An American Life in Istanbul

Current Mood: Esctatic

Guess what? I am no longer employed! How’s that for big news? Didn’t expect that did you?

If you were one of my friends here in Istanbul, you probably were expecting it. Over the past few months it became clear that things just weren’t going to work out between my employer and myself. It came down to a schism in ideology that was part cultural differences. It would be a great topic to write about, but knowing that this is a public forum and that some of distributors have or still do read my blog, I am not going to say anything. Anything that could potentially adversely affect my past employer would be unprofessional.

The question is what will I do next? I am not sure. I will apply for jobs around Istanbul because frankly, I like Istanbul. It’s a great place. I may also apply for masters programs. I may go on a little adventure. The company gave me a decent severance so I don’t immediately need to find a job. They offered to let me stay in the apartment and use the car for as long as I want - which when they realize how long I want they may change that clause to ‘as long as i need.’

To tell you the truth, I haven’t thought about it too much. I already have a round trip plane ticket to the US  for April 14th-28th. I will just figure it all out when I get back I guess. I feel like I should be more worried - I know my friends are worried - but I think the end of my employment was due. Things just weren’t going to my satisfaction. A few weeks ago I met a Syrian representing an American company in the Middle East. He told me that I didn’t know it yet, but since compressors is such a specialized industry, I was going to spend the rest of my life in compressors. That worried me.

I am a bit disappointed though. I was finally starting to get the hang of things. I took this job with no prior training and received no training once starting here. I more or less had to figure everything out on my own. From servicing compressors, to international shipping regulations, I discovered most of this information on my own motivation. These past few months things have been picking up for foreign sales. In March, I felt as though I was on the cusp of really boosting the foreign sales. Everything had finally fallen into place: Alper had found a packaging solution, I had translated all the necessary things into French, I had completed our new service manual, we had finished designs and prototypes for our new potentially huge OEM customer (they were readily accepted), I had completed compiling all data for our technical documents and Altan had nearly completed the 3D technical drawings… pretty much everything was falling into place. Furthermore, I had had the whole gambit of possible questions about compressors so I am no ready to handle tough questions on the fly.

But as I said, it was time. I am excited at what the future holds for me.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Check it out:

Turkish Government Bans YouTube!

No more YouTube!

In Turkey there is a law called article 301 which has made it illegal to insult ‘Turkishness’ since coming into effect in June of 2005. The article states:

<<<

Article 301 states the following.^[6]

1. A person who publicly denigrates Turkishness, the Republic or the Grand National Assembly of Turkey, shall be punishable by imprisonment of between six months and three years.
2. A person who publicly denigrates the Government of the Republic of Turkey, the judicial institutions of the State, the military or security organizations shall be punishable by imprisonment of between six months and two years.
3. In cases where denigration of Turkishness is committed by a Turkish citizen in another country the punishment shall be increased by one third.
4. Expressions of thought intended to criticize shall not constitute a crime.

>>> (excerpt from wikipedia.org)

The law has been used to persecute journalists, writers, bloggers, poets even people for public speeches they have given. The most notable cases were against Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk for an interview he gave for a swiss magazine (charges were dropped against him), Wordpress.com - an online blogging community, and most recently YouTube (it has been banned several times over the past year), for a video of Kemal Mustafa Attaturk singing about how he is a homosexual (at least these are the major incidents that i know of)

I am sure you can all see what an obvious violation of freedom of speech this law represents. The current government has been ruthless about persecuting journalists, shutting down newspapers, blocking websites. They must think they have a mandate from Attaturk himself to protect the Turkish identity. In the international community, the European Union has insisted Turkey remove this law. Although allowing international law and international treaties to override Turkish national law, Article 301 is nonetheless a clear violation of fundamental freedoms and political rights. There has been talk of removing the law, but it has been more than one year since president Abdullah Gul suggested removing the law. Instead the government recently lifted a long standing law from the early days of the republic banning head scarves in public areas, but that’s a whole other story.

Regardless of whether or not this law stays active or is repealed, Turks will feel very strongly about their Turkishness. In my experience it seems that the Turkish identity and Attaturk (the prophet of this religion like nationalism) are more sacred than Islam in Turkey. There are many mosques in Turkey, and many people fast during the month of Ramadan, but there is at least one picture of Attaturk in nearly every business in the whole country. While religion is important here and it is observed, Attaturk and Turkishness are indoctrinated by the state. In school, teachers teach how great Attaturk was, they teach how about how important everything he did was. His drive to secularize Turkey is what saved Turkey from the mess that many of the other Islamic nations are in right now (Iran, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Libya). In some ways Attaturk has god-like status here, in other ways he’s far beyond that. Recently we met a man who had Attaturk’s face tattooed on his arm.

This intensity sometimes manifests itself in violence against those who do not share this view point. With the state prosecuting “anti-Turkish” antagonists, vigilantes within the community do so as well. Hrant Dink, former editor in chief of the bilingual Turkish-Armenian newspaper Agos, is the most notable case in recent history. He was a very vocal critic of both the Armenian and Turkish stances on the ‘Armenian genocide’ (Related Blog Post: Turmoil in Turkey: Part II). He had been prosecuted three times for his opinions about the incident before a young ultra nationalist Turk, Ogun Samast, assassinated him in January 2007. Pictures later surfaced of the arresting officers smiling and congratulating the killer while holding a Turkish flag. What kind of message does that send? Another notable case was Michael Dickinson, a British artist who made a collage showing the Turkish prime minister as a dog. He was held for 10 days. You can see the picture in question below:

He later showed this collage, again of the prime minister, getting himself into trouble again:

I find both picture entertaining especially considering what my friends, and many of the other educated people in Turkey have to say about the current government. To any of my Turkish readers, I pose this question: Is Turkey getting better in terms of human rights and freedom of speech? I would like to hear some opinions other than my own on this one.

With YouTube banned, what am I going to do at work on the slow days. At least I know that I can always retreat back to my home country, where I can say what ever I damn well please.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Current Mood: Happy

Well a lot has happened since I last wrote a real post way back on… December 12th! It was a real pain in the butt trying to get my domains transfered and set up my new host for my website, but it’s all finally done thanks to the help of Ant and Ali Emre.

So what has happened. I guess most of you know about the primaries in the US, which has been the news item winning most of my attention. I guess that’s not interesting for my American readers (everyone else go to cnn.com, they have good coverage).

Izzy and I went to Morocco for one week. It was an organized all expense paid tour. This was the first time I have done something like that and probably the last. I prefer to travel on my own schedule and to just wander around. Although it was a fun trip, I don’t think I will do it again. I covered four cities in seven days. On the way over I hadn’t quite gotten over a nasal infection. I couldn’t equalize the pressure when we went up and I nearly fainted from the pain. I spent the last two days of the trip praying to the porcelain gods. Anyway here are the pictures. Sorry I don’t have any of when they threw a monkey on Izzy’s head out of no where on the street. That was probably the highlight of the trip.

Morocco Pictures

My brother came to visit me right after Christmas up through New Years. We went around Istanbul, partied with my friends, did some shopping… it was a nice visit. I think he had fun except for a little problem with food or water, everything went well. Another friend of mine, James (aka Spags) was here as well. Graham, Spags and myself went to Kapadokya, ‘the land of well bred horses.’ Kapadokya is one of the most interesting places in Turkey according to my friends. It is full of bizarre land formations and underground cities that have been used by countless cultures for thousands of years. Because of it’s relative isolation on the high plateau of central Turkey, it was never a important strategic point to control so it was more or less ignored by conquering armies. I will let you look at the pictures for yourself. (oh I had a sweet new year’s eve party at my apartment. Those pictures are also there)

Pictures from Graham’s visit

Other than that I haven’t done too much. I went to Slovakia for an exhibition for work, but I haven’t posted any pictures. I finally got new climbing shoes. About one week afterwards Izzy hurt his shoulder so we can’t climb until it heals.

My gaming group has really taken off. We created “Istanbul Boardgame Enthusiasts” group on facebook and Izzy and I have been very aggressively trying to recruit new gamers. It has definitely paid off. The only problem we have had is about finding a place to play. Over the summer Wonderland started turning off the AC to get us to leave earlier. Then we moved to the Wrap which said they are now closing at 10:30 instead of 11:30. They had spent the weeks prior trying to kick us at at 11:00. Now we are playing at a bagel cafe called Tribeca. It’s definitely not the best place for us since we are so loud. When we are not there it is a very quiet upscale cafe. When we get there it gets a little wild, especially with the recent surge in people. I have a feeling we are going to be hassled there until we leave also. Here are a few pictures from our recent meetings:

Me explaining ‘Ticket to Ride’ to a captive audience.

In the back left of this picture is Ali Emre and myself. We are actually trying to get my webspace setup to transfer my blog in this picture.

This composite is courtesy of Rana. This was the final showdown in bang between Izzy the sheriff, and Turan the renegade. Izzy won.

On the political front, Serbs attacked the Turkish Embassy in Belgrade when Turkey backed Kosovo. Turkey invaded Northern Iraq to hopefully catch PKK terrorists. If you aren’t sure what the PKK is, I wrote about them in two previous blog entries: Turmoil in Turkey: Part I, Turmoil in Turkey: Part II. Turkey lifted the ban on women’s head scarves in all schools and other government institutions (this is a much bigger deal here than you think, but that’s for a later entry). Of course, that is only the last weeks worth of news in Turkey! To go with all three of those big events, there has been lots of protesting, especially in the east of Turkey where there has been daily rioting, vandalism and clashes with police. On the bright side of things after last weeks blizzard which dumped nearly 10 inches of snow in some places, the weather is warming up! Here’s a picture from trying to drive in the first, and the smaller of the two snow storms.

Alright, that’s all I have for now. Take care of everyone and keep reading. Thanks mom and Chris for bugging me about getting back to blogging.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

In case you missed it, here is part one of this entry:

Our New Employee

Pasha is gone. They tied him up for a bit two weeks ago. As soon as he got off the chain, he dissappeared.

Ahmet is very bored at work.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Alper – who is now working in foreign sales and marketing with me – and I, often talk about the many things we don’t like about Turkey, Turkish culture, and Turkish people. I vent a lot of my frustration to him, and I return the favor by listening to his venting. We spend our lunch and during tea breaks complaining to each other. We are a bit better than say a five year old whining for a toy, but not too much some of the time. Last week, while I was complaining about the thick-headedness and narrow-mindedness of Turkish bosses, Alper told me a story that illustrated the essence of my complaining quite brilliantly.

One of Alper’s previous jobs was in the manufacturer of some small product. Let’s call it a thwap. Many workers worked individually to produce several thousand thwaps per day. When thwap production began, the workers worked eight hours a day and the volume they produced was enough.

As the months went buy, the number of thwaps produced each day declined with no change in the work force or the process. The decline was apparently for no reason. The boss of this company decided that if his workers could no longer produce enough thwaps in eight hours, they would just work ten hours a day. So he increased the length of the workday and sure enough, the number of thwaps produced per day increased back to where it had been. The boss was satisfied.

As the months went by, thwap production fell again for no apparent reason. The boss was no longer satisfied. He demanded answers.

One of the older workers at the plant came to the boss and proposed to him an idea. He pointed out to the boss that most of the workers were women from two income families. All these women had husbands and children at home. They did not want to work longer hours and they were not happy with the previous increase in the working hours. He suggested that the boss should say how many thwaps he wanted to be produced each day. Tell all the workers that if they hit the daily quota they could go home. This older worker thought that with this strategy, the women would be motivated to work hard, and work fast, and that they could produce the number of thwaps they had been producing in only six hours.

This is a good solution, isn’t it?

The boss did not like this idea. His response was they are my workers and I am the boss. They will work as long as tell them for as hard as I tell them. There will be no incentives like that. Instead he would increase the length of the workday until he was getting the right number of thwaps, and he would fire all of the workers if he had to. He would rule his company with an iron fist.

Unfortunately the story ends here because Alper quit that job. Alper found his boss to be a very stupid man and Alper did not like working for him. According to Alper, this is the mentality of the bosses in Turkey. They have grown up, and have made their money by working very hard, by being fighters. They view their workers as a commodity and have a very Machiavellian approach to management – “it is better to be feared than loved.” According to Alper, this is changing, but not fast enough.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

I hear it everyday; “Conrad, you are so lucky.” Friends, people I meet, coworkers; They all share this opinion. I have been called “[my company’s] spoiled child,” “the luckiest employee in Turkey,” and many other things. On more than just my life in Turkey, people say that I am so lucky, that they can’t believe how lucky I am, or that they are jealous how lucky I am. I like to tell stories, and I have quite a lot of stories to tell. This is normally what they are responding to. As usual there are two sides to everything. I of course do my best portray my life as positive - positive thinking leads to an overall positive and happy life. Although I tend to agree that I have been blessed, I find it interesting that these are the comments I receive the most.

First, let’s see what makes me lucky.

• I have a job that supports my life style, provides a car for me, provides a good place to live for me and provides a lot of my food.
• I get to travel a lot for my job. I more or less get to make my own travel schedule too. I have been trying to plan trips such that I can pass the weekend in the area. This is a great way of doing business!
• My job is very relaxed. Because of the lack of professionalism of everyone else in the company, I have a lot of freedom. I can come to work late, leave early, take a day off.
• I have had the opportunity to study in Switzerland and live in the Marshal Islands with lots of other traveling in between.
• I am able to pursue a life of few attachments and lots of freedom. I own hardly anything, and my costs are low. I don’t have a demanding family, or a girl friend holding me back (I don’t consider this a benefit, although some do). Should my job here not work out, it will be no problem for me to find a job elsewhere, or to coast on my savings.

In summation I have good opportunities and I am living the way I want to live. Something as simple as living the way you want to live, seems to be beyond the reach of many people here. Young people are living with their families through university and beyond that sometimes because it is expensive to move out on your own. Also, parents say to their children that they cannot move out until they marry. In this situation, people here in Turkey are never given a chance to live a free life. They are either living a life of compromise with their parents or a life of compromise with their spouse.

I suppose I was lucky to meet Murat as well. When I look back on my education at CMU I realize what a waste of money it was. Except for the people you meet and the connections you make, there is little advantage to CMU over other schools. People will get out of an education what they put into it. Study hard and you will learn a lot. Meeting Murat may or may not end up making my time at CMU all worth it.

Lastly, I am also always doing interesting things with my free time. Something most of my friends cannot claim.

Now let’s look at the other side of the coin. First of all, most of what I have done, most of what has taken me around the world is one simple fact: I am not lazy. I sought out the study abroad program in Switzerland and did everything I could to ensure I got there. When I learned about the Marshal Islands, I went to the professor running the program and literally said, “I will do anything to get into this program” (professor Mertz, want to back me up on that one?), and I did. Making the decision to come to Turkey was a scary one that I think most people wouldn’t have taken. I was moving to a strange place, with a strange language to live and work in a very isolated part of Istanbul (not really Istanbul in fact). I didn’t know more than two people, and I knew it would be a long time before I would see my family and friends again. This was not an easy decision.

Once I arrived here it took determination to stay here, and to move my life ahead in a positive way. For the first few weeks, my stomach was uneasy as I was adapting to a completely new diet. I spent a lot of time stuck in traffic, or worse stuck in Mimarsinan where I live, without a way to get into the city. Except for Izzy and Tahsin, I didn’t really have any friends. I was always lost. There were the other various bits of culture shock I mentioned here in my blog. There was frustration at work, which has only gotten worse as I have had more to do.

The not so lucky parts of my life has little to do with what’s here in Istanbul. It’s about what’s not here in Istanbul. Most of these people who make these comments on my life go home everyday and see their families or can call their families easily and have dinner with them. They see their siblings, have dogs and cats, get advice from their aunt, go to family birthdays together and all sorts of other things. They have their culture here, they have their language here. Turkey is their home, and all that they know is here. I on the other hand, am an outsider. I do not speak the language and therefore am often unable to communicate. I am not comfortable with some parts of the culture here. I do not have many of my friends here. Should I run into rocky times, I do not have the support network of people that they have. I am alone.

To me, I am living ‘my’ dream, but it’s not lucky, and it’s not easy. All the big decisions I have made about my life -Switzerland, Marshal Islands, Turkey - I made understanding for the most part the consequences and implications of my decision. I knew the ups and I had at least somewhat of a grasp downs. I made the decisions I wanted to make, but I had a realistic view of how it would go. These decisions were not easy, and they did not fall out of the sky. I found them, or in some cases, the opportunities brushed briskly against me, giving me little more than the blink of an eye to catch them. My critics could have done as I have done. To those of you reading this, I am very serious. If you really want to get somewhere or do something you can. Don’t be intimidated or afraid or worried about the details and implications of your decision. You only live once, so if you want to do something, just quit whining and go out and do it. Go out and live your life! Maybe you have to be a little selfish in your decisions (I know I have), but if you aren’t, how will you see yourself at the end of the road?

Maybe I am a little lucky, maybe I am a little bit of a lot of things, but luck didn’t get me here; I did. My question to you is where will you take yourself?

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

This week we have a visitor from Tunis. Yes it is the same person I visited some months ago. If you like, and you speak French you can read about how my previous visit went (at the bare minimum you can look at the pictures):

La Tunisie

Now the Tunisien, Kamel, is here in Istanbul to meet with us, see our company, learn about our products, etc… As I said before, he speaks Arabic and French, and that’s it. I therefore am translating for him.

The first thing about this situation that I want to point out is the irony of the whole thing. Normally Murat and Alper are translating for me from Turkish to English. Today during our meeting, I was translating for them from English to French. This was so much fun. My French is not very good, but being able to translate today made me feel very confident in my ability. All last week I had butterflies in my stomach about how on Earth I was going to talk about technical issues, service, warranty, payment terms, prices, spare parts, stock and all the other things in French. I remember being in Tunis for three days speaking only French and at one point just giving up and telling Kamel I needed to rest for the day. I took my time to call my family just so I could hear some English. I was afraid this would happen again.

I made it through the first two days so far without any problems. Well there were some. I keep forgetting the word for belt (not the kind you wear) and the word for ball bearings. I also am having some difficulty with the words for each piece of the compressor, but that’s what we have hands and fingers for. But in general it wasn’t bad.

Towards the end of the day however, I asked Murat to drive when we made our visits because I said it wouldn’t be a good idea for me to drive and try to speak French. Normally, driving in Istanbul requires a lot of concentration. At this point, he pointed out to me how tired I looked, and I was tired. Speaking and trying to think in French was exhausting after not having practiced for so long. On top of that, translating Alper’s already unclear English was even more exhausting. During the technical overview of the compressor, Ahmet Usta, spoke in Turkish (he doesn’t speak English) to Alper, who spoke in English to me, and then I translated it into French for Kamel. Do you have any idea how hard it is to make sense in French when Alper never understood what Ahmet was talking about in the first place?

Murat of course took pleasure in all of this. From time to time he has told me that he cannot speak English anymore with me. That he is exhausted and wants to just think and speak in Turkish. Now, he said, I understand how he feels. It’s true, I do. Granted it’s much easier for him because he has been speaking and studying in English for at least eight years, but it’s a similar idea. It’s tough to try and communicate in another language that isn’t natural for you. If you cannot think in that language, you are constantly translating everything in your mind into your mother tongue, processing it, creating a response in your mother tongue, and then translating it back to the other language. It’s extremely inefficient and extremely tiring.

So Murat, I feel your pain, but this what we signed up for I suppose.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

The newest addition to my company has got to be the cutest pair of legs to walk through our doors since I have been here, and I think everyone would agree. Pasha is a huge hit with everyone. Many of the company’s employees – male and female alike – spend their breaks playing stupid little games with Pasha in an attempt to win favor. It’s terribly inefficient. I swear the only thing Pasha does for the company is make everyone work less, but at least people smile more.

Pasha is of course a dog. Ahmet found him behind the building scrounging around for things to eat. He was a really small and cute puppy at that time (he still is, but not so much). As the person in charge of human resources and finance, Ahmet doesn’t have much to do, so a puppy was a perfect distraction for him. He had a vet come to the company and check the dog and give it all it’s shots and register it. He had a groomer come and clean him up. He bought only the best food for the dog because he loved the dog so much.

Of course the money for the dog ultimately is paid for by the company, which wasn’t much a problem. Everyone seems to like the dog. Although it has no training it was very playful (as a puppy should be) and adorable (also as a puppy should be). Visitors always stop to say hello to this aggressive greeter. In general it’s fun having a puppy around.

I did have one problem with this puppy. Ahmet was leaving the puppy tied up on a very short chain all day. The puppy was barking constantly and was clearly unhappy. So I took the chain and locked it in my desk. This resulted in quite a schism between Ahmet and I who was so angry that his already badly broken English became even more badly broken. I didn’t fold.

Now two weeks later the puppy trots happily around the company courtyard and parking lot. It is free to leave the area but for the most part he sticks around. I have offered to train him, but want no part in paying for the dog or being responsible for it. If it were up to me, I would let him go back to being a wild stray. Ahmet now, in his typical fashion, has lost interest and no longer wants the dog. He tried to give it to me – registration papers and all – but I declined. I found a pet shop and bought him some treats a leash and a brush and have been giving him attention when I have a bit of time at the end of the day. In general though, I do not have time for a dog, and Ahmet is not responsible enough to take care of a dog – or anything for that matter. So I guess you can consider this post as an advertisement; anyone in Istanbul want to give a home to this adorable little dog?

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Yesterday marked the first day of Ramadan. I won’t go into extreme detail about what it is, so if you are interested you can read Wikipedia’s Ramadan Page.   Simply put, Ramadan is an Islamic religious observance. It takes place during the ninth month of the Islamic calendar (it’s a lunar calendar, so it is different than ours). Muslims fast from sunrise to sunset for the entire month! That includes no water as well. Furthermore, you are supposed to observe the Koran more closely during this time period and in general be pure of thought. This includes no smoking and drinking.

Of course each person observes this in a different way. Alper has quit smoking during the day light hours (I think), many people are fasting and Ahmet has recently started smoking cigars in the company. To kick off the first day of fasting, Ahmet, Kenan and I went out for dinner. Unfortunately the restaurant we usually go to is closed during Ramadan so we had to trek a bit, but it was no problem. We were able to get there and start eating before sunset. We of course drank Raki, and to top it off, Kenan smoked cigarettes and Ahmet a cigar.

Since yesterday was my first day experiencing Ramadan, I assumed most of the Muslims here do not observe it. When I went downstairs for lunch today, I was surprised to find the lunch room nearly empty. Most of the tables had been moved and only a few chairs were out. I am often late for lunch, so I checked my watch. I was on time. Only 4 or 5 people from my company were eating of the 30 or so that are typically there. The lunch was unusual as well. It was lots of small breakfast things - cheese, bread, egg, olives, tomatoes, small sausages. It was actually excellent (I really love eating olives here). For a change, I stuffed myself. It felt a little awkward eating in front of our kitchen staff, and having them bring us tea, when they cannot eat or drink until after sunset tonight.

The positive impact of Ramadan on my life is that for some reason all employees get a box of random food stuff from the company (since people are not eating lunch I guess). I assume it’s Ramadan food, so I don’t know what to do with any of it, but there is a lot of olive oil and olives which I am excited about. The second thing is that since there is no lunch break, and no tea breaks (remember they can’t drink either), work ends at 5pm instead of 6pm. Thus my current predicament, everyone is gone and it’s too early for me to head to the city. So what should I do with my time?

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

At the request of several of my coworkers, I have begun having a sort of English class at 5pm everyday (well we started on Thursday, and Friday’s was canceled because we had a small crisis in Greece). I have mostly just gone over some vocabulary with them and have been doing small phrases with them. If you are interested, click here to see the handout a gave them with some starting vocabulary (vocabulary.doc). This was not my idea, nor Murat’s. It was their idea. Murat said that since it seems like I am going to be here a while, they would like to be able to communicate with me.

In my class I have Altan, the new guy working on our Turkish documentation, Burcin, the receptionist, Saime, a woman working in purchasing, and Rahile, one of the women working in the finance department. Altan, Burcin and Rahile are all my age and Saime is 30 I believe. My fifth student, is Murat’s uncle who is way ahead of everyone in terms of his English ability, but still not very good. He takes pleasure in telling the other people the wrong English word for things (example, he will tell them a chair is actually called a pencil). It was difficult to resist the urge to do this as well.

The first class was on Thursday, September 6th. Since this is Turkey, I decided I was skeptical to see if they would actually show up and take this seriously, so I didn’t prepare a lesson plan at all. At 5pm, I came back to my office to find everyone there with paper, ready to learn. I was very surprised. Not having prepared anything, I was a bit nervous. This was the first time I was really communicating something more than good morning with Altan and Burcin, and my communication with Saime has not been much more (Rahile organizes customs documentation for our exports so, although she knows the least English of those four, I communicate with her the most). I was literally sweating bullets. In my mind this was a test. According to Murat, I had passed the test of Alper, Hassan and his father. They all had confidence in my abilities. For this group however, this was my first test. I tried to remember what it was like learning French for the first time back in junior high school. I remember Mrs Rainey talking a lot about Friends, south park (it was in its first season), but nothing more. So I just tried to get teach them a few question and answers they could ask each other (Altan helped when it was not clear to the others what the words meant), and I taught them the head, shoulders, knees and toes song, which they all thought was pretty funny.

Afterwards, I made a list of vocabulary for them to have. I have no idea how to teach English to people who don’t know it, so this is what I came up with. Any suggestions would be tremendously appreciated. I also took the initiative and had Ahmet translate my handout into Turkish so that I could learn Turkish along side my co-workers efforts to learn English. My thought is that if I am able to learn the words in Turkish that I am teaching them in English, a few things will happen:

1. Communication will be easier: Perhaps one person forgets one word, or I forget one word in Turkish. Us learning the same vocabulary list in one another’s respective languages can only make communication easier. The trouble with this is that their exposure to English is mostly in the work environment. My exposure is everywhere outside the work environment. It is very easy for me to learn numbers, places, and food, since I see these words all the time. For them, it is very easy to learn words related to doing their jobs in Tecom, since they are surrounded by those words. My strategy will be to - once I get some basic vocabulary in them - teach them things that are readily applicable to their everyday lives. I will just try and memorize the translations of those things the best I can.

2. I can more easily earn their respect. I think it is very important to earn the respect of those you have to work with especially if you are supposed to be leading or teaching them. by making a strong effort to learn as well my belief is they will respect me more.

3. Motivation! If I am learning Turkish, they will have no grounds to complain I am going to fast with English. Also, if I can learn their language quickly, it will prove to them that it is possible.

4. Work will be more fun. Murat said to me that this will probably be the most fun part of the day.

So far, the best part of being teacher has been Altan’s question to me on Friday (Keep in mind, he was dead serious when he asked me this question). Altan approached me and said he had a question. He wrote down on a piece of paper “hot” and then directly below it “cold.” He indicated to me that he knew the meaning of the words using body language. I nodded and said “okay?” Then on the right side of the page he wrote “dog” and then directly below it the word “cat.” Again he indicated he knew the meanings of the words. Confused with where this was actually going I nodded again. Next, in the middle of the paper he wrote:

“hot_dog = meat”

Followed by:

“cold_cat = ?”

I started cracking up, which was not the right thing to do, because after I started laughing I realized he was serious. He blushed a bit and seemed rather embarrassed. It didn’t help that I immediately called Murat to tell him the hilarity of this situation. After I calmed back down again I apologized and indicated to him that a cold cat is nothing.

This incident reminded me of a similar incident with Alper. I was trying to explain to Alper the meaning of the word “homies.” I said to him that it’s a word used on the streets in cities that people in gangs and things call each other, that they call their friends. Alper’s response was,  “Conrad, we do not have this problem in Turkey, everyone has a home.” It took me a second to realize he thought I was saying homeless. I laughed a bit, and shared my amusement with Murat and Baris, and of course explained to Alper the difference.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!