More Adventures in Turkey

Hello, All!

I am still residing in Turkey, although it is hard to tell sometimes, since I spend all my time inside an English-only building, interacting with American, Canadian, British, and other English-speakers. My lessons are going along swimmingly, and I am thoroughly enjoying the course. After the initial agony of the dismal failure of my first lesson passed and I was again able to look the world in the eye, things got a lot better. The success of my second lesson gave me some impetus and propelled me forcefully into the thick of the program.

Amid frantic morning copy-machine craziness and dashing off to find Maria in the evening, I learn a lot from my tutors, my fellow classmates, and my own failures and successes. My students like me, my classmates respect me, and my tutors are confident that I can succeed.
Today was the last class period teaching upper-intermediates. After today, we will be moving on to the next level, which is actually the next level back. I'll be teaching grammar for the first time on Friday. So far, everyone in the group has gone horribly astray in one way or another while attempting to teach a grammar lesson. I hope that I have learned from all of their mistakes and will therefore come off looking brilliantly super-human. Failing that, I hope to at least pass.

Last night I realized with some chagrin that I had somehow miscalculated the number of days left until my assignment, and that it was due today. At the same time, our landlord, who has been planning to take Maria to the mall to ride the roller coasters, decided that it would be a good day for him to do that. So we all went to the mall instead of me doing my assignment like a good student. When we got home, I worked like mad on my lesson plan, which was due this morning, since I was teaching first. I finished that, but decided that a good night's sleep would be more useful that trying to stay up until 2 again to work on the other assignment. I estimated that it would only take about three or four hours, and that I could therefore finish it in time tonight. Fortunately, we got out of class early today, and I was able to work for about an hour before going to get Maria. After wasting three hours getting home, shopping for breakfast food, eating dinner and getting Maria into bed, I finally sat down at 9 and started my assignment. With three hours until midnight, I was lucky that my estimate had been fairly accurate. I finished the assignment and squeaked it in just at the deadline. Even though it was a rush job, it wasn't that big of a paper, and I think I did well on it.

I just realized I have spent a long paragraph talking about my assignment, which is probably not that interesting to most of you. Hmm. Next assignment, think about relevancy to audience...

Thank you all for reading, even though I haven't been so faithful in writing since I started this course. I appreciate your readership.

This is me, signing off...