On Tuesday I was given a schedule for this week, so I've started classes, although I'm only observing this week and next week I will actually have to stand up in front of the kids for fifty minutes (this place really is a high school, I swear) and attempt to make them speak to me in english. So I had three classes on Tuesday, three yesterday, and I've got five coming up today. I was told I would just sit in on the class, and I wasn't given any kind of curriculum or topic for this week because I wasn't supposed to say anything. My first class was with Fatih, who I've already met and know pretty well. Alex and I had to do recordings last week- meaning we were recorded reading the English midterm aloud, which included an essay about Greenpeace and various questions with odd, out of date or just misused Americanisms: things like "The english professor said my paper was just a trash." But back to Fatih- he speaks almost perfect english, so much so that we actually thought he was australian at first. And he occasionally slips into other accents: a scottish brogue, a decent southern twang... all, he explained to us, he learned from watching south park. He owns every season. On pirated dvds, because they don't do copyright laws here- at all. Half the kids' textbooks are these thick photocopied packets. It takes some getting used to.
ANYWAYS. So Fatih is great, very funny and very fluent. And I walk into his class, and he tells me that he's leaving the last 20-25 minutes open for me to talk. With no prep. Or previously supplied topic. Uh, WHAT? So basically I just introduced myself, and they asked questions, and then they ran out of questions, so Fatih started passing notes with little questions written on them so we would have something to talk about. The kids all asked what I thought of Turkey so far, and what I was studying, and without fail, all of my classes have asked me about obama. And commented on the fact that he is black. Apparently people think Americans (all americans) have a big issue with that. And then Fatih started passing questions like "What do I think of my colleagues (at TOBB)?" and "What do I think of Obama in comparison to Bush?" and "What do I think of the current Israel-Gaza situation?" and other controversial political topics that I had to tread very carefully around. And was NOT prepared for. Especially because I had to talk ve-r-y--s-l-o-w-l-y and had to try to avoid using phrases like "preemptive strike," "historical provocation," "two-state solution" and such. I was sweating like a small rodent in a den of lions- it was a good time. To be fair, the kids are really great so far, and the instructors (which is what they call themselves- not teachers or professors) are helpful and understanding. Even though it's a bit... shocking that they all teach english but I can barely understand them- and unless I use small words, very slowly, they can't understand me at all. I mean, I am awful at arabic and not great at spanish and my turkish is pathetic... BUT, I'm not teaching anyone these languages. It's strange. All of my language professor have been native speakers- Cuban, Peruvian, and Venezuelan Spanish teachers in high school, a Libyian and an Iraqi professor at northeastern. I definitely took it for granted.
So the next couple classes were pretty easy. There are two levels, A and B, the A's being the lower (pre-intermediate to intermediate) level. The B levels are interesting because some of them used to be C's, took the TOEFL (the big international english language fluency test that they have to pass- my entire reason for being here is to prep them for it. It's extremely difficult, it's not unheard of for native english speakers to fail it), and didn't pass, so they're back in B classes. And really not happy about it, as you can imagine. One of my classes yesterday, B-4, was literally just flunkies. Like, you know that one class in high school, where they put all the "bad," potential drop outs in the same room and then stick some poor teacher up there who doesn't even try to teach them- and the kids, all punk and tough-looking, and the over-made-up girls, sleep and sit and chat and flirt and put on more make up? That's this class. There were only about a half dozen kids in it, and the teacher pulled me aside and explained that they were the worst students she'd ever seen, disrespectful, rude, blah blah blah, and that there were supposed to be 20something of them, but most already dropped out, and that even though the students "have" to pass the TOEFL before they can start their regular degree programs, after two years they sorta let these kids slide by, mostly because no one wants to deal with them anymore. Wait, did I mention this is a PRIVATE UNIVERSITY? The flunkies were funny, and by no means stupid. They just knew they had beaten the system and stopped caring. I kinda like them though. One of the girls, Zeren, (tough, wears lots of black leather and way too much eyeliner) shouts hello and good morning and various other pleasantries every time she sees me- about a dozen times between this morning and when I met her, about this time yesterday. I know it's the only english she can speak, but it still makes me smile, because she gets really excited about it- in that tough, cool, I'm badass-look-at-me-speakin-my-english kinda way. When I was walking to the main building with one of the other instructors here, she yelled her usual "hello! Houw arr yew!" and then turned and said something in Turkish to her friend, and the instructor I was with chuckled- and translated her comment: "Look at us! We're communicating!"
After that I had a couple A classes, bright kids mostly. A few funny questions- what do Americans think of Turkish people? (Which I had to fumble around for an answer, and finally mumbled something about Turkish coffee and baclava) and then, what do they think of Turkish men- a question the teacher translated to me, while the kids laughed, and she explained that the boys believed that the whole world had heard of Turkish men. Ethnocentricity at its most comical. I pretended not to hear that question, and desperately held back the giggles.
Alright. I've got more stories of course, but this is absurdly long and I've got class in like five minutes. "Just observing," but so far every class has had at least a brief intro/Q&A session. And they ALWAYS ask about Obama.
love love love (from 5000 miles away)
Katie
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