Football or Futbol?

Today I went to an AMERICAN football game in Turkey!

One of the teachers at my school...her husband is an American football coach of a team here called the Cavaliers! His team consists of Turkish college students and today they played for the championship. The championship of what...I have no idea! It was such a fun afternoon and a wonderful feeling to watch some football, not futbol. Since living here I have seen my share of futbol games, so it was nice to watch a sport I dearly love and actually understand!

With my friend Lindsey

Unfortunately the Cavaliers lost, due to some poor refereeing! We kept joking that every time the refs got in a huddle to discuss the play they would have to pull to the rule book, find the situation, and then translate it into Turkish, so they knew what it was saying. The other team was Boğaziçi Üniversitesi and most of their fans knew English. I heard a lot of... “TOUCH…DOWN…TOUCH…DOWN or D…FENCE…D…FENCE” They also cheered in Turkish, and for the longest time we thought one of their cheers was in Turkish, when actually they were yelling CHAMPIONS…just didn’t sound like it with their accent! After they won they went crazy…here is a picture of the players climbing the fence. Even though the outcome wasn’t what we wanted it was a very fun, enjoyable afternoon! I really miss football, I don’t know what I am going to do this fall.

Bosphorus Tour

Another great thing about all the holidays here is that we never just get one day off. Because the actual holiday is so busy and exhausting for the kids, the next day is a day off to rest!! I LOVE IT. So May 20th - the day after Sports Day -Selma, Julie, and I decided to be tourist and take a Bosphorus Cruise! (the Bosphorus Strait is the body of water seperating Europe and Asia). It was a little overcast and windy but we still had a great time being together. Going back and forth to Asia and Europe, I've gone across the Bosphorus several times, but it was neat to ride it from the bottom all the way to the top where it dumps into the Black Sea. The cruise lasted about 2 hours and then we stopped at Anadolu Kavagi for a few hours to eat lunch and explore. We climbed up to the top to see this famous castle, which was cool...but the best part was the view from up there. There is a picture of the 3 of us, where you can see the opening into the Black Sea (and see how windy it was!)

Sports Day

The longer I live here the more I grow to love this country and their holidays. The most recent holiday we celebrated was Youth and Sports Day on May 19th. It is to commemorate the start of the Turkish War of Independence and to honor Atatürk. Turkish children sing the national anthem, play sports, parade, commemorate Atatürk and are reminded of the values of democracy and Turkey. Our school celebrated by going to a local park, playing games, and having a picnic. It was a great day and very similar to field day in the states. All the kids (K-12) were split into different colored teams. I was part of team yellow...I wanted to join in the games so bad, but had fun coaching and helping :) Here are some pictures from the fun event.

Everyday

They say you learn something new everyday. Since I started teaching, this has definitely been true for me! For example, Thursday we were talking about the explorer Fernando Magellan and how he named the Pacific Ocean because of its calm waters. Several of my students asked me "Why...what does pacific mean?" I honestly no idea so I went to the dictionary and looked up the word pacific. This is what I found: pacific (adjective): tending to make or preserve peace; conciliatory; calm, tranquil. It makes sense...when thinking about a pacifier or a pacifist, but I never knew that pacific was an adjective that you could use to describe!

Here's another: yesterday my kids told me that there is a word googol that means a really big number. So I look in up in the dictionary and sure enough googol means a number that is equal to 1, followed by 100 zeros. Google apparently got its name from this word because of the large amount of information you can get from google.com

And just for fun a picture I took recently, while on the bosphorous.

Frightening Experiences

Last week my class wrote about their most frightening experience. Writing has never been something I love doing, and so it is definitely my least favorite thing to teach. I decided to go through the writing process with them, and it was actually really fun to brainstorm my frightening experiences, write about them, and revise and edit. I even had the kids give me feedback and ideas. Today we went to the computer lab to write our stories...we are going to publish them into a classroom book! Here is my story, along with some pictures.

“Hurry Up!” I shouted to my 14 year old sister, Laura Beth. We were running late and needed to leave for school. We ran to the car, as my mom reminded me – like she did every morning - to be careful and not to speed! We jumped in the car and I called back to her, “I know, I know” and off we went. It was Monday morning and I wanted to get to school so I could see my friends, after all it had been 2 or 3 days since I had seen some of them. Plus I had a softball game that afternoon, if I got another tardy I wouldn’t be able to start in the game!
As we crossed the bridge over the highway, I saw the car, a red 1985 Honda coupe. It was stopped and waiting to pull out of the gas station, and for some reason I had a bad feeling. I thought about slowing down, but before I could the car pulled out. Next thing I knew I could feel the impact of the two cars colliding followed by metal crushing and loud screams. Everything was moving in slow motion and my car began to make its way across the road into an open field. As I tightly held the steering wheel and pressed the brake I began to slow down. The car finally came to a stop and I quickly turned around to check on LB, who was sitting in the back seat. She was crying and holding her nose. We jumped out of the car and I embraced her, telling her over and over again, “It’s okay, we are alright!”
People began pulling over and running up to us. It was then that I noticed my damaged car – it looked awful! I began to cry and praise God for how He has protected my sister and I. Besides my sister’s fractured nose and the soreness I felt, we had no major injuries. The other driver felt awful for causing the wreck and apologized over and over again….he even sent me flowers! We were so blessed that even through a very frightening experience God was with us!!

So whats your frightening experience??

The weekends....

I really love my job, but boy do I enjoy my weekends! Its really the only chance I get to be out in the city and explore. Last weekend Selma, Julie and I went to Bebek, an area on the European side. A few friends had told me about a Starbucks that is right on the Bosphorous Strait, the waterway that runs between Asia and Europe. It was seriously amazing!! We spent over 2 hours just sitting and talking...it felt so good to be by the water and in the sun :) I could have stayed there all day long. All the nationals were sitting under umbrellas, but we had our jeans and sleeves rolled up and enjoyed getting some sun! The view from our seats....Here is a picture of Kanyon Mall...this cool mall on the Europe side. Its hard to tell from the picture, but its a really neat design with awesome architecture.
This Friday, after school Julie and I headed back to the Europe side to hang out with our friend who is a photographer. She needs to get some shots and we just went along for the fun! We went to the Spice Pazar, the Grand Bazaar (the world's largest covered bazaar), and over to Taksim Square. It was a really nice evening and fun to be with friends. Taksim Square is a happening place, especially on Friday night...much different than my neighborhood on the Asian side.

Yesterday was beautiful and warm here and I was glad to spend most of the day outside with friends. Here I am enjoying a waffle covered with chocolate and bananas...it was delicious. My friend couldnt believe we eat waffles for breakfast...its too rich she said!

Day of Birth

Over my lifetime I have had many celebrations on May 8th! I wasn't sure what the day would like look in a foreign country, being away from family and close friends. But it was a really great day. I received over 15 cards in the mail, 3 packages, flowers, lots of texts/phone calls from America and Turkey and was sung to several times!

When the kids started coming in for school they could hardly even look at me, and wouldnt say Good Morning or anything! Once the bell rang they all came in and quietly started reading. I was looking out the window to see if one of my students was walking into school, and all of a sudden they all started singing Happy Birthday to me in unison. One of my sweet boys was directing them. Afterwards they started pulling all these gifts and cards and food out of their desks and bringing them to me. It was so precious and thoughtful! We sat on the carpet and I opened all my gifts, I got lots of great goodies! Here I am with my kids, I just love them!

After school I headed over to a friend's apartment for dinner and to hang out with some girl friends here. One of the perks of living in a foreign country is that you can get just about anything delivered to you! There is this website you go to...its so easy. We decided to try this random Mexican restaurant, and the food was really tasty! Afterwards we had brownies and ice cream and watched The Office from the night before. It was a fun night with some fun girls!

I felt loved and cared for all day! My Father is so good to me and blessed me in little ways all through out the day. Thanks for all the love :)