TEFL: Item Not As Described

When I was taking my online TEFL course, I had to prepare approximately 714 sample lesson plans.  My school was extremely specific about the desired structure and content of said plans, and I, as the good student I am, of course made every effort to give them exactly the lesson plan they were looking for in the hopes of achieving a good grade.

The thing is, even at the time I knew that what 70-85% of what I was writing was utter laughable nonsense.

My school LURVED pair and small group work.  So I put pair work and/or small group work into every single plan I wrote.  At the same time I was doing this, I was co-teaching Georgian primary school children, and knew with the certainty of a Christian Science Believer that not ONE of my classes would be able to handle a single one of these activities.  I know this because I had tried, and after several catastrophic failures I swore I never would again because each time the lesson had disintegrated  in about 40 seconds, into even greater chaos and mayhem than it was operating at previously.  The only way to keep my class engaged and even remotely on-task was to give them  an activity that the entire class could participate in at once, and was both reasonably unchallenging and had a fairly decent helping of "fun".

The irony of this was not lost on me.  I was creating TEFL lesson plans that had exactly zero chance of success in the TEFL classes I was concurrently teaching.  It kind of made me wonder if the folks who had designed a TEFL course had ever actually taught TEFL children.  But then I remembered that I was in Georgia.  At the time, I was unshakably convinced that Georgian schoolkids were the worst-behaved schoolkids on the entire planet.  Mostly sweethearts, sure, but feral.  Surely, in other countries not Georgia, second and third graders could handle a five-minute pairwork exercise.

Then I came to Turkey.  Georgia, I owe you one big fat apology.  Your kids are most definitely NOT the worst-behaved schoolkids on the planet.

When I applied here through my recruiting company, I was advised that "classroom management" was one of their biggest problems.  I nodded sagely and thought: "I've been in Georgia.  It will probably suck but at least I'll have the comfort of having seen the worst."

Wrong.

Although, maybe it's not that Georgian kids are actually worse than Turkish kids.  I have very clear memories of one particular 7th grade class in Poti that probably remains the worst group of students I have ever laid eyes on.  But the thing that is important is -- at least Georgia acknowledged this very significant problem, and more importantly attempted to deal with it practically.  They knew their kids were buttheads, but they wanted the benefit and prestige of having native English speakers in their schools.  So they did the very best thing they could possibly do, which was to have both a native English teacher and a Georgian English teacher in the room together.  And yeah, before you're all off on "but you hated that so much!", I'm going to say that yes, that co-teaching experience was very frustrating at times.  Mainly because my Georgian co-teacher did not want to be co-teaching.  But when I was lucky enough to be paired with a teacher who wasn't afraid of change and new things, we had some very cool classes together.

But in light of my current situation, what appeals to me so longingly at the moment is the fact that, when a student got unruly or rude or spastic or whatever, there was an adult person in the room who could speak that student's same language.

This is something I have been dying to get off my chest.  Ahem.

ATTENTION:  American teachers and American parents -- teaching English in a foreign country is completely fucking different than teaching anywhere, even at problem schools, in your own country.  Unless you have ever faced an entire classroom of shouting, screaming, crying children, and have not had one single fucking idea what any of them were saying because you do not speak their language....

Then shut the hell up.  You have absolutely, positively, not the slightest fucking idea of what I or any other TEFL teacher will put up with on a daily basis.

I hope I have made myself clear.

It's also a pretty good bet that even the worst schools in America have at least some sort of disciplinary system in place.  Detention, writing lines, docking grades, calling parents, something.  It's guaranteed not to be foolproof and it's also guaranteed that students will misbehave anyway, but at the very least you have the comfort of a system in place, to say nothing of the comfort of actually knowing and being about to use and take advantage of that system.

Today I asked my school's Director of English about what is done when a student is truly bad.  Surely there must be something in the ballpark or disciplinary action.  Except.... no.  There really isn't.

I don't hand out grades.  Detention doesn't exist.  With the ever-present problem of the language barrier, I can't call parents.  There is, quite literally, absolutely nothing I can do to discipline students.  And boy oh boy, do they let me know they know it.

Enough on discipline for now.  Let's talk content.

Frankly, even before I started teaching here, I'd come a long, cold, reality-shower down from the completely unrealistic fantasy-land expectations set by my TEFL course lesson plans.  But believe it or not the textbooks I've been given for my third graders are every bit as laughable.  I have to wonder if, much like my TEFL course designers, the authors of my textbooks have ever taught a TEFL course in Eastern Europe.  (I hear Asia is like a completely different TEFL planet.  I think that may be my next stop.)  My books include ridiculously complex charts, for god's sake. My kids are struggling with sentences, and you want them to grasp the concept of filling in a chart??  With nothing but English directions???  The teacher's books includes games with multiple little paper parts that require cutting out and entire paragraphs of directions.  Um, again with the language level, people. Not to mention the discipline problem, sorry for bringing that ugly thing up again.  I can just see exactly what would happen if I ever tried to play one of these games with my third graders, and it certainly does not involve anyone ever winning or reaching the finish line or whatever the logical conclusion to a game would normally be.


The only game that has been even mildly successful is Hangman, and even then the majority of my students refuse to grasp the basic concept, and insist on shouting out random words instead of letters ("armchair!"  "hippo!" "pencil case!" in the true lottery-player's hope of somehow randomly hitting the Hangman Jackpot.

90% of my third graders cannot speak or write in sentences.  Most of them cannot identify more than the odd word or two at a time.  They struggle with "I like cheese" and "This is a pencil, it is yellow", and yet the books have them reading stories about cows that break into their next-door neighbor's garden and put on her clothes that she left on the washing line.  It is, frankly, about one jillion times too advanced for them.  They have absolutely NO FUCKING IDEA what they are listening to or better yet, attempting (badly) to read phonetically.  Because they don't understand, they are bored.  Because they are bored, they act out.  I know this, and I even understand.  But I have to keep plowing forward with the books I have been given.

After a month and a half of teaching, I was finally told that one of my third graders is studying English for the first time ever.  Holy crap, no wonder he is completely distracted and off-task for the entirety of every lesson.  Now that I know, I'll attempt to give him a little more personal attention.  But to be perfectly honest, he is in a class of 18 other students, at least 10 of which are complete miniature assholes.  I am simply not afforded the luxury of crouching down to eye level and speaking softly, giving this guy some private minutes of encouragement.  Because as soon as I take my eyes off the rest of the class and stop barking at them to sit down and shut up, the entire class has gone supernova.  My question is, why is he in this English class at all?  It doesn't seem to require rocket science to figure out that he should be in a beginner class that is at his level, with other students who are also at his level.

But -- much like Georgia -- my school does not test or place students according to language level or ability.  So every year, the gap between those that know and those that don't get's steadily wider and more unfixable.

So, the books are too advanced, and the language level of my students ranges from complete zero to "Teacher, may I next to the Sena?" which, if you do not speak Turkish Third Grader English, is a request to sit next to a friend instead of in her proper seat. (A request which is always denied, because if I grant it once I have to grant it to everyone, and the entire fucking class becomes a really entertaining episode of musical chairs.  But even though it IS always denied, they still ask at the start of every goddam lesson.)  The kids act like they know their actions have no consequences, because their actions have no consequences.  Sounds like this would be a really tough 40-minute lesson, right?

But oh no.  It gets better.

Every single lesson I teach is a "double lesson."  If your brain just short-circuited when you heard that, much as mine did, I will explain that this means I teach each class I have for two lessons back-to-back, with a ten-minute break in the middle.  Let me tell you just how awesome it is to try and teach English to 5-9 year olds for an HOUR AND TWENTY FUCKING MINUTES at a stretch.  It's impossible.  Simply impossible.

They do not have the attention span for it.  Without fail, the second lesson is always WAY WORSE than the first.  Even the best kids disintegrate after an hour.  When you were six, did you want to do ANYTHING for an hour and twenty minutes?  If I ever find the dude who came up with this genius fucking idea, I am going to straight up punt him in the testes, and worry about getting deported later.

For the first month, my worst classes were undoubtedly my first graders.  These babies were practically just born, for god's sake. They barely know Turkish.

Teaching these wee youngsters would be challenging enough under the best of circumstances, but my particular situation is complicated ever further by the fact that, for some reason, I have been given NO materials for first grade.  Not a single book, workbook, worksheet, or CD.  Nothing.  And I am supposed to keep them engaged and on task for an hour and twenty minutes?  With WHAT??  My friend and co-worker Sarah teaches first grade as well, and she has a book.  Every week she gives me a list of the 10-20 new vocab words they are learning that week, and I have to somehow come up with an hour and twenty minutes worth of activities from 10 or 20 words.  Not only that, but they have to be about the level of difficulty you would pick if you were trying to teach your pet how to speak English.  Every week I spend hours making worksheets and flashcards from scratch.  It takes freaking forever.  And every week I doggedly go through my lesson plan and hand out the worksheets only to see them scribbled on and my directions more often than not completely ignored.

Generally, the class was good(ish), for about 10 minutes.  And it predictably went downhill from there.  There were the spontaneous criers.  The nonstop requests to go to the toilet or to get a drink of water.  The tattling (in Turkish, so I have no idea what they are telling me but I can tell a tattler when I hear one).  But all of that would still be okay except that at the same time, the entire class was out of their seats, laughing, shouting, running around, and pretty much completely ignoring me.

I tried everything.  Shouting.  The angry human statue.  Stickers as bribes.  Games.  Songs.  Absolutely nothing worked.  NOTHING.  I had my nadir moment when I had drawn a tree on the smartboard and was shouting myself hoarse to get their attention, just wanting one single small human to acknowledge my fucking existence at the front of the room and tell me that what I had drawn was, in fact, a tree.  I looked around the room and every single one of them could not have given less of a crap that I was there.  My worksheets were being ripped up and dropped on the floor.  I shrugged my shoulders and just sat down at the desk until the bell rang and released me, feeling like the biggest fool in Istanbul.

The last two paragraphs are in past tense because about two weeks ago I decided that I simply was not going to do it anymore.  I went to my Director of English and told him very frankly that I needed help with the first grade.  I explained, in priceless American clarity, the situation in my classrooms, and I said that he could either put a Turkish teacher in the room with me or take the first grade off of my schedule.  He opted to give me a Turkish co-teacher, and I am extremely happy and relieved to say that my first grade classes have gone from being my worst and most dreaded classes to being my uncontested favorite.

I don't think it was too much to ask.  I needed someone in the room to ask why a crier was crying, and comfort him or her her accordingly.  I needed someone to tell the tattler not to tattle, and then tell whoever was being tattled on to stop it.  I needed a second pair of hands, and vocal cords, to keep these exuberant little monsters under some modicum of control.  Now, I still do the actual teaching, and she does crowd control.  It's the best of both worlds.  The kids get a native English speaker, and I get someone who can actually communicate with them.

At the end of last week, I was almost on the cusp of writing a slightly different, slightly more moderated Teaching Exposé.  But then today happened.  I can say with Going-To-Confession Honesty that I have never quite experienced prepubescent maliciousness like this before.  And I never will again.  Both my school and my recruiting company have been advised that if significant changes are not made to a particular class of third graders, then I will no longer be teaching them.

I'm not going into details.  Mostly because I just tried to type it out, and I know I wasn't doing justice to what happened.  To how it made me feel.  It was one of those "you had to be there to understand" moments.  Or at the very least, you have to be a TEFL teacher.



You want to know something truly amazing?  As bad as my kids are, my roommate Rachel has had it even worse.  Here is just a short run-through of some of the things she has had to deal with in her classes, above and beyond the usual ridiculous level of bad behavior that I have to face every day.

A kid has bit her.  BIT her.  She has also been punched, smacked, and kicked hard enough to leave a bruise.  A girl spontaneously poured a bottle of water all over herself and the desk.  Kids regularly fight each other, flip tables, and have on-the-floor screaming tantrums, in the middle of her lesson.  And my personal favorite -- during her first week, a kid legit shit himself in her class.  Pooped.  His.  Pants.  In her class.  I think I would have quit that very day.

Note:  I wrote that last paragraph about a week ago.  In the days since then, the pants-shitter has been upstaged by a young man who legit pulled out his dick in front of her... and peed on her feet.

I am not making this up.

And through all this she is supposed to TEACH?  WE are supposed to TEACH?  In the name of all that is holy, I ask you -- HOW??

This is not a grandiose opus leading up to my justifying quitting.  I will be going into work tomorrow same as always.  In fact, my first double lesson of the day is with that same third grade class from today.  I hope not a single one of them sleep tonight.  Consequences might not translate into Turkish, but I'll make damn sure they know it in English.

Three Expat Birthdays, Two Hostel Stays, and One Very Yummy Fish Sandwich

I know I promised you all a Teaching Exposé, and it's coming.  But in the spirit of Focusing on the Good Parts, here's a rundown of some hours recently spent not at school.

Two weekends ago, I finally got myself over to the Asian Side!  My friend Dan from TLG has also found himself teaching in Istanbul, but since we basically live on either end of the Istanbul Planet, I hadn't had a chance to see him until two Fridays past when I braved the Bosphorus to celebrate Dan's birthday at an Irish bar.

Door-to-door, it took something like two hours to get from my house in Sirinevler to my hostel in Kadikoy.  (This includes 10 or so minutes of being lost.)  And yes, you read that right -- rather than deal with sketchy mass transit or an 80-lira cab ride, I opted to get a hostel bed for the night.  At 25 TL, it wasn't a bad deal, and it was walking distance to Dan's birthday bar.

The party was pretty awesome, and I really loved seeing Dan again.  We Gaumarjosed and reminisced and told stories to the rest of the table.  An excellent night, but I have no photos as proof of shenanigans because I am an idiot and left my camera battery charger in America.  (My parents sent it along and it has since arrived safely, but there is an undeniable gap in my Istanbul Photo Diary.  Oh well.)

The next day I wanted to explore Kadikoy, but the weather gods did not agree.  It was freezing and pouring rain.  I got a very good lunch at a restaurant in my hostel's neighborhood, and lingered over my hangover beer just wishing more than anything I could have gotten posted on the Asian side.  Kadikoy looks like a lot of fun; compared to Sirinevler it is an Expat Urban Paradise.  Maybe in the autumn, if I decide to come back.

The weather was too bad for wandering alleys and outdoor markets, so I got my first Bosphorus Ferry over to Sultanahmet.  I thought I'd finally see the Topkapi Palace, but it had closed for the day already.  I was meeting friends later in Sultanahmet to celebrate another birthday, my friend Joshua's. But I had two hours so instead I called Joshua to see if he felt like meeting early.  He did.

Joshua's birthday night was fun, but tinged with sadness as he had recently decided that all this teaching BS was strictly not worth it, and had handed in his notice.  So it was a combination Birthday and Farewell celebration.  We kept our spirits up with Chinese Food (found an honest-to-Jesus Chinese restaurant!), followed by beers and nargile at a lovely rooftop cafe overlooking the incredible Blue Mosque.

Me, Mallory, Joshua, Rachel

I will miss Joshua quite a bit.  I certainly can't blame him for leaving though.  Hopefully our traveling paths will cross again one day.

But now, let's just skip right past all the unpleasantness of the work week and land ourselves at this past weekend.  This Saturday it was Mallory's birthday!  So she came over in the afternoon and we had drinks and birthday cake, then got ourselves all pretty and went into Taksim.

Mallory and I had gotten a hostel again, because honestly it's not much cheaper than late-night transit home and it is both a helluva lot safer and more convenient.  We found it, checked in, and braved the madness of Istiklal Street.

The place we eventually chose for dinner turned out to be just your basic touristy deal, but the food was pretty good and the waitstaff were nice.  They had live music in the form of a trio who would come right up to your table and sing for you.  Kind of loud, but fun.

Mallory (with her birthday flower tiara), and Rachel

After dinner we found that Irish bar that Rachel and I had been to before, and settled in.  Rachel left shortly before midnight, but Mallory and I ended up staying quite late, having some good conversation and a couple free shots courtesy of the distinctly un-Irish but very nice bartender.

I was kind of expecting Sunday morning to suck, but ended up feeling pretty okay. :)  And the sun was actually shining!  It was sort of almost warm even!  We have not had many nice days in Istanbul so far, so this was special.  Mallory and I got a breakfast Starbucks (White Chocolate Mocha Latte, BLISS!), and wandered around.

Galata Tower

We walked down to the Bosphorus and came upon this very awesome, very random fish market and sidewalk fish cafes.  I loved it immediately.

Does not capture the chaos.

We decided to walk over the Galata Bridge, but didn't make it as we stopped halfway across for a drink.  The bottom tier of the bridge is lined with restaurants and cafes, which are probably fantastic on a summer evening.  I think I lamented about fifty times that day about how far away I was from all this.

Where the fish come from.

And then, we succumbed to the inevitable and went back to get one of those street vendor fish sandwiches for lunch.  Holy crap, Best.  Idea.  Ever.  I have had dreams about this sandwich.

Mallory, with the mighty Ufuk in the background.

 One of the obligatory things you have to do when visiting Istanbul is take a cruise on the Bosphorus.  I'd naturally assumed this would be quite pricey, but when we checked the ticket booth it turned out to only be 12 TL for a 90-minute cruise.  And had one leaving in half an hour.  So, why not??

One more checkmark on the Istanbul Bucket List!

And then we went back to the hostel for our bags and girded our loins for the Big Giant Suffer Fest that is Istanbul mass transit.  An hour and 15 minutes door-to-door for me, and longer for Mallory who lives even further out.  Ugh.

But it was an excellent day, full of the perfect mix of tourist history, local color, and randomness.  Unfortunately the next two weekends are going to have to be full of things that have that and are also free.  I kind of broke the bank this weekend.  Totally worth it.

Today was just pretty much like any quiet day at home, whether you're in Istanbul or Springfield, VA.  I cleaned the apartment, did a load of laundry, cooked up a bunch of chicken breasts to eat throughout the week, went grocery shopping, and paid my wireless bill.  Oh, and wrote a blog post.  Now I'm off to watch some Doctor Who.

Comparing the new girlfriend to the old girlfriend

This past week I had a conversation with a teacher friend about Turkey, and teaching in Turkey, and how it stacks up against other places we have lived and taught.  I reminisced about Georgia, and he about Korea, and then he commented that maybe the first place you live abroad is kind of like your first love.  Even though it may have been a crummy, even destructive, relationship, part of you is always going to be searching -- in vain -- to find and re-create that magic again.

I agreed, and said: "It's like comparing your old girlfriend to your new girlfriend.  You don't want to but of course you can't help doing it constantly."

In that light, I have been thinking about my old girlfriend Georgia quite a lot lately.  And I will say -- she had a terrible drinking problem and never brushed her teeth, she had really interesting ideas about sickness.  She left piles of shit everywhere and was sometimes really nosy while at time same time getting defensive and passive-aggressive when I asked questions back.  Despite her nickname of "Mother Georgia", she often didn't treat women very well.  She could not get anywhere on time to save her life, and sometimes she was just an awful cook.  But holy hell, she was also unquestionably the most FUN that I have ever had in my whole life, and I miss the hell out of her.

In Georgia, every day was an adventure.  And by no means were all of those adventures welcome, or pleasant.  Some days I would wake up with my old girlfriend Georgia to find she'd given me yet another undefinable illness, or that I'd be in for yet another awkward misunderstanding with my host family.  But some days I would wake up staring at simply the most incredible mountains, and after watching some amorous pigs I would go and climb them.

Fast-forwarding to today, I've been in Turkey now for almost six weeks.  In a lot of ways it seems like much longer.  In other ways I feel like I just got here, because the sad truth is that I have yet to even see much of Istanbul, let alone the rest of Turkey.  Adding up the checklist of Awesome Things Seen and/or Accomplished, I really have to face the fact that it looks awfully like I am not making the most of my time here so far.

I certainly was not expecting this expat experience to perfectly mirror the adventures I had in Georgia.  It goes without saying that every country and culture is unique, and just because they share a border is no reason to assume that Turkey and Georgia have anything much in common at all.  Granted, there are a few similarities, such as the terrifying driving, strays, and strangers coming up to talk to you on the street as if you weren't just minding your own business, because they happened to hear you speak English.  (I really hate that.)

There is quite a bit about Turkey and Istanbul that I like.  I like the food, quite a bit.  Turkish food is delicious.  And in sort of in that same vein but not really, I love that Istanbul is full of Burger Kings.  I got a white chocolate mocha latte at a Starbucks the other week.  A Starbucks.  I absolutely freaking love having my own (clean!) apartment, one where I can come and go, eat and drink, sleep and stay up, pretty much whenever I want.  I like being on the Bosphorus, and hope that once it finally warms up there will be many waterside shenanigans to share with you.  I love the incredible history of the city, the blending of East and West, of Roman, Byzantine, Muslim, Ottoman, and modern Turkish culture and history all sort of fitting into place like a Blue Mosque mosaic.


It goes without saying at this point that I pretty much hate the teaching part.  More like loathe, really.  I'm hoping to get in a whole separate post that addresses this particular glittering facet of my Istanbul life in greater detail, but at this juncture I'm just going to say that an average day with the monsters is pretty much guaranteed to fuck my evening.  I have spent way too many nights just sort of sitting stunned and demoralized on my couch.  The best thing that ever happens on a worknight is one or more of my fellow teachers and I will gather in one of our apartments for alcohol and dinner from Little Ceasar's or Burger King, and several hours of brain-and-soul-dumping, venting, bitching, and possibly crying.

So my job is unquestionably the worst bit.  The other main thing that has been coloring this experience a distinctly puce shade of less-than-awesome is my neighborhood.  Remember how wretchedly unhappy I was back when TLG landed me in Vashlijvari, my Village on the Edge of the City?  Yeah.  My apartment, whilst fabulous on the inside, is in the Istanbul suburb of Sirinevler, which seriously seems to be the Turkish version of Vashlijvari.  At least here I do have my own apartment, and a roommate, which means I am both warmer and less completely isolated than I was last January.  My co-worker Sarah is also only four metrobus stops away which is a blessing.  But Sirinevler as an actual neighborhood?  Sucks.  No lie, there is literally not one single restaurant that Rachel and I can walk to that serves beer.  So many nights I've come home and just wanted to go out for an hour and nurse a quiet drink in a quiet cafe.  Utterly impossible.  Even restaurants that don't serve beer are in short supply, and crappy.  Rachel and I tried one with two friends earlier this week, and Rachel was up all night with food poisoning.  I don't think we'll be back.  This is why there are a lot of evenings spent in apartments.

And no, of course a place does not have to serve beer in order to be labeled a fun spot, although it freaking helps.  But here in Sirinevler there is also nary an art gallery, museum, theatre, park, lake, river, or even a decent Western-style coffeehouse.  Or... a tree, come to think of it.  There are just... apartment blocks, little miniature Turkish Wal-Mart shops selling household goods, and kebap hole-in-the-wall eateries, ad infinitum.


Please do not misunderstand me.  Istanbul has loads of incredible and fun nightspots, pubs, cafes, and expat meeting places.  But after six or eight hours of depressing monster-wrestling, I simply do not have the energy or desire for an hour-long trip to Sultanahmet or Taksim where all those places are.

Job and neighborhood aside, there is a lot that is good here.  A lot that is better than Georgia.  But going back and re-uploading all my photos into my old blog posts, and am struck with renewed clarity at just how much crazy, ridiculous, caution-to-the-wind fun I had during those first months in Poti.  The unparalleled hospitality of the Georgians.  The kindness of my host family.  And how stupid freaking lucky I was to be able to get my hands dirty and experience the Georgian culture -- from dance concerts to mid-afternoon impromptu supras, to last-minute invitations to weddings of people I had never met.  I went to Georgia and was unceremoniously thrown head-first into the deep end.  But even though I sometimes thought I was drowning there was always a Georgian or ten who just couldn't wait to pull me out, give me a towel and invite me to their house for some chacha.

I will never say I took any of it for granted, because nothing could be further from the truth.  But being here now, where none of those things have happened and instead I am typing warm and comfy on my red couch, I am forced to admit that the daily comforts offered to me by my new girlfriend do not make up for the fact that it has been six damn weeks and not one supra has been held in my honor.  And seriously, what the fuck is up with that, Turkey?

I miss my old girlfriend, with all of her flaws and halitosis and cow-part stew.  I miss our adventures.  Our fights.  And just how unapologetically, insanely FUN she was.  Gaumarjos, chemi siqvaruli.  There will never be another one like you.

Ephesus: my perfect travel day

First -- something I've been meaning to address for a while.  Due to Facebook's "efficiency", and my apparently not understanding the internet all that well, every single fucking photo that I had uploaded on here by linking to my Facebook photo album has disappeared.   Just to clarify, I started this blog in April 2011.  I discovered this in January 2013.  There have been rather a lot of photos posted on this blog between then and now.

So, I have been going back, one post and one mother-effing photo at a time, and re-uploading them.  Oh, and then also re-captioning, as the caption disappears when the photo is removed.  It is, frankly, taking forever, and I am not even the slightest bit happy about it, but there is also absolutely nothing I can do except exactly what I have been doing... removing, finding, re-uploading, and re-captioning.  Yesterday I made it all the way into January 2012!  Now only... all of 2012 to go.  FML.

But at any rate, sorry if you've felt a jones to go back and vicariously relive one of my hilarious chacha-soaked Georgian exploits, only to be foiled by a lot of blank photo placeholders.  I'll have everything back the way it should be... eventually.

Back to the present though, it has been about the quietest weekend imaginable.  I saw nothing cool, rode no public transit, committed not one single act of drunken debauchery.  But my apartment is clean, my clothes are mended/hemmed/taken in, and my body is rested.  I have re-affirmed that I really do not care for sewing, and also that I do not do it all that well.  Whatever.  My pants will no longer drag on the ground or threaten to cascade gracefully off my hips and to the floor, so I call it a win.

Tomorrow is the day I pay for that lovely four-day weekend I enjoyed only seven short sunsets ago.  And oh -- will I pay.  Three back-to-back double lessons, entirely with first graders.  That's a horrific total of two hundred and forty minutes.  With first graders.

Would I rather go back and face Ursula instead?  Ask me again tomorrow evening, if I am still capable of rational thought.

Tomorrow is going to just suck, so let's avoid thinking about it for an hour and instead reminisce on happier times.  Like last Sunday, when your intrepid backpacker visited the amazing ancient city of Ephesus.

When I first picked Ephesus as the place I wanted to see for my long weekend, originally I wanted to stay in the nearby town of Selçuk (pronounced Selchuk).  But (in the 20 minutes I spent in an internet cafe planning this thing), I couldn't figure out the Turkish rail system and didn't want to take a bus and in a moment of frustration I just said Hell With It and booked a flight to Izmir instead.  So that's how that happened.  But I still really wanted to see Ephesus, and when I inquired at Guzel Izmir Otel reception, I was told that trains leave for Selcuk about every 90 minutes.  So... I guess I could have stayed there anyway.... oh well.

The end of this ramble finds me on Sunday morning waiting in line at Izmir's Basmane train station.  In front of me was a backpacker-y looking young couple, who asked in English, with American accents, for two tickets to Selcuk.  I introduced myself and asked if they were going to Ephesus.  Guess what?  They were.

Their names were Pat and Emily, and damn if we did not end up sticking together for what ended up being a very kickass day indeed.  We chatted on the train, and then when we got off at Selcuk of course we were approached immediately by a taxi driver offering to take us to Ephesus for 5 lira each.  We accepted, and then the driver threw in that he could also take us to Mary's House on the way, for only 15 lira extra per person!  I'd read about this place; Lonely Planet said it was absolutely worth a look, and my co-worker Sarah had said she had just loved it there.  Pat and Emily were skeptical but I kind of convinced them, and we piled into the cab.

We soon discovered it costs 15 lira to get into Mary's House.  I had not thought of that when I gave my whole "C'mon, it'll be amazing and change your life!" spiel to Pat an Emily.  This now brought the Adventure To Mary's House to an impressive 30 TL per person.

Yeeeeah.  Sorry everyone, but this pit stop ended up being an expensive, gigantic letdown.  Based on what I've read, the idea that the Virgin Mary lived her last days here kind of amounts to a religious Urban Legend.  No true proof exists, but lots of stories and a vision from a nun.  Already I was making a mental comparison to my visit to "Juliet's House" back in Verona.  And the house itself is of course a reconstruction, but inside, rather than trying to re-create what Mary's house might have looked like, they turned it into a chapel.  It was very kitchy.  And also notably lacking in anything resembling an artifact.  For example, in one glass box there was a rosary blessed by the Pope.  In 2006.  Um, I was just in Rome, and happen to know that those rosaries, whilst lovely, can be yours for 10 Euro pretty much anywhere in the city.  A seven year old, 10-euro souvenir is not quite what I had in mind when I forked over my stiff admission price.

Pat and Emily were underwhelmed, and I felt bad for basically being the catalyst that led them to lose a total of 60 TL for pretty much no reason.  But we laughed it off.  Sometimes you get your money's worth, and sometimes... you don't.  If everything always worked out then traveling would not be fun at all.  So we got back in the cab and finally headed on our way to Ephesus, poorer but wiser.

Fortunately, Ephesus earned it's 25 TL admission price several times over.

 

You can't really see it from these photographs, but on our visit we had the misfortune to be right in the midst or about four Japanese tour buses.  It meant waiting for a photo gap took no small amount of patience.  We were very glad we hadn't paid for the cab to wait for us!

Library of Celcus in the background

Emily and I doing the "peace sign" pose that we saw every single Japanese girl doing.

 The two highlights of Ephesus unquestionably come at the end.  The first is the Library of Celcus, and then the very, very best is the theatre.

But one unexpected, quite adorable feature of Ephesus is that there are literally hundreds of cats roaming the site.  They were everywhere!  All looking very well fed and surprisingly clean.  I could start a "Cats on Ancient Things" tumblr just from the kitty photos I took on this walk!  Did not see any babies though.  I'm guessing this is because I saw a lot of cats with one docked ear tip, which in America means the cat has been spayed or neutered.

Twins!

Shall we have our very own Kitty Captioning Contest? :)

I had a great time touring Ephesus with Pat and Emily.  They are fun people.  It was a different sort of experience than the one I might have had on my own, less bookish and more laughing.  A fair trade.

We took another cab back to Selcuk, and dove right into some doner kebabs for lunch/dinner because we were about starving.  Bought our tickets home, and then went and found a cheap beer because the train wasn't for another hour.  We got back to the station right as our train pulled up; got on and settled in.  A very successful day!

Except then the conductor came around to check our tickets, and it quickly became apparent that our day had not ended successfully at all because we had gotten on the wrong train, going in the complete opposite direction.  First train mistake, check!  I knew it was inevitable sooner or later.  At any rate, the guy was pretty understanding, wrote something all over our tickets so we wouldn't have to pay extra, and shepherded us off the train at the next stop, explaining to the station manager what idiots we were so he could shepherd us back on to our proper train.  Which wasn't for about another hour and a half.

Boys and girls, we were in the Middle.  Of.  Nowhere.  I mean Nowhere.  There was the one tiny train station, and this shack that turned out to be... a restaurant!  Of sorts.  They had beer!  I mean, sure.  It was lit entirely by red LED rope lights and we were the only people in there, and Pat walked in, took one look and said with a grin "We're going to get murdered here."  We sat down.  Beggars can't be choosers.  Pretty positive they overcharged us for beer, but other than that we had a lovely time.

For some reason I did not get any photos of this scary red-lit saloon in the middle of Turkish BFE.  But I did get a picture of the women's toilet!

I absolutely adored this unexpected side trip.  We had a lot of laughs; to me things exactly like this are what make travel so memorable.  I would have been content to hang out here (the bar, not the pictured toilet) for a good few hours.

But instead we got on our proper train at the appointed time and rode uneventfully back to Izmir.  Safe and sound, we kept with the theme of the evening and found one of those charming smoky hole-in-the-wall establishments that are kind of unofficially supposed to be only for men.  I'd never go into one of these places unescorted, but we had Pat our male protector along so decided to go for it.  Emily and I got some looks but  no one bothered us, and beer was only 5 lira which is way better than any price we'd find in a bar "meant" for tourists.  We had a really good conversation on any number of topics, from religion to drug culture to music.  My kind of people.

Said our farewells around midnight.  I had simply the greatest day tramping around Turkey with Pat and Emily!  Two people I definitely would not mind running into again.

And that was it, pretty much, for Izmir.  The next morning I packed up, checked out, walked, metroed, and flew.  Back in Istanbul, refreshed and ready for the monsters.

... And by about noon on Tuesday, I was ready for my next escape!

Izmir: a much-needed escape

I've meant to get to this all damn week.

Now all of a sudden it is Saturday again.  I should be out seeing more of the city, or hemming/taking in my work pants, or cleaning the apartment.  But instead I decided to use the sad, broken state of my body as an excuse to spend the day sitting on the couch and obsessively refreshing Facebook.  Oooh, and a new level of Angry Birds came out just last night!!

Quick whine indulgence -- I've had a cold for over two weeks now.  I more or less feel okay, just easily tired.  But the cold's developed into a nasty hacking cough that feels and sounds a lot like that last persistent cough I got in Georgia right before the onset of my Myositis.  With absolutely no exaggeration, I live in daily fear of that illness ever coming back.  I never want to feel pain like that again.  So my hypochondriac self is having a great time right now.  Oh, and I also threw my back out on Wednesday for apparently no reason.  I have never in my life had back problems before.  I woke up at 4 AM last night with totally stopped-up sinuses, a sinus headache, back pain and an upset stomach.  And it wasn't until after the first call to prayer this morning that I was finally able to fall back asleep.

...so... Saturday on the couch!! :)

Fortunately blogging is something I can do on the couch.  So let's talk about Izmir!

One of the -- no wait, the very best thing about my job is that I only have to work four days a week.  I am off on Mondays.  My co-worker, Sarah, is off on Fridays.  A couple weeks ago she asked if we could shuffle our days around a little, as she needed to be away for a long weekend.  Of course I said sure, and that meant that I got MY four-days off this past weekend.

I knew I probably shouldn't spend a ton of money, but school was getting me down.  Three weeks doesn't sound like enough time to be needing a break, but no lie I feel like these little buttheads have already aged me.  They're like that torture machine in The Princess Bride, painfully sucking years of my life away.  I needed to get out.

I booked a last-minute flight to Izmir and flew out on Friday, March 1.

It felt so good to have (a lighter, trimmer, 7.5 kilo) Sisyphus on my back again!  I was so happy to be striding through an airport, finding my gate, and doing some proper journal writing at the ubiquitous airport cafe overlooking the tarmac.  I get so jazzed up from the high of going somewhere.  Seriously, I would do this all the time if I could.

The flight to Izmir was something like 55 minutes.  All told, that was probably the single shortest leg of my journey!  But I navigated from the airport to my hotel, the Guzel Izmir Otel, without a hitch, and checked into my very basic, very tiny single room.  I'd wanted a hostel dorm, but Izmir is irritatingly lacking in those.  This was the cheapest I could find, and I hoped I wasn't going to get my discount dividends back in bedbugs.

The hotel itself was pretty much what I've come to expect from the Budget Hotel category.  Reception was nice enough, the staff charming, but my room was small and dumpy and the bedspread looked like it had seen a lot of use since its purchase in 1945.  At least the bathroom was clean.  I dropped Sisyphus off and headed down towards the water and the Kordon, the center of Izmir's waterfront scene and nightlife.  It's really little more than a few blocks of expensive restaurants with lots of outdoor seating and cocktails that start at 20 lira.  I picked one of the more modest ones and had a pretty tasty lunch/dinner along with my 10 lira beer.  After I ate, there wasn't much else to do along the Kordon except walk along the (increasingly chilly) waterfront, unless I wanted to change my mind about those 20 lira cocktails.  So I walked back to my hotel to rest for a bit before trying to find some quiet nightlife a little closer to my budget.

Izmir waterfront 

Turkish Aegean at sunset

Back at Guzel Izmir, I asked at reception if there were any bars nearby that were both inexpensive and safe for a lady by herself.  The guy told me I'd be better off going down to the water.  I explained I had just come from there, and that it was both quite a walk and full of limited (budget-blowing) choices.  He suggested a bar called "Cheers!" near the Hilton, about a 15 minute walk away.

Me:  Well, what about this bar that's right next door?
Him:  .... No....
Hooray for being in the really super part of town!

I walked to Cheers.  It was pretty empty.  I sat at the bar next to an older guy with an impressive mustache, and quietly kept to myself, reading my Lonely Planet book by blacklight.  But I couldn't help laughing when Mustache Guy answered his phone and tried to tell whoever he was talking to where he was.  "Cheers!"  He said emphatically.  "Cheers!"  And then he cheersed himself by clinking his empty beer bottle against his glass.  I guess now that the ice was broken (sort of), guy seized his opportunity and bought me a heart-shaped bowl of mixed nuts.  We ended up chatting.  He was nice but I left after my second beer, politely refusing his offer to buy me a drink.  And that was Cheers!.

For my first full day in Izmir, the thing I most wanted to see was the ruins of Izmir's Roman Agora.  It was only a short walk away, but when I arrived I got a sinking feeling it was closed because the grounds were absolutely deserted.  But no -- it was definitely open.  Just empty.  Can you imagine how jazzed I was to have an gorgeous ancient site completely to myself???

Much of the Agora looks like this.  There's not a lot left above ground.  I was enjoying my stroll but sort of mentally composing a blog post in which I lamented the fact that there just isn't much to see here.  But then I made my way over to those free-standing columns over to the right, and noticed a small red arrow directing me down a flight of metal stairs and into THIS.

This is the Agora's basilica, and as you can see a large part of the bottom level has been excavated.  They let you walk right down in there!!  It was absolutely incredible.  This kind of thing was exactly what I'd always wanted so badly to be able to do at places like the Palatine, and of course never could.  I could touch the walls!  Duck my head through doorways and explore little side rooms.  Take all the time I wanted.  And I was the only one there!  It was awesome.  Hands-down, one of my favorite experiences exploring ruins.

As I finally made my way back to ground level, I saw a few other tourists had finally joined me at the Agora. Bummer.  Then a Turkish school group showed up and I knew it was time for me to say my farewells.

Basilica arches from the top

Interesting note about the Izmir Agora -- the Muslims used the grounds as a cemetery for a time. So over to one side, inter-dispersed among the fragments of Corinthian columns, are these lovely Muslim tombs and gravestones.

After the Agora, I decided to be brave and attempt to blaze a trail through the crazy Izmir bazaar.  It was packed and full of everything you never knew you wanted.  I poked my (carefully covered) head into two mosques.  It was interesting to see the contrast between all the famous huge museum-like mosques, and these far smaller, simpler places definitely not geared for tourists.  I only stayed a moment and didn't take any photos inside because both times they were full of people praying.  I did see more than one tourist not being nearly as respectful as I was trying to be though!  Shame on you.

I couldn't resist taking photos of the food section of the bazaar however! :)

Braaaains...

I stopped in for lunch at this little hole-in-the-wall cafe and had my first Iskender, a Turkish specialty.  I was the only tourist there and they were incredibly sweet to me, even when I got a coughing fit the moment they brought my food.

There's cubed flatbread under there.  Delish.

I wanted to go to the Archeology and Ethnography museums, and to get there I had to walk through Konak Square.  Lonely Planet listed it as a "must-see", and I don't know about all that; it was just a square full of balloon sellers and gypsies pushing carnations into your face.  But hey, I saw it.

Looks like the Turkish Leaning Tower here.  Promise it's straight in real life.

Got a little lost finding the museums, but that was okay because it meant I got to visit a very cool art gallery that had a good collection of modern art, sculpture, and photography.  An adorable old man at the gallery set me straight, so I found the museums and did my circuit.  They were a little dry but worth it, I think.  Especially the Ethnography museum, which was free. :)

Turn-of-the-century Ottoman living room

And after all that, I was exhausted.  I took the metro back to my hotel and rested for a couple hours before heading out to find a cheap kebab for dinner.

Do you know that Georgians have this really interesting.... I don't know what you would call it, an urban legend? that if you step in shit, it means that you're going to come into money somehow.  Well, I had the misfortune to test that theory rather squishily during my evening stroll. :(  It meant my quick dinner errand morphed into a very necessary quest to find somewhere I could wash my shoe before going back to my room.  So I ended up in one of those bars near my hotel that Reception Guy had advised I not visit.  It was fine; the beer prices were posted so I didn't worry about getting overcharged, and it was well-lit and not crowded.  But the owner/bartender guy was very attentive and kept doing things like leaning really close over my shoulder to see what I was reading, and touching the ring I wear on my left middle finger before asking if I was married.  Uh... wrong finger, doofus.  I left after my beer, but not before using their bathroom.   :)

I wanted an early night, because I was getting up early the next morning to take the train to Selchuk.  I was going to take a look at Ephesus, one of the best-preserved ancient cities in the world, and in fact the entire impetus for my choosing to go to Izmir.  Guess what the next blog post will be!


P.S.  I still have not seen that money I am supposedly now entitled to, Georgia.  Your credibility is at stake here.

New apartment, and discovering more of Sultanahmet

Hello once again.  Having returned to Eastern Europe, I can once more blame my silence on lack of internet. My very cool roommate, Rachel, and I moved into our apartment... lawd, two weeks ago, and we just finally got internet this past weekend.  However, I was in Izmir last weekend, and then I had a spectacular 24-hour stomach bug... so, yeah.

Here's my new apartment!

Super fab living room.  I love the rug!

My bedroom.  I've added a night table and a desk.

Kitchen.  Those gadgets you see on the end are a washer and a dishwasher!

It's a beautiful place, and I'm very happy to have found it.  There are doubtless some charming Eastern European touches.  Rachel's bedroom door will not close at all, and the bathroom door sounds like a gunshot when you open or close it.  Lightbulbs keep blowing out despite having just been changed, and the other day we found a merry stream of ants coming out to say Hi from underneath our fridge.  Old Turkish women in headscarves keep coming to our door, either because they are lost (we think), or because they want to scold us for not leaving our shoes outside (again, we think).  But overall we are both pretty happy here so far.  And moving to Sirinevler cut my commute by HALF!! HOORAY!!!  Because seriously, standing mashed in that metrobus for over half an hour after having gotten completely beaten up by eight year olds was no fun whatsoever.

The job is still insanely trying.  I've made a very good friend in Sarah, the school's other female English teacher.  And I am daily very grateful for her, because if I was all alone with no one to talk to, ask questions of or just plain vent, I seriously do not know if I could cope in that place.  I do not wake up on workdays with a smile on my face.

Whenever I am dragging myself home after a particularly hard day, I always try and remember that at least I am having a bad day in Istanbul.  The time here is going to go very fast, and even though workdays are of course a total loss, I've been trying to make the most out of the time that I have here, and not lose myself in frustration and depression.  Because honestly, I could be frustrated and depressed in America.

Two Sundays ago, Rachel and I fought our way through Istanbul's public transit and went to see some more sights in Sultanahmet.  We loosely followed a walk outlined in my Rick Steves Istanbul book, skipping past parts we'd already done, like the Blue Mosque and Hagia Sophia.  The first thing Rick pointed out to us was The Golden Milestone.

It may look unassuming now, but back in the day, this thing was covered in gold and marble and considered by the Byzantines to be the center of the world.

Then we found our way to the nearby Basilica Cistern, so named because Byzantine Emperor Justinian built it on the site of a former basilica.  It was basically a massive reservoir  and the columns holding it all up had been recycled from nearby Roman sites.

Pretty cool huh?  There's only a few inches of water in the Cistern now, but in Justinian's time it would have been about half full.  At the far end, there are two giant Medusa heads that have been repurposed as column bases.  I highly recommend visiting the Basilica Cistern if you are in Istanbul.

After the Cistern, we walked around the Hippodrome, which is basically unrecognizable as an ancient site; it's been converted into a modern square.  There is a very awesome Egyption obelisk here though, apparently 3,000 years old.

Bit of the Hagia Sophia at sunset.

German Fountain

 Rick Steves tells me the Germans gave this fountain to the Ottomans as a goodwill gesture to try and get them to come in on their side in the upcoming World War I.

After that, we wandered around Istanbul's back streets for a while, perusing shops, markets, and various street bazaars.

I am usually so good about controlling my "Stuff" Impulse Buy wants, but in Turkey I am constantly seeing so many gorgeous things!  I simply must have one of those amazing lamps, and that blue pottery made me drool.  And then there's the rugs!  I found one teeny miniature rug I liked a lot, that was maybe 12x12.  I figured, what the hell, I'll splurge, it's really pretty.  It'll look cute on an accent table.  I'll spend... oh, 50 US on this.  Guess how much it was.  Go on, guess.

$1,500.  That's one thousand and five hundred American dollars.

I put it back.  A lot more carefully than I picked it up.

At the end of our wanderings, we went to a cute Sultanahmet cafe and paid for the privilege of eating in Sultanahmet.  At least the food was good.

Rachel and our meze platter.

We had a really excellent day wandering around Old Town Istanbul, reminding ourselves that yes, there really is more to living abroad than losing your voice to first graders.  My next weekend would be even better, because I was about to pack up and head off to check out Izmir.  Sisyphus and I reunited once again!