Sankar’s job was winding down. He had already started working on projects in other parts of the world. It was time to head home. “We’ll be home for Christmas,” I told Angela on the phone. I loved those sentimental words.

“No,” she replied. “I want one more Christmas in Istanbul.” Greg agreed.

Sankar and I were surprised, but pleased.

Even though our kids had visited the past summer, we had new things to show them. The Panorama Museum, with its 360-degree floor-to-ceiling murals that put visitors in the middle of the battle for Constantinople. Akdeniz Hatay Sofrası, where you could call ahead and order delectable chicken or lamb roasted in a salt casing. Sensus, a new wine bar next to the Galata Tower. The Anglican church we’d belatedly joined, Crimean Memorial.

On Christmas Eve, the temperature in the fifties, the four of us drove to the nearby suburb of Gayretepe (gayret = endeavor; tepe=hill) and left the car in a parking ramp. Then we jumped on the metro to Taksim Square. We walked the length of Istiklal Avenue, passing roasted chestnut vendors, window-shopping, and admiring the holiday lights that arched over the iconic street. We ran into Pastor Ian, sitting outside a coffee shop smoking a cigar with a friend, and stopped at Sensus for a glass of wine and some hors d’oeuvres. Fortified, we headed to church.

We arrived at the service early to get seats. The church was filled with people we knew. Robbie, a Californian who had married a Turk and worked in public relations for the AKP Party. Robbie had always been particularly friendly to me. Professor William Hale and his wife, Kathleen, Brits with whom we’d gone on ARIT trips. I had been surprised at William’s fluency in Turkish. Beate, a long-time Istanbulu from Germany, who had invited me to dinner at her historic Terabya home one weekend when Sankar was away.

We gave up our seats to Warren Winkler, an eighty-something American physician who had worked in Turkey since World War II, and his stylish Dutch wife, Ineke. We had attended a party at their lovely,  unusual home, a former Turkish bath.

I love evening church services and this was our first in our new church’s late nineteenth century building, with its choir screen separating the altar from the nave, adorned with frescoes including one of the Christ child grasping a simit (Turkish bagel).

After the service, we spoke with a British couple we had recently met. They were new in Istanbul. Now I hugged her goodbye, feeling wistful: all the confusion and exhilaration of the city was ahead for her. For us, well, movers would arrive as soon as the kids left.

Ümit was taking our guest beds and the desk Sankar had so thoughtfully purchased for me before I arrived. We were shipping most everything else back home. But what to do with our liquor? We owned a surprising amount, given that we rarely drank it. A large bottle of rum, which I’d bought for a cake recipe—a smaller size wasn’t available and, with fifty percent tax, the bottle had cost close to $75. Two bottles of rakı, Christmas gifts from 3M Turkey (along, one year, with a carton of Marlboros). A bottle of gin, and some scotch left over from when Sankar’s brother visited.

We decided to give all of these spirits to our 3M friends, Gökhan and Burcu, who had invited the four of us for a final meal at their apartment. That evening, we loaded all our bottles into the trunk of our car for the drive over the bridge and into Asia. When we reached their place, we discovered that the rum had spilled all over the inside of the trunk. We carried the rest of the bottles into their apartment and forgot about the rum.

We stayed late at Gökhan and Burcu’s apartment that night, and didn’t get back home until after midnight. The kids were flying out early the next morning; we’d be back in the car again by 5:30.

It was still dark as we set out for the airport. Sankar took the freeway entrance toward Atatürk International and accelerated confidently; there was little traffic at this time of day. But then he noticed several police cars, and an officer standing on the left side of the road, motioning us over. We stopped—had we been speeding?—and Sankar rolled down his window. The officer leaned in and without a word, stuck a plastic device in Sankar’s face. Then, issuing a sharp command, he shoved the breathalyzer right into his mouth.

The car still reeked with the fumes from the spilled rum, and I turned toward the kids, my eyes wide. Sankar passed the test and the officer waved us on. But we were shaken. “Can I get sick from having something like that in my mouth?” he asked.

It was the flip side of that Turkish order and kontrol we’d so often admired.

I had started leaving Istanbul months before our departure. I began by saying goodbye to seasonal treats I knew I’d miss. In April: grand gardens of tulips in every shade of pink, red, and yellow, and hundreds of ordinary roadside plantings. Goodbye, lale!

In June: mulberries, little white sweetnesses dangling from tree branches, fortifying my ascent from sea to apartment. Goodbye dut!

In summer: the juiciest, most luscious melons I have ever tasted, some with orange or yellow fruit, others bright green. They lasted for a while after harvest, but finally in mid-fall I ate my last one. Goodbye, wonderful kavun!

Then it was time for pomegranates, ruby red and bursting with flavor. They were still in season as I left Asia Minor, but goodbye nar!

And the sea, a visual reward. I would so miss those unexpected glimpses of pale blue water shimmering at the turn of a street, or a spray of mist as the car rounded a bend. I didn’t say goodbye, but I tried to fix each dreamlike view in my mind.

I also began saying goodbye to the language I’d tried so hard to learn. Ever since my summer visit home, my Turkish skills had been weakening. I could no longer understand conversations as well as I had in May and June, and my speech became more hesitant. “From now on, I’m going to listen to at least an hour of Turkish television each day,” I declared in my final months, but then avoided doing so.

As I intensified my wanderings around the golden city, checking off items to see one last time, I was pulling back. While I tried to stay in the moment, I could also see myself as I’d soon be: far away.

Maybe 55 had been the perfect age to meet Istanbul. I had been ready for its melancholy, what Orhan Pamuk calls the city’s huzun. The visitor is constantly reminded that Istanbul is old, and it is a reminder that you, too, will be old.

Filled with huzun, I had, more than once, longed for an entire life lived in Istanbul. To know all of its wisdom and secrets. I had learned to make difficult personal changes here. I had learned to create optimism and to cope with things I didn’t agree with. I had learned to accept lavish hospitality that I, myself, could not reciprocate. I had been humbled in Istanbul, but I had also stood up for what I believe in. But surely there was a lot more the city could teach me.

In the apartment when all was quiet, I took stock. Had our marriage improved? Had we made a better go of things here than in Costa Rica? Yes to both. Our marriage had been strengthened through discovery of shared interests, particularly in ancient and medieval history. This discovery had occurred in great part because I had opened myself up to it. I had set out for Turkey with a positive attitude, and had (mostly) refrained from complaining.

Had Turkey solved all of our problems? Surely not. I still lamented my lack of professional success, and sometimes, took out negative feelings on Sankar. And Sankar still had a tendency to brush off my concerns. But I smiled as I recalled his frequent efforts to make me happy here, cobbling together bits of Turkish, Spanish, and English to help us find the way to our next historic treasure.

Turkey had showed me that I could overwrite the patterns we’d developed in Costa Rica. That I could break the cycle of resentment and blame, and instead speak up and ask for resources to help me succeed. When a space was cleared that had once been full of negativity, there was room in our marriage to let common interests bloom. We had grown closer through our magical explorations with ARIT and by hosting numerous visitors. We had made wonderful new friends, and we had a list of Turkish places, such as the lost Armenian city of Ani, that we still wanted to visit together. Forever now, at least when we talked about Turkey (and we would talk about it a great deal), we’d talk as a team.

The most challenging experiences often produce the most rewards. The year spent teaching—the hardest job I’d ever had—had actually been a balm. It had provided a crucial sense of accomplishment, enhancing my sense of self and easing our fraught expatriate relationship. It had given me insights into the Turkish culture that I wouldn’t have gained sitting in our apartment or hanging out with other expatriates. And it had allowed me to be the kind of American I wanted to be: hardworking and dedicated. For a long time after I left Turkey, I would think of ÖzU as my employer, and its teachers as my colleagues.

My job had also pointed the way to a new career: teaching English as a Second Language.

I was proud of how I’d handled the challenge of Turkey, and I was already looking back on the experience with satisfaction. I would not only miss Turkey, but I’d miss myself in Turkey. I had, for the most part, been wise here.

Finally, our last morning—a Saturday in January. We’d already bid farewell to our Turkish and expatriate friends, our apartment, and our neighborhood, moving for our two final days to the Radisson Blu in Ortaköy. Ümit was busy with a family matter, so we’d already said our goodbyes to him. We expected to take a cab to the airport, but Taner, Waverley’s driver, did something I would surely not have thought to do: he volunteered to get up early on his day off so that our last ride wouldn’t be an impersonal one. He arrived at 5:15 am to take us to the airport.

In Istanbul, traffic is never far from mind, but as Taner turned left out of the Radison Blu, I smiled. The Sea Road was ours this morning! We were in for a quick ride on the most consistently clogged road in the city. Over the years, I had sat for what seemed like hours on its surface, studying the shiny, black and white photographs of Atatürk’s life on the Yildiz Parki walls to pass the time. Now, we whizzed along, and I busied myself trying to think of something pithy to say to Taner to mark our last car ride in Istanbul.

We were approaching the Galata Bridge when I emerged from my reverie. Just ahead was Eminönü, the centuries-old, maze-like commercial area I’d been most drawn to during my time in the city. I hadn’t planned to see Eminönü again; Ümit would have taken us on a newer route west of the city. But here it was, in all its ancient splendor. And like me, it was just waking up.

The rising sun was hitting the dome of the Suleimaniye Mosque, Sinan’s sixteenth century masterpiece, at the very top of Istanbul’s Third Hill. The largest mosque in Istanbul: how many times had I climbed crowded streets past Istanbul University to visit this house of worship? How many times had I gained a sense of peace from its soaring, taupe and terra cotta interior and enjoyed a timeless view from the green expanse on its north side?

From Suleimaniye, Eminönü’s buildings cascaded down the hill toward me, so crowded together that they looked as though they stood on risers. It was as if the heart of Istanbul had convened a special chorus to bid me farewell. I felt emotions rising; how was I going to go on living without weekly trips to Eminönü?

Still dark, but its outlines visible, on the right side of the “choir” stood the small Rustem Pasha Mosque, another Sinan jewel, adorned with precious Iznik tiles. The mosque had been built on top of a block of businesses. I had been inside it a half dozen times and just the week before, had ascended to its courtyard on the way to a nearly-hidden spice vendor with Greg.

“Take off your shoes and go in,” I urged him impulsively, and he did so without protest, emerging some minutes later to remark, “It felt really good in there.”

The Spice Bazaar itself, Byzantine-striped and surprisingly diminutive given all that it contained, stood in the front row. To its left, the multi-domed 17^th century New Mosque, my absolute favorite; I always felt like I was inside a cloud when I stood in its sanctuary. The plaza between the two, usually bustling with visitors and pigeons, was dark and quiet. Behind them receded a tangle of little streets winding up to the Büyük Valide Han, where we loved climbing to the roof and hearing surround sound prayer call.

And finally, in front like a featured soloist, the magnificent Hamdi Restaurant, overlooking the Golden Horn, where we always took guests for their first lunch. They never failed to marvel at the view of water, medieval towers, and minarets that seemed only to lack a flying carpet or two.

How often had I walked in and out of Eminönü’s shops, buying boxes, cooking chocolate, coffee cups, Turkish Delight? Enjoying smoky whiffs of grilled beef, lamb, and chicken. Stopping for a morning su boreği, or an afternoon kunefe at the outdoor lokanta where a hatchet-faced man stood day after day grilling the melted cheese and syrup dessert. How many tiny tulip cups of tea did I sip in shops throughout Eminönü? How many times did I climb up through the maze to the Grand Bazaar or walk down from the Bazaar in the late afternoon when bescarfed Turkish shoppers were out in force?

We expatriates joked that everything in the world could be found behind the Spice Bazaar, and it was true. Buttons, fabric for a Christmas tree skirt, Turkish coffee, barbecue grills, outlet strips, Jordan almonds, the idiosyncratic red and white tea sets everyone used, googly eyes for a children’s craft project, umbrellas of every design. . . there was even an entire store dedicated to baby showers.

I wanted one more moment with the Eminönü choir, but we were already across the bridge. As Taner turned left, I gulped and blinked away tears. Sankar was intent on a text message to China, working as usual, which somehow seemed appropriate. He had worked much of the experience away, and that had given him other insights.

A moment later the fanciful pink Sirkeci train station, the last stop on the Orient Express, came into view. How I had enjoyed pointing out this belle époque edifice to visitors on our way to Sultanahmet. Now we were heading west on John F. Kennedy Caddesi, an eight-mile stretch that hugged the Sea of Marmara. The ruins of Emperor Theodosius’ double-thick sea walls lined both sides of the road. Built of stone and double-baked brick in the 400s and never breached, they were worn to an oatmeal-like texture, crumbling to nothing in some places and rising impressively in others. Several bus stops and two lighted billboards—one for KFC and one for something called Kofte-mania—stood in front of them, a metaphor for the mix of profound history and bright novelty that is Istanbul.

On we went, one mile, two, and then finally a big corner chunk of wall arose on our left, the Marmara Sea glistening behind it. This is where the sea walls turn at a right angle away to march across land, becoming the land walls. I looked to my right for a last glimpse of Constantinople’s land walls, climbing north with the slope of the land and then finally curving east to meet the water at the Golden Horn. They were considered state-of-the-art for a thousand years but, thanks in part to the invention of cannons, a section was finally breached in 1453, allowing the Turks their turn in this marvelous city.

The corner chunk was a farewell sentry. Now we were outside the walls, the Old City behind us, passing handsome modern apartment complexes, hotels, and a convention center. We turned and drove under the grand, Soviet-like arch that announced Atatürk Havalımanı, parked, and got out of the car, pulling suitcases loaded with Turkish clothing, jewelry and gifts. Taner could have simply dropped us off, but he came in and waited until all our ticketing and baggage was taken care of. Even at the very end, unexpected generosity. “We can never out-nice these people,” I thought for the umpteenth time.

We had come down from our magic carpet ride. Back in America I would feel an odd exhilaration: I had seen so much beauty, majesty, and wonder; I had challenged myself and grown more than I thought possible; surely I had something to new to offer to my country. But I also felt, with great conviction, that nothing else I experienced would ever be as profound.

Turkey. Asia Minor. Quite simply: where we come from.

Inside the airport, checked in and through passport control, I glanced at Sankar. He would never think of weeping in public, but as we headed to our gate, he stopped and looked back toward where we’d just bid Taner goodbye. He paused for a moment and then he looked at me beside him, and nodded. Together, we walked toward the waiting airplane with the same thought in mind. We had been happy here.

The post Leaving Istanbul appeared first on Sue's Turkish Adventures.

Traffic wasn’t usually a problem until we were on the bridge, but one December morning, we came to a complete stop just a few blocks from our apartment.

“What’s going on?” Sankar asked, looking up from his text messages.

Up ahead, we could see a cherry picker truck. It seemed to be blocking a roundabout.. As we inched closer we could see a dense-looking artificial Christmas tree standing sentinel in the middle of the grassy circle. Perhaps fifteen feet in height, it was made of some kind of tufted green substance and blanketed with tiny white twinkling lights. A bright red, eight-pointed star already sat on top.

The tree had only about a third of its ornaments; this project could take awhile. What to do? Noticing a break in the oncoming lane, Ümit backed up a quarter car length. Then, with a snort of exasperation, he swiveled the steering wheel, turned sharply, and headed toward a different O-1 entrance ramp.

As we got into a long line of cars on the First Bridge, I pondered a Christian holiday causing Muslim commuters to be late to work.  I also thought about my job. My one-year contract would end in late January. I was a better teacher now, at least according to survey results I had just received. My students had given me above average ratings, and several had even commented, “She is a good teacher.” I was enjoying my coworkers. Six of us teachers who shared an office had become friends, telling jokes, passing snacks, and occasionally going out for coffee after classes. I was pleased to be included in this group. Everyone else was under thirty-five.

When ÖzU first offered me a teaching contract, I was so grateful that I thought, even if Sankar was transferred in the middle of a school year, I would stay and soldier on, finishing out the year, perhaps living alone in a small apartment on the Asian side. I thought the job would be just the thing for me: absorbing and fulfilling. And it often was. But it was also becoming too much. I was starting to dislike standing in the classroom for four hours each day and spending another three or four hours every day preparing. I was on a treadmill and I wanted off.

But the idea of not re-upping when my contract ended put me in a quandary. First, I had made a major fuss about getting work here in Turkey, and I had received considerable help getting a job. Second, work had carried me away from the boredom and frustration so corrosive to expatriate marriages. I actually believed it had rescued my entire Turkey experience. It had changed my focus from myself to my students. I had allowed me to have a professional experience just like Sankar. It had even boosted my self-worth, fragile after years at home raising kids.

Teaching here had also led to a significant personal discovery. Despite my struggles with unruly students, I loved the interplay of culture and language that teaching English as a Second Language involved. I wanted to pursue ESL teaching back in the States, and I planned take a certificate course when I returned, although I had no idea what my marketability would be at age 57. Now, with a year of experience under my belt, I asked myself: If I taught at ÖzU for another six months or even a year, would that increase my chances of getting a teaching job in Minnesota? I wasn’t sure it would.

I did realize that, if I wasn’t employed here in Turkey, I would certainly experience some unproductive days. But I didn’t think resentment would make a comeback. The decision not to work would be mine; there would be nobody else to blame for it. Still, it was an open question, sort of like, “If I stop taking the medication, will my headaches return?”

My teaching colleagues worked because they needed income. I was different. I didn’t need the money. My $28,000 annual salary wasn’t necessary to keep Sankar and me afloat. So increasingly, a Grinch-like voice in my head whispered: “Why are you giving up five full days each week? Why are you giving up eleven months each year?”

I had thought that, by moving to Turkey, I’d be saying goodbye to Christmas. There hadn’t been any signs of the Nativity in Yemen back in 1979 and ’80, and I didn’t expect any in Istanbul, either. While packing to move, I had, however, tucked a few Christmas ornaments into my suitcase. I thought maybe I’d be able to find the top of an evergreen tree or some potted plant to decorate when the time came. Last year, I had taken off for the States in mid-December to celebrate the holiday back home. This year, Sankar and I would be staying in Turkey. Angela and Greg would join us.

At Istinye Park mall, located in an upscale neighborhood  north of us, a huge cone-shaped Christmas “tree,” laden with gold stars and red garlands, now stood on the main floor. Hundreds upon hundreds of artificial red poinsettia blooms decorated the edges of the mall’s many balconies and arches, with strands of white lights hanging from them. Thousands of Westerners lived in Istanbul and I knew this was a commercial effort, but I felt sentimental during the Christmas season, and a dose of familiarity helped prevent homesickness.

Rows of blue and white lights now twinkled high above historic Istiklal Avenue. When I entered a men’s shop to look for a gift for Sankar, the middle-aged woman waiting on me confided, “Ever since I was a child, I loved Christmas!” At grocery stores in Kuruçesme and Levent, I stared in amazement at entire aisles devoted entirely to Santa hats, wrapping paper and ornaments.

It was a delight to observe creative and sometimes quirky Turkish efforts to commemorate the holiday. One shop window displayed a Christmas tree made of pale wooden dowels, with red and white wooden balls on their ends. A shoe store had a tree made entirely of overlapping red leather slippers. Santa Clauses of all sizes, made of ceramic, wood and felt, were everywhere. Several malls even had life-size mechanical versions that moved their lips and tilted their shoulders. Beside them, shoppers—mostly adults and mostly Turks—posed for pictures.

Perhaps all of this shouldn’t have surprised me. Turkey had been Christian for a millennium and the original St. Nicholas was the fourth-century bishop of Myra, a town in southern Turkey. And Turkey was secure in its identity, unlike neighboring countries bitter about Western colonization.

Christmas tunes burst forth in shopping centers and at Atatürk International Airport. Most were secular, but some lyrics were apparently not well understood. Over and over, we heard Loreena McKennitt’s devout “The Seven Rejoices of Mary,” with its verse about “the Holy Baby.”

We needed to find a Christmas tree. From what I understood, the city of Istanbul prohibited the cutting down of any kind of tree. And, although artificial trees were available, I wanted something real. So Sankar and Ümit, two good sports, neither of whom grew up observing Christmas, went to a nearby nursery and bought a four-foot-tall potted pine. It took some effort for them to lug it up to our apartment. When it reached there, I decided it needed as much light as possible, so I placed it out on our balcony. After Christmas, we would give it to Ümit’s mother to plant in her garden.

Earnest about helping me observe a major religious holiday, Ümit accompanied me to the mall to buy decorations. He quickly found a string of hot pink lights and held them up, declaring, “These are the best ones.”  I ended up buying them along with a matching set of ornaments.

The drive to the mall took Ümit and me through a tunnel. Now, the inside of that tunnel glowed with tiny white lights. “What are these for?” I asked Ümit.

“New Year’s,” he replied.

The New Year was already looking busy. It was possible we’d be transferred home in June. And in the early months, we had three groups of visitors arriving. Each would stay for over a week, a nice diversion from work. I was already feeling distracted, however, by something I wasn’t able to participate in. Waverley had gathered a group of expatriates—mothers from the international school—who went out each week to explore Old Istanbul. They called themselves The Monday Ladies.

A year before I would probably have dismissed a group like this as a bunch of bored wives trying to kill time. But I now wished I could go with them. I longed to wander the narrow passages of the Bazaar Quarter, poking into obscure mosques and defunct Byzantine churches. I longed to have the time to soak up the atmosphere of Constantinople.

With this allure and a feeling that my time in Turkey was growing short, I broached the topic of leaving my job with Sankar. He was surprised. The job meant a lot to me. He understood my desire to delve into Istanbul, but was wary of old patterns reemerging. “Don’t assume we’re leaving here in June,” he warned. “You might be sitting around here all year.”

He was right. But now that I’d opened the door to leaving, little things at work began to annoy me. Management tended toward severity. After I received eighteen positive and two negative ratings from my students, my boss said she wanted my reaction in writing. I  pretended I didn’t understand, murmuring that I was flattered my students thought so highly of me, but I knew which ratings I was being asked to address.

And then my Turkish colleagues. They sometimes acted as if we foreigners were just a necessary evil. Although formal meetings were conducted in English, occasional department discussions in Turkish excluded us. And how was it that they almost never asked us native speakers for English help? (A rare and admirable exception was the deputy director, who stopped me in the corridor one day with, “Sue, is it better to say ‘I am in the Internet’ or ‘I am on the Internet?’”)

There was an administrative assistant to whom we teachers had to go for office supplies, copier assistance, and other support. Friendly to the Turkish teachers, this person managed to “help” us foreigners as little and as grudgingly as possible.

“It’s because we’re needy,” Caitlin explained. Yes, we foreigners did have extra needs. We were clueless about department minutiae and we periodically needed help with paperwork for our work permits. It was very rare to meet unfriendly Turks, and now came the enticement: if I quit, I won’t have to deal with this anymore.

And finally, there was the upcoming Christmas season during which, regardless of whether or not I signed a contract for 2012, I’d have to work straight through. While Angela and Greg were here, I wouldn’t have much time to spend with them, nor would I have much time to shop, bake or decorate. I did understand that Big Nergis couldn’t give us five or six Christian teachers days off without looking unfair. We had taken advantage of all of Turkey’s Muslim and secular holidays. But still, I found the situation irritating.

Caitlin also felt squeezed by the holidays, and she and I discussed this dilemma. Finally, we decided to ask Big Nergis if we could work on Friday morning before the Sunday holiday (thank goodness we didn’t have to work on Christmas Day itself) instead of our usual Friday afternoon. That would extend our holiday weekend a half day. We’d have to make special arrangement, however, as classrooms would be full of regularly-scheduled students. After Big Nergis agreed, we decided to combine our two classes and meet in the auditorium.

“I know—we’ll show a movie! The Grinch who Stole Christmas,” Caitlin suggested.

“Huh? A Christmas movie?”

“We did it at Bilkent and it went over just fine.”

She was right.

As the holiday approached, Neslihan, a colleague who occasionally asked me for help with her American Studies doctorate papers, presented me with a pretty music box that played “Deck the Halls.” The elegant Çirağan hotel, formerly an Ottoman palace, hosted Christmas carolers from the British School, including one of Waverley’s daughters. Turks sitting in the lobby applauded. Adjacent to the carolers stood a gingerbread house of such dimensions that it looked like the Houses of Parliament. Next to it, customers could buy little Christmas trees made of white chocolate and adorned with the words, “Mary Christmas.”

Angela and Greg arrived the week before Christmas, and our gifts for each other began forming a line on the living room ledge overlooking the Bosphorus. They admired Istanbul’s decorations and enjoyed the balmy weather that allowed us to stroll comfortably outside.

We ate a huge Turkish meal that week at Gokhan and Burcu’s apartment alongside their small artificial Christmas tree. On Christmas Eve we went to St. Anthony of Padua Catholic Church on Istiklal for late afternoon meditation. Christmas Day dawned sunny and 55 degrees and, after gift-giving, Angela and I walked with some sense of irony to the seaside Rumeli Hisar fortress that Mehmet the Conqueror had put up in four months in 1453 prior to conquering Constantinople. We climbed its ramparts and composed photos that included the European fort’s stone crenelations, ships gliding back and forth on the Bosphorus, and the distant hills of Asia. Two continents in a single frame. I would never forget this unusual family Christmas.

Back at work on the 26^th, I was still hearing “Merry Christmas” from my Turkish colleagues.

“It’s over,” I told them, “but thank you.” The wishes, oddly, kept coming. Was it because Turkey’s religious holidays generally involved multiple days? On December 29, several large boxes appeared near the office photocopier. The next day, an artificial tree had been assembled next to it, and the doorways in our suite of offices were adorned with shiny red garlands. Two cute little Santa dolls were rappeling up a ladder made of string on one doorframe. They had almost made it to the top.

I stood and stared. How had my colleagues gotten the date of our holiday so wrong? How had they not known?

But it turned out I was wrong. On New Year’s Eve, Noel Baba (Father Noel), a secular character long promoted to commemorate St. Nicholas, makes his rounds (I am not sure if chimneys or sleighs are involved), leaving gifts for Turkish adults and children. Preparations were right on time.

I would miss my friendly colleagues and our camaraderie, borne out of a kind of shared suffering. I knew that once I left ÖzU, I wouldn’t see them much again, and that pained me. And I felt guilty choosing leisure when they had to work. My array of economic choices was surely undeserved. But then I reminded myself that I hadn’t missed one day of work, not even one hour of teaching during the entire year. I had tried my hardest every class period, and although I hadn’t been a very effective teacher at first, I had listened to advice and I had improved.

I had earned my $28,000.

Finally, one morning as I struggled with an inattentive class, my decision crystallized. Teaching is above all a dance between teacher and students, and students can make or break the experience. Unfortunately mine were disrespectful, inconsiderate, and even disruptive. I would never quite understand why this was the case in such an otherwise courteous country, but I guessed their family wealth made them feel entitled.  I no longer wanted to teach spoiled kids.

Of course some of my students came from humble families and some of them were appreciative. But the image of Deniz strutting across the classroom in thigh-high suede boots trumped that of shy, simply dressed Yildiz. And the sight of Nilgun and Hamza roaring down Kuşbakışı Caddesi in a late-model SUV overpowered that of Recep trudging out of class with a worn backpack slung over his shoulders. I was painting in broad strokes, kind of like the hot pink holiday decorations around me. Kind of like a Grinch.

“And then! Oh, the noise! Oh, the Noise! Noise! Noise! Noise!

That’s one thing SHE hated! The NOISE! NOISE! NOISE! NOISE!”

Yes! That was the truest true of all. Above all, it was the noise that was driving me away from Ozyegin. The noise from my students, who talked while I talked, and whom I had never been able to quiet nor tame.

And so, feeling as sour as the infamous Seuss villain—and just as eager to force a change—I pressed the GONDER button on a email to big Nergis late one December evening, informing her I wouldn’t be returning for a second year. But first, I called Sankar’s secretary, Didem, who had been of such great help ferreting out job contacts, writing letters, and setting up interviews for me. I wasn’t very eloquent in giving her my reasons, but I did thank her sincerely for her help. And I told her how deeply I had appreciated having the job. I meant it.

As I packed ornaments and bows away, I felt lighthearted. In less than a month I’d be out of the classroom, the Work Caravan to Asia disbanded. Then I could begin the rest of my life in Istanbul.

The post A Grinch-y Christmas appeared first on Sue's Turkish Adventures.

Turks equated school size with importance. I wasn’t sure why, but exponential scholastic growth was considered a very good thing.

I was often reminded of the old riddle: is it better to receive $5 a day for a month, or to receive a penny the first day, two cents the next day, and so on, the amount doubling for thirty days? I’d figured out as a child that one cent quickly became enormous. Now I imagined the student population at ÖzU doubling over and over, eventually taking over the world. How big—and how prestigious—was our university going to get?

In the fall of 2011, most ÖzU departments decamped to a newly built, vastly larger campus in Çekmeköy, a largely undeveloped part of Asian Istanbul. The School of English Language Instruction (SELI) was, for now, staying put. Thank goodness. Getting to and from Çekmeköy would have added at least an hour to my intercontinental commute.

SELI classes quickly filled the space left by other departments. Every classroom on two floors was jammed with students both morning and afternoon, and the teaching staff ballooned to over fifty. I liked to get to work early simply to think, because otherwise I didn’t have this chance. I would buy a poğaca (a savory pastry) and a cup of strong tea at the canteen and walk both floors, my heels echoing in the empty hallways.

One way to cope with rapid growth was to exert control. In the fall of 2011, I prepared to teach Level Four, Advanced English, under a new supervisor, Ceren, who was known as highly organized. Each Monday morning we eight Level Four teachers met with Ceren to discuss the upcoming week. Afterwards, we emerged with lengthy to-do lists, from evaluating extra teaching materials to downloading Turnitin, plagiarism-detecting software, to arranging library visits for our classes.

“Make sure to get your students’ topics this week,” Ceren told us as the module began. She wanted our students, during the initial week of class, to choose topics for required presentations they would give at the end of the eight-week module. We had already agreed on a list of acceptable meta-topics (psychology, transportation, etc.) based on chapters in our textbook. Ceren now asked us to give this list to our students, allow them five or ten minutes to think, and then have each select a specific topic.

I wasn’t sure why we needed to accomplish this task during the first week, but I was eager to comply with my new boss. As I went around my new classroom, however, stopping in front of each student and waiting to write down his or her topic, the exercise felt forced. Many students were finding it difficult to think all the way to the end of the module. Some couldn’t come up with any ideas at all, but instead wanted me to tell them what to choose. It would have been more useful to spend this early time building rapport rather than exerting my authority.

Level Four students were a few months more mature, and significantly more advanced in English, as there was quite a jump from Level Three to Four. Because we were better able to communicate with each other, it looked like we would get along better.

I needed to establish class rules on the use of electronic devices. On the first day I asked students not to use their ÖzU -provided Netbooks unless a classroom activity required it, and not to take phone calls in class—even from their helicopter-ish parents, whom they found difficult to refuse. That request seemed acceptable, but after class, one girl approached me and, near tears, explained that her aunt was dying and that a call could come at any time. Taken aback, I gave her an exemption.

ÖzU students received a ten-minute break each hour. At that time, I generally headed back to my office to relax and perhaps drink a cup of tea. But I quickly learned not to dismiss my students early. On the few occasions I’d done so, other teachers had heard their voices in the hallway and complained, asking me to please wait until the exact break time to avoid disrupting their students. Thereafter, if our lesson finished early, we all remained in the classroom, our eyes fixed on the clock.

When I left the class for breaks, students often commandeered the room’s sound system, connecting one of their Netbooks to it and broadcasting their favorite songs. When I returned, the room would be full of Western pop music or perhaps a mournful arabesque ballad. This was probably a no-no, but it didn’t seem important enough to forbid. Was I being hip and friendly—or simply a weary pushover?

One day I walked in to the song, Airplanes, by B.O.B., with its catchy refrain, “I could really use a wish right now . . . wish right now.” Airplanes happened to have been written by two of Greg’s college friends and I quickly pulled up Facebook pages of the two songwriters. The students were duly impressed. Another day it was simply a generic Western pop song, but as it ended, handsome, diminutive Sercan walked up to me at the board and confided, “Teacher, that song was supposed to be for my girlfriend and me at our wedding. But I wasn’t nice to her and she broke up with me.” I was touched that he felt comfortable enough with me to share this personal anecdote.

I had criticized Gülcan, my early Turkish teacher, for not understanding my Turkish. Now I often had difficulty understanding my students’ English. And it was awkward to say, “Can you repeat that?” over and over, even though (unlike Gülcan) I wore a pleasant expression.

I decided that, after a student had repeated a word a couple of times with no success, I’d ask him or her to write it down. Or I’d write it on the board and check to see if I had it right.

During the second week of the term, we started a unit on Architecture. I began by showing students slides of a number of diverse buildings, the concept being that architecture can create emotions in the observer.

“How do you feel when you look at this building?” I asked, displaying a photo of a concrete skyscraper.

“Rainforest,” answered a girl who didn’t usually speak up.

“Rainforest?” I asked, not sure I’d understood her. “You think of a rainforest when you look at this building?”

“Yes.”

Surprised, I nevertheless wrote the word on the board along with others students were giving me. A few minutes later the girl raised her hand again.

“No, teacher, I didn’t mean ‘rainforest.’ I meant rainforct.”

“Hmmm?” I replied.

“Rayinforced,” she repeated. And again, slower, “re-in-forced.”

On another occasion, the large number of expatriates in Istanbul came up, and several students suddenly wanted hear my answer to their question, “Is your husband show?”

“What?”

“Is your husband show?”

“Huh?”

Impatient, one of them went up and wrote it down on the board: “CEO.” Ah, they were trying to gauge how important Sankar—and I—were. “No,” I replied, “he is not a See Eee Ohh.”

“I’ve just finished writing the midterm exam, and I want you to give me your comments,” Ceren announced at our weekly meeting. She proceeded to hand out copies of the twelve-page Level Four exam we would give our students. Ceren’s English was excellent, and her draft looked good. Nevertheless several questions needed work. One simply needed a grammar fix, but two others were not written clearly. When everyone was finished reading, I brought these issues up, careful to first compliment Ceren.

It was only after the words were out of my mouth that I realized none of the other teachers, Turks all, were offering any suggestions. They were sitting silently, their faces impassive. And although Ceren was nodding at me, her face was stony. Well, there was nothing to do; I could hardly withdraw what I’d just said. We discussed the questions as a group, resolved them, and the meeting ended.

As I walked away, I chided myself for having irritated my boss. Why had I taken her request literally? Why hadn’t I waited to see what others did before I jumped in? It seemed I had failed to properly respect authority, and that superseded the accuracy of the exam itself. Well, one way to learn unspoken rules is to break them.

I wondered how we expatriate teachers, hired for our pronunciation and comprehensive English, were viewed by our supervisors. Most of us were only temporarily in Turkey, so we posed little threat to the hierarchy. But our tendency to think independently made us unpredictable. It was a case of Turkish control versus American independence, and I now began to notice that Big Nergis and her supervisors often ended directives with pointed looks in the direction of our foreign faces.

Due to the sheer volume of work, however, none of my supervisors ever had the time to come into my classroom to observe. And occasionally, Turks themselves broke rules. SELI was on a different schedule than the rest of the university, which didn’t allow for the short breaks between modules we teachers needed. So, every time a module ended, Big Nergis would, without permission from her higher-ups, grant us days off. I was delighted with this glimpse of Turkish disobedience; the hierarchy wasn’t seamless after all. But Nergis had to be careful, and the upshot for us teachers was that she granted these vacation days at the last minute, making planning nearly impossible.

During the third week of classes, we teachers put together the listening section of the midterm exam. This involved recording passages taken from written material—interviews or lectures. Native speakers were usually asked to make the recordings, and prior to one exam, I recorded a ten-minute “Interview with a Tennis Champion” in which I played the interviewer and Jane, a British colleague, played the tennis star. The students would listen to these recordings on exam day and answer questions about them.

“How did you progress to the top of your field?”

“Well, I showed lots of effort and perseverance. I was diligent in my practice habits. . .”

“Do you have any advice for others who want to succeed?”

In an incident that became notorious among us expatriate teachers, Charlotte, a newly hired teacher close to my age, was recording a lecture on architecture with her young Turkish supervisor, Tulin. As Charlotte read the script, she came upon a word that didn’t make sense. The passage was about how architects use lighting as a design element, but the word “lightning” was written on the page instead of “lighting.”

Charlotte corrected the error as she read, but Tulin stopped her. “Why did you say that? Why didn’t you say ‘lightning?’”

“Because it’s wrong,” Charlotte explained. “They mean ‘lighting.’”

Tulin spoke good English, so it puzzled me to hear that she hadn’t also caught the mistake. Perhaps her slip-up embarrassed her. “I want you to read the passage just as it is written,” Tulin directed.

I would have fought back instinctively and with little thought of consequences. If Tulin had continued to disagree, I would have insisted we march straight into Big Nergis’ office with the issue. Only later might I have regretted damaging my relationship with my supervisor.

But Charlotte didn’t do this. She simply reread the passage as Tulin wished.

With student issues taking up the majority of my time, these administrative conflicts were actually few and far between, Most days, I had nothing but admiration for the department’s precise organization, finding SELI a comforting, predictable place to work. But I sometimes wondered if it wasn’t just a little too sure of itself, too blind to other ways and possibilities. Might our students respond better if they saw their teachers as authentic thinking, searching human beings, rather than all-knowing enforcers?

In late fall, 2011, ÖzU admitted five Somalis, part of a larger group of international refugees the country had recently accepted. I had one of them, Abdi, a serious, attentive young man of about 23, in my class. On the first day of the module, Abdi asked me if he could come five minutes late to class on Fridays, the Islamic day of prayer. He and several other Somalis wanted to catch a bus to a nearby mosque.

I had never been asked that question by a Turkish student, not even the few covered female students I’d had who were presumably religiously conservative.

“Of course,” I replied. I wouldn’t think of getting in the way of his—or anyone’s—religious observance.

SELI was strict about attendance, however: we teachers took it at the beginning of every class hour. Allowing a student to regularly arrive late seemed like something I should mention to Ceren. When I did, she rolled her eyes, “It will be more than five minutes.”

“Don’t let him take advantage of this,” another Turkish colleague warned. “He’ll probably come later and later to class, and then other students will start showing up late, too.” How strange: here I was, a Christian in the middle of a Muslim dispute about mosque attendance.

I didn’t go back on my word to Abdi, but his compatriots in other classrooms, with whom he would have attended prayers, failed to get permission. And perhaps Abdi learned something about the Turkish culture: he ended up dropping the idea.

These situations provided rich dinnertime conversation material for Sankar and me, and it was gratifying that, both expatriates working in Asia Minor, we could now compare notes as equals.

Sankar had told me early on that Turks respected bosses with an authoritarian style, and strived to project an image of strength.

“They certainly seem to have trouble admitting mistakes,” I commented.

“Yes. I find them less humble than people I work with in India or China,” he mused. “They think they know stuff beyond what they really know.”

I thought of all of Turkey’s misspelled and mis-worded tourist signs.

“Part of it is that they’re afraid of harsh consequences from their bosses,” he added.

Hmm. Last summer, another supervisor had chewed me out in front of my office mates for not videotaping my students’ presentations, something I was supposed to do. I had noticed that nobody ever watched those tapes, and I didn’t want my students to see me fumbling with the equipment. And I recalled Umit proclaiming early on, “No more Turkish bosses.”

“They have a need to project pride and confidence. So they’re not self-critical,” Sankar continued. “And they really dislike being challenged in public.”

Ah yes. Ceren’s exam and my well-meaning comments.

“I’ve found that in private, Turks are much more flexible about taking criticism,” he went on.

“So I should have kept quiet at the meeting, but then maybe given Ceren a few suggestions when I had her alone?”

“Exactly.”

“Aren’t we kind of stereotyping Turks? They can’t all be alike.”

“Well, yes, but remember they’ve been brought up in a very standardized system here, whereas we foreigners come from all over the place.”

ÖzU was a business- and engineering-focused university, and in every hallway closed-circuit televisions hung, playing a continuous loop of science and business news. On October 5, 2011, those televisions informed us that Steve Jobs had died of cancer.

Although I’d known the Apple leader was ill, the news was unexpected. I felt sad—and also a little homesick. Whenever a major national event happened—I had been overseas during the Iran hostage crisis, the OJ Simpson trial, and the Oklahoma City bombings—I missed home. I longed for the NBC Night News, my local newspaper, and the chance to sit down with American friends for consolation.

But I had underestimated Jobs’ worldwide impact. Turkey is a highly connected country with a large percentage of computer-savvy young people. And even though Turks have a cultural reverence for control, Jobs’ unconventional creativity had captured their youthful imaginations. For over a week, business television ran retrospectives of his life. In class, my students asked me over and over again what I knew about Steve Jobs, and on Facebook they shared and re-shared photos, including the Apple logo brilliantly altered into Jobs’ bespectacled profile. Their grief was so heartfelt it seemed to speak to a deep yearning.

Within two weeks, the shiny white biography, Jobs by Walter Isaacson, appeared on tables in Istanbul bookstores. I peeked inside one copy, expecting it to be in English, but it had already been translated into Turkish.

My students had chosen topics for their oral presentations weeks before, and Ceren had the master list. Now several students approached me and asked if they could change their topics. Why? They wanted to talk about Steve Jobs.

I considered their requests. It really didn’t make any difference to me what they talked about. The important thing was that they developed an English PowerPoint and spoke in English for five minutes. I loved that they felt comfortable enough with me to ask for a change. So I told them it was fine. I simply asked them to confer with each other to make sure they weren’t all covering exactly the same aspect of the man’s life.

This breach in rules quickly produced another request. Suleyman, dreamy, fair-haired, and artistic, approached me and asked if he could also change his topic. He wanted to talk about Stan Lee, the nonagenarian American comic book writer and publisher. I hadn’t heard the name Stan Lee since my brothers collected Superman and Spiderman comics as young boys, and was amazed the man was still alive. I agreed, pleased my students would be working on topics they enjoyed. I hoped Ceren wouldn’t find out.

Students asking to change the rules. Teacher modeling American flexibility and independence. I was rocking to the Apple vibe: think different.

The post Think Different appeared first on Sue's Turkish Adventures.

“There are two kinds of relative clauses,” I began. “One is important for understanding the meaning of the sentence and the other is just extra information.”

I stood in front of my students explaining English sentences introduced by which, who, or that. As I wrote an example on the white board, three young men sitting beside the window began talking among themselves. Perhaps they didn’t understand what I was saying, and needed to discuss it.

I turned from the board and waited for them to stop, but they kept on. It now appeared that some kind of unrelated, amusing anecdote was being told. I moved a few paces toward the offenders, catching the eye of one of them. The rest of the class fell quiet. A truck rumbled by outside and the radiator hissed a blast of heat.

I remembered being caught talking in class in my student days. I would halt in mid-sentence, if not mid-word, my face scarlet. And I’d take care to be quiet during the rest of the period. But not these young men.

After a few more moments, all three looked up at me and finally fell silent. Great: I had made my point. I turned and walked back to the board. As I did, a conversation broke out in another part of the room.

What a difference a month had made! I was now so busy that I didn’t have time to question what I was doing here in Turkey or, most of the time, how I was doing it. On the home front, Sankar and I were enjoying a good stretch; most evenings we formed a companionable tableau: husband and wife sharing their workdays over dinner. Sankar was good at listening to my concerns and added office anecdotes to the mix as we tossed around our latest impressions of the Turkish culture. Our lackluster social life was no longer a problem; neither of us had the energy to care.

To my surprise, learning my students’ names had only taken a few days. I’d started with the easiest one on my list, Melike. The word means queen in Arabic, and I had guessed my student would be a young woman. Yes, and Melike was lovely, with wavy hair and big brown eyes. Another student on the list was named Onur, which sounded like Honor. It turned out I was right: onur is actually the Turkish word for honor. A rare cognate. The name seemed to fit this alert, blue-eyed young man.

As my students introduced themselves to me that first day, I scribbled hurried clues on my class list. “Curly hair.” “Tall and thin.” “Pudgy.” For one girl, “Looks like Kristen Wiig.” The first thoughts that popped into my mind, many were politically incorrect. One thin, goateed young man seemed furtive, unable to meet my eyes. “Al Q sleeper cell,” I jotted. But Orhan soon emerged as a class clown, and I found out he was the son of a NATO engineer. One day after class he confided, “We have mountains in Turkey that are hollow and full of NATO weapons.” Good to know.

The young women, fully half the students at this business- and engineering-focused university, were feminine and attractive, with long hair and the latest clothing styles. Particularly eye-catching were their boots, made of soft leather or fine suede in shiny browns and pale tans, and sometimes extending to mid-thigh. The young men looked older and more formidable than the men in the freshman English class I had taught in Minnesota. It was their coloring. Blond peach fuzz on the chin of a 19-year-old is barely visible, but a 5 o’clock shadow on a Turkish youth could turn him into a 30-year-old.

They hailed from cities and towns all over Turkey. Mardin, in the southeast, close to Syria, which in less than a month would erupt in civil war. Bursa, home to Ottoman sultans. Trabzon on the Black Sea, home of the mythical Amazons.

The School of English Language Instruction (SELI) was designed so that students could complete all five eight-week modules in one year. This seemed optimistic, and Sankar and I discussed it. Could either of us, motivated and undistracted by hormones, progress from zero to college level in a foreign language in just one year? We didn’t think so—even if we were totally immersed, which our students were not. There would simply be too much vocabulary to learn. The vast majority of OzU students couldn’t do this either: even the best ones failed a level once or twice, often taking two years to complete SELI. My level, Intermediate was considered the most difficult.

To reinforce grammar concepts, students completed a myriad of worksheets. These were designed by previous teachers and stored deep within the staff’s shared online “Z-drive.” It was great to have this resource, but the materials were often rife with mistakes. A typical example: “The teacher was busy taking the attendances.”

I loved my new colleagues — and have put pictures of some of them in this post, just so you can see how wonderful they are. I admired their near-mastery of English, in many cases accomplished with little or no time spent in English-speaking countries. And I knew it was hard to be corrected. But why weren’t we, the five or six native English speakers, tasked with vetting materials before they were put online?

I felt uneasy each time I got on the Z-drive to pull up materials. I could correct a worksheet and then save it to my own file; nobody would care. But what if I did a Save All—and I sometimes did, when I was feeling puckish—preserving my edits for everyone to access? My intuition warned that I might be overstepping a boundary. Would someone discover I had changed their work, and then reprimand me?

During the first few days, my students had been quiet and respectful, content to watch my PowerPoints and sit through diagnostic tests. On day two I got the chance to directly help a student when Talat, originally from a Kurdish town in the southeast, approached me during a break. How hard it must have been for him to form the words in English: “My family. . . is have . . . trouble. I don’t can buy the books,” came out in a whisper. I later learned that his mother had died when he was small, and that his father was only seasonally employed. I thanked Talat for telling me and went straight to Big Nergis.

“Tell him to come see me,” she suggested, and when he did, she loaned him a copy of the Intermediate textbook. The next day I purchased the supplementary book for 35 lira, about $20, and gave it to him.

By the end of the first week, my students’ behavior had begun to deteriorate. I started to notice murmuring that soon became a buzz of outright talking and occurred throughout the four hours I taught them. Most were attentive when I presented a new grammar concept, but whenever I told an anecdote, for example, about how a particular phrase was used in the U.S., or about my own strategies in learning a new language, they turned their faces from me, clearly uninterested. In a language class in which listening was key, the increasing noise was disruptive and worrisome.

Big Nergis believed in team teaching and so each of us had a teaching partner with whom, a couple of days each week, we switched classes. Although this added complexity to our jobs, it gave the students variety in accents and teaching styles.

During my first module, I teamed with Halime, a bright young woman who, like many of the SELI teachers, had graduated from large, prestigious Bilkent University in Ankara. As part of her training, she and several others now teaching at Ozyegin had been sent to Ames, Iowa, for several months to teach English literature to high school students. Caitlin and I laughed when we discovered that this had taken place during the winter months, and teased them that perhaps their “opportunity” had actually been a punishment. They laughed: the trip had had its challenges, most notably the freezing weather and lack of fresh produce, but they’d also spent time in both Chicago and New York.

Since I spent two days each week with Halime’s students, I had a whole new roster of names to learn—and students to shush. And the shushing was more difficult because these students treated me more like a substitute.

This rudeness, in an otherwise exquisitely polite culture, surprised me. I had been warned that 19-year-old Turks, sheltered and rarely given the chance to make their own decisions, might seem like 15-year old Americans. But I’d long had the impression that, while American students are exceedingly casual—putting their feet up, wearing pajamas to class, munching on snacks during lectures—the rest of the world’s students show their teachers great respect. Not so here.

My students’ inattentive behavior—and my uncertainty over how to manage it—made me feel less like a teacher. It reinforced my fear that I was merely an imposter. The students I was supposed to be helping were denying me the satisfaction of a job well done. I had never been treated in such an overtly dismissive way.

Observing Caitlin try to teach over student chatter just weeks before, I had vowed that I’d have a quiet class. Ah, the hubris of inexperience. I simply hadn’t imagined having this kind of discipline problem at the university level.

I tried to come up with reasons for the racket. I knew most of my students were living away from their parents’ control for the first time. They were trying to adjust to new freedoms and they wanted to make friends as quickly as possible. This led to a lot of socializing.

And the over-optimistic design of our program seemed to set students up for failure. Most were not particularly word-oriented in the first place, so they were bored by vocabulary and grammar lessons—and had little hope of success even if they did apply themselves. That made just about anything else in the room more interesting.

The physical setting was another culprit. Students sat in small chairs with desk arms that curved toward them, and their chairs were packed closely together along three sides of the room. The crowding, I felt, made everyone restless. The school had given each student a small Netbook laptop that they carried along with their textbook. That was too much for the tiny desk arms. After chatter, the most common sound in my classroom wasn’t tortured English pronunciation, but a sharp, slapping noise when a textbook or Netbook hit the floor. I couldn’t complain or ask for changes: the following year the entire university was moving to a brand new, multi-building campus some miles east.

Umit offered his take. “They study with money” he told me. ÖzU was not a public university; it was private. Here in Turkey, the general belief was that public university students, subject to more stringent entrance requirements and lower tuition, were disciplined, respectable scholars of modest means, while private university attendees were pampered, affluent brats. Upon hearing of my new teaching venue, every Turk I talked to made the same comment: “Oh, you have the spoiled kids.”

Back home, college students either went to a lecture intending to listen, or stayed away. They didn’t usually show up and disrupt the class. But here, students didn’t have the option of missing class: if they missed more than three days without excuse, they failed the entire module. To monitor this, I went down the class list making checks four times each day, at the beginning of every class period. This spawned resentment and a flurry of doctor’s excuses, causing me to joke about the “feeble health” of my students.

We were treating our students like children. “Why do we take attendance every hour?” I asked Little Nergis. She sighed, and replied that ÖzU had tried doing away with attendance, but that had resulted in students wandering in and out of classes at will.

I also wondered whether student anger might have also played a role. Anger at the lack of control they had as they were processed through the rigid Turkish educational system. After taking a grueling national exam during their senior year of high school, they were herded into universities based solely upon their scores; neither character, talent, nor other accomplishments were considered. And they were told to feel lucky if they gained a spot; a half million students were turned away each year due to lack of space. Once enrolled, students were expected to continue straight through to graduation. Semesters abroad or, heaven forbid, gap years, were viewed as frivolous, if not educationally fatal detours.

Hmm. . .  anger over loss of control. Who felt this more acutely — my students or their teacher?

What could be done? In the past, Turkish teachers had apparently used corporal punishment, and national laws had recently been passed protecting students of all ages. The upshot was that teachers were legally forbidden from asking misbehaving students to leave the room. At ÖzU, all I could do was write up an “incident report” and send the offender to talk with Big Nergis after class, guaranteeing an even poorer attitude once the student returned.

One small tool I did have was the Classroom Participation Grade (CPG), an extra half-point awarded to each student each week for good behavior. This didn’t sound like much, but could total five points at the end of the module and mean the difference between passing and failing. Students that felt they had a chance of passing tried to earn that half point every week.

An ultimate tool, albeit of little immediate help was that students failing a module three times were generally asked to leave.

I also recognized that I had contributed to the problem. During my first weeks I had been too nice, too easygoing with my students. Now, it was difficult to shift to a sterner persona. I should have brushed away my tendency to defer to the culture as the guest I was, and started off assertively.

Two students got under my skin. One was Yildiz, pretty and dripping with disdain, and the other was Can, who actually had pretty good English speaking skills because of visits to the U.K., but spent class periods goofing around.

One day, after watching Yildiz turn again and again to her neighbor with an apparent joke while I spoke, I got angry. I yelled at her—probably for close to a minute—in English. I don’t recall exactly what I said, but it was something like, “Why can’t you listen? Why are you here if you’re not listening? (I already knew the answer to that.) As I went on, Can piped up with a rebuke, “She can’t understand you.”

My words silenced Yildiz, but what does the teacher do after she stops yelling? She turns toward the materials she was attempting to cover and tries to calm down enough to teach them, aware that she is now asking her students to focus and concentrate after she has done something unusual and upsetting.

The result? The miscreants could see that my rant had accomplished nothing; they could see that I had used up my arsenal, and so they paid even less attention . The others in class—the perhaps 2/3 who were not causing trouble? Well, this was an obedient and sociable society and these were nineteen-year-olds. They kept silent.

The only exception was an unusual young woman named Gül, rose. Tiny, with pale skin and relatively short dark hair, she never wore boots or up-to-date styles, but instead dressed in white Peter Pan blouses with print skirts, geeky white anklets and dainty old-fashioned tennis shoes. Every class period, she sneezed just once, but in an idiosyncratic squeak that quickly became humorous. She paid attention and didn’t hesitate to raise her hand when she had questions, which was often. Definitely her own person, Gül was liked by all. As the final exam neared and we began to review, she finally turned to the misbehavers and addressed them in her firmest voice, “Gerçekten!” Meaning, Really? You’re going to continue this kind of behavior even now?

In my first weeks, I had mentioned my talkative students to Turkish colleagues and they had nodded wearily. Yes, even experienced teachers admitted that their students were “chatty.” But I sensed it was worse for us foreigners, who couldn’t understand what the students were saying. In fact, there seemed to be a hierarchy of respect at ÖzU. The teachers who received the most deference were, not surprisingly, older, male, and Turkish. Those receiving the least were younger, female, and foreign. Caitlin fell into this category, and when several of us discussed this problem one day, she shared some half-serious advice. “Get the class to think you’re really cool, and then drop the ‘f’ bomb on them.”

The module continued relentlessly, the busy days blurring together. I kept putting one foot in front of the other, trusting that I’d eventually adjust to my role and surroundings. As the days and weeks wore on, lesson planning and answering diverse grammar questions became easier. I also learned something about Turkish culture, noticing that students who had colds constantly asked to be excused to the tuvalet. It turned out they wanted to blow their noses, something that Turks consider impolite in public. I now recalled Big Nergis’ unusual behavior with the tissue when she interviewed me.

I also conferred with Big Nergis. She told me that Turkish students were more likely to cooperate if they felt I had a personal interest in them. To help establish this, she told me, I should hold individual conferences early in the module. This was good advice, and I followed it in the subsequent modules I taught.

But for now, the constant noisy chatter continued. And, although the problem was often on my mind, I stopped mentioning it to my Turkish colleagues. It seemed an admission of my weak classroom management skills. I feared my students didn’t respect me; how could I invite disrespect among my colleagues as well? Thus I did the same thing the Turkish teachers did with their Achilles heel, English grammar. I buried it.

I had taken the job to feel better about myself, to grab hold of something that seemed, at least in my own country, increasingly scarce. To prove that I wasn’t old and washed up. I did feel a burst of pride whenever a new acquaintance asked me what I did, or when I told people back home that I’d managed to find a job in Turkey. And I felt satisfied when a day’s lesson went particularly well. But triumph and pride were nowhere to be found when I really needed them, hour after long hour in the classroom

By week five I had recovered enough self-possession to begin casting about for activities that might distract students from their socializing. Sometimes I succeeded. I played the song, “If I Had a Hammer” to illustrate the Second Conditional, and the students loved it, begging me to play it again and again. I put a series of grammar and vocabulary questions into a PowerPoint. Then, during our last period on Fridays, I divided the students into teams, gave them scratch paper for their answers, and got ready to keep score.

My male students were particularly thrilled. One team stood up, put their arms around each other in a huddle, and issued a fierce battle cry before I displayed the first sentence:

This is the car ______________ was in the accident.

1. who
2. that
3. it
4. he

As groups puzzled over the question, the guys kept busy yelling what they thought were wrong answers to other teams. The girls were quieter, content to provide much of the brainpower. The entire class fell silent–such bliss!—as I unfolded answer slips and delivered the verdict. When the game ended, such a roar came from the winning team that I was sure everyone on the floor heard us. From then on, last periods on Fridays were always reserved for games, and we all rallied together for at least one hour each week.

At the end of each day I walked outside to meet dear, familiar Ümit. He had complained about having little to do now that both Sankar and I were working, and I didn’t know how he occupied himself during the hours we were away. But he was prompt in picking me up at 4:30 each afternoon and had made friends with the ÖzU guards as well as a fruit and vegetable vendor across the street from the school.

When I emerged from the building, Ümit sprang out of the car, rounded the front to the right passenger side, opened the door with a flourish and stood smiling, waiting for me to get in. I had put up with that ever since I arrived in Turkey, but now I cringed. Several of my colleagues were coming out of the building a few paces behind me. Thankfully, they were busy talking to each other; I didn’t want them to see me getting into such a fancy car. Surely they would wonder why such a privileged person was working at all. I felt like a middle school student who is suddenly embarrassed at the existence of his parents.

I greeted Ümit and ducked quickly into the car, head down. Being “the rich American who rides around in a late-model BMW” was not the kind of relative clause I wanted to describe me.

Months later, however, I wondered whether it might possibly have garnered me more respect from my students.

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