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.

Osman Chapter 4: The first day on Osman

In this chapter, we’ll learn about what happened on my first day on the oil ship! Well actually, it was half a day.

Before we jump in, if this is your first episode in the series, feel free to checkout the prologue and catch up before reading this chapter! Click here.

Similar to how my cabin looked, except there was less space and there was also a bunk bed.

The cabin room was slightly smaller than the dorm I stayed in while going to University of Alaska, Fairbanks. There was one desk against the left wall that was accompanied by a large comfy chair. Getting up from the comfy chair and taking a right there was a bathroom with brand new interior design, a tiled floor, a small shower and a vacuum styled toilet. There were also cabinets on either side of the mirror. There was a sign warning people not to sit while pressing the vacuum button on the toilet, as it could leave a large hickey where the sun doesn’t shine. Returning to the main room there was a small sofa opposite the desk, sitting down the cushions gave little resistance. On the left wall next to the desk there was a bunk bed with curtains and a sleep blinder. Across from the beds there were two dressers. There were also many outlets strewn across the room. These outlets also included American outlets, it was the first time I had seen them outside of the US in Europe or Asia.  I wondered how crowded this cabin would be with two people, especially the desk. Luckily for me, I would be the only one staying here, the rest of the crew had to share rooms.

It’s almost three fifty.

I waited until my cell phone’s clock read “two fifteen” and then I tried to find the area I had just been in. I walked around for a few minutes and then asked where “Steffen” was. They had told me my safety briefing would be with him. He came a few minutes later. He was a guy from Scotland, yet he only had a slight accent. He had giant eyes and in a matter of moments I could tell he cared a lot about safety. I sat down with him and the teacher I was meeting who I would replace as the English trainer for one month named Darren. Steffen went through many slides, he played a couple of sounds that represented alarms for abandoning the ship or dealing with different gas leaks or fires. It was an abundant amount of information and I instantly forgot most of it.

Similar to what our lifeboats looked like. We never got to see them in the water (luckily) though.

That ended up not being too bad, as much of it didn’t apply to me anyway. Then he took me on a tour around the ship, he showed me where my lifeboat was and what I should do when I got there. I had to turn my card around, grab a life jacket, find the last number and stand on it. All the numbers for each lifeboat were painted in circles on the ground. If I was the first person there, I should stand on one, and if someone was standing on one, then I should stand on two. It all seemed simple enough.

H2s Gas. It’s dangerous. Worse than burrito night.

After Steffen was done with me, I met another Scottish guy. This guy was called “Gale”. His Scottish accent was much thicker than Steffen’s. I followed him up the stairs to the helicopter deck and had to repeatedly ask him to repeat things three or four times due to his accent. He brought me to a room where he struggled with the TV for a while and then taught me all about H2S gas and the dangers and what to do if certain things happened. He showed me the equipment and had me practice opening and closing the oxygen valve I would use to connect my mask to if there were a serious H2S leak or incident. The further he went along the more I got used to his accent and by the time he was done I felt like I was ready to go to Scotland.

Dinner on the ship was pretty good. Okay it wasn’t this good. (but close)

After Gale, I was finally able to meet with Darren. We ate dinner and he showed me more of the ship. We talked a lot about how to do all the paperwork associated with the job. There was an attendance list on the computer, a daily attendance sheet for the students to sign, a lesson notes file for every class of every day, a lesson plans file for the same, and there were the books. There were also four different crews to track and the crew shifts to track and the shift changes to track with each crew change.

One of the books we used.

Now back to the books. There were the Oil and Gas books, and English exercise books. The English exercise books also had workbooks for the students and a teacher’s book that had lots of interactive activities in it. There were two whiteboards on either end of the room and across from the teacher’s chair you could see through the windows and look at the sea.

What our real classroom looked like. The table is a little bit curved due to the panoramic photo.

There was a long table with a TV monitor mounted on the end near the teacher’s chair. The TV was also connected to the laptop and there was a printer behind the TV, resting on a chair. After several hours of talking about paperwork and how things worked, he let me know that I would need to plan the lessons for the following day because he would be leaving at eight thirty in the morning. We spent an hour or so working on the lessons for the next day and then I went back upstairs.

NAV deck, short for “Navigation deck. We called this deck “the bridge”. This is a photo from google and not the actual Osman NAV deck.

My main piece of luggage was still in the radio room so I went up to get it. The radio guy was busy, so I just grabbed it and left. Then I walked around this deck called “NAV deck”, which is short for “navigation”. I kept looking at the signs trying to find the stairs to head down to my cabin, but I couldn’t locate it. Finally, after my fourth or fifth time around a square shaped hallway, a guy came out of one of the rooms and asked me if I was lost. He directed me to the stairs; the sign was obstructed behind two other signs. In the coming weeks I would learn – go left, then left to get to the radio room, then go right, and right again to get back to the stairs. My cabin’s floor was just below the NAV deck, so I carried my twenty-kilogram bag back down the flight of stairs and found my cabin again. Inside, I only unpacked what I needed and then slumped onto the sofa.

One of the perks of being on a ship.

It had been an eventful day. I had woken up on the PSV ship and spent most of the day there. Then rushed through two different Scottish guys giving me safety briefings. Then I had gone over all the paperwork and planned lessons for the next day. I sat on the sofa in my cabin for ten or twenty minutes, planning the next day. I thought about how I would plan my weekly schedule, when I would write, go to gym and eat as well as plan my lessons and do all that paperwork. Then I wasn’t sure I even remembered how to get to the classroom in the morning. I would have to wake up early. I hated waking up early. I could wake up at five thirty, take a shower and shave, then go to breakfast at six am and be in the class by six thirty. I could also just sleep until six, have a shower and a shave, skip breakfast and be in the classroom by six thirty. As I lay in my bed thinking, I decided to go with the latter plan.

Osman: Chapter 2: A hotel in Adana

Chapter 2: The adventure in the glorious hotel

Dude, looking busy.

Behind the counter of the reception desk sat a medium height and heavyset teenager. He sat hunched over so all I could see was the top of his head. He was busy staring at his screen and hoping to God that nobody asked him anything in English.

A stock photo, he’s a bit more confident then the receptionist I came across.

“Merhaba” I said. His head popped up. “Merhaba” means “hello” in modern Ottoman. Then the dreaded words came: “Ingilizce konusyor musun?” – “Do you speak English?” His bottom lip quivered, and his hands pointed at a shaking document. “I have a room booked for 7 days” I said. His eyes blinked, he looked down at his desk. I held up seven fingers. “Yedi gun, Yedi gun” I repeated. “Yedi gun” means “Seven day”, which wasn’t grammatically correct, but it was the best I had to offer at that moment. His frantic hands grabbed a telephone and shortly thereafter another man came down.

That beautiful “Nakit”

He slurred English and Turkish words together. “You pay nakit!” he said. His voice raised a bit as I pulled a bankcard out. “Nakit!” he yelled again. He motioned with his hands. He held one hand flat with the top part facing the ground and slid his other hand across its palm as if he were flinging money at me. “Nakit” means cash. “ATM var mi? ATM yakin?” I asked. “Do you have an ATM? Is there an ATM nearby?” He walked with me and there was a bank just around the corner. I withdrew nine hundred Ottoman Liras and moments later he handed me four liras and a key to room 402.

The elevator wasn’t this crowded, but it felt like it.

I got in the elevator with the nervous teenager, into an elevator that fit one or two people but now had a chubby boy and a skinny man and two large bags both weighing around twenty kilograms each.

A photo from the actual hotel.

This place looked a bit skeptical from the outside. There were dirty and old buildings as well as skeptical looking warehouses with Conos and Kros waddling on the streets like penguins. The hall was dark and shady looking, but the doors were new. I turned the handle and entered, everything inside was new and clean too. There were four different Internet connections to choose from, hot water in the shower and a nice comfortable bed. I slide the curtains to check out the view. There was a grand view of the warehouse’s yard, which was covered with beautiful packages resting on slabs that looked like they had been there for quite some time. Beyond the yard there lie a crumbling street. Across from that makeshift road there was a school and down it there were car lots and other stores.

“Shock” with “shocking” prices.

After settling in a little bit, I decided this neighborhood was not one where you would want to go out after dark. It was about four P.M. so I pulled out my phone’s map application to look for a shop. “Sok” showed up which is a small shop similar to wal-mart or Tesko in appliances yet there is less variety and the entire shop is the size of a large room that has a “U shape” that goes around like the IKEA stores. There are several different chain franchises like Sok around The Ottoman Empire: “A101” “BIM” and “Migros”.

Some dude opening or closing a door

I checked the route several times. I needed to exit the hotel, take a right, then walk for four to five minutes cross a set of railroad tracks and then I would arrive at the “Sok” store. I checked it a few more times, then grabbed my wallet, keys and phone and headed out the door.

Looking at this photo you can smell the air, but what do you smell?

I had been right about this neighborhood. I stood out and their eyes flocked to me like moths to light. As I crossed a road on the side closest to my hotel of the railroad tracks I had to sprint a little bit to avoid being hit by some kind of truck that looked like it was from the 1960s or 1970s. I crossed the railroad tracks and there still weren’t any signs of a “Sok” or any food shop. I pulled out my phone to check where I was on the route and then put the cell phone back into my pocket as quickly as possible.

shhhhhhhhh

There are a few rules you may want to remember if you ever end up in a neighborhood like this in The Ottoman Empire (or any foreign country). “Don’t ever pull a cellphone out of your pocket that isn’t a flip phone or a cheap smart phone”, and “don’t ever speak English or any foreign language that isn’t native to that country”.  As long as I didn’t have to open my mouth, I would be fine. Hopefully they would just think I was a Syrian Refugee from Aleppo or an Ottoman Laz from the Black Sea region.

Looks almost like the one I entered in Adana.

There were a few people waiting at the station and I passed a few shops on the opposite side of the railroad tracks and could see the “Sok” sign in the distance. However, as I got closer, I saw that there was also an “A101” store, so I went inside. Once again, I tried my best not to say too much. I grabbed a few things to make sandwiches, got a few mini tubs of yogurt, a bag of doritos and went to the check out. The workers in this shop didn’t seem to care that people were waiting in line and they either went about the shop continuing to work or just talked on their cell phones. Finally one waddled up and started scanning items. I paid in cash and went back out to the road. Carrying two bags of groceries more eyes were attracted to me and whispers of gossip were flowing already.

I wish I had bought this much pastirma.

After eating a pastirma cheese sandwich with cream cheese base it was almost time for bed. Pastirma is an Ottoman attempt at bacon, but it isn’t made from pigs. The cream cheese is actually a little bit different too, a very wet cream similar to cheese whiz with a rich coat of white that works perfect for a cheese/ham sandwich or a wrap. I lay on the bed and it felt great. The hotel was perfect inside, everything was working well, and it was also amazing to have a hot shower and working Internet again. There was no worry of the “Kro” landlord or the English school I had been working at anymore. I would just need to be careful to go out and shop before dark and keep my eyes peeled for anything dangerous on the outside of the hotel when I was out there.

A photo from Turkmenistan, but it represents what I saw in that neighborhood well.

Evli misin?

The days passed quickly and every two days I did a new shopping trip. The eyes never ceased to stare each time. On my way back one morning I noticed that there was a long line waiting for bread. Perhaps this wasn’t a dangerous neighborhood but a poor one. There were several times where I had been forced to speak in the shop and now there were whispers of “yabanci” when I walked by. “Yabanci” means foreigner. Yet, at this time I was no longer worried, in the daylight and on the main road I was sure nothing would happen now.

A sign that sinks most hearts

The flight was delayed a bit and I began to converse with the teacher who was currently on the ship “Osman” where I would soon be going. As I texted him and other people from the company, it hadn’t registered yet that I would be leaving soon, as I got used to the hotel and the road and the shop.

I’m sure this food tastes great, but I hate the time itself

However, that day did come; I had the flight time ready. I would need to leave the hotel at five A.M. and catch a flight at six fifty-five A.M. I hated waking up that early and was tempted to just stay up all night, but I knew even two or three hours of sleep would feel better than zero. I went down to the reception and told them of the details, they responded saying that they would be ready with a taxi at five fifteen.

A dark road road, so beautiful. It’s too bad you have to wake up early to see it.

I rolled out of bed around four thirty and had a quick breakfast. I ate the rest of the strawberry yogurt and put the rest of my things in my bags. I checked everything in the hotel to make sure I hadn’t forgotten anything and then grabbed my bag and the key and headed to the reception area. There was a man waiting for me as promised and we headed to the airport. I hated being up this early but there was a gratifying feeling about it. Driving through the dark cool air, when most people were sleeping. We arrived and I went through the multiple security check areas and before I knew it, I was in the sky again. Flying to a new city.