Happy Marriage!

 My AFS friend Nick visited Istanbul for a week. He studied TESL at the University of Minnesota like I did and has a teaching internship in Berlin for the summer, so when he asked if he could shadow me one day at work of course I let him. In my last week of a long year at a private Turkish primary school, I figured he should see really naughty kids in action before he decides to be a teacher for the long haul.

I introduced him to my coworkers and my first class as "my friend Nick from America." The students immediately took this to mean that he was my lover/boyfriend/husband and spent the entire lesson writing us notes congratulating us on our wedding. Google Translate didn't give me anything useful (the horrible "I just learned how to write" penmanship didn't help)  but they say things along the lines of "Happy Wedding" and "I wish you a happy life together."  (The one ending with Hehhh... is especially intriguing!) I also broke the news to them that Friday is my last day of teaching, so they assumed that Nick had come to Istanbul to pick me up. They were sad to hear I was leaving and told Nick that he could go home but I had to stay. :)

In order to avoid the chaos of that first class, I told all subsequent classes that he was my brother. It was easily believed since we both are pale, skinny and blue-eyed (not to mention gorgeous and extremely fashionable) but I only realized afterwards that if the classes gossip about the stranger at school and find out that he is my brother AND my boyfriend, they will have a very skewed idea of what is socially acceptable in America. Let's hope their class teachers cleared things up before the went home and told their parents that Anna Teacher was marrying her brother! (Although, I might score some expensive wedding gifts before I leave...)