Last Week of School . . . Kinda

I’m having a quiet—and a little bit boring—Sunday, so I thought I’d best update my blog with all the randomness of my life. In theory, E is studying for finals. In reality, he’s playing a game I downloaded to the iTouch. My bad.

For all you Europhiles, last night was the Eurovision Song Contest. I’m not sure if Turkey was pleased or disappointed to take second place. It probably would have been easier if Germany (one of their many enemies) hadn’t won first. If you are bored, I’ve posted both Turkey and Germany’s songs.

Last night, Turkey and the US also played an exhibition soccer match. The US won 2-1. Afterwards, E said, “We lost.” “No, no,” I corrected. “We won.”

We didn’t actually watch either the football match or Eurovision. Instead, we went on date night to see the film Green Zone. I enjoyed it, but E thought there wasn’t enough killing (or something like that).

We were both pretty tired because we woke up early to a wedding party near our house. It started with cars honking. Then everyone got out of their cars. Someone started beating a drum, a few other people played different instruments, and everyone else danced in front of a neighboring apartment building. Needless to say, I ended up getting out of bed and watching from my window.

I actually spent most of the week alone. E went to Ankara on Tuesday (and came back Friday) to visit a friend who is doing his military service. I think he had a good time, but I don’t envy him the trip. He spent 26 hours on a bus between Erzurum and Ankara. Yikes. I know the bus is more economical and environmentally friendly, but I sure like flying. We’ll be flying to Istanbul in two weeks, at my insistence, and E will take the 19-hour bus back to Erzurum, at his insistence.

Fortunately, I stayed busy while E was gone. This was our last week of classes—the next two weeks are final exams—and I was pleased to discover that some things never change. After class on Friday, one of my students followed me to my office to tell me he thinks I am beautiful and he can’t stop staring at me. I said, “Don’t be ridiculous.” He then said he’d fight my husband for me. I just laughed. I didn’t tell E about this because he wouldn’t think it was funny, but I was secretly delighted because I swear I’ve become such an ugly dump since getting married.

I also gave my last midterm (not my scheduling idea). For the exam, I made the students write—and then record—a personal essay. I gave them ten writing prompts, including “I learned life was unfair when . . .”; “I realized my family loved me when . . .”; and “I learned I could be anything I wanted when . . . .”

Of course, I then had to spend about 10 hours listening to the recordings and grading the projects. Overall, I was really pleased with the essays and surprised by some recurring themes. Of approximately 120 essays, nearly half dealt with death—usually the death of a parent. A girl’s father was shot and killed (she didn’t say why), a boy killed his best friend because he was driving drunk, another girl’s best friend drowned in the lake while they were swimming. It was heartbreaking to realize how fragile life is here (I know it is fragile everywhere, but for some reason death feels more present in Turkey). I also had several female students write about how their married high school teachers asked them to have affairs. Unfortunately, I had no trouble believing this.

Of course, I also ran into several clear examples of plagiarism. I was shocked by how stupid some of my students could be. One student used vocabulary I knew he didn’t know: “reckless silence.” Another student wrote about experiencing an earthquake during his freshman year of college. Since this is his freshman year, I knew it wasn’t true. And a third student described a river using miles and feet. Hmm, I’m pretty sure Turks are still using the metric system. If you’re going to cheat, at least try to be a little bit smarter.

Unfortunately, my crappy little apartment has decided to really break down. We have a leaky toilet—fortunately it is leaking clean water—and I struggle every time I enter the bathroom to keep my pant legs dry. We also lost our hot water this week, which makes showering not exactly delightful. E needs to make another visit to the maintenance guys today. I swear there are about ten of them in our building—and they do absolutely nothing.

Finally, I’ve made a new friend. When we went to the police station a few weeks ago, we met our neighbor who is from Kazakhstan. I walked to work with her on Friday, and it was just plain farcical. Basically, we communicated in a mixture of Turkish and Russian (and some Ukrainian on my part). Of course, her Turkish and Russian was perfect. Mine was not. But I guess at least we communicated.