I've gone corporate, I have

Although I am back in a land where livejournal isn't blcked by the minions that be, I still plan to co-blog here because it's just so much more photo friendly. And link friendly. And font friendly. However, I'll still be writing at livejournal because I like to maintain continuity. I guess I'll be bouncing back and forth. Kindly do not get dizzy from this and bill me for the barf on your screen.

In other news, I am back at work, and this time out at Vodafone. Vodafone is a big building complex behind a high pointy fence with lots of shiny mirrored window sides and long silent beige carpeted halls and banks of elevators and security checkpoints and card scanners and windowless classrooms, and it's located in Ikitelli, which is somewhere bleak and dismal and semi industrial out by the airport.

However, it is not as dire as it appears to be at first (aside from my minor thudding headache, which is either due to fluorescent lighting or the fact that I've decided to go cold turkey on coffee ad sugar today). It's actually remarkably positive (note this is Post Day 1 speaking). Here is why:

• The driver picked me up at 9:30 this morning from the Pera Hotel, which is a pleasant 5-10 minute walk from my flat through Asmali mescit Sokak, which I quite fancy. The drive to work was 20 minutes maximum, dropped off at gates. Heading home at 7:30pm after finishing at 7pm, we were home within half an hour again, dropped off even closer to home.
• They feed us. For free. The cafeteria is huge and it has a lovely big salad bar and we can eat whatever we want. I had soup, salad, kofte and that creamy cheesy pumpkinny thing with bubbly water at lunch, and grilled chicken, more pumpkinny thing, more salad, and that meze dish that's the cooked greens covered with yogurt and more bubbly for dinner. For free.
• I get my very own classroom. It's mine. I can hang things on the walls. I can leave my stuff in it. I can camp out there during breaks.
• And speaking of mine: each teacher gets a laptop to use for teaching- for music, for power point, for planning, for whatever. I get a laptop. Woohoo.
• Regular hours- I'm doing 3 classes a day, 2 hours each, with only shortish breaks in between. I'm at school maybe 9 hours a day, teaching for six, eating lunch for one. No more 14 hour marathon split shifts with nowhere to eat and nowhere to rest. I'm in, I teach, I eat, I teach, I'm out. And I only teach 4 days a week.
• I teach the same levels twice- I have two Beginner 1s, two Beginner 3s, and a Beginner 2 and Intermediate 1. I can double up my lesson plans for the first two, and can use some of the Beginner 3 materials later on with the Beginner 2 class. Very minimal planning needed.
• My students are quite cool and funny (so far).
  

I may end up hating it next week, but so far it just seems quite good. This is why I am noting it all now, for posterity.