Education Volunteers Foundation of Turkey (TEGV)
Charshamba Park - Summer, 2002
In July, 2002, I spent one month with TEGV, http://www.tegv.org/english/index.htm, as a volunteer English teacher at the Charshamba Education Center in Istanbul, Turkey. It was quite memorable and a reliever from my graduate classes back in the States. The volunteer work was not really that difficult compared to the US Peace Corps. During the weekdays, I would "try" to teach English to my students with my assistant (Ozge during the first week and Yasmine for the last three weeks). On Fridays, the TEGV staff would take all the kids at the park on a field trip. I missed the first trip (I over slept) but I was able to attend the second Spiderman movie trip. That was interesting since I was the only person who understood the American humor of the film (the movie was in subtitles. The third trip took place at the Tour of the Beyberleri Palace. For the last trip, we spent a long hot day at a park on the Asian side of Istanbul at Beykoz. Kevin Kalb, a classmate from Indiana University, joined me for this fun, and long, excursion.
I enjoyed working with these kids. I have over 65 pictures of the children I worked with. As you can tell, they really loved these pictures. Kevin Kalb can easily be seen with the red Turkey t-shirt he wore. I am wearing a nice light green shirt my mom bought for me while we were in Japan in May, 2002. I have a lot of pictures here.
Beyberleri Palace Field Trip
These pictures were taken at Charshamba Park before the Beyberleri Palace Field Trip. I was not too sure what to expect.
I took a huge group picture of all the kids in front of the Beybeleri Place Entrance.
Some more pictures. I had my digital camera so I could take a lot. I like to look at their different expressions.
TEGV Kids harrassing me
One thing about Turkish kids, they love to foreignors. These kids had fun with me. Unfortunately, I am horrible with Turkish names and I forgot to write theirs down. Here are my students harrassing me.
Some friendly shots of my Turkish students.
I really love these pictures and as you can tell, so do the kids.
The last remaining pictures of the day.
Charshamba Park Skits
During the last week, they had skits at the Education Park but did not tell me. I just happened to show up.
Beykoz Field Trip
The last field trip took place at Beykoz on the Asian side of Istanbul. Yasmine, who helped me a lot, is in the first picture with Irin, everyone's favorite student. I am in the second picture with two sisiters. Kevin Kalb is in the third picture wearing the bright red Turkey t-shirt. The kids seemed to enjoy their time with Kevin.
I am in one of these pictures.
Now the picture taking begins. The staff wanted a lot of these pictures. These kids really enjoyed themselves as you can tell.
Here are some pictures of the staff members. Sermin, my boss, was very nice and helpful.
Here are the final pictures. Shortly after, we all returned to the European side of Istanbul.
I do want to return to Istanbul next summer to see how these kids are doing. They gave me a nice and memorable summer. A few white hairs too!