espana notte

I think i combined Spanish and Italian in that title but, they understand each other so who cares:)

Yesterday was interesting. I had my lovely morning class. They had an exam which they obviously cheated through. They are frustrating for a teacher. I wouldnt even mind cheating if they did it unnoticably( i think cheating is just a common lifestyle here, acutally it was in my welcome packet.)
Best line yet, one of my better students comes up to me after the exam and says "christy i did not copy" I smiled and said ok, thanks, She said " they asked me for the answers and i told them, but i did not copy" I laughed and said. LEYLA! that is cheating. She says " but no teacher, they(the other students) leyla is the smartest in the class (we were learning superlatives so i was happy she used this) so they asked me for the answers, and i told them. I couldnt wrap my head around why she was telling me this and why she didnt think that was cheating. At least she did "her own test" Maybe i should grade everyones tests with hers as the key!

After the test two of the girls took me to get manti which is like the turkish ravioli. They had been promising me this since i started at English time, since i was their level one teacher too. It was delicious.

I came home with a massive headache starting, I thought maybe it was from the cold i've been fighting for the past week. It just kept getting worse and worse, then I went to work, At some points I could barely see straight and i had to teach for 4 hours. Luckily, my conversation class was very talkitive so that was easy, then I was talking to mike before my night class and he said he wuold grade out tests and take my register for me so i could leave right after the test cause i looked miserable. I reviewed with my students who when given the task of writing a few practice sentences i got "My teacher has a headache. My teacher has a fever. My teacher doesnt look very good" Hahah They took their test very quietly, but took forever, I ended up only leaving 10 minutes early. At this point my vision was blurry at some points and was pretty bummed b/c we were having a big spanish night at our house and i felt like going ot bed. I came home and ate some of the leftovers, very good, and magically my headache lessoned. Which is weird cause i ate the same amount of food i normally eat, it couldnt ahve been that! But i felt well enough to hang out, which ended up being really great. The instruments came back out, and we had a great musical session, once again. This time we had two guitars, Bulent had me play somethign... anything and he made harmony to it. it was really beautiful. It was also really nice b/c i was nervous to play infront of a lot of people, so bettina started conversation so I wouldnt feel so weird, then when i eased up they got quiet. Atmosphere.

Later in the night we got into some political discussion. It started about living in Spain. Then Bulent wanted to know what the teaching conditions were there so maybe i could go there and teach. We reached the conclusion it was better here. but then we started talking about healthcare. And the USA, and the american presidents and people. It was really interesting, hearing first hand from different nationalities about thier healthcare, their take on it, their thoughts on Americans and our politics. It frustrated me how open minded they were about new ideas, what works and what doesnt, When i told them the debate in America they just laughed and were pretty much asking why the american people were idiots. It made me thign about what bugs me about America. I do miss it, but when i think about it, the one thing that really bothered me were peoples attitudes about them "being right" Everyone thinks their way is the only way to be right. Quite often when i would engage in political talks in the US i would keep quiet because i never felt educated enough to make a valid statement. However, I would sit and listen to both sides, and carefully choose what to disagree with if I felt the need to disagree, But if i did disagree i never felt like the same respect was shown to me. Never did they sit and think, hm maybe that could be an option too. It was nope, my way is correct.

I think that is maybe something that goes along with having an opinion, not changing it. But there is no need to get super defensive about it. I think you can find these people everywhere though, not just in america, then American ones just frustrated me the most because i know they are the ones voting in my country.

On a completely different note, I think I had a very interesting Activity (conversation class) yesterday, I was a bit apprehensive since I had a msassive headache and it was suppose to be a level 1-2 speaking hour. I was ready for frustration. However, the ones that showed up were fairly decent speakers. We got onto a very interesting topic which i expected to go in a different direction. Basically one of the questions I asked was "Would you rather be rich and have a lot of "fake" friends or poor with really good friends"
They all admitted before this question taht when you ahve money all your friends are there just for the money which is very true in turkey. When i asked this question, every single one of them said they would rather have money and fake friends. I think they could see the look of surprise on my face becasue then they asked me, I said I didnt think money bought happiness and I would much rather have good friends than a lot of money. And they were like "well christy, what would you do? YOu couldnt afford to go to the movies, etc" I said, well, there are plenty of things one can do without money, I gave some examples, and personal examples of my poor college days and how we found free things to do. they were liek "well that doesnt exist here" I said, sure it does. You just have to look for it, You have to have those good friends that make any situation fun. And they didnt agree with me at all.

Obviously the value of money is different here, as well as the value of friendships, maybe that is why I've had trouble finding real turkish friends, Most of my friends are from different nationalities.