Our Turkish world visits us in Tennessee!

Last week, we had the privilege of hosting some of Justin's former teaching colleagues from Büyük Kolej at Justin's parents' home in Tennessee. A group of high schoolers competed in Destination Imagination's Global Finals in Knoxville. It was fun to host a group in a real American neighborhood so they could see houses and grassy yards (instead of apartments) in the suburbs.

The team competed in the Fine Arts Challenge and did a great job, finishing 17th out of 49 other international teams. Their skit was a play on Mario Bros., very well done!

We grilled hamburgers, hot dogs, and lots of trimmings and dessert. (Along with hot tea afterwards, of course.) It was wonderful to speak and hear Turkish again and be able to repay some of the hospitality we had experienced from them.

Teaching English in Turkey

(Justin) Two weeks ago I finished my first semester teaching 2nd-4th graders here. I had a tearful goodbye with my colleagues, since our family made the decision to return to the U.S. to help Elias's progress with his special needs. Everyone commented that it felt like I'd worked there for years rather than just one semester-- it was such a good fit for everyone. Here are some fond memories. This was my view after arriving every morning (most days more sunny than this one):

You can just make out Anıtkabir in the center of this one.

On a bulletin board in the high school wing I was met with a daily reminder of where I'd come from:

Below are a couple of items I got from students during my time that I appreciated. The first is a set of Atatürk Turkish coffee cups that one of my students gave to me on Teacher's Day.

The second is a picture one of my 2nd graders drew for me for Christmas with a note from her in Turkish that she loves me and will never forget me.

Having read this book and talked to countless other veteran teachers here, I can say the complaints of Western teachers in Turkish classrooms are universal. It is tough. The schools are loud, discipline is weaker than at a typical American school. At my school, the acoustics of the rooms and corridors were akin to a racquetball court. During the 10-minute recess after each period, the shrill screams literally hurt your ears. This can shake you deep down to your nerves (signs written in Turkish on the walls pointing out the scientific hazards of "noise pollution" only make it worse). So, you strive for peace and quiet in your own classroom-- meaning you have to keep the kids busy at all times. 40 minutes have to come loaded with 10-minute activities, and any exciting games you have to play need to have strict rules/boundaries to keep kids quiet.

Kids are emotional. They are just as passionate about their football teams as their parents are. There is no age limit for crying to be unacceptable. Insults quickly lead to violence.

And the kids LOVE and want to be LOVED. The best teachers are mugged in the hallways by their students/former students who want to hug them. (Touching is very normal here, it often makes Westerners uncomfortable.) They are lavished with gifts on Teacher's Day. I never achieved that status. In part because I'm not the most teddy-bear kind of guy, it was my first time teaching little ones, and I also had the misfortune of preparing young students for their first Cambridge exams (and their first English speaking/listening exams in any case), which added a bit of seriousness and stress to what had previously been mostly speaking-English-for-fun class.

My advice to anyone wanting to teach in Turkey: Learn Turkish first. This will make you a better co-worker and allow you to understand problems in your classroom. You need to make friends outside of your department and it will be hard for you if few of your colleagues speak English well. You obviously don't want to use it in your classroom, but if I hadn't spoken Turkish, I wouldn't have been able to get help with issues from the homeroom teacher, principal, etc.

But here are a couple of native English speaking colleagues who made my time there go faster as well. I'm glad to have met Jim, a retired Royal Air Force man from Scotland, and Robin, a South African surfer. They helped me have fun. 

 

Here's to the toughest job I've had with the greatest colleagues and boss (Ayşen Hoca) in the world. 

Celebrating the Winter Holiday in Turkey

(Joni) As I mentioned in my previous post, the vast majority of Turks don't celebrate Christmas. However, many of them do celebrate the New Year, and they do it very similarly to the way Americans celebrate Christmas - tree with lights and decorations, giving presents, even Santa (Noel Baba, which means Father Christmas in Turkish) comes on New Year's Eve here! This is why I said Winter Holiday in my post title... Even though in our house, we were very much celebrating Christmas, a lot of the lights/decorations/festivities we are seeing around us are because of New Year!

Karum Mall in the town center has some beautiful star/snowflake decorations.

Since we believe in celebrating Christmas as the birth of Christ and not just a winter holiday, we tried to maintain our family traditions that would help us keep that in mind. So we did our Advent Tree (where we read a short Bible story and put up an ornament every day of December) again this year, and we enjoyed that a lot!

Elias next to our tree in his Phineas & Ferb Christmas jammies that Grandma & Grandpa brought when they visited in the Fall. It's Christmas Eve, so there's only one spot left at the top of the tree for the Christmas Day ornament!

We also threw our own little birthday party for Jesus on Christmas Day, which I unfortunately didn't take any pictures of. But we had a yummy dinner and birthday cake!

Since the postal system between the US and Turkey is expensive and unreliable, rather than mailing gifts to us, our family just gave us money and we did our own shopping for gifts... Elias got so many trains - he's a happy camper! We also had one gift that Grandma & Grandpa had brought when they were here, and it had been sitting in my closet since September! So that was fun for Elias to finally open it!

It was the Toy Story movie and some Toy Story figures. He loved them!

Since Elias had so many days off school, I tried to fill them with fun Christmas-y things like watching Christmas movies (His favorite is the old claymation Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer!) and making Christmas cookies!

My favorite Christmas cookies - peanut butter blossoms! Elias liked the melted Kisses more than the cookie part - he definitely comes by his love of chocolate honestly. :)

We were also able to Skype with our families on Christmas, which was a blessing. Thanks to modern technology, we were able to watch all of them open the Turkish gifts we had sent, which was so much fun! :) So we had a nice first Christmas in Turkey, and we get to keep celebrating since the holiday the Turks are celebrating is yet to come! We're looking forward to seeing how they celebrate the New Year!

Commemorating 10th of November in Ankara

(Justin) A couple weeks ago I wrote about how Turkey would celebrate its Republic Day holiday just after Kurban Bayram. I unfortunately forgot to take my camera to school to take pictures of that morning's ceremony. Just a short time after Republic Day, Turkey annually commemorates the death of Atatürk, which took place on 10 November, 1938. (This travel blog post gives a brief overview on Atatürk for more info.)

10 November is much less appropriate for amateur picture taking; it's more like a funeral, so I grabbed these pics from the school's Facebook page. Even though the holiday fell on a Saturday, all students and faculty were required to be at the school gym by 8:30am for a ceremony. Students first filed solemnly by a stage with a bust of Atatürk, guarded by two high schoolers with mock flames.

Many students brought flowers to lay on the stage and there were funeral wreaths around as well. Here are the 3rd graders posing with their flowers in front of a larger bust of Atatürk in the school's foyer.

Then everyone formed lines with their classes and stood at attention. There were speeches, a Powerpoint of Atatürk's life and honors, poems read by students, and we joined the entire nation in a moment of silence at exactly 9:05am, the moment of Atatürk's death.  All students and faculty (except K and 1st grade) stood at attention for the entire ceremony, which lasted about an hour.

I would say most Americans can't fathom dressing up and then loading kids onto school buses in the pouring rain for an early Saturday morning ceremony that will only last an hour, and then everyone goes home. But everyone does it with pride and contentment. This ceremony was much more silent and solemn than other holidays. 

Much of Ankara's population braved the pouring rain to visit Anıtkabir, the mausoleum where Atatürk is buried.There was an official ceremony there at the same time as ours.

Below is what it would look like on a sunnier day.

There were similar ceremonies all over the country. At the 9:05 moment of silence, sirens wail, people park their cars, and most everyone stands at attention. This picture got my attention via Twitter. It shows a man getting a shoeshine at 9:04. The captain is "A photograph that explains many things."

It is difficult to describe to people the love and devotion that Türks have for Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. He is, in a word, everywhere.

Celebrating My Birthday

This break from vacation blogging (Yes, there are still a lot more vacation photos coming!) is because I celebrated my birthday yesterday! It ended up being a really fun day, and I thought I'd share a bit about it here! Unfortunately, I don't have any photos, so you'll have to use your imaginations.

First of all, I've been needing a haircut for a while, but my language isn't good enough to where I can go by myself. Plus, I've been hearing horror stories about the difficulty of working with Turkish stylists, so I've been putting it off. Finally I asked a friend - Julie, who has been here longer than me - if she could help me go get a haircut! She lives in a far district of town that I have never been to, so it was kind of my like Joni's Day Out Adventure to go to Julie's district (Batikent, for those of you who might be familiar with Ankara. It takes about an hour for me to get to from my house - 30 minutes on a bus, then 30 more on the subway). She took me to her hairdresser who is located in Acity Outlet AVM (AVM is "Mall" in Turkish). For any locals who might be interested in going, it's called Şahika Kuaför on the bottom floor of the mall - ask for Mehmet. Seriously, it's worth the trip out to Batikent for this guy! He was so friendly and professional, and Julie just explained to him what I wanted and he did it. That might not sound exceptional to people who aren't in Turkey, but from what I've heard, that's pretty awesome for a stylist here.

The hairdresser's shop was different from any I had been to before. There were WAY more people working there than I'd ever seen before! You had the stylists, who were like the superstars of the place, and then a whole horde of people I'll call "minions" that were running around doing the dirty work, and it seemed like their jobs were to just anticipate exactly what the stylist wanted and do it without them asking. First, one of the minions shampooed my hair. Then Mehmet began the cut while chatting with Julie in Turkish. At one point, he dropped his comb, and instantly a minion swooped in with another comb - Mehmet never broke his stride. The minion washed the comb and brought it back, switching it out with the other one, and Mehmet just kept working like nothing had even happened.

So he finished the cut and began to blow dry my hair, and another minion came over with a round brush. They had this amazing system where the minion knew exactly where to hold the dryer, when to hand it to Mehmet, when to take it back again, what angle to hold it. It was hilarious! Then when my hair was styled, another minion appeared with a mirror so I could see the back. I loved the cut, and I was also thoroughly entertained by the show! All this for only 35 TL, which is just over $19. I wish I had thought to get a picture of my styled cut - it looked really cute!

Then Julie and I walked the mall for a little bit. I asked her to help me find some shoes, which I've been surprised to have such a hard time! Apparently I have bigger feet than any Turkish woman is allowed to have, so NO stores carry shoes my size! Julie and I didn't have any luck at the mall either, and she divulged to me that she has people bring her shoes from the States. Guess that's what I'll do!!!

Then Julie took me out to lunch for some Turkish food, which was delicious and we really enjoyed just chatting together. Then I caught the subway back into the town center where I had a language lesson scheduled at Starbucks. Usually my teacher comes to my house, but with my plans in the morning, I wasn't sure I could make it back home in time for my lessons, so she met me in town instead. I was glad to get to go to Starbucks - who would refuse a birthday Frappucino on a hot day?!

After a good lesson, I took the bus home to meet Justin and Elias. They had sweet birthday flowers and a homemade card waiting for me! Then the three of us taxied out to IKEA where we ate dinner in their cafeteria (Swedish meatballs - Yummo!) and did some shopping. IKEA has a free children's play area where you can leave your kid up to an hour while you shop, so Elias loves going out there, and we do too!

So it was a fun first birthday to celebrate in Turkey, and I'm thankful for loving friends and family to help me celebrate!

Turkish Mother's Day

Today is Mother's Day, and Turkey celebrates Mother's Day on the same day we do. So we have been seeing signs everywhere about appreciating mothers, and we saw a LOT of people buying flowers for their mothers today! Elias' school had the kids make some really cute things to send home for their mothers on Friday.

There was a card that Elias (I'm sure with LOTS of help from his teachers) glued the beans and ribbons on to make flowers. Then he glued together the paper butterfly. And he painted the gold ceramic angel. I know he did this one himself because I remember the day a couple weeks ago he came home covered in gold paint! I didn't know what it was for then! It's still in it's cellophane because the gold paint comes off when you touch it - I need to figure out some way to either shellac it or find a clear case to display it in. The printed card in the back is a Happy Mother's Day card from the school itself. So that was neat to get so many goodies from the school for Mother's Day!

But even more special is the card Justin and Elias made for me this morning. Justin wrote and Elias illustrated. Justin says Elias chose the colors himself and even helped Daddy spell the words on the card! :) Proud and thankful to be my boy's mommy!

 

This afternoon we went to the mall to do some shopping and eat out for dinner. Sunday is the one true weekend day in Turkey, since many people work on Saturday too. So we rarely go out on Sundays because everyplace is PACKED! The mall indeed was packed, but we still enjoyed our time out and I enjoyed my Mother's Day with my family!

Ahlatibel Park with Friends

A couple weeks ago, Elias and I had a little excursion to one of the large parks with some American friends. We packed a picnic and played on the playgrounds - it was fun! As with most of the larger parks, it's a little too far to be worth it for us to try to get there on public transportation, but with a friend who drives, getting there was a cinch! She said we were a little early in the season so not all of the attractions were open. In the summer, this park will have pools, trampolines, and other fun things to play on too! We had a good time just at the big playground - we're not too hard to please.

Elias (in the red pants) with his buddy Eli. They go to the same preschool, although Eli is in the older class.

This was quite a large playground with several slides, tunnels, swings, merry-go-round, and see-saws. Elias' favorite is always the curly slide!

However, this one also had a two-story slide you had to climb up a ladder to get to, and Elias really dug that one. He's never been really confident on ladders, so he asked me to help him up the ladder for most of the time. But with my encouragement and help, he was climbing the ladder by himself like a pro by the end of our visit!

When we discovered that almost all the playgrounds here have a gravel base, we got Elias a little bucket and shovel to take to play with the rocks. He loves it! I've been pleased and surprised to see that a large number of other kids we see at the playgrounds also bring rock-playing gear. Boys love rocks!

Another of Elias' favorite things at any playground is the merry-go-round, and this one was special because it was more like a carousel with animals to ride on. Elias. Loved. It!

The playground also had this gigantic swing that the kiddos liked.

Then on the way home to celebrate our fun time together, we stopped and got ice cream. Seeing the boys enjoy their chocolate ice cream in pure boy fashion, we decided we had a new rule for life: You know it's been a good day when you have chocolate up your nose. :)

Eli's little brother, Noah, isn't quite 2. He isn't in the other pics because he can't keep up with the bigger boys... Yet!

Thankful for friends, beautiful weather, and fun adventures!

The Hills Are Alive

One really new thing for us about the city of Ankara is that it is SO hilly. And the hills are tall and steep! I've never lived in a place like this before! It's like somebody just plopped a gigantic city on top of a mountain range. There is very little grading or leveling - the city just follows the natural inclines of the landscape. And as the city expands, they just keep building up and down the next mountain! So everywhere we go, it's either uphill or downhill (usually both: up & down & up & down...). I don't think I've seen any level streets. Anywhere. That certainly makes it good exercise for us, since we walk most places! It's also interesting taking city buses up and down those steep inclines and zig-zagging the tight corners! Definitely a new experience for me! Below you'll find a few photos of what I'm talking about. Click the images to enlarge.

View from our kitchen window. You can see the hills stretching out in the background. I took these a couple weeks ago when there was still snow covering the rooftops.

A zoomed-in view out the kitchen window. You can really see how the city is just sprawling its way up the mountain!

Amazing view from behind Elias' school. The mountains are still snow-covered even though it has all melted in the city!

This was taken out the window of a taxi as we drove over a bridge. Another good example of how the city just follows the hills!

From the same taxi. In this spot, the road was dug out of the mountain, but the sides were reinforced. Those are huge apartment buildings sitting at the top of those embankments!

This one you definitely need to enlarge to see. We are at the top of a hill in the city. The road in front of us goes sharply down, but you can see the city continuing on and on into the distance over the hills.

We were riding in a bus today that took an amazing route through a deep valley! I couldn't get my camera out fast enough to capture the view, but hopefully another time. There are some spectacular scenes to be glimpsed at the top of every hill and around every corner! Ankara sure is a wonder!

Playing on the Playground

The weather has distinctly turned more Spring-like this past week, so we have taken full advantage of it to get outside and enjoy our neighborhood! There are 3 playgrounds within a 2-block radius of our apartment building, and we've checked them all out in the past week! Elias sure is enjoying being able to get out and be active - and I'm sure enjoying the sunshine and freedom too!

There are two that are equally distant from our apartment, but in opposite directions. The first one we checked out we can actually see from our windows - it's just behind another building from here. We call it the See-Saw Playground, since it's the only one of the three that has see-saws. See?

It also has swings...

And a fun slide and monkey bars structure.You'll note that there was still snow on the ground that day - I believe that was last Sunday. It's all gone now!

The next park we visited is the Little Playground, since it is only a swing/slide structure. There is, however, a big grassy field where kids were playing ball, so I imagine that's a big draw for older kids! Elias did enjoy it!

And the third park is the farthest from our place, but it's also the biggest - hence my title, the Big Playground. It's also the Merry-Go-Round Playground since it's the only one that has a merry-go-round! A big attraction for Elias!

I was a huge fan of this kind of merry-go-round, since it has a wheel in the center that the kid can turn himself! Mommy doesn't have to turn this merry-go-round! Score!

This park is really large, with two distinct playground areas and another area with adult fitness equipment. I can see us going up there a lot!

This aspect of city life was a huge draw for us when we decided to settle in Ankara. There are SO MANY fun (and free!) outdoor options!

Going to Preschool

When we moved here, we hoped to be able to find some kind of preschool where Elias could go a few mornings a week in order to make friends and build social skills, as well as learn Turkish. We were so blessed to learn that some of the first American friends we made here have a 4.5-year-old son who goes to a preschool right around the corner from us! That sure simplified our school hunt - we definitely knew where to start looking!

We visited the school last week and met with the director, and it seems like it's going to be the perfect fit for Elias. Although they prefer having the children full-time, they agreed to let Elias come only on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays from 9-12:30. It is a Montessori preschool, so there is a lot of freedom for the children to choose their activities, and there is also a large emphasis on teaching the children independence, which Elias really needs! The school is completely Turkish language, but the director went to school in England, so her English is very good. I've heard at least a little English from some of the other teachers too. And of course, Elias has a friend in the older class who can be called upon for translation if needed!

The school's front door

So on Monday Elias and I went just for 1.5 hours, and I stayed with him in the classroom, but he did very well! He jumped right in and played, and he even participated as much as he could in some activities! The lady who is going to be his teacher doesn't speak any English, but she is so great with the kids, and Elias liked her right away.

We went back on Tuesday for another experimental day, and he just ran right into the classroom and joined in! He was so comfortable, they told me to stay in the office instead of in the classroom with him, and then they told me he was doing so well I could just leave and come back to get him after lunch! They had my cell phone and could call if things didn't go well, but they did! No phone calls; I just picked up one happy boy at 12:30!

Elias was tickled to find this "Welcome, Elias" sign on the front door when we got there the second day!

Then Wednesday I just took him and dropped him off, and went back again after lunch to pick him up. He did so great and I'm so proud of him! He really loves it, and I know this is going to be such a good thing for him!

It's about a 1 km walk to get to the school, which is a bit far to ask Elias to walk both there and back. What we've been doing is catching a minibus to take us there, then I walk home while he's at school. Then, I walk back to get him, and we both walk home together. As long as the weather holds, which it's been perfect this week, I think that'll work out well. Not only is Elias having a great time at school, but I'm getting some good exercise too! In fact, the road we walk down to get to his school has a dedicated walking/running track all the way down it, so this is what our walk to and from school looks like!

We sure are excited about this opportunity, and we are so pleased that Elias is doing so well after only 3 days there. We can't wait to see how he flourishes in this program! You can check out the English version of the school's website here.

Mommy & Me Adventure: Pepee at Panora Mall

Elias and I had a huge adventure yesterday just the two of us! We mentioned in a previous post that Elias likes watching a Turkish cartoon called Pepee. Well, Justin had seen advertisements that Pepee was going to be at one of the big malls this weekend, so he encouraged me to take Elias on Friday while he was at work. (He thought Friday would be the best day to go, since it was a workday and probably less crowded.) The advertisements weren't very detailed, so we had no idea what to expect this to look like, but we figured it would probably be fun, and if not we'd just come home. So I made my plans, screwed up my courage, and we set off on our adventure!

It's about a $10 taxi ride to get to this mall, so I decided to save us some money by taking the bus there. That involved two buses, since none go directly from our house to this mall. However, the Ankara bus system has an exceptional website that allowed me to plan our route, and it worked out perfectly!

Riding the bus together

Pepee's appearance didn't start until noon, but we arrived at the mall about 11 - I wanted to give us plenty of time in case of complications during travel, and I also thought it would be fun to eat lunch there! So when you're out with your 3-year-old having a big adventure and eating lunch at the mall, what else do you eat but McDonald's?!?!

A cheeseburger Happy Meal is the same in any language. Really.

We didn't come in the main mall entrance, so we didn't see what was set up in the atrium area when we first came in. Our first glimpse of it was from above, since the food court is on the top floor. When we finished our lunch and wandered out to the center, this is what we saw when we looked down!

Pepee's house and characters were being set up in the central lobby, and although this was about 20 minutes before it was supposed to start, people were already gathering! So we took a few minutes to walk around a little more and go down to the ground floor, but we joined the crowd. The closer it got to noon, more and more people were showing up with kids. I cracked up at how many people were coming out in the middle of the workday - I clearly underestimate how popular Pepee is among Turks! (He must be their equivalent of Elmo!) I know Elias sure was excited to see him, and he's only known about Pepee for a month!
So right at noon, a lady came out with a microphone and began the announcements. This is all in Turkish, of course, so I don't know what she's saying. After a few minutes, though, she dramatically gestured down the mall hallway, and we see Pepee walking toward us!

It was hilarious the way the people mobbed Pepee! Poor guy. He managed to make it into the enclosure, where he danced a little and walked around shaking kids' hands and giving high fives.

I was standing behind Elias to allow children to be up against the fence, so I couldn't get any good pictures of his face. But it was totally priceless! When Pepee walked by, he was smiling so big and shouting "HI, PEPEE!!! HI, PEPEE!!!!!" I feel confident he was the only one greeting Pepee in English.

Then the real fun began when they invited the kids to come in and play with Pepee!

Elias didn't want to go in right away, but once he saw that really it was just running around and getting to touch everything, he was all for it. I lifted him over the fence, and he went right in! He touched all the statues, and even walked up to Pepee to say hi a time or two!

He stayed in there 15 or 20 minutes, then he was ready to come out. We had a little bit of shopping to do before we went home, and Elias wanted to go back in and visit Pepee again before we left. Alas, I was tired and no way we were fighting that crowd again! So we just waved goodbye to Pepee from afar before we got a taxi home. I wasn't going to navigate the buses with shopping bags! That was an adventure for me too, though, since taking a taxi requires me to be able to tell the driver where I want to go! This was my first time doing that, and we made it home with only one detour because I told him the wrong direction!

All in all, it was a lot of fun, and I'm so glad Elias and I were able to have that fun adventure! May it be the first of many! :)