I'm alive!

Oooh man what a week! To begin with, I think I have only seen the sun once in the last week. It has rained everyday, and I feel soggy. My apartment isn't well ventilated and there is mold growing, and I feel like I will turn into mold, except sometimes it isn't warm enough for me to become mold. Earlier this week I was frustrated by the apartment - I went to bed one night and my clothes felt damp and there was no heat and my room smelled musty. But every day I discover something new - the shower head DOES have a place to hang (the first couple of days I was fumbling around turning it off, putting it down somewhere, washing, picking it up, turning it on etc etc), and the pressure is AWESOME. The couple I live with have a machine to dry the air out, which I will put in my room sometime. The windowin my room is not only able to open from the side, but if I turn the handle the other direction, it can crack at the top so when it stops raining, I can leave it open so my room can air out (it's hard to describe but it's really cool). But I am happy with the place and definatly happy with the people. I am not there very much because I go straight to Sinan's after work because he cooks for me, but I usually see them at

Now, for my course. It is pretty intense. Our first full day was on Tuesday, and by Thursday we were teaching 20 minute lessons. We are teaching adult Turks who speak an elementary level of English. They come for free, knowing they are receiving English lessons by teachers in training. I am at school from 9-6, so I leave the house at 7:30 and don't get back until 7:30. Meaning, I wake up at 6:39. I don't remember the last time I have had to use an alarm. In addition, my body and mind are not used to working such long days - college it was only a couple of hours a day spread out over the day. So I am pretty exhausted. And once I get home, the working does not stop, but I need to plan out the lesson and fill in the sheets, practice blah blah. Luckily I have Sinan to cook dinner for me, and it is ready by the time I get back! He's been really patient and understanding with me, I have been pretty mean and grouchy. He is also useful because not only is he a math education major so he has taken a lot of education classes, where English is his second language he is more familiar with it than I am!

Thursday I taught vocabulary about activities in the evenings and on the weekend, and it was so nerve racking because you have to be so clear and careful with your instructions for the activities because their English is so limited. Friday we worked on negative sentences, and I must say, that lesson went pretty well and I felt good about it. I got positive feedback from my tutor as well. When we aren't teaching, we are learning about things like how to teach vocabulary, classroom management, creating lesson plans and so forth. I think one of my favorite things is that we had a 20 minute foreign language lesson where the teacher didn't speak any English to us, but surprisingly we all caught on and learned (Indonesian we found out) some phrases. It was nice to see you don't have to speak the native language to teach, although it is a challenge.

Next week we have to teach 40 minutes, fortunately only 2 days so we have more time to prepare. They give us the topic and exercises they want us to teach, and I am afraid I don't have enough things to fill up the time.

Anyway, blah blah blah, sorry! Here is a pictures of the area I am working in, taken by Sinan. It is in Taksim, which is a really busy area, but with lots of things to look at so the 15 minute walk from the bus to school is always entertaining. I know I will buy a pair of boots by the end of the course.