Highschool Girls -- Istanbul, Turkey

Teachers are the one and only people who save nations. 

~Ataturk 

I blearily rubbed the sleep from my eyes on Wednesday morning. It was pitch black in the spare room and I relished the blank-page feel of 4:30. Everything is fresh. 

God, I love mornings...

Umit does not love mornings. Neither does Seher. Even Öykü lies quiet during the beautiful, underappreciated hours before 8:00. I take advantage of this exquisite lull and spring from my bed, slide across the waxed wooden floor in my wool socks, and boil water for coffee.

Big... I want something big. I glanced at the porcelain Turkish cups and dismissed them. I wanted something big enough to hold and warm my fingers, so a tiny Turkish coffee cup wouldn’t quite cut it.

Nescafe. Or “George Clooney” in Southern France. Ah, I love how my life changes. How breakfast changes. Just last week, I was drinking mocha for breakfast and waiting until lunch for a proper meal. Two weeks before that, I was chowing down on cheese, meat and coffee. Hell, I even had a few mimosas for breakfast at the Englischhausen. Before that, I was brewing coffee at Billie’s on that funny machine that didn’t heat the water all the way and breakfasted on fruit, honey and yogurt. Before that, I made mochas for Baris and would sometimes dine on socca with camembert.

Now I drink Nescafe and eat cheese, olives and tomatoes. I wonder what I will eat three months from now.

After breakfast, I fooled around online for a respectable amount of time (having limited internet connection is turning me into a considerably more productive lady), wrote a few paragraphs for my blog and practiced yoga.

I really need to practice consistently here. This is absurd. I can’t call myself a yoga teacher if I only practice once or twice a week. Get your ass in line, Bourget. This is your life. Also, be gentle with yourself. Because yoga says so.

I boarded 145T at 11:25 and set off to Istanbul Tip Fakultesi and stuffed my ears with “This American Life” and “Radiolab”. I settled into the top portion of the double-decker (second row, window seat on the right) and got comfortable for the hour and a half drive to the city center.

This is actually relaxing, I thought as Ira Glass’ voice lulled me into pleasant state of tranquil intellectual contemplation. I watched the skyscrapers in the distance and the bumper-to-bumper traffic hounding the bus. Ira, I could listen to you talk about “Fiascos” all day, every day.

I arrived at Istanbul Tip Fakultesi at 12:30 (after being misdirected yet again) and decided to wander around a few streets rather than wait at the bus stop until the students arrived at 13:00. Umit was stuck in a school meeting so was unable to introduce us, but he sent the boy with the best English from Monday’s session to initiate conversation between the four lovely highschool girls and myself.

I feel like I got a crash course on what it’s like to be a happy-go-lucky girl in highschool. I was homeschooled, but worked at middleschools for three years, so I understand the unfortunate, backbiting middleschool classroom environment. Highschool is completely alien to me, though – even more alien than Turkish culture, I might say.

There’s a lot of hand holding, giggling, shopping, inside jokes, karaoke, elbow holding, talking about boys, talking about favorite football teams (aka favorite football jerseys), candy munching, cinema watching, etc.

When I was in “highschool”, I just studied chemistry and hung out with my horses. Which isn’t bad (horses don’t give a lick about how socially awkward you are) – just very, very different.

The girls kicked off the afternoon jaunt by taking me to a family café where I drank Turkish coffee, commenced my interrogation and was given a large Ottoman style clock by a girl’s mother.

Errr... beautiful clock... I just hope there’s room for it in my bag.

There are several things I find difficult about conversations with groups of strangers when a language barrier exists.

·      Different levels of competency in language. One girl had admirably good English, another had a passable level, and the final two could understand when I made eye contact and

SpoKe.

Very.

 SlowLy.

and with more pronounced enunciation than I used when performing a scene from Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra.

Why SHOULD I THINK you CAN be MINE and TRUE

Though YOU in SWEARing SHAKE the THRONE-ed GODS –

This makes things difficult because I don’t want to bore the advanced girl or bewilder/overwhelm the girls with only basic English. I tried for a happy medium, but I think I ended up just boring everyone.

·      I feel obliged to keep the conversation going. It is my duty, my responsibility to get these young ladies to speak English, so I had better be able to steer the conversation with some level of finesse.

Unfortunately, I am not well known for my finesse. Also, I need to relax about the whole "duty" thing. This sort of activity needs effort exerted by both parties, so I’m going to let them ask me some questions next time.

·      When students know each other, they tend to slip back into their native language. When they are chatty teenage girls, they fall back into their native language headlong, singing and dancing and holding hands all the way. This leaves the English speaker sitting and awkwardly smiling, waiting to be filled in on the goings on or clued in on the private joke. This rarely happens though, and I’m generally forced to rudely interrupt their conversations. Sometimes I get tired of being rude though, and I plaster on the awkward smile and hope they switch to broken English at some point in the not too distant future.

That is what they’re here for, yes? English?

·      Restructuring sentences for greater simplicity. I’m a writer. I’m a longwinded writer who relishes elaborate words like lugubrious, ephemeral, lackadaisical and chimerical.  The following is painfully hard for me:

“Ah! The salty yogurt drink is sublime.”

“What?”

“This yogurt is delicious.”

“Again?”

“I like it a lot.”

“You like?”

“The yogurt. The salty yogurt drink is good.”

“Oh! Yes.”

Although tedious, this experience is invaluable for me because I’m learning how to communicate with unnatural clarity and simplicity, and since I do intend to teach English in South Korea, it’s splendiferous that I’m learning now. As opposed to later.

After the coffee, the girls and I piled into a taxi for Taksim, where I gaped and they giggled. The street was beautiful and all lit up with what we would call Christmas lights (not sure what they’re called here...), so I kept commenting on how fine I found the place as the chuckled merrily down Taksim.

“Uhhh.. hungry?” one of the bubbly ladies asked after a few minutes of walking.

“Am I hungry?” I repeated the question. “A little. I am a little hungry.”

“What do you want for eating?”

“What do I want to eat?”

“Yes. To eat.”

“I can eat anything but bread. I cannot eat bread. I am allergic.”

“Bread?”

“Yes, I am allergic to bread. Ekmek.”

Ekmek was one of the first Turkish words I learned.

“Do you want kestane?”

“Chestnuts? Yes! I would love some chestnuts. Would you help me eat them? I can’t eat them by myself.”

“Yes, of course!”

As Umit doesn’t charge his students for these English outings, he asks them to take his friends/volunteers on excursions in the city and to cover their expenses. So the girls graciously handed over a bag of kestane and took only two of the warm, roasted nuts for themselves.

“No, take more!” I protested, shoving the bag towards reluctant fingers and conflicted eyes.

“Very good, but much calories,” they all declined my chestnuts and I was forced to eat nearly the entire bag of very good calories on my own. Which was fine and I’m not complaining... I suppose I’m just saddened that these slender, gorgeous girls didn’t help me eat the chestnuts because they were concerned about their weight. Like the rest of the young/middle aged women in Istanbul.

After finishing my chestnuts, the girls treated me to a proper lamb kebab lunch with a yogurt drink.

So tasty.

I asked them to make lists of favorite TV shows/films and music. 

• Turasi
• The Pretty Reckless
• Rihanna
• Justin Timberlake
• Katy Perry
• Pitbull

Once again, Turkish teenagers knew more about American pop culture than I did. Their animated faces showed severe disappointment whenever I replied, “No... I’ve never really listened to Selena Gomez.”

 

I felt like I was destroying their dreams. Ruining every preconception they have about America and Americans.

“McDonalds!” one of the girls pointed out the golden arches. “Do you like?”

“I’ve actually never eaten at McDonalds.”

“Never eaten?”

“At McDonalds.”

“No!”

“Yes. Do you like McDonalds?”

“Of course!”

The rest of the day was filled with Turkish delight, a brief wander through a city museum and karaoke at the mall.

There were only two English songs on the karaoke machine. I knew neither (surprise), but enjoyed listening to the girls sing in Turkish and Kurdish for the half hour they’d booked.

I stumbled into my Turkish family’s apartment at 21:00. I was dog-tired, brain-dead, tongue-tied.

I just... bed.