Lots of Dialogue and a Few Parentheticals

Since classes ended last Thursday (with a discussion of family feuds in Turkey - not like the game show, but like Hatfield-and-McCoy shooting at each other for traffic accidents. There was a blood-feud-inspired shooting at a neighboring hospital, and assailant was currently in our hospital. Relatives of the victims were supposedly outside waiting in black vans. Longest parenthetical statement yet? Possibly), I have been to a few we'll miss you meals held by students. Usually these end with the students grilling me about my travel plans. They may or may not be interested, but once they figure out when I won't be traveling (I'll be in Van for about two more weeks) they ask, "Why is class ending? Don't you want to come back next week?" I respond: "I do - I really do - but my department head is against this. Ours is a forbidden lesson."

Mark and I went to a man dinner of hamsi, lots and lots of hamsi, which I thought were anchovies but after so many plates I'm not sure anymore. The dinner was hosted by three of the male students, and was jolly enough until one, Ahmed, got a call on his cell. He became serious and walked away from the table. Thurgood leaned in and said, "His wife. Is terrified."

"She is terrified."
"No. Excuse me. We are terrified."

Last night I had dinner with three female students. Sevda, Selma, and Gulsen have taken me out before, if only to practice English, because during class they are too busy giggling. They have been extremely gracious to me, both cooking and buying me meals, and even purchasing gifts for my family (which I'll probably claim are from me). However, when we're out, they always want to gossip about the class.

"Who is the best speaker?"
"Who is the worst speaker?"
"Who do you hate?"

Of course I've never answered these, even though I want to. I'm serious - I really love making fun of people behind their backs. And I can't do it here because I'm the teacher. Also, sometimes it gets me in trouble. But yesterday they caught me.

"What do you think of Hayatin (Hayatin is the sixty-something professor of theology who starts every statement with "According to me" and ends every statement with "that is what it means to be a human being," or the broken English equivalent)?"
"I like Hayatin. He is a good person."
"But in the last class. You laughed at him."

It's true. On my very last class of my ten week term, I broke. Hayatin, as well as a few others in my class, had been giving me off the wall answers for my whole time there, and I had always handled it with grace. But on my last day I broke.

The question was, "What are some interesting or strange phobias?" We listed a few (brown plants? grow up, Murat. Of course with him he could very well have been saying brown pants) when Hayatin raised his hand. I deliberately ignored him for a few more answers until I finally called on him, due to his persistence.

"I would like to tell a story."
"Hayatin - will the story give an example of an interesting or strange phobia?"
"I would like to tell a story."
"But does the story include a phobia?"
"Once upon a time there was a snake charmer..."

And he proceeded to tell a religious fable where the charmer is eaten by a snake he thought was dead. It did not include any phobias.

When he finished, without responding I turned my back to the class, faced the wall, and tried to hold in a laugh. It was like holding in a fart. It was only louder when it came out. When I turned back around, Hayatin had a wide smile on, like he was extremely proud of himself.

So at dinner with the three girls I finally admitted: "Yes, sometimes Hayatin speaks without thinking."

Last Day of Classes

Last Friday I was in my office slaving away on Age of Empires II (the Mongols just don't know when to stop) when Hassan Hoja, my department head, popped in my room and said, "By the way - your classes are finished next week." Then he threw down a pinch of powder which exploded, and he vanished in the smoke.

I was rather speechless, not because of the smoke (it's the primary mode of travel, after the floo network), but because I had no idea my classes were coming to an end. Neither did my students, when I told them on Monday. I guess that's Turkey. No one really cares for calendars, except to look at the pictures (fluffy cat calendar, I so do not regret buying you in the Russian bazaar downtown).

Another example of the spirit of Turkey, perfectly captured in mundane carbonite - my faculty classes, while two hours on paper, are actually only an hour and a half. The sheet on my door says class is from three to five, but we take a tea break at 3:45 and pick back up at four, finally to leave at 4:45. This is the way I was told to run things, and honestly, I'm really starting to pick up a tea addiction. I start scratching my arms if we push through the break.

But today, we said, why go back to class at all? The tea room is where it's at. LET'S MOVE THIS PARTY.

I'm the blonde one. Murat is the one trying to hide behind the ColaTurk refrigerator.

After Maruf, the head chai-master, took the photo, we passed it around as a group. Mustafa, the man on the front right, looked at it and said, "I am handsome." Then Murat looked at Mustafa's picture and said, "SHINY."

This is all the more impressive when you consider that Murat is the Picasso of languages. An actual transcript from today, when he answered the question - when you were a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?

MURAT: Book open, learn much, knowledge and specially beauty. Shepherd.
ME: So, you could say it: "When I was a kid, I wanted to be a shepherd."
MURAT: [pause] Book open, learn much, knowledge...

And even though I still don't know everyone's name, I was comforted in some form by the medical faculty, who, as it turns out, doesn't know each other's names. At first I thought it was just a Turkish practice to refer to everyone as, "my friend." This comes from Bulent, the pudgy pediatrician who dominates our conversations.

BULENT: I agree with the gynecologist.
ASHYE: My name is Ashye.

Learning Through Rap Lyrics

I have a conversation group in the university's medical campus. It's a separate campus, about twenty minutes away and in the city center, and the students overall are more proficient. They're doctors, and not only that, but many of them are widely respected and internationally known. So exchanges like this throw me.

Erjan, the handsome, white haired head of psychology, asked me today, "What does 'what'cha say' mean?"

ME: Where did you hear that?
ERJAN: On a music video.
HUSSIEN: Jonas Brothers?
ERJAN: No, Jason Derulo.

I then explained that it was a contraction of "What did you say," and that under no circumstances were they supposed to use it.

Each day a different group of doctors come to the class, or at least are supposed to. Everyone has their assigned days, but the students who speak English well will come everyday. This has led to some problems. Like today. Today, Tuesday, was supposed to be the day that Ejemi came. Ejemi is the foremost pediatric neurosurgeon in eastern Turkey. However, he's not coming anymore because of his last class.

Two Tuesdays ago, Ejemi was frustrated because the proficient English speakers, those who came multiple days, were dominating the conversation. He was so frustrated that he announced he was boycotting the class - he wasn't going to leave, but he sure as heck wasn't going to talk. Only he announced this in Turkish, and no one bothered to translate it.

I noticed that Ejemi wasn't speaking, so I decided to help. I directed a very simple question at him, smiled and waited for an answer. He smiled back, but it wasn't pleasant - he was like a mischievous first grade bully who you know just played a prank on you but you'll have to wait to find out. It was a good ten seconds before someone leaned over and said, "Ejemi isn't speaking today." But he was still staring at me.

However, my all time favorite cultural mis-translation happened outside the classroom with my friend Murat, when we were visiting Akdamar Island. We were having tea and talking about Akon when he asked, "What does it mean, 'Smack that'?" He then started repeating the lyrics to give me some context. I stopped him after, "Till you get sore."

"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 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.