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!