Exploring the Local Environs

Six weeks in and my weeks still can’t be described as routine. I know what to expect from work at t

his point, and I do experience a certain amount of dread for my six-hour workdays, but even lesson plans I repeat ten times in a row include variety in retrospect, thanks to the many characters that make up my classes. Today, for example, I learned where you can pay 25 YTL for a beer (very expensive!) and was asked on a date. In fact, my students would be the perfect subjects of a research project. I can ask them all the questions I want, and they have to respond. Some days I feel more like I’m the student in a class on Turkish culture than the teacher. This is, however, my version of teaching after a nap, a giant cup of coffee, and a few pieces of chocolate. If anyone had asked me how I liked it yesterday I may have melted into a puddle and refused to give any response other than a weak and pathetic moan. There is a direct correlation between how much I enjoy teaching and how much energy I have.

But after only two days of teaching, I’m halfway through my workweek and the weekend is already in sight. My eventful weekends more than make up for the many peaks and valleys I experience Tuesday through Friday. Last weekend, for ex

ample, began with my first taste of Iskendaar Kebab. Some friends and I went to what is apparently one of the best restaurants in the city for this local specialty, which is essentially a plate of bread cubes covered in sheets of lamb, drizzled with a thin tomato sauce and topped off with boiling butter. And, of course, it wouldn’t be Turkish if there weren’t a pile of yogurt on the side. Long gone are my days of vegetarianism (for now). It was actually quite good, and certainly filling. The night progressed in its typical fashion with a trip to a bar and a dance club, and ended with a very tired Emily.

Saturday was nice and relaxing, with a BBQ as the main event. Sunday, on the other hand, was a day of exploration. After a group breakfast of pancakes grace à Aisha, Kim, Charlie, Christa and I hopped on a bus to Ulus, an older section of the city complete with a castle and bazaars. For three hours we walked our feet off as we searched for photo opportunities, met children who insisted on showing us sketchy ways up narrow alleys, and generally enjoyed a different perspective of Ankara. At first we somehow ended up i

n a very residential area within the castle walls, complete with sagging rooftops and children playing soccer in the streets. Eventually, however, we found our way to the more historic area, where shop windows were bursting with beautiful jewelry and sparkling water pipes. Christa and Kim both bought some jewelry at fairly reasonable prices; I somehow resisted and walked away with nothing more than a free cup of tea. We also happened upon a food bazaar, where you could find everything from honeycomb to cheese to fruit and fish. I have great plans of going back and loading up on all the wonderful foods. It should be good practice for my Turkish numbers as well.

The day did not end here, however. At 5:00 I was due to meet five of my students for coffee in a different area of the city. All four of us ended up going, which actually thrilled the students. We met at a coffee shop called Khave Duneyesi, or Coffee World. It was delightful. It had Turkish and European coffee drinks and an endless supply of beautiful chocolates. I had Turkish coffee and shared in some chocolate fondue. The students were much happier to talk than they normally are in class, and one even read my fortune from the coffee grounds in the bottom of my cup. No bad predictions, thank goodness, only difficult decisions and a turbulent love life. I would expect nothing less.

From there, we voyaged on toward dinner at a cheap restaurant that serves kokarech, a special type of kebab made of sheep intestines. I had tasted it before and opted instead for some mussel dolmas. They were essentially mussel shells stuffed with spice rice, with the mussel meat piled on top. Delicious. I think they may be my new favorite Turkish food.

Monday involved a trip to the campus library, where I found two good Arabic textbooks, a nice long run, and a potluck dinner to celebrate Rosh Hashanah. Then it was back to work. I did make an exciting plane ticket purchase for a trip to Van at the end of October. Van is in the far east of the country, and is considered the Kurdish capitol of Turkey. I have a feeling October is going to fly by. September certainly did!

Quite the Night

This story actually took place nearly two weeks ago, but this website has been down. At any rate, enjoy, and I'll write about this recent past weekend as soon as I get a chance.

Last week I happened upon the granddaddy of all stories. Let me tell it from the beginning.

Friday night I went into the city with Charlie, Joe, Kim, and Natalie and ended up smoking nargili on the patio of the fourth floor of an English-style pub. The nargili was actually very good, much better than any sheesha I ever had in Egypt. While there, Joe and Charlie started chatting with some of the other people on the balcony, including some guy with dreadlocks who wants to be a shaman. We smoked and chatted and relaxed after a long week of work, and finally around 12:30 we were ready to head home.

There is a bus system that runs to and from the school every hour, but one of the guys they had been chatting with offered to drive us back in his car, since it was on his way and he was actually a Bilkent student. In what was in retrospect a moment of poor judgment, the six of us piled into his little new Mercedes. I had the sublime priveledge of sitting on Natalie's lap. I think our driver must have told Charlie to open the glove box, because he did, and inside he found a set of brass knuckles. Incredulous, we all started asking why he had them. His response was simply that you need them in Turkey. I didn't entirely follow the thread of the conversation, but shortly thereafter I was lazily gazing out the side window, in a happy haze, when I noticed a black VW on our right that seemed to be getting rather close. And then it hit us. Not hard, just a very intentional bump, followed by some punches aimed at Joe and Charlie through the open windows of the moving cars! Our driver stopped (in the middle of a very busy road) and five guys jumped out of the other car and dragged him to a grassy divide, where they began punching and kicking him like there was no tomorrow. I was honestly afraid for is life. Joe and Charlie jumped out and ran over, but by the time they got there a bunch of men in business suits were already putting a stop to it. It turned out that these men were, in fact, the police. They all talked with a great deal of animation for quite some time. Us three girls, meanwhile, were glued to the backseat of the car, gazing wide-eyed and without a clue what was actually going on.

Eventually they all got back in the car and everyone headed to the police station. In the car, our driver revealed that he had, in fact, used the brass knuckles on the other guys! Luckily, they got lost in the grass and no one could find them. Once at the Turkish police station, the six of us headed into an office and took a seat. Our driver came and went, talking on and off with the police officers. For whatever reason, I was hard put not to burst out in laughter, and the officers kept having to come over and tell us all to be quiet (everyone was quite interested in piecing everything together). About ten minutes later, they let us all go, along with the guys from the black car. I got to see some very colorful prostitutes on the way out, and we had a police escort for about half the drive back.

By not you’re all wondering what actually happened. I was too. The best that we could figure, our driver had cut off the other car at some point, and their response was to beat him up in the middle of the road. Once at the police station, they discovered that our driver was over the legal level of alcohol (something we had not known) and therefore decided that if he filed charges they would have to charge him with drunk driving. So instead, they just let everyone go. Mind you, they had him get back in his car and drive home over the legal limit, and with six people piled in a car meant for five at the very most.

What a night.

Nearly An Average Week

You could say it hasn’t been the most eventful of weeks, but work aside, it has been far from boring.  We moved on this week from our special little “Welcome to Turkey/Here’s (Briefly) How To Teach” to sitting for hours on end proctoring exams.   No reading, no music, just sitting.  Tuesday we sat for 2 hours, and Wednesday, the crowning glory, we sat for five hours.  Then, Friday, we were placed in our own special Teaching Units.  These units consist of roughly 15 veteran teachers who will be force-feeding students grammar and vocabulary, and about five of us CSIs, which stands not for Crime Scene Investigators but rather blandly for Communication Skills Instructors.  We were given all of Friday to sit in our Teaching Unit (TU) rooms to prepare lesson plans that were already prepared, while the actual teachers went to meetings.  In short, I became very well versed in current events.  We will be doing the same Monday-Wednesday of this week, and Thursday will finally be the big day, D-Day, when we teach our first classes.  Scary stuff.

 On a social scale, however, I’ve had plenty to do.   Perhaps even too much.  Wednesday was the birthday of one of the other CSIs, and a huge group of us went to a campus bar and then back to our apartment building for some Sangria.  This, however, turned out to be nothing compared to Friday.  Some of the Brits in out building planned out the whole evening: a bit of liquid goodness in the apartments, followed by some time at an English Pub-style establishment, followed by a very Turkish dance club with live music.  It was fun, we got home late, and Saturday was painful.  Even more painful considering about six of us had to make our way back in to the city for a medical examination the university requires for insurance purposes.  The appointment was for 10 am…cruel.  I should mention, however, that Turkish doctors offices are much friendlier than their American counterparts.  There was tea.  There was coffee, juice, little packaged cakes, and bread sticks.  It was like a waiting room smorgusboard.  Even better, the doctor we saw encouraged us to smoke!  I think he was only half-joking.

 Today, Sunday, the university treated us to brunch at a very nice restaurant nearby.   There were no pancakes, but there was fresh orange juice, cheese, olives, tomatoes and cucumber, honey, bread, Turkish Delight…and I still feel like I’m leaving out half of it.  It was lovely, aside from the bees that seemed to enjoy dive-bombing our table.  Unfortunately, brazen bees seem to be the norm here.  I had three in my room a few days ago and had to call in reinforcements to remedy the issue. 

 We also had a city tour today, courtesy once again of the program.  It was a nice idea, and it did give me slightly better sense of where I’m living, but two hours on a bus on a Sunday, after a large brunch, is naturally a bit rough.  I was happy to see my own apartment again, where I promptly fell asleep reading “The History of Love.” 

Back to work tomorrow!