The End of November

Hello Everyone,

Eleanor and I have some exciting news! We just booked a flight to Amsterdam for Christmas week! It also happens to correspond with our visas expiring. So we'll spend Christmas in Amsterdam, see the Van Gogh Museum and some other Dutch art, tour the canals, etc, and then get another 3 month tourist visa for Turkey. Maybe after that we'll get residence permits.

We recently saw my parents again, along with some other family friends (you know who you are), as they stopped overnight in Istanbul after finishing up an amazing tour of Turkey, Syria, and Jordan. They had some fun stories to tell! My parents also got us a Turkish carpet for our apartment! (see pic)

Tomorrow we're going to take advantage of some (hopefully) sunny weather and go on a hike in the famous Belgrade Forest! We're both really looking forward to getting out of the big city for a bit and seeing and hearing some nature, rather than car horns and old engines. Walking down some streets you pretty much have to shout to be heard by the person walking right next to you.

We miss you all, and hopefully we'll have some fun pictures of the forest to share soon!

Love,

Mike and Eleanor

A New Job and Marathon #7

Mike:

So sorry it's been so long since we've posted! It's been very busy here. First of all, my family visited for a week and my sister visited for almost two weeks so I was entertaining them. It was great fun! We did a lot of fun stuff together and I'm sad to see them go. My sister flew back to Portland on Thursday and my parents continued their trip through Turkey and will soon head toward Syria and Jordan. Fortunately, I'll get to see my parents again when they swing back through Istanbul for 24hrs before they fly home.

I've also been busy because I got a part-time job as an English teacher at the American Cultural Association language school in Bakırköy - a section of Istanbul. I work for 12 hours on Saturdays and 11 hours on Sundays, so I'm super busy on the weekends! One of their native speakers had to leave on a family emergency, so they needed to hire someone quickly. One of the other students in my CELTA course works for the school and she recommended me and when I interviewed they hired me on the spot and said I'd start in two days!

It's been a little crazy, and it was hard at first adjusting to teaching so many classes a day and so many different levels (introductory, elementary, pre-intermediate, and intermediate), but I just finished my 3rd weekend of classes and it's getting easier and I think the students are getting a lot out of it too. The school mostly wants the native speakers to focus on improving the students' speaking and listening skills, but I teach some grammar as well.

ALSO, on Oct. 18th I ran the Istanbul Marathon! It was my 7th marathon and my slowest! I couldn't spend much time training because of the moving to Istanbul, and once I got here there weren't a lot of places to run, but I toughed it out and I'm glad I did. It took me 4hr 45min. I was so relieved to finish. The course was beautiful though, it started with a run across one of the bridges over the Bosporus Straight, so I ran from Asia to Europe! Istanbul also has absolutely horrid traffic, the worse I've ever seen in any country - but for the marathon they closed all the main roads and it was very enjoyable to enjoy seeing the city sights free from all the car noise and honking (people here love to honk!).

Anyway, congratulations if you finished reading all this and sorry I don't have any pictures. I'll try to remember to take some of the school and will post them later.

Hope everything is good back in the Northwest!! I miss nature.

Cheers,

Mike

Week one is a success!

It's so beautiful here right now! Bright, bright, warm, breezy days. We hear it might be the last hurrah of summer (the temperature is supposed to drop quite a bit next week), so we are trying to enjoy it while we can. A couple days ago, Mike and I went for a walk along the Bosphorous near the Kabataş ferry docks and milled around with the commuters and pleasure seekers there. If it's nice tomorrow, we're thinking we'll go back and hop on one of the ferries out to "the islands", where there are no cars and possibly even a little scrap of nature.

I'm feeling good this weekend, having survived my first week of CELTA. Yesterday, each of us taught a twenty minute lesson to real English learners. For mine, I worked on asking for phone numbers with a group of beginner students. There are a lot of things that I want to do differently next time, but it feels good just to have a little teaching under my belt.

I feel a lot of support and encouragement from our teachers and fellow students. And the view can't get much better from our school. Here's what I see when I lean out the window:

Not bad, right?
Love,
Eleanor

Settling In

Coming to Istanbul has been unlike any travel I've ever done. This past week, we've been doing the tourist stuff, but at the same time, we know that we are something different from tourists. It's nice, because we have been able to take our time and take in Istanbul's marvels at the pace that they deserve. But it's been frightening as well, knowing how much work we have to do to make ourselves a home here.
We've made some serious headway, though, and today I am feeling really good. Yesterday we moved into a studio apartment in the Harbiye neighborhood. It's within walking distance of our school and Istanbul's only organic market, which happens every Saturday. Check out our haul!

It feels good to have a stocked kitchen, a cozy apartment, and even (gasp!) homework to do. Routine is my refuge right now, the more of it the better (I don't speak for Mike, of course). We start school this week. Orientation is on Monday, and classes start Tuesday. I'm excited!

We still have lots of sightseeing that we want to do. Last week, we took a cruise up the Bosphorous on the public ferry. We drank cup after cup of çay on the boat, and then had fish lunch when we stopped at Anadolou Kavağı, a village at the mouth of the Black Sea. The next day we saw Topkapı Palace. Our photos don't even begin to convey how enormous it is. Courtyard, within courtyard, within courtyard. The tiles in the harem are amazing.

More soon, when we have some news about school, or maybe after we check out the Princes' Islands!
Love,
Eleanor

Hello From Istanbul! (Sunday, 9/27)

We left Portland on Thursday afternoon and arrived in Istanbul 20 hours later at 5:30 pm local time. A shuttle was waiting for us and whisked us down some crazy streets right to our hostel. The sun was starting to set by the time we got there (7:30 pm) and something clicked so we instantly fell asleep without exploring.
The next day we dealt with bank troubles (card cancellations-- even though we called ahead of time!!) and did some tasks in town, such as buying cool little akbils for getting around the transit system, stopping by our school to pick up text books, and buying soap and shampoo. We also got a a chance to explore the tea gardens near Topkapi and had a long lunch with a great view of the Bosphorous. Again, we fell asleep at 8pm!

Today we've done some more sightseeing-- checking out the Turkish and Islamic Arts Museum and walking around the Hippodrome and the back of the Blue Mosque. We've even been trying out some Turkish phrases, with much success... we think. Tonight our goal is to stay up to 10 pm.

Much love to everyone,
Mike (and Eleanor)

Here we go!

So many things to do on our last full day in the country! One of them is to finally publish this blog I've been telling everyone about. I'm hoping it will be a useful tool for Mike and me to stay connected with all of the wonderful people we have collected (and will collect) around the world. Here, we can post our photos and thoughts about everything we experience.

We leave tomorrow for Istanbul, where we will have about 2 weeks to sight see and settle in before we begin our CELTA course on October 6th. CELTA stands for the Certificate in English Language Teaching to Adults. It's given by Cambridge University, so it's very well recognized around the world. We're taking the course part-time, on Tuesdays and Fridays. We're hoping we can find some part-time teaching work while we take the course, so it will be an easier transition to full-time teaching when we complete our course in December. More on that bridge when it's time to cross it!

I think this is going to be a rewarding adventure for us. Mike and I are both interested in teaching careers, and we both want to spend some time living abroad before we get tied down here. I feel lucky to travel with such a solid partner in both work and play. And to have such fabulous friends and family. Thank you to everyone who has offered travel advice, moving help, reading suggestions, professional opportunities, Turkey contacts, well wishes, and more. We go confidently because we know we are supported by our community. I hope you will check in with us now and then to see how it has all paid off!

Thanks for reading,
Eleanor (and Mike)