Tuesday, October 7 "The Cleaners"
First day to catch the bus in the morning and ride without mom and dad. They told us to be in front of our building at 7:55, but the bus shows up pretty regularly at 8:10. No big deal. When I say "bus", it really is a glorified van with "Okul Transiti" on the back, "school bus". And a big red stop sign, "Dur". I got them onto the right one and headed inside, perpetually in fear that I've lost the key to our apartment, or dropped it down the elevator shaft since there's a good two inch gap between the car and the shaft when we get in on the 11th floor.

Anyway, Tuesday the cleaners came. Five people with TED uniform shirts on came into the apartment and cleaned. And cleaned. And cleaned. They were here for 3 hours! First Aeden and I stayed in the living room while they cleaned upstairs, then we stayed in Lacey's room while they cleaned downstairs. It felt like forever. But they did all the floors, fixtures, dusted everything, and cleaned the windows inside and out and scrubbed the balcony floors. At one point one of the men was balancing hanging out of our window to wash the outside of the neighboring windows. I couldn't watch. I figure it is as clean as it is ever going to be unless we hire a maid...maybe later :-)

Brian got his teaching assignment and schedule today. He will be teaching 4 classes of 10th grade pre-IB and 1 class of 11th grade IB. At a first glance, it appears that the 10th grade pre-IB curriculum is analogous to his first semester and the 11th grade IB class is analogous to his second semester curriculum. Students take about 10 classes per semester, and each meets 4 times per week (two 45 minute classes and one 90 minute lab or test period). There are 1965 students in the high school at TED, and 180 teachers. I haven't visited the school yet, but I will at some point I'm sure. It is a 20 YTL cab ride to get there. (YTL is "New Turkish Lira" and is roughly 1.00-1.40 USD right now).