Apple in Gaziantep

Although I am at this moment crunching on a very tasty Turkish apple from a little local market, I am actually referring to the computer folks. Apparently, Zivre struck some deal with Apple to purchase 1001 MacPro laptops. All students, staff, and teachers get them free. If you leave Zirve you have to return it, but we’ll have the use of them as long as we’re here. And interestingly, while the apple logo was everywhere, they used the Turkish work for apple "elma" and not the American company name "Apple." In fact that was the one word I understood on all those banners hanging around. (I'm working on Turkish food words -- I figure they are important.)

Today was the big public celebration of the partnership. Having worked in development at two different institutions that know how to put on classy events, I must say Zirve did a good job. They wanted the American teachers to be standing in front so we had to listen to all the speeches without understanding a work. Finally, our fearless leader, Eva Bowman, Director of the English Language Institute at the U of North Texas, got to give a little speech. She noted that today was a special day because it was the last day Turkish would be spoken within the halls of Zirve. It’s supposed to be an all English-speaking institution. I think the message was mostly for the students. If they ask me a question in Turkish, they are out of luck. But more than half the teachers are native speakers of Turkish and they are under great pressure to use Turkish in class. I think they’ve been very good about drawing the line, however.

No one could receive their computer without going through a three-hour training program. We were scheduled for last night. None of us were two enthusiastic because the language of instruction was to have been Turkish. Here’s where snafus sometimes work in your favor. It turns out no one gave the names of the American teachers to the tech guys so they not only hadn’t set up network accounts for us; they didn’t even have computers to give us. So we got to go home. We had training this afternoon from the Apple rep who’d come down from Istanbul for the event. Actually, I’d guessed he was the tech guy during the formal ceremony. All the other speakers were dressed in suits and ties. Then there was this guy who came to the mike in a sweatshirt. It wasn’t a grubby sweatshirt – it had a certain flair to it – but it wasn’t a suit. Of course, he was the techie. Anyhow we got our “training” in English. I use the word training loosely because it began with a presentation on the history of Apple and Apple products. We did get to play around with some of the whiz bang features of this new computer. Like many trainers, he hopped over the “go here, select that, then push on that” more quickly than most of us could follow. But Apple was really designed to be relatively intuitive, so eventually you can figure most things out. Anyhow, that was the big event of the day.

One thing that was nice were the refreshments. Fancy canapés and a range of juices -- good juices. And when people go out around here, they drink tea. It’s not a culture awash in alcohol. That’s a relief of sorts.