In which I watch an ostrich [not] give birth...

The exciting things in my life lately:

• Traveling to Hatay/Antakya, meeting new friends, eating good food, and seeing one of the best Mosaic museums in the world…

• Cutting out paper snowflakes, decorating the house, watching the first flakes of real snow fall, and bonding with roommates….

• Traveling to Edirne/ Istanbul, seeing beautiful mosques/churches, enjoying long bus rides, and receiving a Müzekart [Free Museum Admissions!!!]...

• Retrieving packages from locked safes at custom control, venturing to a new (strange?) part of the city, trying to argue in Turkish, and accidently breaking several universal bus rules on the way back…

• And, on Wednesday:  cancelling class, watching an ostrich [not] give birth, and bonding with my students. 

Every time I think I understand my life, I am consistently proven wrong.   When my students came late to class and told me there was a “camel bird” on campus, I was more than intrigued but tried to keep up my teacherly façade (which isn’t that great in the first place).  When, with the use of Google Translate, they invited me along to see an ostrich, that teacherly façade disappeared completely.  What my students may not realize:  If presented with the option of an exciting adventure, I will always choose that adventure over a boring classroom.  My academic attention span is truly quite short. 

So.

Back to the ostrich.

I followed my students out to the Animal Hospital and to exclamations of “So-and-so is a gentleman” as every door was held open by at least three students was ushered to the “Livestock Operating Room” in the hospital.  Lo and Behold, there was, in fact, a sedated ostrich sprawled out on the floor and surrounded by a variety of upper-class veterinary students and faculty.  Being a bit averse to blood (read:  not wanting to pass out on the concrete floor in front of my students) I stayed near the head and neck of the ostrich but, obviously, the exciting things were happening nearer its nether regions where all of my students were crowding eagerly.  Based on their location, the jokes being made in Turkish which seemed to all contain the word “coming”, the explanations the seemed to include some indication that something was wrong in the bird’s stomach, the fact that nothing was happening—everyone was waiting, and the fact that my students said they wanted to watch the ostrich for an hour, I made the only logical assumption:  Obviously the ostrich was giving birth. (Knowing nothing about the ostrich birthing process, I assumed an hour was an accurate amount of time). 

I watched for about 40 minutes before leaving the operating room and cancelling class.  The students left with me and explained something about cutting into the stomach.  “Oh, a C-Section!” I thought. 

Afterwards, my roommate reminded me:  An Ostrich is a bird.  It lays eggs.  It doesn’t give birth.  So…I don’t know what I watched for 40 minutes.  I do know it was interesting, I do know it was unexpected, and I do know that it was an adventure.  Welcome to my life in Turkey. 

Abbreviated Adventures.

Well.  Once again my adventures and everyday life have far outpaced my blog posts.  Whoops.  I never claimed consistency as one of my talents.  I’ve been in Afyon for over a month now so, hopefully, as I adapt to my schedule, blogging can be a more regular occurrence.  (One can always hope, right? :) )  An outline of the last month's travels:

·      Aizonoi and Çadvarhisar:  Çadvarhisar is a fairly small/traditional farming village about 135 km from Afyon proper.  What makes the town special?  It contains the largest surviving temple to Zeus as well as a bunch of other old ruins that were only “discovered” by Western explorers in the mid-19^th century.   Unlike many Turkish tourist sites, we were among very few travelers, and were definitely seen as a novelty by the people we encountered in the small town.  The bus/minibus adventure to and from Afyon went remarkably well and strengthened my confidence for future travels.

 

·      Eğirdir Gölü (Lake Eğirdir): My favorite weekend so far.  We traveled to the Turkish “Lake District” for a weekend with friends, swimming, biking, and relaxing dinners of fresh fish.  The staff at the guesthouse, Charley’s Pension was incredibly welcoming and offered wonderful accommodations, kahvaalti (Turkish breakfast), and traveling assistance.  This weekend (and the lake and mountains) were exactly what I needed and maybe even a little reminiscent of my hometown—hopefully I can return in the spring before I leave Turkey. 

·      Antalya:  One of the major tourist towns on the Mediterranean coast of Turkey and also the placement site of one of my friends and a fellow Fulbright compatriot.  First off, the size of Antalya reaffirmed truly small and easily navigable nature of Afyon J  Secondly, the numbers of tourists (mainly of the aged European variety) made me realize how truly homogenous Afyon is.  Instead of being corrected and spoken to rapidly when we attempted Turkish, Antalya-ites recognized and appreciated my limited vocabulary.  Instead of constantly being asked, “Why don’t you know Turkish?” our meager knowledge of Turkish was complimented and (I think J ) appreciated. We found a used bookstore, dined near the water, swam in the Mediterranean, visited Hadrian's gate, and perused the Antalya museum.  

  

On Sunday, we visited Perge, another ancient Roman site that is definitely more popular than Aizonoi.  Many of the statues at the Antalya museum originated at this site, so it made a great 2-day experience!  

More updates on day-to-day life in Afyon to come soon!  Also, I’ll be taking a 6-day trip to Georgia for Kurban Bayramı (The Sacrifice Holiday—on the Islamic calendar, to celebrate Abraham’s [Ibrahim] willingness to sacrifice his son, Ismail) later this week!  Stay tuned!    

The First Week in Afyon!

We arrived in Afyon on Thursday afternoon and the days since then have been a crazy blur of apartment shopping and furnishing, mind-numbing waiting on paperwork, and slowly but surely adapting to my new surroundings.  We still don’t have internet in our apartment…so Skype tours are going to have to wait while I get a lot of reading done in the absence of internet L 

That said, WE HAVE AN APARTMENT!  It is a three-bedroom flat on the ground floor near the city center. We’re right next to our real estate office, across the street from the People’s Republican Party (The CHP, Ataturk’s party) and near a variety of stores, bakeries, and cell phone shops J  The campus is set apart from the town, so it will be a 15 minute bus ride to work in the morning, but I definitely appreciate the location and ability to be in an apartment over the accommodations (aka dorms) that were closer to Afyon Kocatepe University. 

On Monday I taught my first lesson!  I will be teaching 15 hours in Hazerlik (the preparatory year of English classes many students are required to take between high school and college) and 6 hours in the School of Veterinary Sciences.  The latter assignment will be two 3-hour classes of conversational English taught to freshman students on Monday and Wednesday afternoons.  I did preliminary classes (introductions and such) in both of my veterinary classes this week but Hazerlik classes don’t start until next week (and don’t REALLY get into the swing of things until the week after that). 

I was told that, as students generally don’t come to the first day of school after breaks, I should go to the classroom but not prepare any substantial lessons plans as I would only have two or three students.   On Monday, I had 26 attentive freshman awaiting my every word and on Wednesday I had even more (and less attentive) students J  It looks like the classrooms are designed to fit closer to 60 students…so it should definitely be an adventure!  Even though there is a lot that is still unsettled, I feel a little better now that I have seen the classes and know what I need to plan for as far as levels/expectations and such.  Hopefully I’ll get curriculum and a class list soon too J I’m excited to start planning some more fun activities to get them engaged during class time! 

Although Afyon is definitely bigger than I expected, it’s still a smaller and easily negotiable city.  I’ve enjoyed seeing different parts of the town through our trips to events at our colleague’s homes and random wanderings. I hiked up the Hittite fortress in the center of the city on Sunday, and it definitely afforded some nice views of the city.  Apparently the legend is that, if you hike the fortress, you will stay in Afyon for 7 years (or forever, depending on the version you believe).  So…you might all be coming to visit me here for a long while J 

There’s so much more that I want to share, but more routine/informative blog posts will probably have to wait until we have internet in our apartment J I’ll have some pictures to share soon too!  

A Bit About Afyonkarahisar?

This video apparently tells a little bit more about Afyonkarahisar, my soon-to-be-new-home for the next 9 months.  It's supposed to available in English translation but I couldn't find the link :(  Hopefully I can do more searching tomorrow!

Afyonkarahisar Video

Also, FYI, Afyonkarahisar means "Opium Black Fortress" in Turkish.  If nothing else, it's a pretty cool city name!

Jet Lag and Other Adventures

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 24^th, 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

Anit Kaber, Ataturk's Memorial

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!