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Published: August 30th 2014
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Artistic expression at its finest!Welcome back to the chronicles of Eric, the Turkish Traveler!
If you’ve been following my blog so far then you know that my life here has been pretty upbeat for the most part as I slowly venture through this foreign land. Well, I’m glad to report that my upward spiral continues as I now attempt to describe my newest adventure that has turned out to be both an awesome personal experience and an excellent career path for me in this city that the Turks call
Beautiful Izmir!
New Beginnings: Joining the EU No, not the European Union – Ege University baby!
Since my last post I’ve been fortunate enough to become a member of Ege (Egg-Gay) University’s (EU) diverse and talented teaching staff and I simply couldn’t be happier! I absolutely
LOVE my new job and have found everything about campus life to be vivacious and stimulating. I’m one of 230 English teachers who work in two different shifts to teach almost 57,000 students throughout campus (watch out OSU, we’re catching up to ya!).
The department in which I work is actually called the
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Department of Foreign Languages Department of Foreign Languages because it offers foreign language classes in French, German, Italian, Russian, Chinese, Japanese, and English (That I’m aware of, perhaps more that I’m not). They even offer Turkish classes that would be perfect for a yabanci (foreigner) like me that doesn’t speak Turkish!
Much like the Ohio State University (OSU), EU is a state university with an affiliated teaching / learning hospital that sits on its property. It’s the perfect place for EU’s medical students to learn and practice their future trade! EU is however, quite a bit younger than OSU since it was only established in 1955 – I know, ironic huh? A newer university in a
MUCH older country!
EU is also somewhat like the Ohio Expo Center (OEC) in that it hosts numerous other educational related events throughout the year. In fact, the EU campus is capable of hosting upwards of 70,000 total students and during non-class hours it takes on a life of its own! Much like a small city, EU’s campus contains a çharşa (Char-Sha, which is a main business strip) that is home to numerous shops, including a cell phone store, barber shop, beauty
salon, dozens of restaurants, bakkals (markets), bookstores, photocopy stores, and a travel agency. The only thing missing is a sports bar (sadly, EU is a dry campus)!
EU is accredited by the Turkish Council of Higher Education (YUK in Turkish), so a degree from here is transferrable to America or anywhere else globally. In fact, there are numerous foreign exchange students here who represent dozens of countries from all over the world (again, much like OSU and even Hocking College at this point). We have essentially become one internationally compatible education system that is conducive to globetrotting haven’t we?
Okay, now for the hardcore statistics (to satisfy the stat geeks):
Ege University is the largest campus in Izmir and the third largest campus in Turkey. It sits on 3,700 hectares of land, which is about 9,143 acres (1 hectare = 2.47 acres). It would literally take you all day to walk across campus just to get a glimpse of the main facilities available. The campus supports 11 faculties, a teaching staff of over 3,000 and an administrative staff of over 4,000. It contains numerous buildings designed for educational, cultural, sporting and
social purposes. Services and facilities include a central library; an arts hall; a botanical garden that contains a bird sanctuary and two large greenhouses; a campus cultural center with a 750 seating capacity; a university club house; a shopping center; a hypermarket (super market); a guesthouse for university members; multiple student dorms; a sports facility with an Olympic sized indoor swimming pool; and perhaps most impressive of all (at least to me), is a football field and stadium that is home to an American football team known as the Ege Dolphins – Go Dolphins! Do we have a future Dan Marino in our midst?
Lucky for me, campus even has its own subway (metro) station – pretty cool huh? As a perk, one of the biggest and best outdoor cafés on campus is just a stone’s throw away from the subway station, appropriately named, “The Metro Café” – you literally have to walk right by it to get to the main campus and I frequent it daily to get my morning energy drink before class!
My total commute time is about one hour from doorstep to doorstep (home to office) and this includes switching
trains at Halkapinar, which is the major transfer station here. You can see by the pictures of the Izmir Metro System that it’s quite large, and it allows me to cut the city in half fairly quickly. It’s definitely the best form of public transportation that I’ve experienced so far – and believe me baby – I’ve ridden them all now! I started out with the manyak dolmuş drivers (maniac dole-moo-sh), then I switched to riding the city bus for a while, and now I’m riding the subway. It’s a bit crowded at times, as are
ALL forms of public transportation in Izmir, but I would rather ride it than any of the other forms here (except for the ferryboats, which are REALLY cool cause you can drink tea and feed the seagulls while you ride – plus the sea-side city view is absolutely amazing!).
My total cost to ride the subway (one-way) is 2TL, which is about $1 U.S. That’s a helluva lot cheaper to get me halfway across the city than driving at $10 per gallon (Not to mention fighting with the other race car drivers on the road, and then finding a parking spot)!
As an added bonus, whenever you use any of the forms of public transportation here, you then have 90 minutes to switch to a different form of public transportation for FREE. Isn’t that cool? This includes the subway, city bus or ferryboat (a dolmuş is privately owned transportation). That means that I can go from our city neighborhood in Karşiyaka to the summer village neighborhood of Doğanbey (To my in-laws summer home) for only 2TL ($1 U.S.). That’s a 2-hour trip that includes one subway train AND one bus ride – both to the end of the line – for only $1.00 U.S. Can you believe that? How much gas would that have been???
Izmir’s Most Awesome Campus! I can sum up campus life in two words: IT’S AWESOME! Seriously, life at EU is pretty dynamic in a lot of ways. First of all it’s a real campus; complete with student protests, outdoor plays, concerts, and tons of outdoor café’s where you can sit and eat some pretty awesome food for cheap (I’m talking homemade Turkish meals, not just fast food)! In fact, choosing which café to eat your lunch at might be the hardest decision
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The best cheeseburger on campus! you’ll have to make all morning because campus is literally loaded with them (As you can tell from my photos). Almost none of the vendors that work in these café’s speak English, but they all know me as
Pepsi Max because that’s what I always drink with my lunch or as an energy drink before class – That is after I switch from drinking good ole’ imported Columbian coffee first thing in the morning! Thanks Juan Valdez!
The single most consistent element that makes EU a truly awesome place to work is the amazing people who work here! It doesn’t matter where on campus I go; I can feel tons of positive energy coming from almost everyone that I make contact with, from the administrative staff, to the teaching staff, to the housekeeping staff, to the campus barber, to the numerous café workers. Literally everyone seems to go out of their way to be not only helpful and courteous, but extremely pleasant to me each and every time I see them.
I can tell by their facial expressions, their body language, and their actions that it’s not at all contrived; it is
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My friendly chef Faruk indeed truly genuine and this makes me happier than mere words could possibly describe! In fact, it makes me genuinely bond with these people in spite of the fact that I still can’t speak their language! I feel extremely honored that they have accepted me as a central part of their society in spite of the fact that we can’t progress beyond a simple introductory conversation!
Case in point: As I was taking photos of the various outdoor cafés on campus (for this blog post), the managers of two different cafés came out to greet me and offered me something to drink. I gratefully accepted and went inside to sit down with them. When I offered to pay for my drink, they refused my money and simply said, “Afiyet olsun”, which means enjoy your meal/drink. How’s that for hospitality? Turkey reminds me of the Deep South in America where hospitality to guests is very much still alive and an important part of their culture!
To summarize exactly how most Turkish people make me feel I will say this: Most Turks (as a society) that I’ve encountered make me feel as if I were a
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My redneck brother from another mother long lost family member who had finally returned home! Most of the people in my life genuinely make me feel as if I were originally from here, and truly belonged here, yet had been conspicuously absent due to a long journey, and had finally returned home! When I stop to think about it, I get overwhelmed with emotion to the point where I feel incredibly grateful to be in such amazing company! I love you Ege University, I love you Izmir, I love you Turkey! Thank you all for making me feel so incredibly welcome!
My Redneck Brother from Another Mother Speaking of feeling incredibly welcome, I gotta give some love to my good friend Melih Unal!
The first time I met Melih (the campus IT Director) he was drinking coffee from a, “Hell yea, I’m a Redneck” coffee mug that displayed the Rebel Flag. I was shocked and asked him where he got it from. He explained that he loved American country music and had quite a collection of country memorabilia. From that moment on he was my redneck brother from another mother and we’ve been thick as thieves ever since! What
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Melih discussing popular mechanics magazine are the odds that I would fly halfway around the world to meet not only a kindred spirit, but quite possibly Turkey’s only (native Turkish) redneck! That’s all right bro, I’ve got your back – there are two of us now!
The Three Amigos I am also fortunate enough to continue to work with my good friends Franco and Alexander, who also worked with me at Sifa University. In fact, we are the first yabanci (foreign) native speaking English teachers to work here in the last decade (can you believe it?). I must admit that I kinda like that in a way, because it makes me feel a bit like a rock star at times, standing out in the crowd and all, but in a good way! The entire staff at EU has been so welcoming and accommodating that we ALL feel as if we’ve come home! In fact, on the very first day of orientation last year, Mengu, the English Department Director, came up to Alexander and I (who were sitting together) and put his arms around us and said, “Welcome home!” He couldn’t have summed it up any better if I do say so
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Can you make me look like Brad Pitt? myself, because this is exactly how we all feel! Thanks Mengu, we love you and we love our new home!
Eric’s Ege Project: My 15-Minutes of Fame As Andy Warhol once said, “In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes.” Well it seems that I may actually have my shot here. I was recently given a project that I’m extremely excited about.
Working at EU has allowed me the freedom of creative expression enough to spearhead a new project that I’m currently involved in. I recently began filming a series of short instructional English videos titled, “2-Minute English with Eric,” starring yours truly! The basic concept behind it is to create a series of instructional videos that are short enough, funny enough, and entertaining enough, to capture our students’ attention while (hopefully) teaching them something in the process! We intend to feature a new video each week during the school year which we will present as our English video of the week on our English Department’s website. This gives us about 28 videos in all, so we’ve got a lot of work to do! As we speak, I’m busy writing the
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Yigit (in the middle) with two new interns transcripts that will become my monologue.
In an effort to stay social media friendly we will also upload these videos to our EU Facebook account as well. If they achieve their desired effect, then hopefully they will go viral enough to not only get the students talking
about English, but more importantly
in English!
We’re filming in the BITAM department at Ege University Hospital, which is affiliated with Ege University and man is it impressive! BITAM is the abbreviation for Turkish words that when translated into English mean: The Center for Information and Communication Technologies. This department is home to a 3-camera television filming studio, a film editing studio, a radio broadcasting studio, a photography studio, a graphic design office, a digital editing office, and an entire team of creative geniuses who feverishly and silently work their magic behind the scenes to make all of these hospital and campus projects come alive.
This is evident by the giant photo collage that is located on the department’s entrance wall. This collage represents the department’s entire staff and was artistically created and enhanced by their multi-talented digital team. Did
you notice by the way that they’re all Canon shooters? Yea Baby! Cause ya’ know I am!
Professor Doctor Fazil Apaydin is not only the director of this facility, but he’s also a world famous globetrotting surgeon who regularly makes trips to New York and Chicago for his medical seminars – I bet he also knows Dr. Oz (Who is a fellow Buckeye by the way as he was born in Cleveland, Ohio)! Go Buckeyes! Sorry, I digress! Anyway, we sat down with Professor Doctor Fazil and explained our project to him and what our goals were. He was on board with it 100% and graciously offered us full access to his facility and staff in order to make the project happen. I know that we all feel the same way, but I would like to once again express my appreciation to him for letting us use his studio to create this exciting new project!
We were lucky enough to catch him back here in Izmir where he gave us (Mengu, Melih and I) a personal tour of his filming studio and I must say that I was completely blown away! He introduced us
to his entire production crew and magical geniuses (a very professional and courteous staff I might add), and he gave us an in-depth explanation of the entire project development life-cycle. It was not only extremely professional, but very fascinating to see how they film, edit, polish and publish a television project from start to finish! All I can say is that it reminded me of a miniature Hollywood studio; complete with all the trimmings! Julian my friend, you would have
LOVED to see the special effects equipment and procedures they use to make the final product for marketing – and yes, they are
Apple friendly!
This department has its own dedicated television channel and radio frequency, both of which are broadcast throughout Turkey. They even have their own YouTube channel, which they will use to upload our English videos to as our project progresses! In addition, Professor Doctor Fazil told me that they will play my English videos throughout Ege Hospital for the visitors sitting in the waiting rooms and hallways to watch as commercials in between regularly scheduled hospital television programming. Hello! Excuse me but I’m a bit overwhelmed here! So it appears that
I actually do have the opportunity to become somewhat of a temporary local celebrity, at least in my own mind if nothing else (Shades of Clint Eastwood in Magnum Force, “He’s a legend in his own mind.”)! But hey, don’t take my word for it, you guys can judge for yourselves once our videos hit the Internet!
Upcoming Events In my next story I’ll talk more about my daily cultural observations of Izmirians (outside of work); our new house (yes, we’ve moved yet again!); things I miss about America, and I’ll discuss (and show pictures) of the radical summer crew cut that we gave Tigger again this summer! Freaking hilarious! You gotta see it to believe it! He hates us now!
Thanks again for reading,
Eric, the Turkish Traveler!
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Brett C.
non-member comment
Good to hear from you Eric!
Thanks for the update Eric. Glad to hear that you are doing well and are so happy teaching at the university. As you said, that has to make you feel good to be accepted and treated so kindly by everyone there. We had another great Fair this year, with very seasonable temperatures (which always helps to boost the attendance). The Buckeyes won their opener over Navy yesterday. It wasn't always pretty but they got the job done with the new redshirt freshman QB (JT Barrett) who is replacing the injured senior Braxton Miller (out for the year with shoulder surgery). Until your next blogpost - take care. Brett