Cappadocia: First Impressions

WELL.  Internet friends and lovers -- this one is for YOU!  I logged on this morning to find I'd surpassed 22,222 hits on the blog!  Utterly awesome, and thank you.  (Trolls and snide anonymous comment-leavers still unwelcome, natch.  Just go elsewhere.  But thanks for your hit! :p)

And yet once again, it seems I must offer apologies for the tardiness of this post.  My trip to Cappadocia just so happened to fall right smack in the middle of certain busy events at my school, and immediately before a friend from the States came to stay for nine nights.  Plus, after avoiding it for weeks (due to terror), I finally got Egypt sorted!  A Nile River cruise is happening!!!  So yeah, lots to catch you up on.

But first:  phallic fairy chimneys, Turkish viagra, conquering claustrophobia, and a possible concussion.  Good times!

If there are precious few things for which I will stand in an hour-long line, there are even fewer for which I will willingly get up at 4:30 in the morning.

Apparently, Cappadocia makes the short list.

After being so mentally away from everything for so long, it was a welcome breath of air to pull out Sisyphus again, pack him full of crap, and sally forth into predawn darkness.  I live three easy metro stops from Ataturk, but I discovered that is less helpful at 5:00 in the morning, as the metro is very definitely still closed for the night then.  (WTH Istanbul?  Don't you know that 5:00 AM is a completely acceptable time to start commuting?  Just ask all those perfectly sane people living around DC.  They'll tell you.)  So I got a taxi.  It worked out fine.

I love airports.  I love the thrill of being about to go somewhere.  I love getting through security, boarding pass in hand, and finding my gate with enough time to take a seat at a nearby cafe and people-watch for a while, listening to all the different languages, taking a peek at all the countless stories happening all around.  Flight itself was smooth -- short and uneventful.  I'd flown into Kayseri, and had arranged a shuttle bus transfer to my hostel in Goreme, which also worked out with no problem.  Although apparently I was lucky it did, because at least three other people thought they'd booked the same bus and did not end up going to Goreme right just then.

My hostel, Shoestring Cave House, was not the fanciest accommodation in Goreme but it was pretty cute.  They weren't really a hostel though.  It was mostly private rooms, with one big dormitory (16 beds!!) tucked away on the ground floor.  Bathrooms were across the courtyard, which meant you had to actually go outside.  Not the greatest for a midnight pee, and just bummer for you if it happened to be thunderstorming.  In my travels, I've come to to the conclusion that a place really just needs to decide from the get-go whether it wants to be a hotel or a hostel, and then just bloody well pick one and stick to it.  I've never had truly stellar experiences at any accommodation that was attempting to straddle the fence.  To put it simply, hostel life and hotel life are really very different.  They attract very different types of travelers, who have very different and specific ideas as to what their stay should look like.  It's hard to make everyone happy in this kind of conflicting environment.  But the staff were (mostly) very friendly and helpful.  I checked in, claimed a bed, confirmed my tour for the following day, and signed up to have dinner at the hotel's restaurant at 7:00 that evening.  Time to explore!

Goreme is really cute, but years of subsisting almost purely on tourism has turned it into a bit of a Cappadocia Disneyland.  No exaggeration, there are probably at least 200 different "cave hotels", and about as many tour operators nestled in between "authentic" Turkish restaurants and souvenir shops selling "authentic" kitsch.  I walked around town a little, got some mezzes for lunch at one of those aforementioned restaurants, and walked north out of town to find the Goreme Open Air Museum.  On my way I got my first real glimpses of this very justifiably famous landscape.  Never seen anything like it -- because there is nothing like it.  In the whole world, Cappadocia is the only known region to have geological phenomena like this, the affectionately-named Fairy Chimneys.

On my way to the museum, I took a quick side trip down a dirt path to see El Nazar Kilise, a 10th-century church.  I was somehow expecting something more church-shaped, but this is what I got.  My first foray into a Cappadocian cave structure!

El Nazar Kilise (Church of the Evil Eye)

Frescoes inside, sadly quite damaged

 The Goreme Open Air Museum is not really a museum.  It's a monastic settlement that dates from the Byzantine era, and is an impressive cluster of churches and monasteries all carved into stone.  Special bonus for me!  Right as I arrived it started to absolutely monsoon, so I waited under cover chatting with a very nice older couple from California.  When the rain stopped 20 minutes later, the place had emptied out and wasn't nearly as crowded as I'd been warned to expect.  Hooray!

They let you climb about pretty liberally, which of course I adore, but wouldn't allow photos inside the churches where all the truly impressive and gorgeous frescoes are.  The very best frescoes are in the Karanlik Kilise, which naturally they make you pay an additional 8 lira for.  Lonely Planet advised me not to skip it, and I have to agree with them.  Breathtaking.

I was able to do a good circuit and leave the museum right as the place began to once again reach Critical Tourist Mass.  It was still only mid-afternoon, and I thought I might follow some pray-painted arrows and do a little hiking in Rose Valley.  Only I'd been up since 4:30 AM and my body was beginning to protest.  I stopped at a little cart and  got a cup of freshly squeezed (as in, squeezed right there in front of me) orange and pomegranate juice.  The vendor was utterly charmed at my Turkish, and the big hit of natural sugar and vitamins was exactly what I needed. :)  Onward!

After the crowds at the Open Air Museum, the nearly deserted Rose Valley was blessedly still.  I put my pepper spray in my front pocket though.  No sense being unprepared.  Rose Valley was incredible.  It was hard to believe all these weird giant towers of rock were actually completely natural.  I also quickly realized how easy it would be to become very very lost in this weird landscape full of criscrossing paths, and made sure to take notice of landmarks so I could find my way back.

Something completely awesome about Cappadocia:  there are literally the remains of caves and cave settlements everywhere.  I do mean everywhere.  It is completely awesome.  And they're all just sort of there.  Completely open and just begging to be explored.  For someone like me, this is just about the best thing.... well, ever. :)

Tatooine.  I half expected Jawas to jump out and zap me.

Amazing multi-storey house I found.  This was the upper room,

Tiny cave church, with remains of frescoes on the walls.

I hiked for maybe 2.5 hours total, out and back.  I would have liked to have gone farther, but you can see from the Tatooine picture that rain remained a threateningly real possibility, and my high from the orange and pomegranate juice was fading.  I stumped back towards town, stopping along the side of the road for a fortifying beer and chat with a lovely Canadian woman who'd happened to find herself in this strange land these past 20 years.

Unquestionably the best thing about Shoestring Cave House is that they have a rooftop pool.  Even if it was too chilly for swimming, the roof terrace offered a spectacular view of Goreme and was unbeatable for chilling after a long and satisfying day.  I had a glass of Cappadocian white and met a cool Australian girl.  At 7:00 I went down for dinner and was very pleasantly surprised!  Soup, salad, and then a main course of chicken and rice, served on this sort of personal Mongolian barbecue apparatus.  With real fire!  I love it when food gets served to me on fire.  (Technically, I guess, the fire was below the food.  Whatever.)  Everything was quite tasty.  Had a lovely quiet night and retreated to bed around midnight.  A very satisfying first day in Cappadocia!

Topkapi Palace, or How I Learned What "Harem" Means

The Disgruntled Hermit spreads her wings!

Yep, after pretty much a solid month of Doctor Who and various poorly-written novels, two Sundays ago I finally made myself put on real pants and go out of the house for something other than work or grocery shopping (or a beer run).  I went into Sultanahmet to check off one of the big giant touristy must-sees that I hadn't hit yet -- Topkapi Palace.  Otherwise known as the Buckingham Palace of the Ottoman Turks.

The Gate of Salutation

The palace grounds are enormous, and my guidebooks all said to budget at least two hours at the site to allow yourself time to see it all.  They did not, however, mention that you also needed to budget an hour for standing in the sun, waiting to buy your goddamed ticket.  There were automated kiosks, but I wasn't sure if they took cash and I didn't want to lose my place in the line I was already in.

(Also the length of said line should have in no way taken an hour.  But I watched a group of three women as they stood at the ticket window for at least ten minutes.  I'm not being hyperbolic.  When I say ten minutes, I don't mean three minutes that felt like ten minutes.  I mean they stood there for at least ten fucking minutes, because it was ten minutes from when I noticed and started timing them with my watch.  What on earth were they doing up there for ten minutes??  Even if they were counting out their ticket costs in pennies, it shouldn't have taken ten minutes unless they kept forgetting which number came after six.  And they weren't the only ones taking forever.  I was so confused.  When I finally got my sweaty and irritated self up to the counter, it was "Bir billet lutfen, sarayi ve harem." [One ticket please, palace and harem.]  I handed over my money, received my tickets, and was on my way.  TWENTY-FIVE FUCKING SECONDS, PEOPLE.  Thus leaving nine minutes and thirty-five seconds of giant honking unsolved mystery.)

Ahem.

Most of you know by now that there is not much I'll stand in an hour-long line for.  But I was determined that after my long self-imposed exile from my temporary home city, that I was going to check something off the Istanbul Bucket List that day.  I practiced my breathing, and eventually my patience was rewarded and I got to stump on through the fairytale-like Gate of Salutation, above, and into the Second Courtyard of the Topkapi Palace Complex.

A Topkapi Palace ticket costs 25 lira.  Because the palace's harem is one of the most beautiful and popular spots on the grounds, they naturally make you pay and extra 15 lira to see it.  Which makes a visit to the Topkapi Palace a slight extravagance at 40 lira.  But the harem is worth it, and in for a penny, you know.

I swung by and went through the harem first.  It was pretty impressive.

Interesting bit of trivia:  "harem" in Arabic means "forbidden."  The harem, despite the sexy connotations the word has been given in Western culture, was nothing more than the private apartments for the Sultan and his (largish) family.  And, okay, a bunch of female slaves and eunuchs,  but according to Rick Steves, the Sultan was allowed a maximum of four wives and four girlfriends, who were largely selected for him by his mother and existing wives/girlfriends.  I mean, certainly the man still had no shortage of female company after a hard day's work, but the reality of the harem was still a very different place than the picture painted by Byron's Don Juan.

After the harem, I walked through the various buildings in the third and fourth courtyards.  It was pretty crowded, and the more popular buildings had yet more lines of tourists with varying degrees of sunburn, slowly shuffling forward an inch at a time, in order to get their fifteen seconds of fame with this famous diamond or that famous dagger.  I waited in what lines I had patience for, which wasn't much.  I mostly circled around the outside of the ring, trying to get glimpses of the priceless artifacts over hats and between elbows.  Unfortunately, most of the Very Famous buildings did not allow photos inside.

View of the Bosphorus from the Treasury.

The Third Courtyard

Unsurprisingly, what I enjoyed most was the (least crowded) Fourth Courtyard and the several small but beautiful kiosks there.  No famous daggers inside, but any of these would be a simply perfect place to lounge away a hot summer afternoon.  Preferably with some wine and a nargile, of course.

Tulip garden, slightly past its peak.

I think this last picture is the Baghdad Pavilion  built by extra-fearsome Sultan Murat IV so he could have a quiet getaway from his tough-guy image and read some poetry.  Gotta love it.

The guidebooks were right, and even though one of the main features ended up being closed (the kitchens, repurposed as galleries), it still took me about two and a half hours to do my full circuit.  This included all the time waiting in various lines (but not the ticket line outside) and also some quality moments resting on benches.  The guidebooks are also right about this being an absolute Istanbul Must-See.  I enjoyed the Topkapi Palace immensely, even with the giant stupid wait to get in and the thronging masses once I was finally inside.  Utterly beautiful, and a fascinating insight into a very different culture.  I took my time with my dog-eared guidebook tucked under my arm, and even if such meticulous sightseeing is not your thing, I recommend it for a place like this.  I got so much more out of my experience by reading about each part as I was seeing it -- like that little bit about Murat IV!

And so passed the Sunday where I officially ended my Istanbul Hermitage and re-entered the grotty touristy backpackery world.  Five days later I would be off to weird and alien Cappadocia!

The present is stationary, but the future is in motion!

Hello internets.

First, something very important.  It's May 1.  This means it's the official two-year anniversary of my new life. Two years ago today, I landed in Tbilisi airport in the dead of night and had absolutely not the foggiest inkling of how wonderful, crazy, frustrating, scary, and all around in-fucking-credible my life was about to become.

But snapping back to the present, it's been pretty quiet on this old page recently.  This time, my reasons for silence are pretty simple.  I have not been doing anything, not one single thing, that is worth blogging about.

This is tragic, for so many reasons.  For one thing, it's completely unlike me.  The last time I was this lethargic, I had a mystery illness that was sapping both my energy and my appetite, and made it hurt to breathe.  I have no such excuses this time.  To make matters worse, I recently had a five-day weekend, and what did I do with it?  Nothing.   Not one single, solitary thing.  I don't think I even finished a novel.  Five whole, free days, and not only did I not travel, I barely even left the house.

I had wanted to go to Cappadocia, but I put off booking or even researching until the very last minute, and then got myself totally overwhelmed by both the cost and the planning required.  Yeah, Cappadocia is a whole region.  It's large, it's incredibly remote, and guess what? -- people there know they're sitting on a tourism goldmine, and they charge you for it.  I did not end up going to Cappadocia.

However, the small bit of good that has come out of this weird ennui is that I promised myself it was going to be the very last time five free days wasted away like that.  So this time I started my planning properly, weeks ahead.  I have a 4-day weekend coming up May 10.  And guess what?  As of this afternoon, I have both a plane ticket AND a reserved dorm bed at Shoestring Cave House.  W00t Woot.

I'm pretty excited, and I really hope that both the anticipation and the energy shot of actually seeing something amazing will kick the last of this lethargy away from me.

But, believe it or not, Cappadocia is NOT the most exciting thing on my horizon!  While researching flights, I also decided to look into my ticket home.  I had a vague idea of stopping off somewhere in Western Europe for a few days before humping it all the way across the Atlantic.  I considered places all over.  Prague, Budapest, Bucharest, Dublin, Vienna, Berlin, Munich... the only real requirements were that it be a new passport stamp and not too terrifically budget-busting, which is why I did not consider Switzerland.

Then I had a little lightning-strike epiphany, and decided to see how much it would cost to fly to Cairo.

So, um... yeah.  Guess where I'm going in June???

This time, excited does not even cover it.

I've visited a lot of places these past two years and there have been a fair few I've introduced with some version of "I've wanted to go here my whole life."  Of course, that was almost never literally true.  I didn't know about these places for my whole life.  It's impossible to want to a go to a place if you have no idea it exists.  But when it comes to Egypt, "I've wanted to go there for my whole entire life" is about the most truth that statement is ever going to see.

Again, not my whole life.  Not the diaper era, natch.  But pretty much right around the time I started realizing that my desires to visit Thundera and Eternia were very likely never going to happen, we studied Ancient Egypt for the first time in school.  I was instantly, completely, hooked.

And yes, I realize that this might not be the very best moment in all-time everness to visit Egypt.  I'm fairly positive my Mom wants to smack me about the head until I fall unconscious and she can tie me up until I miss my flight.  But I cleverly avoid her machinations by being in another country!

All I can say is that I'll be careful.  I'll do my research.  I'll plan.  I'll know where the American Embassy is.  I'll keep my head down and dress modestly.  I'll go on guided tours.  I won't crash any Egyptian frat parties and challenge them to Beer Pong with Death Cup.

This is without doubt one of the crazier things I've decided to do.  And I can't wait.

Then, after one amazing week of staring, totally star-struck, at the Great Pyramids and the Sphinx, I will fly home to Virginia.  And I will be there for a glorious day and a half before getting on another plane (one-way ticket again!) to Pensacola, Florida.  I will have a brand-new baby nephew to start spoiling.

Oh yeah, and then at some point after that, I'm getting myself up to Maine somehow, because my parents just closed on a cabin by a lake.

My life does not suck.

Somewhere in the midst of all that, I have to figure out where I am going next.

ALL the episodes, plus a trip to Prince's Islands

Okay, so... not every post can be vitriol (love that word) and bitterness.  And while it is very true that I have not been having as much fun in Istanbul as I believe I should, not everything has been about work and its resulting misery.  For one thing, my roommate, Rachel, and I have bonded like long-lost sisters based largely because we both hate teaching here... but even more importantly, because several weeks ago I introduced her to the wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey stuff that is Doctor Who, and ever since that fateful day, that is pretty much all we do with our evenings.  It only took a few well-chosen episodes for her to declare we needed to watch ALL THE EPISODES, and since the end of March when we started, we have made it about halfway through Season 4.

Just pause for a moment, and reflect on how many episodes that averages out to be in a night.  I mean, it's only April 15 right now.

I am SO PROUD of the monster I have created. :)  However, since we are also concurrently watching episodes of Season 7 as they come out (thank goodness she doesn't care about order as much as I do), we are going to finish up WAY before it's time to come home again.  Hopefully we can find some Classic Who somewhere to download.

But yeah.  Our weeknights pretty much go like this.  Come home, bitch rant rave, talk about quitting, pour a drink, sit on the balcony (if weather permits) for more ranting and doritios, then inside to heat up dinner, pour a second drink, and fire up the TARDIS, otherwise known as Rachel's Macbook.

It's not a bad life.  Granted, it's not one that either one of us expected to have whilst in Istanbul, but even the worst day can be improved with some vodka and David Tennant.

It's not just ennui that has kept us in though.  Due to not working a full month in February, our March paycheck was cut significantly.  That meant that after living off of savings for our entire first month here, we had the pleasure of surviving March with a paycheck that was about 1000 lira less than it was supposed to be.  Both of us pretty  much completely ran out of money for the last two weeks before April's payday.

We did get out on Easter for a little bit though, and visited a park and man-made beach in Florya, nearish to my school.  It was a pretty nice day although the Bosphorus is one gross body of water.  Completely full of trash, and way more unpleasant than that, jellyfish.  The Bosphorus is a gigantic jellyfish soup.  I've never in my life seen so many of these things.  Even if they turn out not to be the stinging kind, I will not be swimming here.

We got lunch/dinner at a restaurant overlooking the water.  Pretty expensive, and especially for us as we were scraping the bottom of the barrel.  But the food was good at least!

And then... finally came the day when our patient suffering was at an end, and lo -- it was April 10th!  We've been here over two fucking months and this is the first full paycheck we've had!!  We celebrated.  I'd found a butcher's shop nearby and ordered up a kilo of ground beef (27 lira!), and the day before I'd made up a potato salad and picked up some fresh mint at a farmer's stand.  (This was an accident; I'd thought it was basil.)  Indoor Payday Barbecue, motherfuckers!  Cheeseburgers, potato salad, and mohitos because I needed something to do with the mint.

Except I very sadly discovered that a bottle of Bacardi in Istanbul costs 70 lira.  However, this depressing setback led me to discover that mohitos can still be pretty mohito-ish when made with cheap vodka.  When living abroad, sacrifices and experiments are called for!!

It was a completely amazing dinner.

Afterwards, we... watched more Doctor Who.  Why mess with a good thing?

I'd decided weeks back that I was going to see something new and exciting the first weekend I got paid, and picked the Prince's Islands, south of the Asian side in the Marmara.  Several sources had recommended them, and I figured I'd stay Friday and Saturday nights at that Kadikoy hostel I stayed in for Dan's birthday, see more of that area, catch up with folks in the evenings and spend Saturday on the islands.  I booked it, and all was well.  I'd come home on Friday after work, pack, and make the long trek over to Asia.

Except I dragged my sorry ass in the door on Friday evening and did not feel even the littlest bit like packing or navigating Istanbul's mass transit or even meeting any new hostel friends.  Rachel and I made our customary post-work cocktails and sat on the balcony... and then I called the hostel to change my nights to Saturday and Sunday, put on pajamas, and we... watched Doctor Who.

To use one of Rachel's weird British phrases, I was truly knackered, and even went to bed early (for me).  This meant I was able to wake refreshed to a gorgeous Saturday, do my packing and mass-transit navigating, and meet my friend Mallory over in Kadikoy.  We did what there is to do in Kadikoy, which is walk around perusing the countless restaurants, coffeehouses, bars, and pubs, and talk about any random thing while eating and drinking the item of the moment.  After Mallory left to go back to Europe, I met Dan and a few of his friends, and had a pretty good night.  Winning.

Except I then woke up on Sunday (my new designated day for visiting the islands), and it was chilly and grey and threatening rain.  I mean... of COURSE it was.  Nonetheless, I figured out the right ferry and headed off.

Blue Mosque (left) and Hagia Sophia (right)

Kinaliada

I decided not to get off at Kinaliada or Burgazada, the first two ferry stops.  Lonely Planet said there wasn't much there, and I wanted sufficient time to explore the larger two.  When I did finally get off the boat at Heybeliada, this is what I found:

The island town was beautiful, but everywhere I looked all I could think of was that it was full of a sort of sad, lost grandeur.  Pretty much every house needed repair, and/or was currently under heavy renovation.  I think Heybeliada must have been an impressively gorgeous place once, and doubtless will someday be again.  But on the afternoon I was there, she seemed like an old lady rocking on her peeling-front porch and speaking quietly about the many beaux that used to come calling when she was a girl.

I found a path through the woods that eventually led here:

I followed the steps down, to this truly horrifying and disappointing sight:

This is doubtless the saddest beach I have ever seen, and I spent seven months on the Georgian Black Sea.  Utterly heartbreaking, but what really confused me was that that sign was not that old.  They couldn't possibly be suggesting people swim here.  How long does it take for a beach to get like this?  Also, I saw no sandwiches.

Walked back into town after this.  I didn't feel all that tremendously comfy being all isolated on my own, even with pepper spray.  With my luck and coordination skills I would end up dropping it or spraying my own face.  But other than the beach itself, I did see some incredible views.

Back at the pier, I grabbed a Turkish coffee and waited for the ferry to take me to Buyukada.

The first thing I noticed about Buyukada, the largest of the islands, was that it was WAY more crowded.  So right away I was put off. :)  All the same, it was way past time for some proper food, so I explored and eventually found a cute little restaurant and had some chicken skewers and rice.

The thing to do in Buyukada, other than shop, is hike up to this monastery.  I'd planned on doing that, but then the weather turned just slightly worse -- colder with the occasional drizzle.  I thought about it, and eventually decided to leave a hike up a mountain for another day.  Instead I walked around the town a little and got the ferry back to Kadikoy at 5:00.

Seagulls flocking in a rather ominous sky.

I enjoyed the Prince's Islands, although I'm aware I didn't see everything they had to offer.  As with most things, the key seems to be coming on a beautiful day and with plenty of money.  I have a guest or two visiting me here in Istanbul come May, and so will have a good excuse to visit the islands again if I feel I need to.

Today, I made it back home in time to take a nap, do some chores, and watch two episodes of Doctor Who with Rachel.  That is less than usual but she wanted to go to bed early. :)  And I guess it wouldn't hurt to start stretching them out!

Coming up, I have a long weekend.  Originally, the idea was to visit Cappadocia, but now Friday is really soon and once again I have not done one iota of planning.  Partly because no one has been able to tell me exactly which days we actually get off.  Ah, Eastern Europe.  Anyway, stay tuned.  I'm sure something will happen.  I mean, Rachel and I could decide to get really crazy and start watching Torchwood.

Love and an Idea, and What Happens After

Yesterday, I had what was almost certainly the Worst Saturday in Recent Memory, otherwise known as Parents' Meeting Day at my school.  Otherwise known as The Cautionary Tale of What Happens When I Say That Nothing Can Be Worse Than Teaching Turkish Children.

And so it came to pass that our world-weary protagonist learned most painfully that while indeed, facing a classroom full of shouting Turkish children is not unlike facing an army of Chaos Demons, facing a classroom filled with their mothers is not unlike facing an army of Chaos Demons who have all been recently upgraded and enlarged.

It was not pleasant.

And I didn't even get the full brunt of it, as my translator/Turkish English teacher colleague decided to stop translating most of it, saying only: "They are being very rude now.  To both you and to me."

Well.  Keep it classy, Istanbul.

And unless you might have missed a very relevant word up in the top line, I'm going to go ahead and re-point out that this was, in fact, on Saturday.

I am so Over It.  I could absolutely rant and rave and bitch and verbally slice away at this most recent humiliation that is only the latest installment in a series of Days That Suck, but what would be the point?  I signed up for this, took a chance, and it turned out to not be a success.  I'm leaving here in two months and one week, and frankly I think it will be extremely unlikely if I ever set foot in Turkey again in my life.  At the end of the day, that's all that really needs saying anymore.

I do think about quitting, every damn day.  Multiple times a day.  My roommate, Rachel, and I had a long and quite serious discussion on this earlier in the week.  And we both agreed that the one and only reason we could think of to stay is for the sake of our very hefty apartment security deposit.  Literally, 1,000 lira (each) held in limbo is the one and only thing that is keeping either of us from booking a plane ticket and packing our bags.

Back when I first started, I was still able to tap into the high of being here.  Of being in Istanbul.  I mean, who wouldn't want to live in Istanbul?  To get to actually tell people "Oh yeah, I live in Istanbul?"  Doesn't that sound cool?

In my early twenties, I had the misfortune to date particular young man who, among other things, had the lovely habit of whining whenever we fought (which was often): "You don't love me!  You just love the idea of me!"

It's embarrassing to admit that I did not, in fact, break up with him on the spot the first time he ever said that.  But if nothing else it does speak to the remarkable evolution of my intolerance of bullshit over the last ten years.  The point, however, is that I have been hearing his annoying voice in my head quite a bit these days.

"You don't love me!  You just love the idea of me!"

Only it's not an ex-boyfriend in my head, it's a city.

Istanbul.  "I live in Istanbul."  I practiced that, under my breath or in the car or in the shower.  I loved the way it sounded.  How exotic it was.  Expat chic.  Living in Tbilisi was one thing; a lot of folks didn't even know where that was.  They didn't know where Georgia was.  But damn, everyone has heard of Istanbul.  Constantinople.  And I get to live there.  Just how awesome am I???  Moving up in the world, Baby!!

I arrived here bursting with excitement and puppy love.  I walked home at night, back to my dumpy rented room, singing.  I joined Istanbul expat communities on Facebook and introduced myself to people at happy hours.  I talked constantly about the future, about taking Turkish language classes, opening a bank account, and subletting my newly-rented beautiful apartment over the summer so I could come back to it in the autumn, refreshed and ready for a shiny new year of teaching.  Of living in Istanbul.  My new home.


"You don't love me!  You just love the idea of me!"

And even after it became clear that teaching at my school would not be anything even remotely pleasant, fulfilling, or productive, I entertained ideas of looking elsewhere.  I exchanged emails and promised to send my resume.  I wanted to stay.  I wanted so badly for Istanbul to be my city.

"You don't love me!  You just love the idea of me!"

Yeah.

Sorry Istanbul.  I don't love you.  I had an idea of you in my head, and I fell in love with it.  I came here and tried to find something that was never there for me to find.

And now I am just tired.  I want to go home.  I want to quit.  Just.  Fucking.  QUIT.

I haven't felt like this since Ursula, and certainly never expected to again  I suppose thanks of a sort are in order, because if I hadn't had all those years of corporate Mord-Sith training, I don't know how well I'd be handling things right now.  As it is, I can count down the days.  I know this isn't going to last forever.  June will be here before I know it.

And after June?  What happens next?  To be honest, a quiet receptionist job, or Trader Joe's, doesn't exactly look all that horrible anymore.

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.