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!