Teaching Abroad

Teaching abroad is a good way to see the world. If you're from an English speaking country, are a native English speaker, can pass the photo test and are in the preferred age range for your chosen country, you can get there and 'see the world'.

However, there's one very serious reality to consider, and that is that teaching is a difficult job. Your salary will generally allow you to live comfortably (but not always), and depending on the type of school or company you work for, you may have enough time to see a number of different places.

But when you're teaching, you're working. It's possible that you'll be working and working and working, just like you would be in your own hometown.

Clever expats find different ways of circumventing the daily grind, but if you're teaching abroad, count on a full workload.

Settling Down... in spite of myself

Going global sounds good, but momentum comes and goes. Teaching means having a job and hardly ever eating exotic... or even nice cuisine. It means taking the bus at a regular time. It means not strolling jauntily around in a foreign land. But it still sounds nice, and it's better than being stuck in your home town. It's much better to leave your home town and later wish to return than to never have left at all.

As it stands, sometimes get homesick. I also sometimes want to shoot off to India. My mind changes every time I see a travel program... but mostly I just want to leave this place.

Try and fail

Try something... then fail. Realize that you're still alive... no longer afraid to try.
Today I'm trying to be optomistic.... and failing a little bit, but that's ok. 2012 is just another label for a block of time, which is just a label for getting older and things happening. Still, I'm eyeing 2012 as something that can be full of promise. I want to promise that I'll zig when I'd normally zag... I feel like I've been zagging my whole life.

Recent days have been appalling... I am the frog that's boiled slowly, gradually warming up but too complacent to jump out of the pot until it's too late. Right now it is too late... or is it never too late? When is dinner time?

I'd really like to take a walk today - it's been awhile since I've gotten any exercise. My legs feel like going all the way to Karsiyaka or Bostanli, but we're having the kind of wet, cold weather that makes chilled bones and runny noses that never stop. Besides, but kitchen is warming up and my pajamas feel comfortable.

Throw up your hands, tear out your hair... stuck in the minor leagues

2011, the year of intended change... it turned surreal and hit a wall of blind, stupid vengeance. Actually it was more of a storm of blind, stupid vengeance. For me, the moment of numb weightlessness immediately after the impact- that dull, shocked slow motion stretched over an entire summer and I'm still waiting for the full realization of what exactly has happened and what might come next. My attempt at making large changes in my life only achieved a holding pattern. I'm still in Turkey, feeling a little bit trapped here. No amount of slowly whirling meatlogs could make me like it better. The story is purely personal... it would be of no educational value to share details, but the life of an expat can take unpredictable turns. I definitely stepped on some cultural toes and caught some bad surprises.

In hindsight, I can see where I hesitated when it was time to make a move and when I moved at the wrong time, but these lessons may or may not be applicable in the future.

Despite things gone wrong, I'm finding quite a bit to be happy about. I like my job and my apartment... and there's a new Mexican restaurant...

The next move (plan B) requires a bit more planning. I'd like to borrow a few pages from a successful expat handbook somewhere and get back on track, hopefully improving my game.

Turkish Culture

I'm finished with Turkey.

Enjoy the film guys. Then go to hell with the person who sent you.

Here in America

Back in America for the semester break. It's pretty cold here in Michigan... so cold that it feels unreal compared with the modicum of chill I get in Turkey.

I've gotten used to being on vacation and just like I don't want to leave this warm little apartment to go outside, I don't want to go through the hassle of flying around the world with nine hours of layovers and get back to Izmir just in time to go to work and face students and noise the next morning. However, I'm a little bit excited about the week's lesson plan and I'm doing a lot of reading to prepare for next year when I'll be teaching kindergarten (assuming that everything goes as planned).

In Turkey, the selection of beer is pretty pathetic, so I swore that in Michigan I'd spend some real quality time with the hops, but I had just a few non-Turkish beers the whole time I've been here. The best was Boffo Brown Ale, brewed in Michigan. I also tried Shipyard IPA, brewed in Maine. Any other beer I had was just basic: Killians and a light Mexican beer.

I also intended to get some nice curry, but haven't really gotten around to it. We run out of time so quickly on vacation.

It happens sometimes...

It just happened again; a motor somewhere purrs down some street on a normal night, and there is a sound like a garbage dumpster being dropped. After that, the motor is silent. Sometimes there are rapid-fire voices immediately afterward, and the men at the tea shop downstairs stop playing their game. For an instant, the voices of people on adjascent balconies stop... just long enough to listen to the nothing that happens after the crash before resuming their conversation. The men at the tea shop start to play their game again, whatever that game is. Even from my apartment on the eighth floor, I can hear the plastic pieces moving around on the game board.

Tonight it was a motorbike that went suddenly silent, and the script played out predictably. Now, only minutes after the crash, I can hear the usual sounds around my apartment as if nothing happened. Maybe in Turkish people wondered aloud, "Was that a crash?" "I don't know. Maybe not..." before the hiccup in their converstion passed and the topic turned back to the usual. I don't know. I don't speak Turkish.