Women, We're on to You

Most funny things in life are small moments that don't fit into a big picture. Big picture funny things are the topics of books and movies. Most funny things are like the picture my dad sent me of the cat sleeping on my mom's neck. Classic.

So when Turks say funny things, or when I do something stupid, it usually takes a bit of wrangling to fit it into an overall framework, to make a post-length story. The following story I couldn't fit into any story from the past couple of weeks, but it makes me laugh, so I'll just post what actually happened. And besides, there were a lot of bad jokes in my last post. I tried to hard.

On Friday in my conversation class I set the topic as Valentine's Day, because it had just passed and I wanted to know what my students thought of it. Most of them didn't celebrate. Actually - none of them did. Once I taught them the word "commercialized," they agreed that Valentine's Day was all about money. So instead the conversation devolved into romance and then further into (yet again) the difference between men and women, where it was stated that while women only love one man, men can love many women. The word polygamy was used repeatedly, but I can assure you that no one knew what it really meant.

Anyway, after our daily tea break (gotta have it), we resumed class and I started to direct the conversation towards other holidays, like New Years or Mother's Day. We were deep in discussion about why moms are more sensitive than dads (men vs. women again; yet, no one ever seems to get offended), when Bunyamin, one of the silent students (there are a few who come to class not to speak but to improve their listening), spoke up and said, "Woman use eye-drop for gun." You could tell he put a lot of thought into how to phrase it.

The Ultimate English Lesson: How to Party

On Wednesday my speaking class held a party. It was exactly like the parties at the end of third grade. We had cake and took pictures and then I got beat up afterwards by Lewis Chase. How did he find me?

Fissun (far right, red turtleneck) was the only one who knew my iPhone was also a camera.

I thought it would be a short affair, with some sweets (I love me some Turkish sweets) and probably a present. I thought there would be a present because the day before one of the students asked me point blank what kind of present I wanted. Well, that's not the full truth. He started out asking me if I needed a tweed suit jacket. I countered with, "How about a solid scarf?"

The party was supposed to be attended by the three instructors - Mark, Hassan and myself. Mark had another class, so it was just Hassan and I standing at the front of the room while twenty students sat in their usual desks. Before I realized what was happening, Hassan started calling on students and asking them what they liked about the course. Because I was the young gun, most all of them were nice enough to say that I was a great teacher. But eventually people got tired of saying that, and started trying to top each other. One woman, Selma, said, "My life is more colorful now." I gave her a thumbs up. If there was an award for best comment, though, she would've gotten second place, finishing right behind Gulsen, who spoke last.

"I used to have no hope. Now I have hope."

I kid you not. Gulsen said that. About me. Perhaps.

As we distributed cake, students started to ask me about my girlfriend, Holly. Holly was supposed to come to Van at the beginning the week, but because of the super criminal with the weather control device creating all the snowstorms in Europe, she's still in Montana. Furthermore, because of her new flight schedule she has to spend the night in Istanbul before continuing on to Van.

We actually talked about this in class. While I was done teaching, the class continued for a few more lessons. I had to fill in for Hassan one day when he left town. As typical, I found out about this an hour before class.

Since I didn't have a lesson plan, I told the class what had happened to Holly and asked for suggestions. We brainstormed, and the incredible bad-idea-ness of their thoughts was only equaled by their enormous desire to help. Here are a few things they suggested:

1) Holly takes a taxi to Taksim Square (night life central) and walks north three hundred meters, takes a left and continues two hundred meters to Mustafa's brother's apartment.
2) Ahmed's daughter drives four hours to the airport to pick up Holly. They return to the daughter's apartment, only to go back to the airport the next day, totaling sixteen hours of driving time for Ahmed's daughter.
3) Nere's sister (sister or aunt, I wasn't sure), who works at the airport, will let Holly stay in her office until midnight, when the sister's shift is finished, at which point the sister will take Holly home. Then Holly will be an honored guest in the sister's home for the sister's two day break.

Needless to say, I solved the problem elsewhere. But as I explained this to the class at our party, Hassan interrupted suddenly: "Yes, the problem is solved. There is a student who lives on the Asian side of Istanbul. Holly will take two buses and the metro to meet the student at a Chinese restaurant. Everything will be alright. Tamam."

"I'll See You Tomorrow"

This week marked my third week to teach professors at Yuzuncu Yil University, but it was also my first week to teach the medical faculty. I now have two separate classes on two separate campuses - the regular professors (education, theology, veterinarians) and the doctors.

The doctors are much cooler.

Campus is about 20 minutes outside of the city of Van; the medical faculty is located in the heart of the city. Everyday after lunch, the medical faculty sends a car to pick me up and bring me to the city. Everyday the car is driven by the same Turk, Nazim Matin.

Nazim is probably sixty, and looks like all other sixty year old Turkish men: a little pudgy, five year old mustache, wears a suit everyday. Each time I get in the car, Nazim is sweating. Like beads, running down the side of his face.

He also speaks no English, but he talks the entire ride. I try to look at him while he talks, and nod, saying, "Tamam" during the pauses (basically, "Okay"). I have to listen hard for the change in pitch, if he's asking a question - when he asks a question, he usually looks at me. I used to say, "I don't understand," but that never stopped him, so I don't anymore. Now I say things like, "You know, Tom Cruise said the exact same thing to me yesterday at the club." Then Nazim will say, "Tamam."

The difference between the medical faculty and my regular students, besides the doctors being a little bit more advanced, is imagination. They talk all the time, and they just run with questions that I ask them. For instance, when I ask my regular class to pretend that they are meeting one another for the first time, they ask me to restate the question a few times, then say "Hello," to one another. In Turkish.

I gave this task to the doctors. The first pair, a surly old man named Bulent and the only woman, Sahran, began innocently enough until Bulent asked Sahran how her operation went. She got confused, and Bulent clarified. "I heard they took out your kidney." Sahran turned to me and said this wasn't true, but Bulent interrupted. "I am pretending."

The absolute scariest part of my day is when Nazim drives me home. My first day, the outbound traffic, towards the university, was clogged. We were stuck. Nazim muttered a few Turkish curses then jumped the median between our lane and incoming traffic. Then we drove for three minutes in the incoming traffic lane. And it was just as full as our lane.

As I got out of the car later and tried to hide the pee stains on my pants, I was shutting the door, with my hand in the small crack between the frame and the window (I rolled it down to throw up in fear), Nazim rolled the window up on my fingers, trapping them. Then he pulled out of the parking lot. I ripped my fingers out of the door and waved limply. "I'll see you tomorrow."

"You Are Boring"

I'm teaching forty year old professors. It should be easy, right? Civilized, enlightening, reflective? Perhaps even esoteric (I think that's where fresh water and salt water meet; I read it in a book on screenwriting). The answer to these adjectives and most other positives ones you can find in a thesaurus is no. If you compare them to animals, they will most be like man cubs - raised by monkeys, but still four years old.

(Just in case any of these professors has found my blog and Google translated it, that was a little harsh, I admit. You are most like the campers I had at Camp War Eagle. Like twelve year old boys. How about that?)

After a week and a half of teaching, I've spotted the types. There's a fifty-something professor of theology who is the kid who knows all the answers. And all the answer return to the spiritual character of a man. Even the answers about the weather in the Black Sea region. "WE - BELIEVE - IT IS - THE SOUL OF A MAN -"

"Yes, Hiyat, that is very true. What other kind of weather does the Black Sea have? Anyone?"

There are two best friends, women who speak very little Turkish, who giggle at every mispronounciation  I make. Today when we were talking about marriage, I repeated what a student said - that the bride and the groom are ceremonially bathed before the wedding - and these two women began laughing like schoolgirls, laughing so hard they couldn't speak enough words to explain that what I had said was funny to fourteen year olds.

Then there's the kid who won't answer anything. "Faruk," I say, "what is your favorite movie?" And Faruk just shakes his head, 'no'. He's a big man, and he sits in the back with his arms crossed. He has nice ties, though.

Today I had to create two rules: 1) No Turkish, and 2) Only one person speaks at a time. In the beginning I thought we could get by on mutual respect. We are all adults (well, everyone except me). But something happened last night that made me reevaluate.

After class yesterday, I was in my office when there was a knock. A woman from my class came in, and with the help of a friend she told me that it was too loud in class for her to understand. I knew this was my fault and told her I would fix it. Then, she said, "And...you are boring." What? "You...are boring?" We stood confused for a few seconds before she left, and then it was confirmed - my class was boring.

Later on that night I attended an intramural soccer game of my peers (English Dept vs. Education Dept; we play every week, and we roll them. We have this old man who I swear never moves more than twenty feet in either direction, but can pass a soccer ball like a lead bb), I caught a ride into town with a player who had to pick up his wife. It turned out his wife was the very same woman who thought I was boring. With the help of the others in the, I eventually understood that she meant to ask me if I was bored in class. Whoa. Big relief. But then the car went on to talk about my class for the next fifteen minutes in Turkish, and no one would translate.

You Can Call Me Mega-Fast Wind

When I first arrived in Van (positioned on Lake Van, right, as seen from space - note the resemblance to a phoenix), my home for the next nine months, I was told the university wasn't ready for me. The classes I was supposed to teach didn't yet exist, and it wasn't possible for them to mentally prepare enough for my style of dress. That's okay, I said. I don't have to teach right away. In fact, I don't have to teach at all. I have no idea how, anyway.

(I got the Fulbright to Turkey because I looked up all the countries which didn't require previous knowledge of the language - there were 13, out of the 200 countries the Fulbright is offered for - and applied to the country with the most spots. I had to write an essay about why I have always wanted to go to Turkey. Thank you, Wikipedia. I don't care what professors say about open code sources.)

Monday was the first day I had classes to teach. I've been assigned a conversation class, meeting five days a week for two hours at a time. When I first heard about it, I panicked; Hassan, the department head, told me not to sweat it. He said that when he taught the class, he would go in and write a topic on the board and just ask questions, so that the students would answer in English. Basically, he told me he just made it up on the fly and didn't give a Turkish rat's behind about preparation.

So on Monday I went to my office hours and wrote science fiction, played Age of Empires III, and then a half hour before class started I had a panic attack. It was small and unembarrassing, but it spoke to my tiny, surly fear - I have no idea what I'm doing.

I walked in the classroom; in it there were maybe 20 or 25 professors, 40 years old and up, waiting to learn English from me. Hassan came in with me, and spoke to the class at length. What he had to say could've been said in three minutes, but, God bless him, he took thirty. During his speech he would occasionally turn to me and tell me how to teach the class. These were things that were sort of intuitive -  like writing vocabulary on the board or correcting pronunciation. I felt a little helpless because this was happening in front of my students, who were saying to each other, "This is him? He looks like a Yeti someone has shaved and then put on a liquid diet. Pass the olives, Mehmet."

Finally, before he left, Hassan told the class I wouldn't be there on Thursday, because on Thursdays I would be at the city campus, teaching the medical faculty for eight hours. This was perfectly acceptable to the students, but because I had never heard of this before, I was slightly concerned. On his way out, Hassan said, "Do not worry - we'll talk tomorrow," as if to communicate that he knew I had no idea about the eight straight hours of English teaching he had added.

There were a few moments of silence. I took a few baby steps. I wrote my name on the board, and asked the students to tell me their names. And it went on from there. It wasn't completely smooth, but somehow we got on the topic of the meanings of names, and an hour and a half later they left. All this with absolutely no preparation. Thank you, Hassan.

Like this blog, while in class I told a few lies. I told them I had met Tom Cruise once, but was too shy to speak to him. I told them that there were seven generations of Cass's in my family. And when asked the meaning of my name (which happens all the time - everyone here knows what their names means), instead of admitting I didn't know, I said it can mean either "fast wind" or "mega-fast wind," depending on pronunciation.