An Afternoon in the Neighborhood

The gate at the bottom of the hill is where I catch the dolmuş for work every morning.

Here is the block of Turkuaz buildings.

 Fall colors!

 Getting close to home...

 The view from half-way up the stairs

 The lovely landscaping just outside the front door of the building

[Insert thought here]

Sorry, I was busy shoveling in breakfast and I hadn't noticed the time... I'm down to nine minutes. OK, the upstairs neighbors are nocturnal giggle fiends. SOMEthing is fantastically funny every night (maybe it's the thought of sad-sap teachers going to bed so early). Last night they even let me fall asleep, but swung into action around 1 or 2 in the morning. They giggled and stomped, giggled and stomped, and then took the world's looooooooooooooooongest bath, which sounded like they were bathing in my bedroom because the pipes were so noisy. I did fall back asleep eventually, but now I'm a leetel stoopid. Let's see how my classes go today, especially with all the students completely focused on the fact that next week is a holiday.

Classroom Manager, Ltd.

Until yesterday, my lessons really haven't been derailed by the behavior of the students, and, of course, my responses to their behavior. One class in particular has issues with distraction, which leads to five or six different side conversations at any moment. Transitions are guaranteed lost time. I have never wanted to be a police woman, and I want to avoid an adversarial authoritarian relationship with my students to the best of my ability.
The classroom management advice that I have liked best tells me to move around the room to stand near people who are prone to distraction or move students away from distractors. It is quite the trick in a room packed with 22 students in rows which can be moved only with great effort. Also, it has taken me three weeks to learn almost everyone's name (still got confused yesterday), and addressing people by name is key in this situation.
None of the students are actively uncooperative; some are remarkably on-task despite the others. Today's task is to deal with the situation directly, openly and get people back on board (for 50 minutes at least).

Craftiness

It turns out that several of my ELC colleagues live in nearby apartment complexes. We live in Sinpaş and friends live in Park Evleri, Medyakent, and Acarlar (in the lower left of the map). A couple of weekends 

have been spent doing crafty projects. The first time we did a lot of gourmet canning thanks to a friend of a friend who owns a home-canning business and graciously taught us several of her recipes. This was the result:

Left to right: Olive tapenade, lemon squash, peach mustard, roasted red pepper and walnut pesto

I got to take home a jar of each! I have to say the pesto vanished almost immediately. They are all delicious!

Last week, when it was especially cold and rainy, I wished I had a bigger winter scarf (the one I brought was knitted from leftover yarn and didn't quite make a normal sized scarf), so I asked a couple friends if they knew who like to knit. Of course, they do! On Saturday, one of them took me and another new coworker to the knitting shops in Sarıyer, where I bought some nice yarn and needles to start a new scarf. Here is an early view:

I've added a few more rows since then!

Morning Routine

It's 6:45am and I have about 15 minutes before I have to get dressed and head out the door. Lately, I've been looking at work email before I go to work--big mistake! So, I'm trying to use this time for the blog. For today's mini-installment. The morning routine: I get up at 6am, make coffee, take a shower, eat breakfast, surf the net, get sucked into work email, panic about the time, get dressed, and head out the door around 7:20am. As you can see, I'm not moving very fast. Any faster, and I've learned that I forget things, drop things, and other silly stuff.
Then I walk downhill on the main road of the apartment complex to the gate where the minibus stops. If I see the bus coming from the top of the hill, I can usually guess which direction it's going, but it's smarter just to ask. It's a very simple question: Koç mu? If yes, then I get on and pay my 1,50 TL (which is about 75 cents) for the herky-jerky ride uphill and around curvy roads to the university. At the gate, the bus has to stop so the security guard can check our ID cards. In the beginning of the term, there were lots of students enrolling, so we'd have to pull over while the guard took IDs and returned with guest passes. These days at this hour, there are very few of us on the bus, and we all have IDs. There's a longish driveway into the main campus, and I get dropped off by my building, usually around 7:35. I head in and get my first cup of tea for the day (tea and coffee are continuously prepared all day long by the çaycı (tea maker) in our office--when she's not making tea/coffee or cleaning up, she's reading her book). The work day has begun.
The one important piece that's missing right now is EXERCISING :((((( I hope that changes this week. I bought cheap gym shoes last week, and I asked a couple people at work if/when they go to the gym, so the plan is getting closer to reality. Ideally, I'd like to get a yoga mat because the floor in the apartment is also the domain of ugly bugs, and somehow having a mat makes me think I'd be safe.
Anyway, it's 6:59, and time to get myself back in gear!
More tomorrow....

Why?

UPDATE: The hot water is baaaaaaack, baby!

Turkish Folk Music Club

Yesterday I went to the Turkish Folk Music Club meeting on campus. It's a student club, but a couple of my ELC colleagues participate, too. It just lasts an hour on Tuesday evenings, and there are loose plans to give a concert in December. Most of the student participants come to sing (as I did), and the other adults play instruments, although this time there were just three saz players.

A saz, in case you were wondering...

A lot of the meeting was spent discussing which songs to practice this term. Of course, I had nothing to add to this conversation since it was all in Turkish, but it was good listening practice! They did have sheet music for the song we practiced and the lyrics were written out syllable by syllable, which was very helpful. Here's a version of the song we started: Bayram Gelip Elime Elimize

I have a lot of practicing to do so that I don't stumble so much over the words. Unfortunately for me, our pace is a little faster than the video version!