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[Ulysses]

Hi guys
I spent many years in Southern Italy when "la dolce vita" really existed..are the Turks hard-working or do they have a touch of the sybaritic?

[Lewis Collins' tortoise]

[Ulysses]

thanks..I like your name and car, by the way!
from my experience of Italy, it was more a way of looking at the world, pleasure in living that made them relaxed. I have sinmce worked in northern italy and Poland where the students were very demanding and the life was not hedonistic at all...
I am more interested in restaurants and chatting in the sun, and teaching as a way of financing this..is Turkey the wrong place?

[Lewis Collins' tortoise]

It depends on where you end up teaching.
In the dershanes (private schools), the most common place for foreign English teachers to find work, there is some scope for what you want, although it varies from dershane to dershane.
The students have been through a very "rote" based system of learning in school. They are often so goal oriented that all they want to know is the grammar and how to pass the impending test that they will undoubtedly have.
Some students haven't been completely broken and you will see some sparks of enthusiasm occasionally.
They are so used to having the information drummed into them by the teacher that they are often quite passive. If you confront them with situations which require some degree of thought or imagination you will more often than not be met by an erie silence with the accompanying tumbleweed rolling across the classroom.
Outside the dershane most students want to be your friend, on their terms that is.
Most evenings are full with lessons, as are most weekends.
The money does give you available cash for relaxing and socialising.
If you can find a good school or a position in a University, but those aren't easy to find, then you could be sitting pretty.
It's all a bit pot luck.
I hope that doesn't put too much of a pessimistic spin on it. I'm trying to be realistic...

for me the glass is half full of water and half full of air...

"English is the most ingenious torture ever devised for sins committed in previous lives"

[Ulysses]

Hi
That was a very helpful answer, thanks!
:-)
U.