, karma got me last night and I
ended up lying awake for 3 hours wishing that it really was the middle of the
afternoon J Whoops.
Besides the nagging sleepiness, the last few days have been
great! Jam-packed full of information,
lectures, and reminders of my need to learn Turkish FAST, but wonderful nonetheless. We’ve
had a lot of excellent politics/society/culture type lectures mixed in with
some fast-paced Turkish lessons which, although I know I’m not acing, I feel
like I’m not too bad at keeping up, and we jumped into some knew “How to Teach
ESL”-type exercises today. We’ll be
doing most of our ESL teaching sessions next week.
We also met our university representative yesterday and that
was really reassuring. Even if we don’t
know the exact details on our living situation and other bits and pieces,
having him as our guide makes me feel a lot better! We’ll be starting to teach/observe in the
classes on September 24th, so that should give us a bit of time to
get moved in and adjusted too. I’ll be
teaching mainly in Hazerlik, a preparatory year of English between high school
and college, but I’ll also be teaching 3 hours a week in the veterinary
school. That should be quite the
adventure!
On Wednesday, we took a tour to Anit Kaber, the
mausoleum/burial place of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the “Father of the Turkish
Nation.” As our guide explained, he is
basically “The George Washington and Benjamin Franklin of Turkey in one
person.” He enacted a ton of
modernizing reforms and even went so far as to completely rewrite the Turkish
alphabet. Needless to say, he’s pretty
popular around here! This was my second
time to go and I really enjoyed it. I
did realize that twice is two times more than I’ve been to any American monument
(or Washington DC)—definitely something I want to remedy when I get back to the
states! I think I had more contextual
knowledge this time around and that helped me to be more relaxed and enjoy the
experience. It was also our first time
to get out into the [HOT!] sunshine and leave our basement lecture halls J
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| Anit Kaber, Ataturk's Memorial |
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| And...the group photo :) |
Yesterday we had the privilege of attending a reception by
the US Embassy in honor of the Peace Corps 50-year anniversary of being in
Turkey. It was really fun to be there
and chat with so many interesting people who have been invested in Turkey for
SOO long. The first lady I met had been
placed in Afyon, so that was an exciting surprise! As the first group in Turkey, they had been
commissioned by President Kennedy and had been residing here in Turkey when he
was assassinated. You could tell that
the experience had been a formative experience in all their lives and it was
exciting to see their youthful enthusiasm even inside of their 50 years of
maturity since the experience. Tonight I
went to another reception and got to see some of their pictures from their time
in Turkey—quite interesting!
Tomorrow we’re set for a morning of Turkish lessons before
we go off for a tour of the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations. Hopefully as we head into the weekend, I’ll
find even more opportunities for exploring the city and engaging my Turkish
knowledge! Iyi geceler! Good night!
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