Phwew

Sorry for the alarmist message posted before the weekend-- we have indeed staved off homelessness and managed to escape the confines of the Erasmus Sarayi to boot!  What a weekend.

Catholic Church, Antakya

Wednesday began normally enough, taught my video class and then went to grab some cay with Adnan in the canteen.  Upon our return to the office, we were met by Gulbun Hanim, who was obviously upset.  She shared with us some horrible, though not unexpected news.  The lovely people at the Erasmus Sarayi have expected us to be paying rent, at 50 TL a day (that comes out to about 1500 TL a month, more than half our salary), and they are expecting back-rent from us.  HAHAHAHAHA.  Of course!  Well, since we had been told we'd be living rent free in the dorm, this was obviously a problem.  At least Gulbun Hanim had the wherewithal to be upset too, and in fact, I think she was very concerned with the development since she was partly responsible for the miscommunication (along with the vice-rector) with the dorm that allowed this to happen.


Obviously, we were pissed.  Adnan called Secil Hanim, our Fulbright boss, and the wheels of justice began to turn slowly.  Within an hour, Gulbun Hanim had us driving around (willy-nilly) in a car looking for apartments for rent.  But the real stroke of "genius" came from the vice-rector, who had the idea to put us in the lojman on Meram campus.  If anyone has been a casual reader of this blog, you will perchance recall that we had been promised the very same apartment when we first arrived in Turkey by Gulbun Hanim, only to be deposited unceremoniously in the Erasmus Sarayi upon our arrival in Konya.  Well, we are finally here, two months later.  Wednesday night, we received the green light to move in, and Thursday after classes, we moved all the way across town and have been settling in ever since.

Alex and EB at the Oasis Hotel, Karpaz, Cyprus

The apartment is not beautiful.   But it is certainly better than the Erasmus Sarayi, and it even has the potential to be "home."  First of all, it is in a neighborhood!  We can walk to restaurants, supermarkets, hardware stores, and bus stops!  WOW!  It is also not staffed by some hypocritical jerks who occasionally decide to make our lives miserable and treat us like children.  While we actually don't have keys to the front door of the apartment block yet, we only have to ask the really nice security guards to let us in-- day or night.  We're not in student housing!  We are real people!

It is a gratifying feeling to be treated like a human being again.  The aesthetic of the apartment is "70s glam-coke:"  blue carpeting, hexagonal couch with polyester patterning, fake crystal chandeliers, and crumbling appliances.  The kitchen is in a sun-porch thing, and seems like it could fall off the side of the building at any minute.  Some of the outlets don't work in the kitchen as well, including the important outlet which the stove plugs into-- so for now we've rigged some extensions across the kitchen floor form the mini-fridge (yup- not a real fridge).  It shouldn't be too bad though, since I'm usually the only one who is inclined to cook anything complicated.  Additionally, the shower is an interesting, multi-level affair, and most of the space inside the cubicle is taken up by a radiator.  Only a picture can do it justice, which I will post once we've moved in a bit more, along with pics of the rest of the place.  The Meram campus is about 1.5 hours away from the main campus by dolmus/tram combo, and 45 minutes by direct shuttle, so I'll be spending a lot more time waking up early and traveling.  But it is so worth it.  Also, I have a house plant that I'd like to name.  Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated.

Agios Philos church, Karpaz, Cyprus

Yesterday, we went furniture shopping with Meryem, our friend and my office mate.  She kindly drove us to a Turkish Home Depot knockoff, where we were able to purchase some cheapish shelves and drawers and other necessities.  Then, we went bowling with our new friend Caglar!  I was introduced to him by one of the people I met in Gaziantep, Ceyla.  Ceyla and Caglar were Fulbrighters to the US a few years ago together.  Caglar is working on his PhD in English Language Education, and is actually taking classes in Adana, so is only in Konya Sat-Wed.   He has already been so kind, helpful, and friendly, that meeting him, combined with the new apartment, makes me feel like we're finally getting somewhere towards "settled."

This post is getting to be quite unwieldy, and I don't really have any relevant pictures to help it go down smoothly.  I guess I'll supplement with some extras from Bayram.  [edit- pics of the apartment courtesy of EB]

Coke-couch, and Adnan on the Gazelle after work Thursday (Credit: EB)

But I should say a little more about work:  In my hazirlik classes, the students are getting ready for the midterm on Thursday/Friday, and are starting to freak out.  I hope mine will do well, because (most of them) are really great kids.  One of my classes invited me to go see a Selcuk basketball game with them on Saturday, and I had to stand them up due to the moving crisis.  Hopefully when I bring them cookies on Tuesday, they'll forgive me.

Montana is beocming a bit of a problem, as the two students are absent almost as much as they show up to class.  Their English is ok, but certainly not good enough to survive in Montana as college students.  And it makes planning for class very difficult.  Because there are only two students, I have to put a lot of work into my lesson plans to fill the whole time productively.  But when I show up to class after such careful planning, and no one else is there, it really throws me out of tune.  And if only one student comes, I have to decide whether to use my activites with just one or wait for both... the other Montana teachers and I are all meeting to discuss this problem on Wednesday, because they're having the same struggle as me.

Orpheus at the Antakya Archaeology Museum

Last-- advanced reading in the literature department.  The students have had some trouble with the reading responses I've been asking for.  Some of them aren't turning them in at all, and some are turning them in late.  For my last response, many of them plagiarized to some extent, and we had some fun class time talking about plagiarism.  What is plagiarism?  Why is it bad/wrong?  Why does it completely defeat the purpose of the reading responses?  It is very difficult to impress upon the students that I'm not grading their reading responses on grammar, vocabulary, or cleverness.  I just want to see that they're thinking about the reading and then I either give them full credit (for completing the assignment, regardless of what they write) or no credit (if they plagiarize or don't do it).  I've given the students a chance to redo their plagiarized responses, and I think the message has been received.  After talking with a number of students, it seems to me they're not plagiarizing maliciously.  They just are used to being able to do it, and see no real problem with borrowing other people's words.  Especially because they're writing in a their second language, plagiarism to them often seems like an extension of using a dictionary to express themselves in an unfamiliar language.

Bellapais Monastery, Girne, Cyprus

So, hopefully this plagiarism saga has been mostly wrapped up.  And our classes in advanced reading have been very interesting, which I think helps the students adjust to the unfamiliar way I manage the class.  It is as much discussion-based as I can make it, and the way we approach the reading is pretty novel too, I think.  They're not used to saying things like "I think" or "in my opinion," etc... and I think they're enjoying thinking about reading in a different way.  We had some really great discussions about Paul Auster's Portrait of an Invisible Man, and Harriet Jacob's Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl.  We talked about identity, self-definition, power hierarchies, and how objectivity is all relative.  For this Friday, they're reading Mary Louise Pratt's Arts of the Contact Zone, which is a very complex (though short) text, and we're going to re-examine Jacob's essay from Pratt's perspective.  Should be interesting!

Ok.  This is long enough.  I am sad to be missing Thanksgiving with my family, as it is by far my favorite holiday.  I'm expecting some intense homesickness over the next week, but hopefully a trip to see some other ETAs in nearby Afyon next weekend will help me survive a Thanksgiving away from Houston/New Orleans.

Finally, I have heard some rumblings that people want to be notified when I update the blog.  There are two ways to do this.  The first is to "follow" this blog using a google email account.  Once you're following the blog, you can change your setting to receive emails  when I update.  If that sounds too complicated, email me and I will make a mailing list to manually notify ya'll when I update.