November!!

It's already November! Time goes so fast! A lot has happened in the last few weeks, and together we have realized that we haven't written for a while! Well . . . we'll try to hit the highlights.
School has been going well. Our students are a lot of fun. We have been learning a lot from them, and hoping that they are learning lots from us. Sometimes I'm not sure though. There are days when the students seem determined to not put forth any effort in our classes, and those are the days I give them the lecture about being stuck in level A for the rest of their lives. It at least makes them think!

Last weekend we had a day and a half off for Cumhuriyet Bayram (Joom-hurry-yet Bye-rum). That is the celebration of the day that Turkey became a country. So, we enjoyed the time off to start getting in the Christmas mood, buy Jeremy some new pants, and go visit Rum Kale with some of our fellow teachers. That was AMAZING.

Rum Kale is an ancient castle built into the existing stone of a rock cliff along the Euphrates river. It was absolutely beautiful. To top it off, the day was gorgeous - bright sun with some awesome clouds. I was astounded by the beauty. One of the teachers at Zirve had decided to rent a car to go and visit Rum Kale, and was determined to drive in Turkey despite the hesitancy of the rental agency. But, our only incident the entire day was swiping a guys side mirror about 10 minutes into our trip. Other than that and having to back out of the toll booth lanes about 4 times, we were fine. When we got to Halfeti (where we got the boat to go to Rum Kale) a man offered us a ride to Rum Kale on his boat right away. So, we took it and got on. We were thrilled, and snapped pictures all the way up the river. We passed Rum Kale, and kept going to the sunken city - a city that the government inundated when they built a new dam. But, they relocated the people to a city higher up. It is interesting though, because you pull up in the boat, and dock almost right on top of an old mosque. The minaret rises up out of the water right next to you. So, that was pretty cool. Then, we were heading back to Halfeti when we asked about getting out a Rum Kale. The boy who was driving the boat told us that we could not go there because of excavations or something. So we went back to Halfeti. We were pretty bummed about not getting to explore Rum Kale, and as we were trying to decide what to do instead, a man came up and asked us what we were doing. We told him our dilemma, and he said, "What? You can go up to Rum Kale, I'll take you." So, after waiting a little while to see if another group would show up, he sent us to Rum Kale on one of his boats. We got to explore and climb around the ruins of the ancient castle. It was pretty amazing. While we were waiting for the boat, however, we got to explore an old mosque that had been flooded recently. They are working on renovations, but for now it is just open. So, we went inside and looked around and climbed all the way to the top of the minaret. And . . . here is the secret, the steps in a minaret just circle all the way to a point! There are openings where the muezzin stands of course, but the top of the steps is just a point, it doesn't go anywhere! That made me laugh. When we were coming back from the ruins, Jer and I were lying on the front of the boat looking at the stars when we saw the most amazing shooting star we have ever seen in our lives. It was beautiful. Oh, and lest I forget - we also got to see one of the funniest things ever. We drove around a bend on the mountain going down into Halfeti, when we saw a little boy riding a donkey down the mountain - backwards. It was hilarious!

Other than Rum Kale, life has been going well - rather busy, but very good. Jeremy has started taking some classes downtown in the International Relations masters' program from Zirve. He is also part of the Zirve Prep School soccer team. So far they are 1-0-1. On Thursday he left me in Gaziantep to go to Cyprus and get his work visa. Everything went smoothly with that, and now he is back! (I am very glad.) I have been busy with lesson planning, and starting guitar lessons, and this week hopefully I will be able to start my ebru lessons (it is a type of painting that is famous in Turkey.) On Friday night I went to a birthday party for some of my friends. That was fun. Oh, and this week we have had some spontaneous power outages which have been fun. That has been life recently! But, before I finish, one more adventure . . .
Last week we started our Christmas shopping, and we found this one shop of copper and silver things. The man who works there is super nice - we call him Friday. His name is Cuma (Joom-a) which is the Turkish word for Friday. He invited us in for çay as soon as he saw us, so we sat for a while. We ended up buying a few things from him, and then returning even later for a few more things. Then, yesterday we decided to finish up our shopping, and without realizing it, we ended up at his shop again. He wanted us to stay and go to kahve with him, but we didn't yesterday (we had a date planned.) So, we went back tonight to see him. He is super nice. We just sat with him for about an hour at his shop. He bought fıstıklar (pistachios - G. Antep is famous for them) and Turka Cola and we sat on stools by the road for an hour or so eating pistachios and watching traffic, which in reality is very amusing. His shop is on a corner of a street where three different directions are merging onto a one-way. And between the people who decide the one way is not for them, the mopeds on the sidewalks, and the car that died in the middle of it all, we had some good laughs. When the one car died, Jeremy was about to jump up and help, but Friday told him to sit down and watch, keep eating pistachios. It was about 10 minutes of pushing the car the wrong way down one of the one-way streets, trying to get it going, bringing it back up the hill, turning it around . . . I'm not sure what he actually did, but eventually he got going and left. Then, Friday walked all around Çarşı with us. He bought us corn on the cob (a very nice gesture, but don't be fooled - the corn on the cob is put in hot water, I think, but it isn't actually cooked . . . so, it is a little rough to get down.) Then he took us to a little kahve house and bought us coffee. Before we left, he gave us his number and told us if we ever have a problem to just call "Allo, Cuma!" So, we are thankful for the friendship.
Well, for those of you still reading, thanks again for your thoughts and love. We miss you all, but we are thankful for how our Father is taking care of us and working in us. He is good!

İyi akşamlar!

bbq today . . .

So, we had a Prep school teachers' bbq today. It was a beautiful day, and a lot of fun to just hang out and spend time with some other teachers . . . and eat some very good kebap!!

Zirve - we teach in the farthest building - kinda in the middle of the picture

I think the nets need stretched out a bit

bbq today . . .

So, we had a Prep school teachers' bbq today. It was a beautiful day, and a lot of fun to just hang out and spend time with some other teachers . . . and eat some very good kebap!!

Zirve - we teach in the farthest building - kinda in the middle of the picture

I think the nets need stretched out a bit

serüvenler seviyorum!! i love adventures!

So . . . it is definitely time for me to write a post! There is so much to write, but I will try to not make this a novel. We are finished with our second week of classes! I love teaching. I must say though, that by the end of the week, I'm tired, and all of my students were tired. It is funny, because I gave the same lecture 3 times on Friday. I pointed to the building across from the English Prep building and said, "You see that building? That is university. If you do not start working in this class, you will never go there. If you work here, Level A, Level B, Level C, Level D, University. If you do not start working - Level A, Level A, Level A, Level A - four years!!" I think they got the point. We'll see if it helps!
But, despite an occasional (or somewhat usual) lack of motivation, our students have been doing well and we have really enjoyed getting to know them. They are a ton of fun. And they have been helping us learn Turkish!! We are hoping to be able to spend a lot of time with some of them and hopefully get to share more of our lives with them. So, please keep that in mind.
This week we did not do much other than school, but on Friday night we got together with our friend Erhan and his friend Hakan at SankoPark. That was very fun. I think we laughed for almost 3 hours straight.

Today was a grand adventure. :-) Early this afternoon we headed towards old çarşı, near the castle. We found the soccer stadium and then saw that directly across from the stadium was a muze (museum.)

So, we wandered in and were very excited. The museum was full of steles from the Hittite and Roman periods and also a ton of mosaics from Zeugma - a city on the Euphrates that has just been uncovered in the last few decades. The mosaics were awesome - all different mythological stories and such. (The pictures above are all mosaics from Zeugma. The top one is a very famous picture around here of a gypsy girl - then the middle one is Europa who was captured by Zeus because he fell in love with her, and she became so famous that they named a continent after her, and the bottom one is Poseidon.) Then there were coin collections, stamp collections, signet collections, hair pins, animal figurines, pottery . . . it was pretty awesome.

Next we went and walked over by the castle. There is a little coffeehouse there that has been restored to a traditional Turkish coffeehouse. It is really cute, and sits right underneath of the castle. So, we went in there and got çay. There was a family there with three little boys. They were so much fun to watch. There is a rope hammock-like swing under one of the trees, and the boys were having a blast in it. This provided a pretty funny false cognate story. One little boy was in the swing, and the other one pushed him pretty hard towards the tree. Then the boy in the swing shouted "Hayir, hayir!!" Which, to Jeremy and I in the context of swinging meant, "higher, higher, push me higher!" However, we then remembered that we are in Turkey, and "Hayir" actually means "No! No!" I guess the little boy was more nervous of hitting the tree than he was excited to swing. We laughed. Then we walked around for a little while. I bought a scarf and Jeremy got a cool hat.

One Week In

It is Saturday afternoon and both of us are pretty well exhausted. We have just finished our first week of teaching at Zirve. We are both teaching 24 hours a week. We are both teaching listening, speaking, and reading. The prep school is divided up into about 35 different classes of 16-18 students. The teachers then cycle through those classes teaching the different skills. We meet with our reading students 7 times a week, listening 3 times, and speaking twice. Altogether we end up having about 120-140 students this term (we will have an 8 week term and then it will start over). It has been a lot of fun getting to know our students and interact with them in (and out of the classroom). It has not been so much fun trying to learn all of their names! It was a lot of new people to meet in a short amount of time.

I won't repeat everything that has happened this past week because there has been too much, but I want to give at least some of the highlights. There are a lot of great things about the university where we are working. It really has been a lot of fun. It is a new school and so there are lots and lots of things happening. They are growing at a pretty incredible pace. There are, however, some definite issues still to work out. As of the previousThursday night (before we started teaching on Monday) we had no idea what the syllabus were for the classes we were teaching, what materials we were using, how many classes we were teaching, how many times they met, when they met, where they met...pretty much we knew "classes are starting on Monday!" On Friday morning we had a meeting that gave us a little more information...and a stack of like two hundred pages of materials that some of the coordinators had been working on. It was really helpful...but took most of the weekend to figure out what was what. But we still did not know our teaching schedule (or things like how many times each class met during the week). They told us they would have them ready by the end of the day. So 5:00 comes and they are frantically printing and handing out the schedules. So we more or less knew what the plan was supposed to be for the week. We weren't ready for it...but we at least knew what it was. Then Saturday morning we got an email saying they had to change the schedule and that we could find out on Monday (or it might be posted on-line Sunday afternoon). So then we again had no idea what was up. From our perspective not knowing any answers it was a little overwhelming...for those who were working on the problems trying to find answers it was a ton of work. But in the end everything got sorted out and we all started teaching on Monday morning...only a few hitches...well there were hitches but classes went on all the same. (If you would like more about the saga of teaching at Zirve our other native English-speaking colleagues would be more than happy to tell you every horror of the experience)

Our classes have been so much fun to work with. Kylie has done an awesome job of putting together lessons plans and helping me to figure out what on earth I should be doing. We both have gotten along really well with our reading classes (which is good because we are with them seven hours a week). We are doing our best to cover the tons of material these students need to learn and also keep the classes fun. The way the program is structured the students we have are in the English prep school. They have to pass through the 4 levels of the prep school before they can enter their faculty classes in the university. There are 4 terms in the year. So theoretically a student could start off at the bottom level (A, which is where we teach) and by the end of the year pass all the way through level D and then be ready to enter university next year. It is a lot of ground to cover in a short amount of time but we are hoping that a lot of students will be able to do it.

 So - school is a lot of work but really, really fun.

On other notes we are still working on Turkish and learning something new about every day. We learn some from our students (although we try to use only English with them). We learn a lot from the Turkish English teachers we work with. We've been able to develop some good friendships with them and that leads to teaching us lots of Turkish. We have also had some really good conversations and our getting to learn more about the culture and mindset of the people and share with them some of our own. So that is always an exciting thing to see.


A few pics: 1, 2: us on our first day of classes (kinda felt like kindergarten...((okay...felt like that for Kylie...for me it felt like my freshman year of college...aka=homeschool!)))
3: It is starting to get cooler and wetter here so Kylie got a jacket and rain boots. They are super, super cool...and even though she's not a purple girl it definitely is cute!
4: During the last week we've had two glasses break or chip so we had to get some new ones. These ones are nearly identical to our favorite ones we left at home...and they just happened to be the cheapest ones too (6 glasses for 4.00tl = $2.85)