Cute, Energy Stealing Monsters -- Istanbul, Turkey

I honestly can’t remember what happened on Tuesday. I probably practiced yoga and went to my café and attempted to write. I suppose I took the metrobus back to Beylikduzu after that because I had a final lesson at Seher’s school bright and early the next day.

This is going to be a full week, I considered my schedule. Monday was with Umit’s students. Tuesday was off. Wednesday is with Seher’s students. Thursday is with Umit’s students. Friday is with airport guys #2. Saturday is with Dilara. Sunday is with airport guys #2. Oof. Oh, and I have to meet with Seher’s friend for lunch after working at her school on Wednesday.

But that’s just the way this particular opportunity works. Some weeks, I am busy nearly every day. Some weeks, I’m busy for a day.

I woke up at 4 o’clock on Wednesday so I could do some work before Seher started getting ready for the school day. I wrote, drank a cup of coffee and ate a grapefruit.

Turkish grapefruit is so much more sour than American grapefruit, I thoughtfully compared and contrasted as my lips and cheeks contorted into all sorts of funky angles.

We arrived at her school a wee bit late. But most teachers arrive to Seher’s school arrive a wee bit late, so we melted right into the crowd of lackadaisical middle-aged Turks. Like many of the underpaid and underappreciated positions in the States, these middle-school teachers don’t feel a lot of commitment to their jobs.

I might have melted in with the teachers, but the children certainly spotted me. They remembered me quite clearly from my two days teaching a month and a half ago. Cries of “Aimee!” and “hello!” and “I love you!” rang through the bustling halls. I know these kids only think I’m great because I’m foreign, but I think I’m going to miss being so beloved and exotic when I go to England. Americans in England aren’t nearly as exotic as Americans running about in Turkish middle schools. I very much doubt I’ll have little English girls calling out, “I love you!’ with anything near the same unfaltering regularity as they do here.

Istanbul has been hard, but the people of Istanbul have (for the most part) made me feel like something precious.

We played our makeshift version of apples to apples (cards we cut out of extraordinarily thick posterboard) and the children loved it.

Hint to future English teachers: BRING GAMES. Apples to apples. Catchphrase. Bananagrams. Taboo. Guess who? Scrabble. Also, be able to teach a card game or two.

The last lesson was with a group of kids I’d had before and Seher needed to stick to the curriculum, so playing games like apples to apples was off. As Seher is a very hands-on sort of teacher and the curriculum required her class to learn about illnesses, she got all of them to stand up in front of their fellow students and act out simple ailments with text they made up themselves.

What an effective way to learn the word “toothache”, I thought as I watched one girl cradle her jaw as she asked for the doctor. After each student had been given the chance to perform his or her short skit (and bask in their fleeting moment of stardom), Seher asked if I had any ideas about skits for illnesses.

“Well...” I racked my brain for skits I’d performed in variety shows in Rifle or taught in variety shows in Grand Junction. “I have one idea...”

“Okay,” teacher Seher gave me her full support. “Can you show it to us?”

“Sure,” I rose from my rather uncomfortable wooden seat and took the stage. “It is a doctor’s office,” I explained the situation to the keen kids. “I need someone to play the receptionist. This person will say, “The doctor will be with you soon, please have a seat.” I wrote the line on the board for the students to practice. “The first person who comes in has nothing wrong. He or she is not sick. H-E-A-L-T-H-Y, healthy. He just comes to the receptionist and says, “can I see the doctor, please?” What does the receptionist say? That’s right! The receptionist says, “The doctor will be with you soon, please have a seat.” So the person (who is not really sick) has a seat. Then someone else who has a cough comes in. Can you cough? What is a cough? Good! Yes, that is definitely a cough. So the sick person with a cough comes in and asks, “Can I see the doctor, please?” and the secretary says, “the doctor will be with you soon, please have a seat.” So the coughing person sits next to the healthy person and keeps coughing. Suddenly, the coughing person stops coughing and the healthy person starts. The person who stopped coughing looks happy and says, “I feel better!” and leaves. The person who started coughing looks confused. And keeps coughing. The second person who comes in has the hiccups. He or she stops hiccupping and the other person starts. The third person who comes in has a twitch in their neck. The fourth person has a runny nose. The last person is pregnant, so the originally healthy patient – who is now coughing and sneezing and blowing his nose and twitching and hiccupping – sees the pregnant woman and shouts, “NO! ANYTHING BUT THAT!” and runs offstage. Okay?”

The kids looked awed. Excited and overwhelmed and all too eager to participate. I quickly assembled my cast of sick children (I played the person who was not sick but caught everything and Seher played the pregnant woman) and the skit was rollicking fun. By the end, I was hiccupping and sneezing like a crazy person and the kids were applauding and laughing and would most certainly remember the “sick girl from America” for a very long time.

It was a fun day. A day that took me back to other fun days spent teaching theatre to home-school kids. Days I remember with both fondness and thoughts of “how the hell did that happen?”

This is not unusual for me. I generally remember things with fondness and “how the hell did that happen?”

Like Morocco. England. Ireland. France.

I’m sure that’s how I’ll remember Istanbul.

After lessons were over, Seher and I loaded into her car and drove back to the Beylikduzu apartment. Öykü said, “Aimee!” and I said, “hello!” Then I went to bed and tried to sleep. I did not succeed in this endeavor because Ayse kept puttering in and out, retrieving this and that from the spare room, but it felt refreshing to be horizontal regardless.

After what seemed like three minutes (but was in actuality about an hour), Seher poked her head in and said the four loathsome words, “it’s time to go.”

“Already?” I groggily checked my phone. Yup. Already. I am never having children. They are nothing but cute, irresistible energy stealing monsters.

Seher had planned a lunch with a friend and colleague from school. We would be fed lentil balls wrapped in lettuce leaves and speak English for the remainder of the afternoon.

I’m just... tired of talking. I can’t wait to be in a situation where, if I don’t want to talk, I bloody well don’t have to. This job is so good and so hard and so rewarding and so... ach. It’s perfect for me at this point in my life. Perfect things are just the right amount of hard. They challenge but don’t completely overwhelm. Talking all the time is challenging, sure – but I’m not overwhelmed. Yet.

I spoke English to the daughter of Seher’s friend. We spoke English for over three hours.

I loved every minute.

“What do you do for fun?” I asked the routine question, expecting the routine answer of “shopping!” or “watching TV!” or “playing video games!”

Instead?

“I like to read. I love to read.”

“yeah?” My interest was sparked, “and if you could go anywhere in the world, where would you go?”

Her intelligent eyes lit up as she mulled over my question. “So many places... I would... shay, I am going to London for summer to study English. After that? I would go to Italy. It is in my books. The Coliseum. Julius Caesar.”

“And if you like history, you should go to Greece too. Visit Athens and Corfu. Visit Crete. And visit Spain! You’re right. There are so many places.”

We spent the rest of the afternoon discussing travel and what inspires us to dream. I left the afternoon feeling stuffed (lentil balls are so snackable) and energized. I had been able to share my passion with someone who really, truly appreciated it.

I went back to Beylikduzu and passed out. I had planned to return to Cesim’s flat in city center that evening, but every ounce of energy had been zapped from my body and I collapsed into bed like a zombie. Even Ayse’s puttering about failed to wake me from my zombie slumber.