Soccer match

More food and some pictures of where I live

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More Antalya (and food)

Blogspot is being weird so I am making this into two different posts. The pictures below are from today - three different meals. Breakfast, at the bottom, was out on the porch. We had tomatoes, cucumbers, parsley and cheese, meat borek, and french fries. So good. Dinner (middle two) was simple, delicious baked chicken with potatoes, salad, beans with meat, and rice with vegetables. I thought food was over (besides ice cream) but then she made something similar to borek, only with ground meat, cheese, AND tomatoes, and it was FRIED! I really am almost in tears I am so full and I could only manage to eat half of one. I can barely drink tea I am so full.

Today Kubra, Serdar (Sinan's brother) and I went to the beach about 15 minutes away. There was a strong breeze that kept it from being too hot, and almost too cold at times. I was hesitant to get in the water because I hate being wet in the wind but I figured you only get to take a swim in the Mediterranean every so often. We all got really sunburned, and unfortunately I have this "skill" of getting the splotchy-ist sunburns ever. The few spots on my legs make sense, I was hasty with applying sunscreen, but my chest and neck looks like a two year old applied sunscreen. Oh well. I go back to Istanbul tomorrow night, and hopefully tomorrow will be more just hanging around and reading.

More Antalya (and food)

Antalya!

Beach #2

Berke - he's grown since I last saw him!


Berke and Kubra - Sinan's sister


Merve - Sinan's cousin. She likes to practice English.


Beach #1 with most of the family.

I’m in Antalya as I write this! I had three days off in a row, and I wanted to get out of Istanbul so I decided to go visit Sinan’s family down in Antalya. I managed to get three consecutive off days because today, Tuesday, is a holiday, and I normally have Wednesday and Thursday off. I arrived here late last night, leaving from work. Sinan’s mom, brother, and sister were so kind to get me from the airport at 1:30am! Naturally, there was food for me – stuffed peppers, chicken, a salad, fasule (like green beans) in tomato sauce, and cake.

Unfortunately today was a big day so we had to wake up at 9 which meant only 5.5 hours of sleep, but wow, it was good sleep. The temperature is perfect sleeping temperature, for me at least. We were supposed to go on a picnic and then go swimming in a pool, but because today is a holiday, places were closed. I never really knew what was happening until it happened, but this was the order of the day: dropped the father off at the apartment complex he built, went to the relatives in Antalya for hanging around and eating breakfast, stopped in two furniture places and someone ended up buying a fridge (we’re a 3 car caravan by the way), drove for about 35 minutes more to a beachy area, stayed 10 minutes, drove back about 30 minutes to a different beach, drank Coke and eat sunflower seeds, went into the water (Merve won 10 lira off of that), stopped at a restaurant to eat meatballs and beans, grocery store, and now home. Sinan isn’t here so I don’t get as much guidance or information, but his brother, a former English teacher, has been wonderful and is helping me along. I think tomorrow will be a more relaxed beach day, hopefully I can just zone out and read my book. It’s probably been a year since I’ve been to a beach to read! I’m looking like a ghost so I need to get some color.

Work is going pretty well, I’ve been pretty busy there. My main concern now is that I don’t have the heart to repeat people, or I have very low. I will probably get in trouble if I don’t start repeating more…What I really enjoy about where I work is that there is kind of a community there with the students, like you see them again and again whether in an Encounter, a social club, or just hanging out in the social club area. It’s nice to see familiar faces, I haven’t really established any social circles yet and seeing the friendly people at work is making up for that.

That’s about it! Life is going pretty well, just doing normal day-to-day things. I’m hoping to get home for a week or two this summer. I miss things like driving and speaking English fast and listening to stranger’s conversations and Reese’s cups. And the obvious – my family and friends. I thought I smelled a BLT today and it made me yearn for summer time at home and eating and playing on the back porch with my family, eating fresh things from the garden. I suppose I get to eat fresh fruit and kebaps and other cool stuff, so I shouldn’t complain!

Still alive!

Hi sorry sorry I'm so bad at this! I guess no news is good news? I'm teaching full time now, and it's been going pretty well. I still need to study lesson plans because I am given new ones everyday, but I am also reteaching some so I just pick up the binder, and go to class, without needing to think. I can't wait until I can do that with all my lessons! Soon! I am still really happy with my choice of Wall Street - they pay on time (and in cash, I felt so sketchy walking around with an envelope full of money on pay day), they give a food debit card (about 200 lira a month, which most restaurants/bakeries and so forth take), we have a teacher's "lounge", the printer and copier works - things like that that don't seem important, but I have heard so many complaints about from ESL teachers where they don't get paid on time (I heard from another teacher he worked at a school where that happened, and another teacher there started teaching students the wrong thing to get back at the school!), there aren't materials for the teachers, and so forth.

One aspect of the Wall Street method is that students aren't allowed to use dictionaries in the study center, like Turkish to English, English to Turkish. The point of this is so the students ask us or one of the personal tutors, and we give them an English definition, or act it out or draw it. I like this idea because it prevents translation in their head - ohh a flower is a çiçek, because that ruins the point of learning the language as a child learns their native language. So instead of saying çiçek, I could draw a pictures of a flower, or be like, the pretty things that grow in gardens etc. The problem of not having dictionaries is, sometimes worlds are so hard to describe! A couple I have been faced with are "available" and "place". I still don't know how to define those words. Ah another interesting question was from a girl in law school, and she wanted to know the difference in robber, thief, and burglar, and also how it was different from a muggar.

While there are standardized lesson plans, we do have a time to do things a little more creative, in the Complementary Classes, Social Clubs, and Free Chat Hour. In the first two I've done things like a lesson on Feng Shui, and worked on prepositions with that, or for a lower level, health and sickness vocabulary. I did a spring cleaning lesson and then students had to create a cleaning plan for certain rooms of the house. So it's more open, it's nice.

The weather is FINALLY improving, it's been so overcast and even chilly. We've had about 5 days of spring so far, which is really unusual. Unfortunately summer is going to start soon, so it's going to get pretty hot. Oh well.

Also, I'm sick for the 4th time I think since I've been here, which is really unusual. Nothing horrible, just sore throat, headache, and a runny nose, but now that I am working it's a pain. I'm planning to move in mid-June, and maybe I can find a newer place where more air circulates. A balcony would be wonderful.

Well that's it for now! I need to study some Turkish, I have a lesson this afternoon, and I have been a very bad student. I hope everyone is well!