This week I have created the blog, using a new video format! Let me know if you like it.
Osman Chapter 9: Crew Changes
Chapter 9 is here! This week, there are crew changes on the ship, which cause chaos and a French warship shows up!
If it’s your first time viewing the blog or story then click here to start at the beginning of the story.
Ship men leaving, much like they did on Osman.
Now everything was falling into place. My daily habits and schedule were working perfectly together. I also knew all the students; their names as well as their true levels, so it was much easier to plan the classes. I hadn’t messaged Darren for almost a week and had every part of my routine down, including doing laundry and eating. Yet when I went into the classroom and looked at the crew members from all the crews, their test dates and other information there was something looming over my head; “February 24th, 25th and 26th.” These were the days when the new crew would come on board and by the end of the 27th; they would be mixed in with the other classes.
Trying to figure out the crew changes and curriculum with mixed crews felt like entering a matrix.
Some classes were behind the others, and now there would be crews coming who had already completed certain units in the book that would be added to the chaos. Now it was time to send lots of text messages to Darren again. It was my first time facing the crew change, so no matter how much I talked about it or planned for it, it was impossible to know how it would go. Crew member shifts were also changing for those who would be staying on board, so I was also guessing when they would come to class. For the two classes that would still have Crew A members I planned three lessons and had them ready based on different scenarios. Scenario A: The same students come but no new ones. Scenario B: the same students do not come, only new ones come. Scenario C: the class is mixed with both crews.
Things getting serious
Darren recommended that I head up to the bridge and ask the radio man about the different students. He could tell me who was coming on which day and what the shifts would be for the students who still be on board. The radio man worked with me over the next fifteen minutes checking all the students work times and dates of arrival. When I was about to leave, he told me I should go to the top deck, because there was an Ottoman warship patrolling along side the ship. Apparently due to threats coming from Cyprus and the European Union, the Ottoman Empire’s leadership had sent a warship to protect Osman while it was doing its exploration drilling.
Looks scary or sexy, depending who you are.
As I exited the stairwell and was greeted with the smell of the sea, I could see the towering metallic structure of the ship, making its way almost to the top of Osman’s top deck. Gigantic guns ready for action, Osman men in camouflage patrolling and running about, and others standing at attention with rifles awaiting orders. All of the sudden, there was a radio announcement blaring out of the warship’s speakers. It was in Ottoman, so I couldn’t fully understand it, but they seemed to be pointing towards the horizon. I squinted and tried to peer through the piercing sun and the white water that was flashing and reflecting to see. There was a tiny black dot on the tip of the water, far in the distance, where the water met the sky.
I was awoken at four A.M. with a siren shrieking. There was an announcement about the dot on the horizon. It was a French warship, which was coming at full speed towards Osman and its warship. The radio man went on saying that we should be ready at all times for an abandon ship drill, should anything happen. When seven A.M. rolled around there had been no other announcements, but I was awoken by another shrill noise, my alarm clock. In the class I had a stroke of luck, no students came. Then when ten AM came, only old students joined the lesson. A bit more relaxed about the crew change situation I went to the bridge to see how the warship situation was going.
A lot of action on the top deck.
The radio man Uzgur looked serious. No smile was on his face and he was furiously typing on his computer. He couldn’t take it any longer and went out onto the deck to smoke a cigarette. He apologized for not being friendly when I came in. He told me to look out onto the water and there you could see the French warship, now only a hundred meters or so from Osman. Directly fifty meters from the French warship’s guns were the Osman warship’s guns, they were both pointed at each other. Neither ship had much commotion on it, with men standing at attention and ready to take orders. Uzgur said, there was a lot going on, on the radio. There were a mix of threats and commands which were mostly being ignored for now. The French ship was demanding that Osman leave Cyprus’ waters. The Ottoman’s were demanding that the French warship leave The Ottoman Empire’s waters. Then they went from demands to threats and from threats to commands. Then the cycle continued but there was still no movement on either of the ships.
The main sources of entertainment on the ship were the gym and sleep.
I wanted to continue watching the exciting stalemate, but it was about twenty minutes until my third class. I went back downstairs to the classroom. When one o’ clock arrived, there were only crew B students. I did my normal thing, going to the gym, showering and relaxing until dinner came. At the dinner table there was the latest gossip about the warships around the dining room’s tables. The French warship and the Ottoman warship wouldn’t budge. I finished my dinner as quickly as possible and headed upstairs for the final class.
Mixing it up in the class like this. Unfortunately there were no girls though.
Seven P.M. swung by and the class was a mix of one crew B student and three crew A students. It was also a class mixed with crew A students who were in different units. My plan for this scenario had been to do the unit that was the furthest behind, and the more advanced students didn’t seem to mind. As the students left the class at eight fifteen, I was able to relax. Now I knew where all the students were and planning the lessons would be easier. The day was over and now I felt more comfortable with crew changes. The other ones would be much easier. The only problem at this point was the students who wouldn’t come to class, yet is extra free time on one’s hands ever a problem? I went up to my cabin for the night. The warships suddenly crossed my mind again, but then I relaxed. I was sure they wouldn’t do anything. Thirty minutes later I crawled into bed, hoping for a good night’s sleep.
Osman Chapter 5: The first day of teaching
The story of my first day of teaching on the ship called Osman.
This is the story of my teaching experience on an oil ship. If you missed the first episode, you can check out by clicking here.
6am, a time most people loath seeing; no matter how many hours of sleep they have gotten.
I looked at my clock and I couldn’t believe it was already six AM. I forced myself to get out of bed and shaved. After that I took a quick shower, as I hadn’t showered at all while on the PSV. The shower on that supply vessel had been suspect looking; there was one faucet that hung near the toilet, there was no barrier, no shower curtain and just the same tiles that were all around the bathroom on the floor. The water was also cold, and the entire ship was much colder than the temperature on Osman. After showering I tried to find the stairs that would take me downstairs and finally found them.
What a door inside a ship looks like. Beautiful, isn’t it?
Next, I tried to remember which deck the classroom was on. I glanced at the row of decks on a list near the stairs and thought I remembered it being “F deck”. However, when I reached the bottom of “A deck” which was right above “F deck”, there were no more stairs, only a door going out onto the deck of the ship.
A look out at the sea, during the wee hours of the morning.
I went out onto the deck and it was well lit, but as I looked out into the sea there was a swallowing darkness. I couldn’t see the waves, but I could hear them. I backed up and moved further away from the rail. Finally, I saw the windows of the classroom. Going inside, the starboard door nearest to the windows, eventually I found the classroom, with the lights on but nobody inside. I sat down and waited.
Our snack bar was a little bit less luxurious.
Fifteen or twenty minutes later the other teacher Darren came in. He asked me if I had eaten breakfast and I replied no. I had woken up at six and sacrificed breakfast over a shower and a shave just for today. He told me I could get some fruit from the snack room, but I didn’t dare leave the classroom for now. We sat for the next fifteen minutes briefly going over the lesson plans and then chatting with some small talk, most of which I don’t remember now.
Any teacher, gets to see many of these.
At seven A.M. no students came. Darren showed me how to record that in the “lesson notes” file and then told me he would leave around eight for the helicopter deck. There were calls on the broadcast system about the helicopter and people leaving. These calls would come almost every day in the future, and I would get used to radio calls coming over the broadcast every once in awhile. Darren left soon after and I waited for the next class that would be at ten A.M.
This broadcast booth looks similar to the one on the bridge, but there were less sliders on the board.
When that time came though, nobody arrived once again. Darren had told me that I could do my own broadcast for tardy students using the broadcast system or I could call the radio room and ask them to do it. On the first day I decided to let it slide and not to do any radio broadcasts. It had been expected that no students would come to the first two lessons, but after lunch, there would be students for sure.
A mess hall from a navy ship. The mess hall on our ship was a lot more attractive looking.
Lunchtime came at eleven A.M. and since I hadn’t eaten, I was more than ready to start as soon as the doors to the cafeteria opened. I had to ask a person going down the stairs where the mess hall was, and he beckoned me to follow him. Inside there were around a dozen tables for sitting and eating; two kitchen counters, a salad bar, a soup kettle, a dessert table and a second salad bar, plus a double-sided refrigerator and two jugs. One of the jugs was always filled with ayran and the other was filled with some kind of juice that changed from time to time. On my first day it was filled with orange juice. The other drink called ayran was a popular Osman drink, so it was filled and emptied every day. Ayran is a yogurt filled drink by the way. A Canadian girl in Istanbul once described it to me as yogurt mixed with sweat, but I had grown fonder of it than her. I met a few people at a table and chatted with them as I ate and then went back to the class to wait once again.
About three minutes before the class started a student came waltzing in, he had his head shaved bald and bushy eyebrows. He set his notebook down and then left. Soon there were four students and later a fifth came in. The class went like any other I had ever taught before. Introducing myself, writing their names on the board, talking about where they were from and other basic “get to know you topics”. We did a maze using “simple present vs present continuous” and then spent the rest of the class playing an “adverbs of frequency game”, similar to “candyland” except they had to ask questions and answer using an adverb of frequency to get to the end.
After dinner three more students came and we did the exact same lesson. I added a second die to make the “Candyland game” go faster but it still drug on forever. We had a few minutes left so I used the adverbs of frequency to ask questions and burn out the remaining minutes. They all shook my hand and said that it was nice to meet me and then the first day was about to finally close. I took a photo of the daily attendance sheet and sent it to Darren via WhatsApp, did the lesson report and punched the students into the attendance file. I looked around the room and made sure everything was in place. Turning off the lights, I locked the door and headed back up the stairs.
Me after the first day.
I had spent all day in between the classes messaging Darren asking about the level one student classes and many things about the schedule and planning. The first day was finished but now Sunday might be even tougher, with a full load of classes. As I would soon grow accustomed to, the level two and three students skipped their lessons a lot but the level one students almost always came. Luckily the following day was level three followed by Saturday where I only had to do reports.
Planning. My life’s greatest skill.
In my cabin, I went over my schedule and now that I knew what my days were going to be like, I could plan when to go to the gym, write and plan lessons. My first plan was to do the gym four days a week, on those days edit one book and on the non-gym days edit both books. Finally, on Saturdays I would write a poem and edit both books. This plan would not hold, but it was a good start.