Seher's School -- Istanbul, Turkey

The opposite of anger is not calmness. It's empathy.

~ Mehmet Oz

 This week has been enervating, frenzied, sensational, stimulating.

I am learning nearly every second. Istanbul, although fairly westernized, still has an incredibly unique culture of its own -- of which I am entirely unfamiliar and bits and pieces consistently catch me off guard.

Questions. The way I live (for the moment, anyway) is so drastically antithetical to the expectations of most societies that I can gauge how societal rules impact various cultures by the questions the people ask and the comments they make.

In Colorado: Traveling! Wow, that’s awesome. Good luck!

In Germany: You do not work? How do you pay for it? Vhen will you start to live za real life?

In France: Ah, but you will fall in love.

In Turkey: Are you married? No? Do you vant to be married? And how do you get full if you cannot eat bread?

Also asked in Turkey: What is your religion? Where is your family? Sade, orte, or secerli? 

Common comments in Turkey: You’re so slim! Your eyes -- very beautiful. I like your haircut. I will travel someday, inshallah.

Weight seems to be an important issue in Turkey, as nearly everyone brings it up at least once per conversation. And by everyone, I mean the women at Seher’s school and the girls I worked with through Umit’s highschool. The girls on Wednesday kept commenting on the fact that I was slim, and weren’t satisfied until I’d returned the comment (which I’m always reluctant to do. I don’t like telling people that they’re slender when they’re begging for it. I feel like this only reinforces reliance on others for validation).

Eyes. Most Turkish people have light brown to dark brown eyes. Because my eyes are an odd mixture of orange and green, they are commented on with a regularity that makes me feel ungracious in my pat answer of a smile, a brief “thanks” and a quick subject change.

Most children I meet were born in Turkey and have lived in Istanbul their whole lives. They have vague notions of countries they want to visit, but I have yet to meet a Turkish child who has traveled outside of Turkey. One of my goals for each “session” is to instill a little extra curiosity in each student.

As I wrote in a previous entry, Seher is an English teacher and works at a primary school about ten minutes away from the family flat. Her hours are 7:20 – 13:00, Monday through Friday. She teaches forty students in forty-minute increments with ten-minute breaks straight through.

Woman got grit.

On Tuesday, she arranged for me to come in and help with her students; I couldn’t have asked for a better introduction to teaching English to children.  We pulled up to the school a little after seven and dashed into the building, weaving in and out through swarms of scampering children as we speed-walked.

“So...cold...” I puffed.

“I hope I don’t have to watch in the garden today,” Seher fretted as we blew inside, taking the chill air with us.

All the teachers met in their lounge/locker room downstairs, mulling about, hanging up coats and finishing breakfasts of olives, cheese, bread and tahini. Only a couple of them spoke any English, so I flicked on my kindle and read a little Kerouac as I waited.

“I’m ready,” Seher stood by the door with her folders. She led me up a flight of stairs and to a small classroom in which the forty students sat, cramped and antsy at their desks.

“HELLO!” they bellowed at the top of their lungs, big grins and even bigger eyes filling their faces as they saw Seher and me.

“Hello, how are you?” Seher replied in English. The class uniformly recited, “fine thanks, and you?”

“I’m fine.”

Seher sat at her desk, flipped through her folders and slipped me the role.

“Would you call their names?”

“I won’t be able to pronounce most of them.”

“That will make it fun.”

“Ha. Okay.”

And I went through the list of forty names, completely butchering most (eruptions of laughter) and scraping by with others (still, eruptions of laughter).

“And would you like to know more about my friend?” Seher asked the class when the role was finished. “Do you have questions for her? “What is your name?” “Where are you from?” “How old are you?” Questions like these?”

The classroom immediately filled with dancing fingers and waving arms, and I spent the next twenty minutes calling on students, answering questions and writing names on the board.

“Ummm.... what is your...” the girl’s face blackened and she turned to Seher for help, asking a question in Turkish.

“Am I a dictionary?” my host answered playfully.

The girl replied in Turkish.

“Am I a dictionary?”

The student whipped out her little dictionary and flipped through the pages.

“What is... your... favorite animal?”

After personal questions were answered, we quickly explored the use of frequency verbs.

I always –

I usually –

I often –

I sometimes –

I rarely –

I never –

I filled in the sentences and the children wrote them down. The bell rang in the tune of Für Elise, signaling the end of the first session.

I already felt tired.

“Now we have a ten-minute break,” Seher packed her things and we walked back downstairs to the lounge. I drained a cup of çay and read Kerouac.

Session after session followed suit. Forty students filed in, forty students asked questions, forty students filed out. Seher managed them beautifully, using the perfect mixture of humor, seriousness and chocolate to keep the classroom in order and everyone engaged. 

13:00. I dragged my feet.

“so... tired...”

“Now you see why I sometimes do not want to talk at home.”

“Yes. Yes, I certainly do. “