I haven't been everywhere....

Great words to live by...

I'm feeling restless these days.  Almost one and a half years in Turkey and I'm itching for a change!  But now there's a slight catch - the bf.  For the first time in a long time, I am happy.  And I don't want that to change - but the itchy feet don't have the same feeling.  I don't want to leave U behind as I continue on my life journey...but he's not at a place in his life to uproot his own life (two businesses to look after)...so what do I do?  It's a Catch-22 kinda situation...Keep working on my list I guess.

Holidaze...

Presently, it's 12:18pm...I'm sitting at my desk in the English Department Teacher's room...I'm listening to the İstikal Marş (the national anthem of Turkey) which is rather abnormalI as it's only played in the mornings before class...now, the March has transformed into Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas...and again the March and now Jingle Bells...I think they're having some technical difficulties..

 

 

Listening to this odd mix of patriotism and capitalism made me think about Christmas...today we put up our department Christmas tree - complete with tinsel, balls and lights!  Does anyone else think that it's slightly odd in a Muslim country??  Not so much it seems.  Although the Turkish people do not celebrate Christmas, they do celebrate the New Year like most other countries.  They have blended Western Christmas traditions with their own cultural New Year's traditions.  So, most every house will have a Christmas tree and some Santa Claus' hanging around!  Christmas music plays in the mall and stores around town - even in our English department.  Christmas lights, wreaths, and Santas decorate the street corners, building facades and windows.  On Saturday I was at Ankamall (the biggest shopping centre in Ankara - think bigger than the Eaton Centre or Square One,), and many of the home stores had Christmas angels, stars, reindeer, trees, gingerbread men, and anything else you can think of in relation to a Western style Christmas! Starbucks sells their Christmas Blend coffee, Levi's and H&M have Christmas themed sweaters, Pizza Pizza has a Christmas 2-for-1 special...you name it, it's here! 

 

The only thing they don't do here is celebrate Christmas on Christmas Day.  Like everyone else in Turkey, I'll be working on that day...and every other leading up to New Year's Day.  We do have New Year's Day off however.  Unlike Canada and the US, there are no winter holidays.  We have January 1st off and then it's business as usual until the end of the 1st semester which is January 25th.  Then we have 2 weeks off for Somestre - or Spring Break.  Then nothing again until the end of the year.  However, we do have 2 other weeks off for Ramadan - because this doesn't follow the Western calendar, the dates change every year.  This year, we had one week in August and one week in October to mark the beginning and the end of the month long holiday.  Next year it should fall in September and November...something to look forward to!

 

 



Our English Department Tree!

 





A Day in My Life...

It has now been just over 7 weeks that I've been working at my new school.  I mentioned before that I am the English Coordinator at a private primary school - Yükselen Kolej.

The front of A Blok

 

What does being an English Coordinator mean?  To tell you the truth, we're still trying to figure that out here as well!  Essentially, I am overseeing 16 English teachers (none of whom are native English speakers) and 2 Heads of Department.  My responsibilities include teacher training and management, curriculum creation and management, and teaching English.  All of this is rather overwhelming considering I've been an ESL Teacher for all of 1 year!  Fortunately, my previous career in management has paid off alot (thanks again Enterprise!!). And fortunately the book publisher from whom we bought our curriculum books offers me and the school extra support in the form of two other natives.  Gabrielle comes to the school a couple times a month and generally helps out with book problems.  Sometimes she'll observe a class and offer some ideas and feedback and sometimes she'll come with me to my conversation class and help out (she's Australian so it's good for the kids to hear her accent).  Then there's Kate - a British ex-pat who lives in İstanbul.  She's supposed to come every month to do training seminars for the teachers but she's yet to come...But they do help me when I fumble so I can't complain too much!

The school itself is divided into two blocks.  A Blok is the lower primary building which houses kindergarten through to fourth grade.  There is a canteen and cafeteria, music room, art room, computer room, and gymnasium.  B Blok is the newest addition.  It houses fifth through to 8th grades and has all the same facilities (albeit more modern!).   I tend to spend my days in B Blok because it's nicer and has better washrooms!

The corner where I wait for my bus!

A typical day in my life is as follows:

- wake up at 6:45am
- get ready and to catch my servis bus (it never comes at the same time each day!) at around 7:45am
- arrive at the school at 8:55am (yup, it's a loooong way to school...)
- go and grab a simit from the canteen and make myself some Nescafe (it's my new Tim Hortens)
- do some file updating
- observe teachers in their classes and offer feedback (usually I observe anywhere from 1 to 4 teachers per day) - I watch their classes and check to see if they're following the curriculum that was set out at the beginning of the year, if they are using the books and materials effectively, and how they manage their classrooms 
- help teachers with pronunciation or activity planning
- plan my own classes (I teach 2nd grade on Tuesdays and Wednesday - just 15 minutes and usually just a fun production activity, and 4th grade Newcomers on Wednesday (same idea), then I also have a conversation club for 5th-6th grade on Tuesday nights and for 7th grade on Wednesday nights, plus my ESL for Teachers for 2 1/2 hours on Wednesdays after school - all told I teach about 10 hours per week)
- because it is near to impossible to make an appointment with anyone ever, I have random meetings with the owner of the school, the two department heads, and the principal whenever they are free - generally we discuss the progress of the teachers (where they are successful and where they struggle), and how we can improve the program
- at 4:55pm everyday (except on Wednesday where I stay untıl 8pm and on Thursday when I leave at 1pm) I get on my servis bus for the 1 1/2 hour drive home

My Turkish school bus...not like what we're used to back home!

The buses dropping off the kids

 

It's not as easy as Wall Street was (now that was a cushy job!!) but it's rewarding to see my teachers develop and feel more confident with English and as teachers.  I still have the opportunity to help people learn and that's just as good for me!  Every day is different which is also great. And I have evenings and weekends to myself which is another big plus! 

Just life as usual in the grand adventure of being me!

Some Light Reading for you...

There's always a lot of interesting things happening in the political arena here in Turkey.  It's so hard to determine fact from fiction because all the media outlets are controlled by the government - there is no press freedom.  So, I try to read from a lot of different sources and make up my own mind.  Sometimes the sources are so contradictory it's difficult to determine where the story starts...here are just a few of the articles I've read recently...see what you think...

Who is Turkey's Prime Minister?  
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/2270642.stm
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/oct/24/recep-tayyip-erdogan-turkey

Did you know that some 700+ people have been on a hunger strike for over 60 days? If this happened in Canada, would we react the same way?
http://mideast.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2012/11/06/kurdish_hunger_strike_pushes_turkey_toward_the_tipping_point
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/nov/08/erdogan-kurdish-hunger-strikers?INTCMP=ILCNETTXT3487
http://www.armenianweekly.com/2012/10/31/the-hunger-strikes-in-turkey-using-ones-body-as-a-means-of-communication/
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/europe/2012/11/2012111255711767550.html


Turkey is free democratic country.  If you think otherwise...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/greenslade/2012/oct/23/press-freedom-turkey

Life as Usual...

"Here comes the sun...do do do do...Here comes th..." fumble fumble SLAP!

And so starts my new morning routine - waking up at 6:45am each morning to go to my new job waaaay out in Cubuk (for my Canadian friends, that's like living in Mississaugua and working in Toronto only without the traffic jams).  The commute to my new school takes about 1 hour.  Sometimes a little longer if we have to stop for fuel on the way.  Kinda strange that.  Even the intercity buses feel no compunction about stopping at a service station with a full load of passengers to re-fuel...takes some getting used to.

So, let me tell you a bit more about my school. The school I now work at is called Yukselen Kolej.  It's a K-8 private school.  Although 'kolej' translates to college in English, it really denotes private school.  There is nothing more special about this school than any of the state schools (ie. public schools) other than the fact that most classes are small (22 to 24 students) and that they have foreign language education (state school starts in grade 9 whereas we start in kindergarten). Another difference is that our kids at the kolej are spoiled and without discipline.  We have 6 classes of "newcomers" (those that studied at different schools the previous year whether state or private) - and you can really tell the difference between a newcomer class and the returnee's class.  The newcomers are eager to learn, polite, and respectful.  My colleagues say this will last only this year and then they too will develop that dreaded "chip on the shoulder".  So, enjoy it while it lasts they advise...

The school itself is fairly large by Ankara standards.  We have 2 big buildings each with 4 floors.  B Blok is brand new and just opened this year - it is for the Upper Primary kids (5-8), A Blok is the older building and it houses the K-4 kids.  Each building has it own cafeteria and canteen.  The food is catered by an outside company is refreshingly delicious and healthy.  We also have an outdoor swimming pool and large playground as well as a covered gym for football, basketball and volleyball complete with bleachers for fans!  We can have all these facilities because we are so far from the city centre so we have a lot of space.  To be honest we are in the middle of farmland.  Real farmland.  Complete with cows and their related smells...

The students and teachers are bused to school with our own private servis company.  Instead of the big yellow school buses we are all used to, Turkey has little white mini-buses that seat anywhere from 16 to 24 kids.  These little mini-buses are much easier to maneuver in the narrow twisty streets of the city centre.  We have a fleet of 50 minibuses for our kids.  They start collecting kids at 7:30am and we are usually all at the school by 9am.  At night, all the buses leave at 5pm.  Each day there is a servis that goes near the downtown area which leaves at 1pm - so when I have my half day, I can get home by 2ish!  The servis drivers are all really well dressed too - I don't remember my bus driver back in high school ever wearing a suit and tie to drive but that's the norm here!

Moving with a Pet...

I have moved over 10 times - 6 times with my cat.  You could say that we are pretty seasoned movers!  However, this newest move in my series of moves might prove a little tricky! How do you take a cat to Turkey??

In the midst of the my anxiety about going back to Turkey, one happy thing I am focusing on right now is that my cat is coming back with me!  I thought this would be fairly straight-forward, but anyone who knows Turkey knows that nothing is ever easy there!!

Before I came back to Canada, I started researching what I needed.  Most websites about pet relocation had conflicting information.  Not a great start.  Some said one set of documents was needed, other said a different type of document was needed...one said definitely microchip and another said no microchips needed...and no where (even on the Turkish Government's website!!) did anyone specify exactly what I needed to do.  How frustrating!!!  I even called the Turkish Consulate in Toronto and then the Turkish Embassy in Ottawa and was told two different things...an ominous beginning maybe?

When I arrived home in Canada, I called a vet that was referred by a friend and they were able to tell me exactly what was needed!  So, shout out to the ladies at Cambrian Animal Hospital in Sudbury!!  Unfortunately, they weren't able to provide the services there, but at least I was now armed with the info I needed!

Anyone who is looking to move to a foreign country - the first thing you should do is go to the Canadian Food Inspection Agency's website.  They have a comprehensive list of what is needed for each country.  They also recommend that you call the consulate of the country you are moving to to verify any information (depending on which country you are moving to this may or may not be helpful!).  To move to Turkey, I needed to have an International Health Certificate and all vaccination certificates.  You can print out the International Health Certificate on 8 1/2 x 14 legal size paper from the CFIA's website, then bring it to your vet to be filled out.  Then you need to mail or deliver it to your closest CFIA office (Sudbury's is in North Bay).  The official veterinarian signs and stamps it and then sends it back to you (in the enclosed self-addressed envelope of course!).  This process takes about a week (if you use priority post).  The lovely folks at Baxter Animal Hospital were really helpful in filling out the forms and getting the necessary information for me.

Good luck to anyone trying to move with a pet!  It may be difficult but I know it will be rewarding!

Minx - the soon to be international travelling cat!

Here's the link to the Export page of the CFIA's website - 

http://www.inspection.gc.ca/animals/terrestrial-animals/exports/eng/1300388920375/1300388985791#petcom

Sad Day...

Well, in 5 days I'm heading back to Turkey...my visit in Canada will be at an end.  

It's kind of bittersweet.  

I'm really looking forward to going back but at the same time, preparing to go is really difficult.  

This past weekend I emptied out the storage locker I had been renting for the last year.  I sold all my furniture and gave away tons of clothes, shoes, and small items.  I loaded up a big cargo van (thanks Enterprise!) and carted the rest of my stuff to my dad's place.  Yesterday, he and I went through the remaining boxes and gave away even more stuff.  Today, I went to see a guy who wants to buy my car.  We'll be doing that trade off on Friday afternoon.  Doing all this is a relief (less things to pay for while I'm away) but also really saddening.  I feel like my life in Canada is ending.  Even though I know in my head that I will be back here in a year, it doesn't feel like this is my home anymore.  My poor head is so mixed up!!

bye bye car....