It's not all bad. There are two other new Kindergarten English teachers that get to share my pain and one of them was nice enough to meet me for dinner! (Hello Tercel, if you are reading this!) She also dragged along her boyfriend, Memo. Tercel is not only super nice and knows her shit, but she also grew up in Lewisville and graduated from my rival high school... Small world, eh?
The combination of jet lag, getting thrown right into a brand new job and having to get used to walking everywhere (again... my fat hurts) has made us very tired by the end of the day and has also turned me into a lazy blogger. So I'll use my alone time to catch you all up with what has been happening on this side of the world.
I was bored in the airport so I made this on my iTouch :)
Sam and I got into Istanbul with very little trouble. We flew from Dallas to Chicago, where we had an hour and twenty minute layover and then we proceeded directly to Istanbul. My dad was worried when he dropped us off at the airport that we would have to go through security again once we got to Chicago and the guy who checked us in at the airport assured us we would not have to... but it turns out that guy is a giant liar. We had to run from our arrival terminal over to a train, stand in line to get through security again, and then get directly on our plane to Istanbul. It wasn't THAT much trouble but it was annoying because we were both really hungry and it did not leave us time to get a Chicago dog or an Italian dipped beef sandwich.
We got into the airport Saturday around 4:30 p.m., picked up our bags and met the schools HR superstar, Tuba, and a few of the guys who work at the school in a little cafe inside of the airport. We were so happy to have someone who we have talked to before pick us up at the airport in a friendly manner (unlike Korea!) and help us exchange some money. They also helped us move bags, loaded us into their cars and drove us to our new apartment! Tuba gave us a mini tour of our apartment and all of it's essentials and then we were left to pass out in a traveling-for-twenty-four-hours coma.
Sam gives a tour of our new apartment
Sunday we spent most of the day sleeping, unpacking, and walking around our new neighborhood. We found the grocery store, a little bowling ally, a few cute little restaurants and a little shopping mall all outside of our apartment complex. We also got an e-mail saying that the expected dress for the next days school orientation was business formal. After googling what the hell business formal was, Sam and I came to the conclusion that we may not be fancy enough for this school because neither of us owned a suit. We decided we would put on our best business casual clothes and hope that they would not be too offended.The shuttle picked us up the next morning at 8 a.m.-ish, and I must say we were looking pretty snazzy (except Sam told me later that day that he didn't like my dress because it was "too bright." What a bitch).
We got to the school and luckily met up with some of the new English teachers... three of them being my fellow cohorts in Kindergarten and we instantly created a "we don't know how to speak Turkish" clique. And how glad I was! The school served Turkish tea and coffee as we sat out in the sun getting to know our new coworkers.
Breakfast outside... You can't do that in Texas!
Breakfast was amazing. Turkish breakfast is: Cheese, salami, tomatoes, cucumber, and several different types of pastries that I could not tell you the name of. YUM. I've always said that I could live entirely off of cheese and bread and I think I've come to the right place to make this dream come true.
After breakfast they took us into the auditorium for a "welcome to the school" speech from some heads of the
school and let's-embarrass-the-new-people introduce yourself time. All of the heads spoke only Turkish so they gave the English speakers funny little headphones and had someone translate the gist of what the speaker was saying.
Awkward headphones face!
After the speech they split us into our different departments. I headed over to the Kindergarten building and Sam headed over to the primary building. We got to meet the heads of our departments and take mini tours of our buildings. Basically shoot the shit for a couple of hours... and then there was lunch! I wasn't even hungry yet because breakfast was so big... but there were so many new things to try.
Lunch #1... Lamb, rice, dolmas, tomato-y soup, yogurt,
tomatoes, cucumbers, and baklava. Oh my!
After lunch they took us on a giant tour of the entire school! The school is GIANT. It is also beautiful. They seem to have a ton of resources and relatively qualified personnel. My only problem so far is that the Kindergarten seems to not be very organized with their meetings... but after the bullshit they put is through at the English camp on Jeju I am really not going to complain about it. It's nine-thousand times better than Korea and everything is beautiful!
The Primary school building where Sam is working.
Walking through the campus.
Huge villas overlooking the gyms.
I think Sam mentioned before that the school is nestled between a bunch of hills in a really rich area. There's lots of beautiful trees and huge houses overlooking the school. The surroundings make it a kind of surreal place. The downside of this is that all of the houses look the same and Sam has been singing the theme song to Weeds (the video he posted earlier this week) so he has been singing, "Little boxes on the hillside, little boxes made of ticky tacky! Little boxes on the hillside and they all look just the same," non-stop for the past four days. Someone kill me, someone kill me now.
Damn you little houses... DAMN YOU!
At least there is a nice waterfall in the courtyard!
The hill in front of the school... So many trees!
All-in-all we are very happy with our experience in Istanbul so far. I am delighted, actually. Everything is turning out much better than expected. So well, in fact, that I am convinced something catastrophic is going to happen because good things never happen to me this much. If the world explodes within the next few days you can blame it on me.
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