On Ortakoy, Teaching and Very Busy Clerks

This is my blog. Read it in remembrance of me. Yeah, so I envision this blog as being half literary and half not literary. What I mean is I'll post updates on what's going on in my life: school stuff, travel stuff, Istanbul stuff. Things that most of you want to hear--at least, I think most of you want to hear it--minus the boring details. But I'm also going to post essays about my Istanbul experiences, which will contain, as any good piece of writing should, a lot of details. But first, I'll begin with a general update.

I flew in late Friday night and a driver brought me to this beautiful neighborhood of Ortakoy. It's right on the Bosporus, just south of the Bosporus Bridge, and a few miles north of the famous Taksim/Beyoglu neighborhoods. The old section of Ortakoy has narrow, stone streets running every which way, with little cafes, restaurants, and steet vendors. Along the water is an open kind of yard with benches, where a lot of young people sit all throughout the day and evening. I was told that a long time ago, the Jews, Christians and Muslims all lived together in Ortakoy. Even now, as you'll see in my next piece, there are several mosques and a Christian church. Across the main road, the new part of Ortakoy begins, which is basically comprised of hotels, shops and banks. It's nothing special, but it is very central; it reminds me a bit of Astoria. My hotel is in the new section, but it only takes me a minute to walk to the old section. My apartment, which I'll be moving into in a week or so, is another minute or two up the road, further into the newer part of Ortakoy.

Yesterday I went with two of my colleagues (two Aussie girls named Yolandi and Tracy) to the school where we're going to teach. I found out that I'm going to teach fourth grade. I was quite dissapointed, but I consider it a tradeoff. The school is bright, airy, and the teachers and staff are kind and caring. It's also really close to my apartment; I could even walk to the school. The middle/high school (grades 6-12) is very far away, up near the Black Sea. It would take at least an hour to get there by bus. Considering I have to be at the school from 8-5, I'd rather not be commuting two hours a day. Besides, last summer in Costa Rica I taught older students ranging in age from 13-21, but it was a veritable nightmare. I had major discipline problems and the living/commuting conditions were horrendous. Here, I won't be teaching the grades I want, but I'll have ample free time, decent wages, a curriculum (thank God!), and a studio in a beautiful neighborhood. I'm here to live, not to work. Work is just a means to the ends of a fulfilling experience.

I begin my orientation on August 6th, but the school year doesn't begin until the beginning of September. So these days have been a vacation. I haven't gotten out of my "Ortakoy bubble" too much yet. Took a tour the other day of the Golden Horn area and saw the Blue Mosque, the Grand Bazaar, a lecture on carpet making, which was more of a sales pitch than anything, and an old Christian church, which the Ottomans so kindly left us, but not before destroying many of the beautiful iconic paintings and mozaics of Christ, Mary and the Disciples.

Yesterday I got a taste of Turkish bureaucracy. Yolandi, Danielle and I went to the police station to get our six month residency papers. We visited all three floors at least twice, bringing one paper to one clerk, taking another paper to another clerk. Luckily we had a very nice Turkish girl doing most of the work for us. Her name is Nilufen and she is the pre-school director's personal assistant.

The whole six hour bureaucratic experience was entertaining, though, particularly when we began a running commentary on one of the bald clerks. He and three other fat men sat at their desks behind one much younger and skinnier clerk serving the entire line of people waiting for their papers. The four fat men sat hunched on their desks or slumped in their chairs, chatting aimlessly, staring and pointing at the air-conditioner in the window. They finally dispersed to their respective desks, but did no work. The bald one stared at the queue and began taping his fingers, while the others stared at the pile of papers on their desks, at their pens, at the wall, at the queue. This lasted for five minutes.

"Uh, now he's biting his nails," said Yolandi. The bald clerk did this for another five minutes. He then turned his chair, opened the blinds with his finger, and stared out the window.

"He's looking at something," I said.

"Is it a chick?" Yolandi asked. The clerk muttered something and one of the other clerks made the same motion, turning his chair, fingering the blinds, staring out the window. He laughed and muttered something back.

"Yeah, it's a chick," Yolandi said.

We were getting annoyed with the inaction. The line would have gone much quicker if at least one or two of the sedentary clerks hopped up to the front desk and took papers.

"How do you say 'Are you retired?' in Turkish?" Yolandi asked. We both laughed, and I looked it up in my dictionary and wrote it down: Sen emekli misin? I pushed the paper over to Nilufen so she could tell me if the sentence was correct.

"Me?!" she asked.

"No, no," I whispered. "We're talking about one of the clerks." As I tried to clarify, the bald clerk came over and looked at the piece of paper with great interest. I pretended that I was asking Nilufen how to use adjectives in questions.

"And how do you say, 'Are you tired?'" I asked. Sen yorgun musun? she wrote. The clerk stared down at us for a few minutes, but said nothing. I felt myself turning red in the face and I waited for him to tell me off via Nilufen. He returned to his desk smiling, though, and began talking with Nilufen, nodding his head to me, raising his eyebrows mischievously, laughing at his own comments. She looked a little embarrassed, but I don't think he knew we were talking about him. She wouldn't translate, though.

After we left the room, Yolandi smacked my arm. "You bloody bloke!" she cried. "I can't believe he saw what you were writing. Do you want to get out of here with our papers or not?" We did get our papers, though, and had some fun in the process.