New Apartment

This is our new kitchen.  As you can see... we went from really big to kinda small (cozy, I'd say).

I'm not going to mention the Situation That Cannot Be Named, but I will post some pictures of our new apartment.  Much like our place in Prague, it's located on a giant hill near a small football stadium.  As you can see from the pictures, it's "sparsely" furnished, so I'm sure we'll be taking a trip to Ikea to get some more Stuff for it.  Oh, and it's dirty (but I've been cleaning!).

The kitchen (pictured above) opens up into this small dining room area.  We have a little balcony outside, which is really nice for watching neighborhood kids, drinking coffee, and hanging laundry.

This is the living room... messy.  Oh, we've got a TV though, and we have like 300 channels (a few which are even in English)!

Bedroom.  It looks small because it is small.  But, I mean, it's a bedroom.

And a bathroom.  Also small.  But ya know what?  All the furnishing are new, the landlords are awesome, and the price is right.  And I'm close to the metro and close to the bar/restaurant/gringo part of town, so speaking little to no Turkish isn't a huge problem.

Oh yeah, I also finally got my bike from DHL, which required no less that 5 hours of traveling around in DHL trucks/taxis/helpful peoples' cars.  But it's done! And I've discovered that it's possible to ride all the way to the black sea(!).  I'll post more this coming week.  I miss you guys a lot, and really wish I could be home.

The World's Most Expensive Used Bicycle

The bike finally made it.  I won't go into too many details, mostly because I don't know where to even begin, but the process involved 3 days of going out to the airport to go to different customs offices, DHL offices, and DHL warehouses.  Once I finally got the box, it was really satisfying to take the who thing out of the box, put it together in front of a crowd of DHL employees, and ride off into the sunset.  A lot of bizarre things happened over the course of getting the bike out of the customs, too many to recount here, so you'll just have to wait 'til I get home... Which I'll be doing NEXT SATURDAY!

Also, I think I'll be updating the blog on Sundays from now on, so that way everybody knows when they can check it to get some news on my trip.

The first week of school was good.  I was moved up to the high school program, but then moved right back down to Kindergarten.  So yes, Uncle Pete, I guess I was laterally promoted and demoted in the course of a couple of days.  I had my first true, Turkish made Lahmacun on Friday.  It was delicious, it's kind of like a flatbread pizza with minced meat and spices... very good.  They drink Ayran with it, a weird watered down yogurt drink.  I haven't tried that yet, though.  Okay... see you guys soon!

New School, New Job

This is my new school, Terakki Vakfi Okulları. Terakki means "progress" in Turkish.  Founded in the late 19th century, the school is one of the oldest (and most prestigious) in Istanbul.  The picture below is the front of the main building of the school.  I'll post some more pictures when I get a chance.  It's a huge and impressive building with an impressive staff.  Basically, it's intimidating, but I think it'll be great experience for me. 

I was originally slated to teach Kindergarten at this fine school, but today they offered me a spot teaching their high school prep class.  I guess one of their other new hires from America fell through and I'm one of the only people with experience teaching 14-16 year old students and an educational background in pedagogy.  Long story short, I agreed.  Long live the lateral promotion.  I'll post more info about and pictures of the school in the coming weeks.  See you guys in about two weeks!

Starting Work Tomorrow!

Tomorrow I start my new job.  Granted the school year itself doesn't start until September 12th (an extremely inconvenient date, I know), we do start a few weeks to get prep work and orientation stuff done.  I'm really excited, but definitely very nervous.  For the past three years I've been on the constructive end of Sunny Canadian.  I watched it grow from a tiny school in a converted apartment building to a still-growing legitimate school, complete with computer lab, library and all.  It's been great, but the school I'll be working at, the Terakki Foundation School is serious business.  It's huge, and it's been around since the early 1900's.  I hope I didn't get in over my head over here, but we'll see come tomorrow.

Yesterday, I went down to Sultanahmet, the more historic section of town... home to the Blue Mosque, Aya Sofya, the Hippodrome, and so on.  It's a nice part of town, but seeing as I'll be here for a while, I'll wait until I have somebody to brave the seriously long lines with before I take a deep look.  Here are some pictures...

 This Egyptian Obelisk is one of the few remnants of the Hippodrome, a huge arena once used for chariot racing.  It was built in about 1500 BC and brought to Istanbul by Constantine.

 This relief, at the base of the Obelisk, was built in the 4th century AD, and depicts Theodosius I with his family watching the chariot races.  To recap, the Obelisk is from ANCIENT EGYPT (!!!!) and the "new" base for it is almost 1700 years old. 

This shot is of the back side of Aya Sofya, which is, in it's oldest parts, more than 1,400 years old.  I know I thought Prague was old, but this is incredible.  

Sunny Canadian Students

I hope you guys had a great summer break.  Istanbul is a very cool place, but it was not always called "Istanbul."  It used to have other names.  Do you know what they were?  I think you can put your answers at the bottom of the page. 

Mr. Tenerowicz 

Guess what...

...It rains in Istanbul!  Well, the first couple of days were nice; I guess typical weather for the area.  Hot, humid, sunny, and  a little bit breezy, but today was a washout.  I thought I was leaving Prague to get away from all this stuff.  Yeeech.  So here's a quick recap of things so far...

Frankfurt Airport - After taking an 8 hour overnight bus from Prague, I spent about 6 hours in the airport waiting for my plane.  It's a great airport, yeah, and the McDonald's even had the elusive McRib sandwich, but I was going insane just walking circles around the area outside of security.  Turkish airlines was great, though.  I got to listen to Turkish pop/rock on the airplane's radio system.  You can imagine what it was like.

This is the street near my temporary flat.  By the way, I've gotten a more permanent accommodation set up just today, so I'll be moving into that tomorrow.  We're renting from a very nice, helpful Turkish/American couple.  The flat is newly renovated, new kitchen stuff, bathroom furnishings, etc. etc. and it's, naturally, on a huge, steep hill (hooray!).  I'll post some pictures of that sometime soon though, maybe once I get settled.

 Public transportation!  Kinda... well, this is one of the historical trams that runs through town.  Outside of this, they have a few newer tram lines that run to both sides of the Golden Horn, and they have an expanding metro system.  Coming from Prague, it's unbelievable, shocking actually, how little public rail based transportation options there are.  There are a ton of buses, dolmuses (private buses), and taxis though.  Oh, there are also ferries, and apparently most of those are the same price as taking the bus or the tram.  I would've thought it'd be more expensive.

I also ran into somebody on the street today.  In Istanbul.  The city of like 12 million people.  It was one of our friends from Prague.  Very strange feeling, running into somebody you know in a city like this.  I'll post some more pictures soon.  Miss you guys a lot, but I'll see you soon!

Leaving Today

(Don't worry, the apartment is empty now)

So today is The Day - I'm meeting up with my landlord, handing over the keys, gathering up my two stuffed bags, and getting on a bus.  I'm taking the bus to Frankfurt and then flying to Istanbul to save a little bit of money.  Tickets from Prague were pretty expensive, but I guess Germany has a substantial Turkish population so the offered a lot more direct flights.  I'll post some pictures once I get there, and I'll try as hard as I can to update this thing like... once a week or so.   


Hey Kids!

I'm moving to a country called Turkey.  It's an enormous country.  You could fit about 10 Czech Republics inside the country (it's really big).  I'm moving to the largest city in Turkey. It's called "Istanbul."  It's a really old city.  It's about 1,500 years older than Prague.  And you thought Prague was old!  I'll post some pictures once I get there.  I hope you guys had a great summer, and I hope you're ready for the school year.


Mr. Tenerowicz

In the beginning...

... I moved to Prague, where I promptly stopped e-mailing people on a regular basis.  I know, it's a terrible character trait, especially when I live so far away, but I've finally (after three years) gotten my act together and have decided to do something about it.  Hence this blog.  In short, it's to keep all of you guys up to date without having to talk to mom about perpetual home-redecoration (just kidding).

Now... I'm moving to Istanbul and I'm taking this change in location as the motivation I need to get back in touch with everybody.  I know it looks boring now - if you have any suggestions on how to better "curate" my blog, please let me know - but I'll be posting pictures, news, etc. on a regular basis once I actually get to Istanbul.

This blog serves a second purpose, too.  I'm also going to use it to keep in touch with my former class at Sunny Canadian School.  So, kids, check this website every once in a while, and I'll post some pictures for you and I'll also teach you guys about my new school and the new city I live in, okay?