One week left!

Hi hi hi! I hope everyone is well. Nothing new to report, I taught 2 forty minute chunks this week to the intermediates, who are much quicker and there are more of them. A challenge I ran into was getting their attention. My first lesson there were 19 of them and it was a speaking activity - yikes. I need to step up and take charge and think of different ways to get their attention. They aren't rude, but they just get engrossed in their work. Anyway, things are just still crazy busy but I am more accustomed to it.

This upcoming week is my last and I am kind of scared, because once it is over I need to start facing the real world, where I won't have my tutors holding my hand walking me through my lessons and so forth. I need to start thinking about resumes and cover letters and interviews. I haven't even decided on what kind of a place I want to work in - I know I could get a job in a language school, but the hours are kind of funny, like nights and weekends. I also don't want to work too far away and I want to get paid a reasonable amount. A lot of places in Istanbul are not good places to work in (low pay, don't give you 2 days off, a lot of turnover in management) so I need to do some research. I think at school we will talk about it this week as well.

That's about it! Yesterday I finally went and did something cultural - there was an exhibit about the wooden houses in Istanbul. Very interesting and well put together and it makes me want to go explore Istanbul to find wooden houses before they are knocked down to put a modern apartment building in. Oohhh I had an embarrassing event. It was raining of course, and I was sitting on the metro coming home and I had my dripping wet umbrella in a bag (they gave me a bag at the exhibit) which was on my lap. You can guess what happened. The bag leaked all over my crotch without me realizing it and it looked like I peed on myself. Oh well.

Tonight I am going to my relative's house for a women's day dinner. Hopefully I can meet some people and make some connections of things to do and ways to get involved. I've been here almost 2 months and don't really have a circle of friends which needs to change. It's been fine because I've been so busy but with the course ending it would be nice to have people to go do things with.

That's it for now! Thanks for checking in and please keep in touch. I will try to load a video of my apartment in another post now!