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Life in turkey is like the tomatoes here, for most people it’s fine, but for me I just can’t. 

First start with small everyday life.

So many times people will ask me “where are you from?"

And always that’s all they know and start talking a bunch of Turkish and sometimes strange movements
once one man grabbing his own neck and choking his throat
another time they just sit and kept looking at me in strange ways.
When I first arrived, one police stopped me even before I go through the customs, they stopped me for one hour checking all my files. And start making fun of my name by pronouncing it in all kind of weird voices
After they finally let me through, I’m at the custom
He saw my passport, I show him the German student visa and that I’m Erasmus.
And he just laughed and took it to the guy next to him and saying like “hey its Taiwan! wow what a rare thing!"

I’m NOT a rare specie in this Zoo which you can just play with.

So for the first thing, phone.
They let all foreign phone have three months since they inserted a Turkish sim card. And then there will be no signal for this phone unless go to pay some tax or some phone store can use some “skill" to make it work, how long is not guaranteed.
This is a method to protect the local phone producers, or going to nearby countries you can buy phones a lot cheaper.
For Iphone X 64GB 6099 tl around 1355 euro
In Germany 1149 euro, Taiwan around 1026

This actually show three things
High import tax: all foreign products are not worthy to buy in here

Strong government control: the government put control on all the things, no noise after 12, or the police will come, even its in the middle of the noisy area.

Black method: though usually the official method is usually very bad or not functioning, so people came up with all kind of “hacks"

And like in September my roommate helped me set up the sim card and I put 75 tl in it.

The system is strange and the money used up in one month, which should be only 24 per month

So in October I went there by myself, I thought it should be easy. But not, it took me almost 2 hours and I got a strange lottery or TV Serie package, ok it is also 4 gb, but its more expensive and they asked me to charge money twice, in a total of 40~50, and also my father’s name and mother’s name. It was a really strange thing and I spent the whole morning there.
After this experience I never go there alone.

Transportation

The transportation in Izmir is IZban, metro, Eshot bus, and private minibus
In Urla there is only Eshot bus and minibus

Going to school 35 minutes, to Izmir 70~80 minutes, Kitesurf 30 minutes, Cesme dive 60 minutes

The minibus is really small but a little faster, the EShot is big slow
Both are shaking and hot, not ventilation

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The undeveloped world shouldn’t be the issue, still, the people here is what causing it.

Am I suffering? Not in a serious level, and actually maybe whining too much

Also this atmosphere among all shows this, and the cycle of hatred started so fast that I can’t even stop it

So, I will need to apologize if you are mad about me for reading this article. And for the followings.

Since I came because of my master course, let’s talk about education. 

Basically the feeling is that everyone is putting a lot of effort and time, having a lot of pressure to achieve low standard results. 

Not only in my experience, but also others. 

Well mostly Erasmus students are just having vacation and fun in the exchange semester, but here it’s giving tons of quests, exams, and homework

If these things help, at least it’s acceptable, but it’s not

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Here I’ll just stay with my personal situation first

Wednesday morning: research seminar 

This class is on the purpose of setting the basis of the Master thesis, the literature part. 

The content is teaching a book called “how to do a social research “

Well it’s acceptable to learn that, but again, it’s just basic 101 information, very general 

When in a master program, the form, the structure, the content and plagiarism should be taught clearly and be required 

But it’s not. 

And since there is a very wide range of usage of social research, the topics are also depends on each students own instructor. So the function of this course is just to let us create the first proposal. 

But nothing is regulated or defined. 

It’s worse than my bachelor reports. 

And for the performance 

The teacher sometimes cancels class and once even when everyone is already in the classroom waiting 

She just said:5 minutes.  In WhatsApp, 

another 30 passed 

:Another 10

Eventually class cancelled. 

And the classmates attendance was also low, once even  only me came to class alone

And for instructing, four of us have completely different topics

Gis, Urban-rural Interface, regional Economy, sustainable development 

So it’s impossible to know them all and instruct

So when not regulate the form, and no research direction instruction 

This class is only letting us looking for research question on our own. 

I can’t say it’s useless, even comparing to other courses, it helped. 

But the low standard is just unbelievable 

And one funny thing : the teacher has one habit

When she thinks, she kept her mouth open and generates an Aaaaaaa sound, Can up to one minute. 

Thursday morning: regional economics and development 

At first I thought he is a professor who really teach something empirical. 

But after the syllabus is changed, the whole class is awful. 

There’s just not enough time to produce one quality report, and also the professor is not looking for one.

But today its finally finished, I gave myself only 30 out of 100

This atmosphere of losing motivation is among all the people in all departments and I have not idea why, I even stopped my exercising habit

For the afternoon, planning theory.

I just found that the professor is a doctor of philosophy, no wonder I understand nothing

tons of reading every week, but I still read them all

the way is to let 2~3 students present, and mostly it’s just collages of the sentences of the readings, and they just read it
And its always too long, the teacher never explain much and want us to feel by our self
well, I really don’t see anything out of the history of planning in US
All the theories, it was worse than geography
We are debating if we are science, and this is just social science and Utopian versus developer
All the questions lead to unknown.

The final exam was made easy for the teacher didn’t know if we understand or not
good call, because I don’t know a thing

And the last class is GIS, it is slow.

Every Friday from 10~16, just pure nothing, it could be done in one hour for me

It introduced ESRI story map, arcgis pro, online and the license is useful

And I gave a lesson for spatial data mining

The worst thing is that so many times it cancelled first time at 12.30 am

so I check every Friday before I leave

and then it happened that he cancelled at 10, 30 minutes before the class start

Well it’s worse for others from Izmir, just two hours for nothing going in the horrible bus.

To conclude, the semester here asked a lot from the students but the quality is not regulated

And all the universities are so busy that all people are overwhelmed by it

For me? I kind of managed them well, too much time in the Urla with no wind