I'm baaaaaack

Whoa, HOW long has it been since I posted?

First, some disclaimers: I am exhausted. If this post is crap, let's not make (probably accurate) assumptions about me and we'll blame it on exhaustion. Second, I am cranky and also not feeling the best. So suck it up, people, and read on!

So, we started class on Sunday. I've been in "intense" courses before, but seriously. whoa. This is a bit out of control. A LOT of information coming at us all at once for 8 hours, and then HW afterwards to round out the night. Oh, and did I mention that today (my third day of class) I got to get up in front of 15 guinea pigs (also called students) and teach a lesson? I am thinking perhaps me making a fool of myself has endeared me to them...Yes, let's go with that.

No, they really are a great group of students. We have a very large age range, from 17 to 35, I believe. They are at various stages of "intermediate English speaking," which I found out today is an incredibly useless label. Basically, some of them are basically close to fluency, while others struggle to correctly form sentences and pronounce words. They have all volunteered to take this course to work on their English. Poor souls, imagine spending a month of your summer getting up for a 9:30-12 class 5 days a week with teachers who have never taught before! I think I know who's getting the short end of this stick. Chris is in the elementary group, which means they speak either none or very little English.

I have time to write this tonight only because I don't have to teach tomorrow. I'm supposed to be doing other work, of course, but my splitting headache and need to NOT look at that hated notebook have landed me here. But yeah, basically don't expect as much blogging for the next month. Firstly because we're just doing the same boring thing day after day, and secondly because I simply don't have the time for my usual novel-length blogs. If something interesting actually happens, I will try to catch up on the weekends.

So our days are structured like this: Class begins at 9:30 with our students. For the rest of our month, 3 of us will teach 45 minute lessons to the group each day. (The next day, the others in the group will teach their 45 minute lessons- we will have a day on of teaching, then a day off.) At noon, when the students leave, we go for our hour lunch in the cafeteria. I have discovered cafeteria food, no matter which country, really does all taste the same. We return at 1, and from 1-3 we have our own class time, with our instructors teaching us the finer points of ESL teaching. At 3 we break into our groups again and have a feedback session on that morning's teaching. Those can be brutal, I can already tell. Lastly, we round out the day with lesson planning for the next day. Then we go home and either work on lessons, papers, reading articles, etc. So very busy days. On the plus side, it means I'm sleeping VERY well at night!

We dropped laundry off tonight. Tomorrow at 8PM we will have 2 1/2 weeks worth of clean clothes. YAY! It's weird, they don't have self-serve laundry here. You either have maids do it, or else you drop if off and someone else does it for you. I would LOVE this arrangement (laundry has traditionally been my responsibility at home) except that it is not cheap, and therefore I fear I may be relegated to doing laundry in our bathroom sink. Which will make the self-serve washers and dryers of the US seem like paradise. I was just happy to have found a way to do it! Apparently laundrymats are really rare, so we were lucky to have this one.

I have made a few observations of Turkey in couple weeks I've been here. I know some of you are dying to know these answers, since we discussed them before I left. So I'll take care of them now, at least as many as I can remember. First, there ARE Western toilets most places I have been. TP being stocked is a little trickier to find, which has forced me to add yet another item to my already bulging purse- a roll to carry with me. (BTW, for those wondering, we have seen the Oriental style toilet, but at this point, I'm not going near that!) So far though I have found them fairly comparable to bathrooms in the US. People to not freak out if you say ummm. That's all I'm going to say on that topic. The food is just as good as what I raved about in all my previous posts. That has remained a highlight for me with my time here. I miss sidewalks in the US, where they are not used as substitute parking lots, are wide enough to walk on, and are flat concrete. My high heels have been taking a beating on these cobblestones! I miss GPS. And Oliver Wine. I think that will wrap up this section.

Actually, this may wrap up my post. I'm starting to stare very hard at the screen and my brain is shutting down for the night. I will try to post again this weekend if I have anything new to add.