Tuesday, October 5th, 2004

Today was a very boring day at school. One of my culture shocks is the way people do scheduling in Turkey. And by this I mean the way they don’t do scheduling. During the morning I was going to type a bunch of stuff, but the power kept going out and my laptop battery wasn’t charged, so I couldn’t really do anything. So I was in the teacher’s office, sitting in a comfy chair with my Turkish modern political history book and attempting to read. I kept nodding up, so I devised a clever ruse to enable copious amounts of nap taking. I turned the chair away from the door and sat with my book open in my lap. Whenever anyone came in I simply lifted up the book and started to read. After they left, I closed my eyes and slept, only to repeat the process during the next break time. Mwahahaha… they knew nothing!

Anyway, in the afternoon I had these meetings scheduled. Which I didn’t know about, because no one told me that they were occurring ahead of time. I had told Hakan that I could go with him to his daughter Nílŭfer’s school for a short amount of time to visit her class. We arranged it all and it seemed to work. When I told Selo he said, “Oh, wait, but you have to meet with so-and-so as well as Dr. Balci this afternoon.” Great. Thanks for informing me! So, I had to cancel on Hakan, which made his daughter cry. Bummer.

So I keep asking about when this meeting is going to occur. Selo says, “Wait, wait, I can take you after the next class section.” So I wait. And wait. And wait. Finally, Selo admits that he does not have the time to take me. So we get Mikiel (???) to take me instead. When we finally arrive, the guy is gone. So, we wonder up and down the hall waiting for him to return. We visited at least every teacher’s office once, had tea in each, and even talked to the vice principal twice. I must have had 15 glasses of çay! Finally, we realized that the guy wasn’t coming back. So I returned to Selo to find out about the Balci meeting. “Oh, you don’t have that meeting today.” When I called him out on this random scheduling chaos, he just gave me a funny smile and didn’t say anything. Fortunately, another English teacher, Oktay, was there and took my side, saying that Selo needed to get in gear as far as telling me about things in advance.

It’s funny. I can handle the more impulsive nature of the culture, but sometimes that lack of communication is really annoying. And it really is centered upon a few people, as the other teachers are very accommodating. Which means that either people just ignore what I say or actually don’t understand what I say and chooses to do nothing about it. It might be a bit of both. But all in all, people are quite nice to me and have done a lot for me, so I can’t complain a lot. I just try to communicate my wishes and see what happens.

Lunch, however, was good. I ate with students from the Tourism department, including Elif. I like her a lot. We have a good time talking, and I can speak pretty freely without worrying that she won’t understand me. It’s so funny; the girls are way more willing to talk than the guys. Some guys that I know from Hakan’s English classes came and visited with us for a while, which was good. Unfortunately they only have questions about football and sex. Which, according to Elif, is all that Turkish guys think about, so I guess it makes sense. Girls actually have intelligent questions and fun comments, and I end up enjoying the time with them much more. They also all think I’m handsome. Serious confidence booster. So thumbs up for Turkish women!

After work (I snuck out at 5 pm by hitching a ride with a history teacher I met last week!) I dashed home, changed, and then hoofed it to Elif’s flat. Today was Umut’s 21st birthday and we had planned a surprise for him. We bought a cake, assembled his friends at the same old house place that Elif and I went on during our date/hangout/whatever and waited for Umut. He finally showed and was classically unsurprised. I guess his friends did a bad job of covering it up. We hung out, drank Cokes, danced to random Turkish music, and eventually ate the cake. It was nice, although very different than the student birthday parties that I’m used to. Umut was pleased but ultimately would rather have been out clubbing, which is impossible to do in Çankiri. So we settled for crap Turkish pop and cola. It was good bonding time though, which is something I’ve desired here.

I crashed at Elif’s on her couch for the night. By about 11 pm I am just partied out. It’s ok though, student life here is just like back in Goshen and people are very accommodating. I’m really enjoying being with the students here; it’s given me a whole other dimension of life here to explore, and its one that I appreciate greatly.