One Day at a Time Really Works

Things have been getting better here. I'm becoming more used to the system and the way things are in Turkey (as well as how Turkish people are) and I'm getting more comfortable. I finished my first course and met my new students yesterday. I'm also pleased to report that all but one of my students from my first course passed PIN and are now Intermediate students. I'm so proud of them! They were a great first class...I think I got really lucky with them. They were exactly what I needed them to be with everything else that was goin' on. I went out to dinner with them right before the course ended and genuinely had a good time. And one of my students gifted me a bottle of Georgian wine and some homemade wine her father's dad makes. All my students knew how I felt about wine, mainly because I usually always used it in my grammar examples (First conditional question form: Will Heather die if she never drinks wine again?). So screw the apple, nothing beats this gift!

I'm a little nervous to start a new class, but I'm also a little excited to see how different things will be. I think this class will be much weaker than my last class and I'll really have to develop as a teacher to be able to meet their specific needs. I just hope everything goes smoothly and I have a better course overall this time around. Aside from my great students course one was horrible. But everyone says they get easier as they go and that the next year (after ICELT) is even better, so I'm really glad I stuck it out and made it work.

Winter is upon us and my oh my is it cold. I need to go out into town and get a better coat. When it got really cold back in Florida I would just hop into a warm bath and soak. I really wish I had a bathtub here. Oh wait....I DO! Totally had one installed and indulged in my first bath last night. Poured a glass of wine and read my book while soaking up to the neck. Talk about simple pleasures. I honestly and truly believe I will be much happier here for this reason alone! It's the best 350 TL I've spent so far.

Thanksgiving was lovely. I made a homemade dinner for me and my fiance and it was amazing. Played volleyball before I started cooking, and even though I hurt my wrist, it was great to have all the things I love on Turkey Day: my favorite sport, a bathtub, homemade dinner (literally, everything from scratch, stuffing, turkey, mashed potatoes, and gravy), my fiance, and an episode of The Walking Dead. It was lame I had to work earlier that day as well as the next day, but it was the next best thing to being home with my family. And I even got to chat with them a bit, too. Good stuff all around.

I have a lot of planning to do this weekend, but overall I think it'll be nice to just relax and clean house a bit. Maybe I'll go out and buy that coat today.  Lazy days are my favorite days :)