Another Day in Paradise

Every time I walk to my Dershane, private teaching institutions in Turkey which prepare students for the university exams, I take the same route. I go down my street, take a right, cross the street, go past the white and graceless cab stand, down all the way to the park, float down into the underpass and surface on the other side of the road, walk straight down, go past the lottery stand, the begging children on the left and Levis on right, turn right at the intersection, get through the huge line of people waiting for the bus to arrive and cross the street, turn left at the corner, being careful not to step on the peddler's goods, go past the little children playing harmonicas and begging, and, voila, I'm there.

My class in Dershane possesses a very wide range of teenagers. There is the girl who lives 20 kilometers away and takes a 1.5 hour long bus ride every day to get there, there is the girl with a constant smile on her face who studies way harder than the others yet still gets low grades, there are the guys in the back, pretending they know it all, but really they don't even know what they're working so hard for. And then there is that girl who can draw beautifully, but she has to learn all these to be able to live a "decent" life. Behind her sits that guy who talks a lot, jumps at every question and thinks he can do anything. I hope he stays that way. And next to them sits the diva of the class; her makeup pretty, her hair combed, her scarf and her shoes matching-she writes down everything on the board with the utmost care in her notebook, with color pens. She thinks she's learning, but she doesn't realize that those colorful notes are not going to get her into college alone. In the front sits the girl with the headscarf. She is nice, funny and hard-working-yet she's been chained down and subdued by the drug some call "religion" at only 17. She wants to be a doctor. And finally, there is the awkward guy, who wears the same thing every day, and is very smart- but his school doesn't care about him. For all of these people, except the exceptionally wealthy ones who can afford getting into a private university (which accept students with lower grades from the entrance test) the university exam is the way out, it's their salvation, it's the only chance they get to turn their lives around and be who they want to be.

Yet, their teachers at school don't know what they're supposed to teach. Their parents don't care about what they do: they only care if the Dershane sends home texts saying their child didn't do his/her homework. They don't have iPad's or iPhone's or computers to do research from or to let off some steam.

That begging child I see every single day on my way to Dershane, always has a book in his hands. He is always reading, even as night time begins to fall and the light starts to fade. What if he had a better family? What if his family had the resources to send him to the best schools in Ankara, get him tutored in playing the violin, and send him to Europe for creative writing workshops? Unfortunately, no matter what is stored behind those dark brown eyes shining with excitement and curiosity, may never be used.

That is what's wrong with the world. Your life is pretty much decided when you're born, according to the conditions you are born to/in.  Not everyone gets an equal shot at making this journey of ours called life, the best one they've ever had. Some manage to change tracks; they take a right at the intersection instead of a left and they meet the most amazing person who knows this celebrity who can get them a job, and at that job discover that they're extraordinarily talented and rise to the top very quickly and build their own companies and BE HAPPY. Some can do this. And the ones who can't, well, they go down the same old gray road, get a decent job, work only to make money, and always dream about what their lives would've been like if they were born into different families. Or if they'd studied harder and had a better math teacher in 10th grade and had gotten into a better college.

So everytime I go to Dershane after coming home from my private school and choosing a bag among the ten to put my Dershane stuff in, charging my iPhone, hearing my parents say "We love you, and good luck, don't stress yourself out", and feeling them hug me just before I leave, and then see those little children on the street begging for money rather than being at school or at home playing with his toys, I lose faith in the human race and this messed up system they've (we've) invented. I wish everyone could have equal opportunities, I wish there was a world where the people with the most money or best connections didn't get what they wanted. But we all know that this is not possible, and ending this blog post saying "I wish everyone could be equal :(" is equivalent to writing a blog post about unicorns and then saying "I wish they really existed".

The least we could do to mend this broken system of ours is to listen and try to help. I'm not saying you shouldn't buy that 100 dollars worth sweater that you don't really need and instead donate that money to some charity. All I'm saying is, listen. Don't Pretend you can't hear them, start to whistle as you cross the street and seem embarrassed to be there. Because if you could just listen, if you could just understand, you could grant "another day in paradise" for many people.

Homeward Bound

"Home is where the heart is."

 

Have you ever been "homesick"?

It's not like any illness you've encountered and fought your way through until now.

Its symptoms are excessive longing for particular things, the blues syndrome, watering eyes, a sense of despair, among many others.

You know you've caught it when you wake up somewhere else in the morning and wish that you were home, wish so hard that you don't want to go to bed again that night without knowing that you will wake up at home.

You know you have it when you get up at night and can't find your way to the kitchen in the dark and something, something deep inside, feels seriously wrong.

You know you have it when you miss the view from your living room window, when you miss the smell of your house, when you miss everything and everyone inside it. And it hurts.

 

Homesickness is nothing pleasant, and its only cure is to GO HOME.

But going home...Ah, that feeling is one of the best ones in the world.

You unlock the door with out even looking at the lock, you swift open the door just enough so that it doesn't hit the shoe stand behind it, you step into your sanctuary, and that feeling of "being home" swoops over you and you're just feeling ecstatic.

Then the smell hits you. The smell you longed for while you were away but you didn't know so. You take off your coat, settle in your place on the couch with the optimal view of the TV yet also the perfect place to enjoy the sound system.

You finally know where everything is (at least most of the time), and you don't feel out of place. You're standing in a room which was formed and developed around you, by you, and for you.

 

Today is the last day of our vacation. Tomorrow, school -the seemingly-endless obstacle-race- begins. Today, lots of people return to their houses with the hope that this year will be better than the last one. Tonight, new year's resolutions will be made. Some will decide to study harder and some will decide to get on the lacrosse team. The familiar feeling of lying in your own bed returns; thinking about what classes you'll have tomorrow, checking if you've done all you've wanted to do that night, and slowly drifting into sleep and into the magical mystical world of dreams only to be awakened by the screaming alarm clock...That noise which snaps you back to reality and annoys you even if you hear it in another context.

Tomorrow morning, at least most of us, we go home. We go back to the building we spend most of our time in in a normal week-day, we go back to the people who we see more than our parents sometimes. We go back to our routine life styles and rituals, and that counts as going home as well.

And school may be opening and our days of freedom (although densely occupied with "summer homework") may be over and a marathon like no other, our senior year, may be beginning, but at least we get to spend it in our own place, with our people, at home.

Sometimes we get bored of the routines and the monotony and just to get away from all of it, but yesterday, today, and tomorrow,  we will always be "homeward bound".

 

 

Little Kids with Giant Hopes

This week, the eleventh graders in our school went to a village school in one of the cities in Turkey. We had the opportunity to improve the conditions of their schools and at least scoop them out of their ordinary, boring lives if only just for two days and help them have the best time of their lives so far.

The experience cannot be shaped into mere words and sentences; it was too different and extraordinary to be reflected truly by letters put together in coherent structures. But I'll do my best.

I know that spending time with fifteen kids and having them do artwork or painting their school or setting up a library in just one elementary school in one village in one city in Turkey in the whole world may not seem as much. It seems that there is much, much more we can do, and that is true. When I reflect back to the time of the day we saw the kids run off to their houses at the end of our last day there, carrying their brilliant pieces of art in their hands and decorated by the jewelry they made for themselves, to return back to what they used to do the very next day, some next to his/her parents to work in the farm, some at home to do the work, and some, actually a minority, coming to a school seeming so empty without us there again the next day; there was so much more that we could do. I thought that this was not enough.

Right then, a little girl who I spent a long time with during the activities came up to me and hugged me, with her incredibly beautiful masterpieces of art hanging around her neck, glimmering in the sunlight.

I remembered how every one of them listened intently when we were describing the new activity.

I remembered the boy in the front row getting the hang of the activity we were doing before we could, and enjoying himself so much that his joy was apparent from his deep, dark, shining eyes.

I remembered how they looked up and thanked me every time I helped them with something.

Then, it seemed like we had done everything we could have. I felt satisfied with the work that we did, because we made children happy. Yes, they may have to work in the fields the next day and those hands which so delicately beaded, drew and cut, may be used to tie knots or weed the garden, and get bruised, cut, and harmed. Yes, the girl who wants to be a doctor when she grows up may be forced to marry a much older guy in the next 10 years and look after kids. But that fire of hope we saw in their eyes, that passion to learn and the happiness they had when they were showered with affection and attention, will never go out. The hands of the incredibly talented boy may  be bruised and his fingers may be damaged, the girl who wanted to become a singer may lose her voice from yelling at the sheep to keep them together, but their will to learn can never be broken. And seeing this and at least having a part in shaping their lives and strengthening their wills, showing them what they could do, what lies beyond the valley in which their own little village was settled in, was more than enough to be satisfied with what we had done.  They are the little, lost kids of our country with giant hopes and even bigger hearts, who are waiting to be found by people like us.

Names to Fit

On Friday, I did not wake up at 6:30 in the morning to get dressed up and go to school to "learn" and "have fun", really to be tested all the time. Instead, I woke up at 7:40, with butterflies fluttering in my stomach, my fingers waiting anxiously to embrace my piano for the final time before we got in a cab in the rainy, humid morning to take place in a piano contest.

Each grade was assigned a specific piece before hand, ours was a Kuhlau Sonata, and we got to pick another piece, which could be anything at all... as long as it did not exceed three minutes.

We got there a little early, and sat in the cafeteria of the relatively small school. While my mom and I were waiting for my name to be called, students would come and go, some there for the very same competition, with their sheet music in their hands, some with their fathers making them follow him around, some in haste, trying to get copies of the criteria before he/she got called in. And there were some who came with their teachers. This was the last day of the competition, so it was grades 10, 11 and 12 for piano and guitar, and most of these competitors had their valued tutors and "supporting" parents with them. Their tutors were giving them advice, speaking to them with such hurtful ambition and speed, speaking the way a boxing coach speaks to his athlete, telling him how to beat up his opponent so badly that he faints, just before the bell authorizing violence chimes among the halls of gambling, ambition, and money. The parents on the other hand, were a whole new kind. Some sat by, chatting with their children, as my own mother did, actually, she played a game on the iPad while I studied for my French test,  while some were worse than the tutors; parents instructing their children, and their children frantically practicing the hard passages of their pieces on the plastic coffee table they sat in.  One father was dressed up in a suit, his son also dressed up in a black shirt with black suit pants and black, shiny shoes, lead his son around the cafeteria. The boy didn't look up.

Finally, I was called up, along with fifteen other students, and they took us up a floor, where we continued to wait.

When I had four or five people remaining to go before me, we started talking to each other. I sat next to two very, very different people.

One of them could not afford to but a piano, so she had a keyboard at home on which she would practice the passages and parts of pieces, and then she would play her pieces on the piano at her school every day.

The other one's name was Idil, named after the famous Turkish pianist Idil Biret. Her parents bought her a piano when she was born. She played the piano since she was 4-5 years old; but she hated it. She told us that she did not enjoy it at all and that "she did not have anything to do with it." I had the opportunity to listen to both of my new friends. The first girl played quite well, but you could tell she could use a little bit more practice. The second one, Idil, could not play very well, it was as if she was sight reading the pre-determined repertoire right there, and, it was not that hard to sight read. The jury stopped her at the middle of her first piece, asking her to commence with her second piece which she chose. She came out of the room, happy that it was over, while I went in the room, excited to see the piano, the people, and to cross something off my bucket-list.

And today is mother's day. A day only for the most patient -well, most of the time- , most loving, most encouraging creatures on the face of earth. They are indeed special, all parents are, but when they try to change the course of their children's lives, when they try to make their lives into the life they've always wanted to have but couldn't, they become more ambitious, almost to a degree which could hurt their children... But sometimes, they do help them, some become great pianists, great doctors because of their parents' push, but some always look up to their parents, not in the good way, and to everyone around them, walk with their heads down, always trying to live up to their name, while they fail to realize for their whole lives that it is their names who should fit them, not the other way around.

In the Words of an IB Student...

 

Take the IB, they said.

It will be fun, they said.

 

Now another precious Saturday is over,

With little got done,

I'm sitting in front of the computer,

Entering the data for my lab report one by one.

 

I set the alarm early in the morning today,

Because Saturday and Sunday is no holiday.

They may be shaded on my calender gray,

But they are just like every school day.

 

The bright brilliant day outside,

And the wondrous things on the web, like Facebook,

Are incredibly alluring, but I must not abide,

Since I have not given my math questions a single look.

 

As if it knows,

The computer is reluctant to draw my graphs,

I need to calculate the uncertainties and the ratios,

But all I get from the data-collection software is bitter laughs.

 

There is a TOK essay waiting to be written by me,

Blank sheets gazing up, asking, "How do I know?".

I know, it's only 300 words and five comments, not fifty,

But why does it seem like I still have 1000 words to go?

 

Now I must stop writing this poem,

And dive back into the bottomless dark pit of position, velocity and acceleration,

I sincerely hope I'll get all my stuff done without becoming a victim,

Of the cruel IB and its high expectations.