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A Very Fine Romance Redux

Authored by sincerae,   website: veryfineromance.blogspot.com

• Member: Since 08/10/2008
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Wonders Never Cease

I will not make any promises to blog regularly again. In the next month I do not know what my load of responsibilities will be.

I have had my share of stress, excitement, and surprises in the last two weeks. I am currently living with my boss and his family until another apartment is located for me. One had been located in a section of Izmit where I would have a view of the bay. The city’s Sunday bazaar would have been a welcomed sight and convenience just across the street. It was my kind of apartment with lots windows for the light to pour in and a view of ships in the distance (ahhhhh), but I lost it to someone else because I was not sure I was going to stay in Izmit or for that matter, Turkey.

My two months have been heavenly, hectic, and hellish. I was offered a job at a prep school in Istanbul. I even went there and signed the contract, but my loyalties were already strong in a short period of time for my current school.

The hellish part of my sojourn was caused by my former American (the ugly American) roommate who not only harassed me but who has gotten on the last nerve of just about everyone else her psychosis prompts her to. Now that the harassing is over and I’m out of her reach, it seems that my boss will fire her today. At least, that is what he told me night before last following one of her usual episodes of showing how ungrateful and hateful she can be. I actually worked for her on Wednesday, which is one of my off days. When she came to the school that evening after being in the hospital the night before with a bad back, she refused to mark her student’s exams. I had given the exam to them. When one of the managers handled her the student’s papers, she asked, “What the
hell is this?” In the last week I have worked in her place once and twice in the place of my other American colleague. The latter got lost in Istanbul the other evening, and the school could not locate him. He was not supposed to go there because really it was not his day off. He went anyway.

The Ugly American gets some kind of weird high out of being rebellious. She is rude to the boss’ wife and just about everyone, especially if the other person is of the female sex. Her students complain to the management and me about her. They tell me that either they don’t like her, her teaching (or lack of), or her accent. Some beg me to be their teacher. Others who are jointly in my and her classes say that they wish I could be their teacher all the time. The management rotates the American teachers since we three come from or originated in different regions and therefore have diverse accents. They want the students to get a taste of a variety of American accents. I always thought my slight southern drawl would be a turn off, but many of the students like it.

Wednesday night was the apparent end for the ugly American. I am waiting to see what will be the outcome when the boss drops his bomb. She certainly worked hard to alienate herself from the Turks and to infuriate them. Since she has quickly grabbed a Turkish boyfriend after weeks of promenading loudmouthed with loud colored clothing up and down the streets of Izmit, I wonder how she is going to work this one out. If she is fired, will be the boyfriend do his best to keep her in Izmit even if she is jobless? According to her, he’s supposed to be some big military man. Maybe he can pull some strings for her somewhere in the city.

As for me, wonders never cease. Last week shortly after I was moved bag and baggage to my boss’ place, I was at home one morning when I mentioned to the housekeeper/nanny that I was a little sick. She speaks no English. I speak only “broken Turkish.” She was listening to a call in radio program. That much I know. I understood enough that she was trying to tell me about a doctor. She got on the phone and called someone. Then I understood that she was insisting that I speak to the other person on the other end. I started speaking, and it was a man who spoke Turkish. I asked him in Turkish if he could speak English. The next thing I realized was that I could hear my voice and his over the radio that housekeeper had put in the kitchen. I was on Turkish radio! I was so shocked that I shoved the phone at her and walked off smiling saying in my merger Turkish that I could speak only a little Turkish. There are always surprises here, often pleasant ones. I am still amazed at the kindness and generosity of a lot of Turkish people even though I see it every time I come here.

My biggest and most shocking surprise came this week. A day before announcing to me that he was going to fire my troublesome former roommate, my boss told me that beginning next year, I would be the school’s education director. He was handing over many of his responsibilities to me because in the last two years he has lost both his father and mother to cancer. His father established this school. Some of the school’s textbooks were written by his father. In the last five years my boss has lost seven family members to cancer. His mother died three weeks ago. An uncle of his that I met two weeks ago is battling cancer, but the prognosis is good. The family has a cancer gene, I was told.

I am to be the boss’ right hand at the school, he says. He told me that for two years he had waited for an English teacher like me. He is not very pleased with my two American colleague’s work, but he obviously feels that in me he got a long waited for prize.

I know I am going to be inundated by work and many responsibilities. From what I have observed here in Turkey, when an employee is good at what he or she does, they are inundated.

I have already mentioned to my boss some of the innovations I want to introduce to make the school function better, and he has not said no. He says that I will have to be tough. By nature, I am a shy person. I may seem tough on the internet, but I am a softie. Still there is a toughness that I will not relinquish when confronted or when my principles are attacked.

My boss and the other members of the management feel that I have a temperament similar to the Turks. I am “emotional like eastern people,” my boss says. I actually despise American individualism and “dog eat dog” ways of doing things, so how things function here in Turkey is right up my alley in many ways. The Turkish staff operates like a family. There are disagreements and disorganization, but in the end things are worked out.

I was never fully American in my ways. I am American and always will be, but I am a product of a slower, more generous and gentler time. I am very much like
my maternal grandparents, who were rather “Turkish” in their ways and who were products of the 19th century. My boss has seemed my efficiency, dedication, and honesty at the school. He told me that he has observed me, and after speaking with his wife, one of the other managers, and the head teacher, they all believe that I am the best pick to oversee all issues concerning the other foreign teachers, the school’s students, and the some of the school’s, especially classroom and class organization.

I do not have the time or energy to continue here. I want to continue blogging, but my life is truly moving into a different dimension now. There is more I could, but maybe I will way until later.

I have had what I call an “Obama rise.” Like him, I have risen very fast in a new area. In less than five years Barack Obama rose from being on a small local stage to the international one in a land I am sure he loves. I am in a land I love, and where I would love to stay. To have some of the staff here bow to me or to have a student kiss my hand is wonderful. My hand was never kissed in America. I had to go to first Africa and then Turkey for it to be kissed. It has been kissed several times. I love old world pleasantries, etc., because I am a romantic. I will go to my grave one. I am happy and humbled by all that has happened. I will nurse my achievements and my adventures with care. That was something the Ugly American did not do. She took so much for granted; so many people take so much for granted. My former roommate did not understand that even though the accolades can come, they have to be respected and never ever taken for granted.

Perhaps in about a month I will be blogging again regularly, but if I came not, I will be dropping a post here and there of my times here and the things from the past and the present that I love.