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)

Bu haftada

Gaziantep from the castle

Well . . . I suppose we are a little behind on updating this! I'm not sure where to start!
Some blessings - Jeremy has a job now! He decided to go ahead and get his TESL certificate and teach at Zirve with me. He is in the middle of his course work right now, so as you think of it, keep him in mind. I'm not sure if this is positive or negative for him, but this week we also have teacher "boot camp." Some teachers from UNT have come to teach us for a week before school starts. It has been really enjoyable for me at least. I love hearing all of the ideas and suggestions and practical problem solvers for the classroom. So, that has been good. It has also been good to just spend a lot of time with the other English teachers here. We have been developing some friendships with some of our colleagues, and thoroughly enjoying it.
Another blessing is that we have been able to get to know some people that we will hopefully be able to spend a lot of time with. We spent some more time with our friend Deniz this weekend, and he introduced us to his friend Erhan. Those two and Jeremy played some basketball together, and we were able to go to Erhan's house for dinner on Sunday. His mom is a VERY good cook!! She said that she will teach me sometime how to make some of their dishes. It was really fun to be in their house and just visit with them. We got to see some pictures and drink Turkish coffee and çay and have some of her amazing cookies! Then, on Sunday we also went over to Deniz's house after Erhan's for some more çay and just to hang out and talk. It was a really good weekend.

Lastly, we've been working on our Turkish! Some of my friends at Zirve have been taking time to teach us some of the rules, and it has helped to finally be able to formulate some sentences and understand at least a little bit of what is going on! It will still take a long time, but we've at least started!
Dun akşam pazardan meyve satın akduk. Bu akşam lakmacun yemek istiyoruz.
See! Okay . . . so that took a while, but I didn't use a dictionary!! (Then again, it probably isn't all right either.) So, think of us in regards to language. We love learning it, and have so much fun with it, but it is seriously something we want to be able to master. That will expand our relationship opportunities infinitely!
Well, that is all for now. We hope you are all doing well! Thank you for taking time and caring about us . . . we really appreciate it. We do miss everyone at home, but He has been so good to take care of us, and His promises are an encouragement even when we feel alone.

the castle in Gaziantep