(electronic music)
- Merhabala!
Happy Halloween, my name is Zoe
and today I'm gonna show you what an average day is like
teaching in Istanbul, Turkey.
So a little bit about me:
I finished my ITA certificate in January
while I was working full time at a kindergarten in America
and I moved to Turkey this July.
All righty and I'll give you a little tour of my place.
This is my bedroom,
as you can see.
I've got two bathrooms at my place,
shower, washing machine, always.
Let's see.
Here's my kitchen, a small oven, fridge
and then my living room as well.
(traffic sounds)
OK so someone just asked me how long it took
after my certificate.
Also this is my work cat, I give him a little pet every day.
Anyway, it took me about, actually a week after I applied
at this thing called Teachers in Turkey,
so they let you be paired with multiple types of schools,
I personally wanted to be with children
and about five days after I applied, I got the interview
with where I am now.
Hi my love, oh you're good cat.
OK so I just got to school.
My average school day is 8:30 to 4:30.
You can see we're decorated.
Our school has ages three, four and five
and I'm with the oldest kids, the five year olds.
OK and this is our classroom.
We're all ready for Halloween.
We also just had Cumhuriyet Bayramı,
so there's lots of Atatürks everywhere.
Yeah I have 14 students, all aged five.
Everything's in English in our school.
Sometimes playtime is in Turkish
but all of our lessons and my co-teacher and I,
my co-teacher is Turkish, we both just speak in English.
Hi, so why Turkey?
There are pretty few American ex-pats here
but I have always been interested in the history,
the culture, the language,
I actually studied it at university
along with Political Science.
So I moved here to Istanbul
with a knowledge of the language.
So Istanbul is the biggest city in Europe
and it is both in Europe and in Asia
and because of that, it offers so many concerts
and art exhibits, movies, anything you want to see,
you can see it here.
I also come from Indiana in America
and as you may know, it's pretty expensive
for international flights from the center of America
but here in Turkey, I am so close to Asia,
I'm so close to Europe that my travel is so cheap.
So not only am I doing international travel,
like I've done Thailand and Greece
and soon I'll do Hungary and Spain
but I can also do a lot of traveling within Turkey
and it's pretty cheap within the country.
Turkey itself is a very diverse country.
Here in Istanbul, it's like a great nightlife
and so many cool old Ottoman buildings
and then I just was in Anatolia, which is in the South
and it has great beaches, it's very warm.
If you go East, you can see
the oldest temple in the world, Göbekli Tepe
and in the winter there's plenty of skiing
on beautiful mountains
and it's all gonna be for much cheaper
than you'd find in America or Europe.
OK,
end of the day, gonna do some prep work for 20 minutes
and then I'm gonna head home.
OK so I just got dropped off by my dolmuş,
I'm just a couple minute walk from my house.
This is a really popular shopping area,
where everything's like way cheaper.
It's a bit rainy today, so not quite as
crowded as it has been.
My personal Instagram and I love answering questions
so send me whatever, I'm happy to answer.
OK so it is 5PM and I'm home and back from my job,
I have no prep to do so I'm free to relax.
As for the people who've asked me Istanbul
or Turkey-specific questions, I'm going to share my--
(electronic music)