A day in the life with Gary

Rena has been in the classroom the last few weeks. Today the students start!
Let me tell you about my days. Usually I am up by 7am and put the kettle on. I spend the quiet hrs checking in on e-mails and such, between that, I am in the kitchen. I clean it up to make it dirty again. We have breakfast looking out onto Izmir, and then she's out the door and I am....???
I work on the language for a few hour, making grocery lists, direction sheets, translating fliers or washing machine info.... anything to gain vocabulary and confidence for the day. I'll walk to the park and hit the outdoor public exercise facility giving my mind time to mull over words. A great public resource for promoting fitness and preventative health! I jog home and hit the shower. Now I'm ready for Izmir. I hit the streets to run errands, ya know, post office, film developer, bank, grocer. Simple things take a lot of language preparation and patience. Not to worry. Time I have, communication skills, not always.
Izmir is fairly easy to get around. I have a bus pass and have hopped on random buses to go somewhere. I have roamed allies and followed stray cats. I have also had a job interview! The company teaches English to corp. folks but they only offer evening schedule, and folks I just left 10 yrs of not seeing my wife. I turned it down for the domestic life and travel.
Instead, I am meeting with two locals to exchange languages. One is a waitress. We meet in the morning before her shift at a cafe. We are equally linguistically challenged. A lot of charades, dictionary flipping and tea. I am developing daily tutorials for us. Mostly functional and conversational lessons. In the afternoon I meet with the pastry chef. He knows plenty of English and wants to practice pronunciations. We hang out in his shop and talk. I am learning the ingredients and kitchen vocabulary. Of course there is tea.

Home to make dinner, more dirty dishes and an evening with Rena. So far, so good!