Turkey In Depth

I've been prompted by endless readers (one) to explain a bit more about my trip to Turkey. My primary reason for going was to attend Eracon 2006, a conference for all Erasmus Coordinators. In case anybody doesn't know, Erasmus is the student exchange program in Europe--if you do a semester or year abroad, it's probably through Erasmus. The conference was about changes in the program's third cycle, 2007-2013. Things like much longer staff exchanges (six weeks instead of one week) and increased funding for research exchange periods are things we need to start planning for now.

Another topic was the experiances of various institutions, on topics like Ideas for motivation and recognition in order to increase participation in teacher exchange, Before and after being an Erasmus student, West-East Mobility: Problems and Possible Solutions. The point was to learn how other institutions have solved the problems we're facing. As a reletively inexperianced international office, my colleague and I try to model our methods on those of more experianced/successful international offices where possible.

The last reason, less important for many participants, still important for us is networking. There were two sessions of the GO-Exchange Educational Fair, where each participating institutions set up a table with material on their institution, and either my colleague or I went around to each asking if they do pedagogy or health, and if they do can we organize student or staff exchanges, or some other kind of cooperation.

So that was the first half of my trip to Turkey. The second half was guest lecturing at Anadolu University: Amazing. The university has 1,100,000 students and an international airport with 22 aircraft. Personally interesting/convenient is that they have school and preschool facilities. Much of this was meeting people, since I wrote an agreement with these folks at Sweden conference, but it's always better to develop more personal relationship before sending them your students. I did lecture some American literature, though: A Perfect Day for Bananafish, by J. D. Salinger. It was interesting as always, and as always the students had ideas I hadn't heard before. The only problem was that we didn't have copies of the story for everybody, so we had to make copies. I'd sent the story by email a week earlier, but it wasn't clear that everyone needed a copy. That took an hour, since there were over a hundred students, it was my first lecutre given by microphone. And because the students were seniors, they'll be graduated before they could do an Erasmus exchange with us. All I could really talk about with them was literature, but they're not fans of English or American literature...so I was mostely looking over my shoulder wishing they would get back with the copies. Plus this wasn't even supposed to be a literature lecture, but rather an English traslation class, so the students had no patience for this (whenever several guest lecures are schedules for one week there are mix ups). And my colleague was no help! :p

As far as Turkey goes, I could spend a few years there. The mountains are gorgeous, as well as the rest of nature (pictures to come when I start a photo website). There's supposed to be a site for all the pictures of all the participants, but it's not up yet. The people are more friendly, generous, and helpful than any other nationality I've met. The coordinators of the university program drove us there from the conference (4 hours) and to the airport in Istambul afterwards (5 hours) instead of putting us on a bus or train. We got out of the car to take pictures of a wedding, and they invited us inside to meet the bride. My colleague asked some guy for a light, and after lighting my colleague's cigarette the stranger gave him his lighter. Another thing I learned in Sweden is that women's right aren't visibly different there that anywhere else in Europe. You see women disagreeing loudly with their husbands, and the husbands listening, which is something I didn't expect. Lots and lots of people, at least in Lithuania and the States, have gross misconceptions about Turkish people. They're extraordinarily nice!