I spent a lot of time this week reflecting on ...really, just everything. It's funny how being in a place so different will make you do that. Studying abroad in Germany last summer came so easily for me. Many things were different but I felt like I made a very natural transition into German culture and life. My transition into Turkish culture and life has been quite different and a bit tougher. It actually made me wonder if I would really be okay going off to Russia for 3 months in the Fall. These experiences are teaching me so much about myself and just... life. It sounds so cliche, but it's so true.
I always wanted to be so worldy and travel a ton, but the more I travel, the more I just want to settle down somewhere and put some of the things I've learned abroad to use. It's kind of weird traveling for such extended periods of time when you are in college. Because let's be real, the closest thing I have to being my own home is my college dorm/apartment that I get kicked out of at the end of each school year. For the past two years, once school has ended, I've been lucky to travel, study (in), and see other places. I mean, what else would I be doing anyway?
I also slightly panicked this week because the full weight of me being a senior in college hit me. It's really not "that long" before I'll need to know what I'm doing with myself post-grad. So many options. It's just overwhelming. I have far too many interests, which only complicates things. I think I would honestly be happy if someone just told me what to do. You can make the best of any situation, right??
I keep telling myself that I have all of August (once I'm home from Turkey/Germany) to get my life in order before I hop on a plane to Russia. I'm just going to suppress the stress until then. New life quote: suppress the stress.
Here is the link to pics of Mt. Nemrut sunrise. Here are some things that happened in the last week:
Friday (06/21)
Okay, and finally we make it to today! This morning I had sausage, sort of. It was more like spam in the shape of sausage. It was aight, but not the same! I also had what I can only describe as a vanilla pudding flavored Nutella. I liked it, but it was different!
I don't remember mentioning this, but my class is planning a parade/picnic/party for the 4th of July for the entire school! This is my community project for LE. Today we made a ton of posters and decorations and everything seems to be running smoothly. There's so many details that just really need to fit together for this to work and there's really no telling what will happen until the day of! For instance, we assigned each class to bring something different so that not one class or teacher is responsible for so much stuff. I just hope that like the 3rd graders will be into it and bring their items! Teaser for July 4th festivities:
Side-note: I sent of 11 post cards today! Here is the breakdown: 1 to DC, 1 to Canada, 3 to Alabama, 2 to Virginia, 1 to Florida, 1 to Texas and 2 to NY! So postcards are (fingers crossed) coming y'all's way soon!
Also, it's getting pretty dang hot here. It's just a crazy dry heat. I'm used to boiling hot in Alabama with all the humidity.. and even in DC too. This weekend should be above 40 degrees Celsius (about 100-110 degrees Farenheit).
Tomorrow I'm heading to Urfa for the weekend, again! Except this time I will be with the other teachers instead of my host family. We'll see what sorts of things we get into!
Thursday (06/20)
Let it be known that on this day a student told me how (in front of the entire class, mind you) how much he enjoys my class. It was a good day. It's funny though because I walked into class with absolutely no lesson plan. I figured I'd wing it and see what happened. Guess it turned out well! We have been talking about food this week and I had asked them the day before to bring in their favorite Turkish recipe and we would translate them into English together. Well, they all brought in Turkish recipes in English. Totally taken from the internet I'm sure. Whatever. Anyway, so I made them tell a partner how to make their recipe and then I asked them to make a recipe card on construction paper. It had to include the title of the dish, the ingredients, instructions and a picture (that they drew). While they did that I tallied up how many had appetizers, main dishes, desserts, etc., I split them up and assigned page numbers. Then I had them read their recipe cards one by one to the class while I made a table of contents page. And I had two girls make a cover page while they listened. By the time I had the last recipe card, we had used up 2 hours AND I was able to clip it all together. Viola! I asked them if I could keep it and they loved it! And then I sheepishly admitted that it was a selfish activity because I wanted the class cookbook all along. Haha. Then one student said how creative I am and how fun the activities I assign are. HUGE sigh of relief, guys. Because you have to keep in mind that their participation is completely voluntary. They don't pay to come and they don't have to be there. It's just a free community class sort of thing. And yet they keep coming back :).
I can't emphasize how lucky I am to have my class, they are all so great. Some of the other classes are really disrespectful and literally tell their teachers how bored they are. Some of them refuse to participate at all and are really just there to cause a ruckus and be with friends. My students all participate, are competitive in games, seem to enjoy class, are polite, sometimes disruptive (until I point to the class rules that they created themselves on the very first day)... all in all though, no complaints from me :).
Wednesday (06/19)
**HALF-WAY MARK (wahhht! where's the time gone?)**
Tuesday (06/18)
This was a pretty cool day because all of the teachers went to the local grocery store together to buy ingredients for PB&J's!!! Oh yeah, the best part was that we went by ourselves, without any of our Turkish friends!! It was so liberating. And strange. In case you haven't noticed, we are really dependent on our host siblings. It's not even necessarily by choice, although they are extremely helpful and we love them! Because of all the crazy riots and such in Turkey, LE has really buckled down and we aren't allowed to be by ourselves. Anyway, it was a very successful trip. We made it back to the school, found an empty class and locked ourselves inside to enjoy our American food. PB&J's, Oreo's and Diet Coke.
Afterward, we had planned to have all the high schoolers watch Mean Girls in the school's auditorium. The principal wanted to skim through the movie before we played it andddd he was all, "No." So, that was awk. He basically said that by law we couldn't play it in school because it goes against their culture, but he suggested for us to watch it at someone's house. Also, this is an elementary school that we are using, sooo it all makes sense. Anyway, I thought he was very nice about it, just bein' real. The students were reallyyyy disappointed though because they had hung around until after lunch to see the movie. We tried to get them pumped to watch the other movie we had with us--Dragonball. They weren't thrilled and they ditched us.
Monday (06/17)
THIS Monday..oh, this Monday gets good. So this was the first day that we started teaching in the mornings instead of in the evenings. We now have to be at the school 9:00 AM- 1:00 PM (instead of 5:30 PM- 8:30 PM). You may have noticed, but this also means that another hour was added. Just as I thought I was getting into a groove and had some sort of schedule, we swap the time!
Well, anyway, my students were acting so cray on this day. I think they were mostly getting restless because they were used to only 90 minutes of class instead of 2 hours. So the last half hour, I decided to take them outside to play Uno since they were just really unmanageable that day. A few minutes later an older lady, fully covered, comes up and starts talking to my students. I asked them what she was saying and they said, "Oh, nothing." I asked them again and, again, their response was, "Oh, nothing." The lady really wasn't going anywhere so I said, "No, really, what is she saying?" Something along the lines of THIS: "What are you all doing here? This is so stupid and so pointless. You aren't learning any English playing this game, the only thing that is happening is that the girl is learning some Turkish. Are you all stupid?...etc.." I was SO mad. I butted in and said, "teşekkürler (thank you)," while waving her away from my students. She gave me the worst look and disappeared. It didn't really help that my students were dying of laughter because they thought what I did was so hilarious. I just felt to protective over them! It's funny how they were trying to also protect me in a way by being reluctant to translate.
Later I found out that this same woman (after having been waved away by me) went to visit Jake and Molly's classes too. As in, she went inside the school and walked around to visit the other high school classes. She didn't do anything in Jake's class but stare and actually walk around the classroom.. uninvited. In Molly's class she was cursing at the kids and asking if they were stupid and saying, "This is such simple stuff, why don't you know this? Are you all stupid??" She also hit one of her students on the head.
I asked my students if that was normal for some stranger to just approach you and criticize what you're doing. They didn't seem phased by it a bit and said that it was normal. I explained that in America it was very rude. Come to find out, this woman is the mother of one of our 3rd graders! I know, so weird.
Sunday (06/16)
Picnic. We went to the most amazing picnic I have ever been to on this day. Who knew Turks like parks so much? It was kind of on a huge hill/small mountain, so the further we drove up to meet the other teachers, students and host families, the more we saw how many people were actually in this park. There were multiple playgrounds, great views, tons of picnic tables and just space in general. It was so great to just chill out and play card games (is this the part when I say that I won every card game that was played that day? I'm pretty good or whatever). We also played ultimate frisbee and watched our families transform nothingness into an amazing meal.
When I think of an American picnic, I think of sandwiches that are kinda hot from the sun, fruit, potato chips, potato salad (if you're lucky), can drinks getting warmer by the second and napkins blowing everywhere in the wind. This Turkish picnic cannot even be compared to what we call a "picnic" in the States. There were tiny grills absolutely everywhere, sizzling and grilling kebabs, vegetables and other stuff. This was like a super fancy grill-out/barbecue. There was also salad (chopped cucumbers, tomatoes and onion with parsley and olive oil), fruit/watermelon galore, bread.. BREAD (so much), normal cake, pound cake, and so much more.
Then host-mama and baba (dad in Turkish) picked Nisa and I up. They took me to one of the coolest places I've been. Some really old caves in Adiyaman. From 1st century BC. It seems like everything here is that old! Nisa and I rummaged around, dug through some tombs, went into creepy caves and climbed all the way to the very top. Good times..
Saturday (06/15)
Sunrise at Nemrut. We got up at 1:15 AM in order to meet the rest of our group at 2:00 AM to head to Mt. Nemrut! My host family didn't think I had enough clothes on, because apparently it's supa cold way up there (even in Summer), so host-mama packed me an enormous baby-pink crocheted scarf and one of her winter coats. Everyone loaded up into like 4 buses and we were off! I was in an awkward position in the van with my knees crammed into the person's chair in front of me, so I didn't sleep much. Anyway, maybe an hour and a half later we made it to as far as the buses could take us.
Everyone stumbled off the buses dazed and confused and throwing on layers of clothes. We started walking up a pretty steep path that was made up of tiny rocks. I was stripping off the layers of clothes all the way. It's funny though because the Turks were putting more layers on. They just aren't used to the cool weather. My shoes had a hard time gripping anything so it was more like one step forward, two feet slides back. Once we made it to the stairs part I felt safer but they were SO steep too. My thighs got worked out real good going up. Not to mention I could actually taste blood in my mouth because of the elevation (7,001 ft.). I think my lungs were bleeding. Is that a thing?
We made it up there about 15 minutes before sunrise and it literally took my breath away. It was so so incredible. There were beheaded god statues everywhere! The pictures you can see on google images are pretty neat, but to be there! Wow. So cool. I got tons of pics, so check 'em out on Facebook! A whole album devoted to Mt. Nemrut. Here is a teaser:
Once we left and were driving down the mountain, holy guacamole.. I could barely keep my eyes open it was so scary. The roads were so narrow that whenever our bus driver would turn a corner he'd have to back up a little, pull forward a little, back up, pull forward.. until he could make the full turn without driving off the side. Finally, he pulled over and made everyone but maybe 4 people get off. He said we overloaded the bus. Nothing made any sense and it never does. We did as we were told even though the capacity was like 13 and there were only 11. So we went to join other buses that were already at capacity before we jumped on board. I dunno, nothing ever makes sense here.
This is about the point that we found out that we would be going by 3 other places on the way back to Adiyaman. We were already SO tired. We went to some overlook place where you could see a super old castle and some caves. Then we saw a really old bridge called Gender Bridge and then another place with similar old statues.
Anyway, it was a really cool, but super exhausting day. We were home by 11:00 AM and slept for soo long.
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