Saturday, November 04, 2006

The... Err... Alive Life...

Sum quod numquam eris, friends, Europeans, and countrymen,

Today, against all belief and expectation, it is snowing in Istanbul, assuming I can trust the view my windows afford me, because, of course, I haven’t left the house in days. O, dear readers, Hell, or the closest thing to it outside of a fantasy book (besides Bucharest), has frozen over!

And I’m happy that it’s snowing. I hope the flurries flutter, fall, and freeze, until the all the residents of Istanbul are frozen in place, so they’ve nothing to do but stare at each other and contemplate how silly they actually look. Why? Why?

Cause it ain’t my problem.

This weekend is mine, and aside from a couple of social obligations (some welcome and some not), and a dinner date that doesn’t involve me, the next few days are blissfully relaxing and stress-free. And it doesn’t end there.

There will be no more staring at walls, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, and no more drowning my sorrows in Nescafe. The blade has dropped, O sons and daughters of Adam, and can you feel the force of my wresting the head of Isik University from the guillotine and thrusting it triumphantly towards the heavens through these 0s and 1s? Imagine, if you will, the droplets of sweat flying from my unkempt locks crashing to the earth as my body, pulsing with the primal energy of emancipation, grows, smashing through the hallowed halls of my office, my building, and the entire campus, and my hands and arms, now the size of skyscrapers fling themselves outwards, smashing service buses and sending whimpering students scurrying to perceived safety?

Well, that was fun for me, at least.

In reality, it wasn’t quite as glorious. It went more like this:

Aaron, seated at desk, tossing apple up and down in hand, staring at wall. Office door opens. Sheepish American man walks in trepidatiously.

Ted: Aaron, uh, are you still interested in teaching in Erenkoy?
Aaron: Uh, yeah.
Ted: Great. You start tomorrow. See you.

Aaron waits for door to close. Dances around office. Zeynep looks annoyed. Aaron scoffs, skips outside, and begins smoking merrily.

You see, my confused companions-in-angst, Isik University has decided to expand its services. To make up for the lack of students at the main campus, they’ve begun to offer night classes at a couple of (hideously expensive) high schools in Istanbul. This particular high school in Erenkoy, is located about a fifteen minute taxi ride from my house, perfectly situated within the city, in a quite nice, upscale, and interesting part of town (of which there are about 3 in all of Istanbul). So, on Wednesday morning, I woke up at 5:50, forgoing the snooze button, took my time getting ready, humming all the while, gave my cats a quick pat on the head, and skipped to the bus stop, knowing full well that this was (O hope of hopes!) the last time that I would have to suffer that life-destroying commute.

This is what they told me: “Aaron,” they said, “you’ll be teaching 5 days a week, from 6 PM to 9 PM in Erenkoy. They’ll be high school students, hoping to pass the English University Exam the first time around. You might not have access to many supplies there, but we’ll try to give you what help we can.” Doesn’t sound too bad, eh?

Here’s the reality:

They didn’t get as many students as they expected there, either, so I actually only teach 1 hour on Tuesday and Thursday, and 2 hours on Wednesday. That’s 4 hours a week, with a 4 day weekend. I go when I have a lesson, and I leave when I’ve finished. They’re not high school students; they’re adults. Highly motivated, and highly educated adults, including a doctor and a psychologist. I’ve got an office there, in the most posh private high school I’ve ever seen, and I teach in a fully-technologically fitted conference room, right next to the tea room and the billiard room. The classes are informal, the students are cheerful, happy, and helpful, and my teaching partner, Ece, is a wonderfully spastic Turkish woman, who spits wonderfully sarcastic remarks as we chain smoke together during breaks. I could take a bus there, but the taxi only costs 10 YTL, and since I’m still receiving a full salary for 4 hours of teaching a week, I feel totally justified in going to work in style. I still have to go to Sile once a month, but those beige walls will scarcely suffer a glance from me, as I go there, report on my progress, and immediately head back home (after eating a free lunch, of course).

So, what am I going to do with all this free time? Well, there’ll be a little bit of extra work at home, no doubt, making worksheets and what-not. In the meantime, I’m going to do part-time work at English Time, making a bit more cash, and increasing my teaching load to the unbelievably astronomical number of 12 hours per week. The rest of my time will be spent alternating between doing nice, relaxing things for myself, like playing video games and studying languages, and preparing nice, healthy, nutritious meals for my girlfriend, whom I realize now does a disproportionate share of the labor in this relationship (more likely, I’ll put more effort into timing my ordering of nasty, greasy food, so that it arrives within seconds of her returning home from work).

Alas, I must away. All of this writing has felt a bit too much like work, and I must retire for a spell so as to not offend my delicate sensibilities. But, O, spare not a tear for Aaron, my dears, who was once handsome and tall as you.

With a final shuffle of his boots,
Aaron Rotsinger,
Wanders off into the sunset