The more things change…

Merhaba!

I really like Turkey so far.  I’m living in a beautiful city.  I am close enough to work that I can walk there.  I’ve got some great coworkers.  And I love talking to the student and helping them learn english.

All the food that I’ve eaten has been delicious.  Unfortunately I still haven’t started writing anything down so I still don’t know what anything is called.  But it’s alright because I can be almost certain that the next food I try will be just as delicious.  In fact, this evening for dinner I had some kind of bean and lentil soup.  It was delicious, and had a kind of minty, refreshing after taste.  The bread here has always been fresh and delicious, and it comes with almost every meal I’ve had.

There is tea served almost whenever.  It is absolutely delicious, and I really love the fact that people lounge around and drink it.  Everything about life here… okay, most things about life here seem to be very laid back and relaxed.  It suits me very well.

I think it’s safe to say I’m currently enjoying the “honeymoon” phase of culture shock.  I’m not looking forward to ending the honeymoon, but it’s probably coming.  The language barrier is a bit worse than I was anticipating, but only a bit.  And I am working on learning Turkish so the barrier should be getting better day by day.

The jet-lag is still around though, and I don’t foresee it disappearing anytime soon.  Of course, if it does then that’s great and I can start being tired due to bad sleep habits. =P

Anyway, I’ve put a new batch of pictures up on Flickr if you’d like to check them out.

And now, I’m off to sleep.

I hope everyone is doing well!

-Mike

First day of work!

Merhaba!

That means hello in Turkish.  See, I’m learning!  And I can count to four!

Today was a pretty good day.  I got up pretty early, and I was able to go into work with a girl who lives in the same building.  She is apparently taking classes at the American Cultural Language Institute, aka. where I work.  It’s nice to be able to talk to someone in the morning… and work on my turkish while she practices her english.

Work today was fairly uneventful for the most part.  I spent a large portion of my day sitting around waiting for something to do.  They just started a summer program for children so everyone was really busy doing things related to that.  I helped out where I could, but quickly discovered it was best if I stayed out of the way until I was needed.

So, I hung around all day.  It was neat to see the way things worked.  I did get to help teach a class today, and that was definitely the highlight of my day.  They were just starting to learn english, but it was a lot of fun talking to them.  I was even invited to go drinking and clubbing with a couple of them.  I will take them up on that, but not until I’m over this jet-lag. Unfortunately I forgot to bring my maps of Canada, and Canadian memorabilia to show them where I lived.  Oh well, I’ll make sure I have that for tomorrow.

Also tomorrow I get to try my hand at helping to teach the children french as well.  I’m actually really looking forward to being able to play and teach kids again.  I’m also going to be getting my schedule of classes that I get to teach.  Again, I’m really excited to teach!

Anyway, after work I went out for dinner with one of my coworkers.  I really need to start writing down the names of the foods that I’m eating because it was really tasty and I’d like to be able to order it again.

I got home fairly late and I stopped along the way so that I could take pictures.  Some turned out better than others, but I’m experimenting with my camera and pushing myself.  I do see where I can improve upon some of my pictures though so that’s a start.

Well, I’m exhausted so I’m going to try and conquer this jet-lag and go to sleep now.

Cheers,

- Mike

Melon party!

Today was my last day off before I start work tomorrow, and I must say it was a good day.  To start with, I was able to catch up a bit on sleep.  I rolled out of my bed around noon, and went for breakfast/lunch with my room mate whose name escapes me at the moment.  Man, I really have to start remembering names, or at least have people write them down for me… oh well, I will start that tomorrow.

Anyway, lunch was essentially a grilled cheese sandwich made out of a full loaf of bread.  It was quite good.  We then spent the day walking around town.  Basically he showed me how to get to work.

On the way we ended up seeing a couple of horses just wandering around the streets.  No one paid them any mind so I’m going to assume they’re a fairly common sight to see.

Anyway, we got into town and ended up spending a while relaxing in a cafe drinking çay (tea) and talking.  I attempted to learn some Turkish, but I don’t think I did very well.

When we came back I spent some time relaxing then we went to dinner.  There I met one of my future students who then proceeded to invite me to a melon party.  Which is as it sounds, we sat around and ate watermelon.  Of course that was interrupted by a thunderstorm.  It didn’t last long, but we all went inside and turned off all the electrical appliances.

Since then I’ve been here just relaxing and enjoying my last moments before going to work tomorrow.  I’m so excited and nervous!  It’ll be great though.

Cheers to all!

-Mike

Water, water everywhere…

Greetings from Yalova!

I’m writing this from my new dwelling for the next couple of months.  I am, and will be staying in the student dormitory for Yalova University.  I have two room mates, both of whom are, I’m told, sailors though I’ve only met one so far.  Thankfully he speaks english well enough that we’re able to communicate fairly well.

I’m now going to backtrack a little bit and talk about my arrival in Istanbul yesterday.  I was too exhausted to write about it when I got here so you’ll have to settle for getting the information a day late.

Well, I landed in Istanbul around 3pm on the afternoon of the 18th.  At the airport, there was a big crowd gathered around the entrance.  I had no idea what that was all about so I left via a different exit and got a taxi there.  I took the taxi to Yenikapi, the ferry dock, and from there I took the ferry across to Yalova.

There were a couple of things that went wrong on the way.  First, the money changer gave me what turned out to be a counterfeit 50TRL.  I didn’t find that out until I tried to pay the cab fare.  So, since I was a bit flustered, and I didn’t know the conversion rates off the top of my head, I’m pretty sure the cab driver took advantage of that and overcharged me for the ride.  That sucked a little bit.  And then after that, I had to wait a couple more hours for the ferry boat to show up, but the hardest part about that was staying awake to watch my stuff.

Now, when i got to Yalova I was supposed to call my supervisor to come and pick me up from the ferry docks.  The only problem with that was that I had no phone, and there was no pay-phone nearby.  So, I happened to chance upon a police station not too far away and was able to pantomime and speak in broken Turkish phrases, and short english and the very nice police officer with the big gun used his cell called him for me.

After that I went to the school and had dinner with some of the teachers and some of the students.  Then I went to a hotel room and crashed for the night.  Well, first I accidentally popped the electrical breaker for my room and lost all power.  Then I crashed.

Then this morning I got up and went back to the school.  I didn’t really get a “training” so much as I got there and just wandered around and hung out.  I saw a couple of classes and talked with some of the teachers and some of the students.  Apparently I have a strong accent that they can’t understand yet.  So, I have to speak slowly, which is an interesting experience and I occasionally forget that I have to do it.  I’m sure I’ll be getting better with practice though.

Anyway, since I had no lessons to teach, I was able to go for a little bit of a walk along the beach.  My goodness it’s beautiful here.  It’s also quite warm, but I was expecting that.  I’m very thankful that my job lets me wear shorts to work.

I’m finding the language barrier to be an interesting issue.  It’s been a long time since I’ve travelled somewhere that I don’t speak the language, and not constantly with someone who can translate for me.  I have decided that my project for the summer is to learn basic Turkish, and hopefully enough to be able to carry on a conversation by the end of the summer.  There, I’ve announced it to the world so I had better carry through.

Tomorrow is my day off, so I have decided I will be spending it walking around and taking pictures after sleeping long enough to feel rested, of course.  Hopefully there will be a lot of new pictures going up for tomorrow’s blog.

Until then, I’m going to be trying to be playing around with the settings of the blog to see what it can do.

Cheers!

Mike

Almost there

I’ve arrived in Munich, and it is currently 9:43 am local time, which is 3:43 am in Ottawa.  The plane over wasn’t too bad.  I watched a couple movies, got a little bit of sleep, and had an aisle seat so I was able to stretch out my legs a little bit.  I must say though that for the first time in a long while, I was very thankful that they did the announcements in two languages.  It served as a bit of a reminder that I was traveling to an area of the world where I would have difficulty communicating with other people.

I just finished what is quite possibly the most expensive breakfast I’ve ever had.  $22.50 CDN for a cup of yogurt, fruit, granola, and a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice.  Yeah… doesn’t seem so bad in Euros (€10.90) but the conversion is a killer.

Edit (Jun 18, 2010 @ 4:05)

- Okay, I had the conversion wrong.  It’s only $1.25 CND to the Euro… which would make breakfast only $13.63.  That’s still expensive, but not as bad as I thought. -MW

The airport here beats anything I’ve seen in Canada.  They’ve got some really nifty things here too that are both amusing to see that they exist, and very good ideas.   The neatest one I can think of is the “Nap Cab”.  Basically they are booths that have a bed and are apparently soundproofed.  The idea being you pay to rent one so that you can either do some work, or get some sleep.  They look pretty comfy, but I’m too cheap to pay to try one out.

Also, I swear that the colours on my computer are off sometimes, and that everything has kind of a red tinge to it.  But then I look closer and everything appears to be just fine.   Either I’m really tired, or going crazy.  Or both.  Either way, I’m going to try to get comfortable and rest my eyes for a bit.

Cheers!

- Mike

The beginnings of a journey…

It’s finally here!  The day has come!  The hour is nigh!  The winds are right!  The voyage has begun!

That’s right!  I’m off to Turkey!

Okay, technically I’m only flying as far as Montreal for this leg of the trip.  But after that I’m off to… well, okay I’m flying from Montreal to Munich, so that’s closer.  But after that I’m flying from Munich into Turkey!

It will be a rather long journey.  In fact, I should be arriving nearly 24 hours after I leave, when you take into consideration the time difference between Ottawa and Istanbul.  I’m excited to get started though!

I’m currently taking full advantage of the free wi-fi provided by the Ottawa Airport to update my blog.  I am rather worried that I forgot something that will be very important to have.  Granted, I do feel this way whenever I’m going pretty much anywhere on any kind of trip and usually it ends up that I didn’t forget anything.  But knowing that doesn’t really help my peace of mind.  Ah well, I’ll survive.

At this point I’d like to note just how strangely empty the terminal was when I arrived. I wish I’d taken a picture when I got to the terminal, but unfortunately I didn’t. I guess I’m not used to having a camera again, which is weird because it’s large enough you’d think I’d notice the extra weight.

Well, with that being said I’m going to go play with my new camera.  Hopefully I’ll get some pictures worth showing.

TTFN!

-Mike

It has to start somewhere…

Welcome to my blog!

I wanted something really exciting and mind blowing to say here, but currently I’m coming up blank so I’ll just start writing and hopefully something good will come out.

I’m starting this blog just before going to Turkey for the summer through AIESEC.  I’m super excited to be going.  I’ve got my visa and tickets.  I’ve got a new camera that I’m just dying to use.  I’ve got some Canadian paraphernalia (or will have shortly to be exact).  I’m not packed yet though, which I really should get to doing.  Instead though, I’m procrastinating by writing this blog post.  Hurray for procrastination!

Have I mentioned that I’m excited to use my new camera?  Yes?  Oh, well I’m excited to use my new camera.  It’s my first SLR camera and I really look forward to seeing the quality of pictures I can get while I use it.

If you will notice, there is a flickr panel on the sidebar.  The pictures you see at the time of this post (June 15th) are not mine.  They are good though, aren’t they?  As the summer progresses, I will be uploading the pictures that I take so my pictures will start to show up there soon.

I will be leaving for Turkey in two days… oh man… two days!  So excited!  Anyway, I will be leaving for Turkey in two days and there is so much to do.  So, it’s time to stop procrastinating and start getting ready to go!

I think I’ll try to come up with a catchy sign off phrase for next time.

Until then!

- Mike W.