Okay. So I haven't blogged about the trip and I might get to that later. It was a great weekend of adventure in Istanbul. I have lots of photos and places to talk about. But today is fresh in my memory so I will post about that first. This is the first evening I've had to spend some time getting all my thoughts out so I will start with the most recent.
Emily had to work today and her first class is at 9:00. She left me at the apartment to sleep in a bit and come to the university later with her roommates who teach at 12:30. I got up and showered and was having some coffee while the girls were getting themselves around and there was a funny chirping sound in the hallway. I really couldn't figure out what it was. One of the girls came out of her room and said it was the doorbell! She answered the door and it was apparently the downstairs neighbor. He was trying to explain a problem he was having in his kitchen. Earlier in the fall, when Emily first moved into the apartment, the kitchen was redone and the water was at that time leaking into the downstairs neighbor's house. That was happening again this morning. Roomie 1 called Emily on her cell to translate what was happening be use none if understood enough Turkish to know what he was trying to say. I looked undere the kitchen sink and there it was - a puddle of water and a fast dripping pipe juncture. Emily called the landlord from her office at the university and he came over. Before he could get here, we moved everything from under the sink, tried to put a bucket under the drips, when it became a strong stream. The landlord arrived and immediately shut off the water, which was located in the hallway. He told me that Emily is such a nice girl and that the plumber would be coming to the apartment later. *** I will also add here that Emily's building was being converted to natural gas this summer and it has not yet been completed and last night the temperature fell into the low 40s.***
We left for the university and took a bus to get there. I got to Emily's office and set off with her to her afternoon classes. Emily teaches English at Gaziantep Universitesi. Students take English and have a main section with a teacher and then separate reading, writing and speaking sections. The Fulbright teachers are here to take sections of only speaking, just as Emily did last year, but this year she has a private contract with the university and also teaches a main section. This afternoon were two of her speaking sections, each at a different level. The first class was at rather quiet bunch and they were working on parts on conversation and Emily was explaining How questions rise in intonation at the end in some cases and fall at the e d of others. It was really interesting and their goal is to make the students competent and comfortable speakers. Emily rhymes a lot in class and uses a lot of catchy phrases. She plays music on her computer during the break in each class when the students go outside for a coffee or a smoke break. The students had a chance to ask me questions and learn a litte bit about me and they had questions like "Is Turkey a better place than America?" and "How old are you." We had a break ourselves between classes when we got a coffee and headed back to the classroom again.
The second section was much rowdier and is a level behind the earlier class I sat in on. They were very excited to see Emily's mother and a few of them could not pronounce my name, it is not a vowel sound that comes naturally in Turkish so they called me Mahm. Emily has a great classroom pres de and one of her students brought her a bottle of a Turkish specialty drink from a trip they took home to Adana, a neighboring town. It was purplish in color and he encouraged her to drink it. Emily opened it up and took a small sip and proceeded to gag about 5 times and drink some water, her eyes were watering from the spiciness. She said it was picked beet juice. She also handed out pieces of bubble gum I had brought to students who brought their book to class,as she is trying to have them bring their books more often and has been marking them as absent from class if they don't have their book with them. Sometimes they spend time talking between themselves and asking a group question to clarify something she has said. Overall this group was very engaging and two of them did a little bit of a traditional Turkish dance when Emily encouraged them to do so.
We left the university and took the bus back towards the apartment. The sun is setting at 4:30 and by the time we got back it was pretty dark out. Even though this is the Middle East, it's pretty chilly here, with a high temperature in the low 60s. Emily and I stopped at the neighborhood market to get a few things - apples and bread and jam. When we got to the apartment, there were two workmen in the kitchen working on the sink and two in the hallway trying to find the gas leak in the walls so they could get the heat turned on to the building. Workmen have been coming and going all evening. The sink is fixed but the washing machine is not yet. The water is on, but not the heat. That may still happen later, but maybe not until tomorrow.
I'll try to figure out how to get photos from my phone to my iPad and see if I can get some of them up soon.
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