*I guess another lull so this should be titled " . . .Ten or So Weeks"*
The alarm at 7:45am seemed to arrive too quickly. For the past few months, there weren’t many days I had to actually get up before 8:30am. Regardless, today was the first day of my CELTA (Certificate of English Language for Teaching Adults) course. It was only a three hour orientation class from 9am-12pm. I arrived with about fifteen minutes early (again, if you know me this is impressive). I sat down and began chatting with a few students. I learned that apparently I had one of the shortest commutes here at about 10 minutes. One girl had to come from about an hour and a quarter! In case you haven’t heard, many things in Istanbul aren’t necessarily far but the traffic can hold you back. In fact, it seems to be a common phrase/excuse in Istanbul “. . . well, it depends on the traffic!” After orientation, a group of ten of us went to lunch at Dilek Pastanesi right next to the school. It was nice to better get to know my classmates, and a few of us exchanged mobile numbers. After lunch, two others and I decided to do some meandering and tea drinking. We stopped by a small café and started chatting. The two people I was with were from Belgium and England. It turns out the Belgian girl, Desta, is a singer, and a quite good one. She has had many concerts and has traveled all over the world; she has even sung backup for Michael Bublé. In any case, I would like to shamelessly plug her so you can check her and her music out. Her name is Desta Hailé and she sings both solo and with her band The Elements. You can hear her and her band’s music at www.myspace.com/destahaile and www.myspace.com/theelementsbxl and http://www.the-elements.eu Anyway, we sat down and enjoyed the weather and some drinks for a few hours before heading to our respective homes for the day. Also, I determined that there are 15 of us taking the CELTA course (10 girls and 5 guys) and the countries we came from are: 4 US, 3 England, 1 Ireland, 1 Belgian, 1 Australian, 1 Argentinean, and 4 Turkey.
