Expat Living and Working in Turkey | Expats Everywhere

hello and welcome to expats everywhere if you could tell us your name where you're from and a little about yourself sure I am Gabrielle I'm from California Northern California near San Francisco and I've taught in Turkey here and then back home in the States okay where is here Saudi Arabia somebody ready okay well what was it like working in Turkey uh Turkey was great I worked there for two years and I had a really good time there it was my first time actually living outside of the States and it was really good cool were you in one city or multiple cities I was in Istanbul I did get a chance to travel around a little bit when I was there but I was stationed in Istanbul yeah okay cool what types of jobs were available for english-speaking expats in Istanbul hmm you could do a lot of different things but mostly English teaching I knew some people who did privates but most of the good steady jobs were regular school lessons during school hours with kids okay are these international schools or local schools they have both and I worked at a local school but some of my friends who had actual teaching degrees ended up working international schools and they loved it too awesome well what a typical day look like for you at the public school you worked out here my first year I lived on the opposite side of the city so the city is on two continents an Arab in Asia and I'd wake up in the morning walk to the ferry station get on the ferry do my lesson planning or take a nap on the ferry and then when I got back to the other ferry station I'd either catch a cab or a walk to my other school then I don't know I had kindergarteners so we'd do a little PE lesson with them first and then I just take trips from class to class doing my lessons go home and go to sleep or go back out so what was the commute life um I actually would recommend taking the ferry back and forth from work I switched the following year I had to a two-year contract the first year I worked the other side and the second year I switched to be closer to home and I ended up really missing that commute because the water was just so peaceful and about 30 minutes there and back on the ferry gave me a chance to kind of unload and you know get getting the mindset for work and then get in the mindset for homeboy back so I liked it so it was a good time to decompress a bit oh yeah and it helps that I get to see the sunset and one time I even saw dolphins it's really cool well do you know of anyone else that had a job outside of ESL an english-speaking an expat yeah I know people who worked in the art arena so they would work on exhibitions or people who did tourism and stuff like that okay cool how much can you expect are working in Istanbul as an ESL teacher it varies quite a bit so for the private school jobs they call them backups it's like it means like a chain or franchise of schools those I think starting salary is about 2,000 us so I would say you'd probably make about 2 to 3,000 okay depending on your experience and how long you stayed with each particular school but my salary did go up every year kind of like here okay and do you think that this is enough what kind of lifestyle can you live with this type of money I paid my student loans while I was making that type of money and now I wouldn't know how I would do that with $2,000 a month but actually it was really great because the cost of living is pretty pretty low there so I mean I know it's on the rise right now but when I was there mm maybe 2200 is what I was making and it gave me a little bit of money to help with my apartment but it was more than enough okay how much can you save how much of your paycheck hmm well I'll just explain what what I did I had student loans that I was paying and so when I would get my salary of 2200 or whatever it was 21 22 I would just take a thousand out right away and pay directly to my loans and then from that I would live on the today I still ended up saving enough to go to Europe and Egypt and I came home during the summer summers were paid to so wow that's great so at least half your salary you could say if if you were recommending to a friend to move to Istanbul what would you tell them they need in terms of startup cash um I didn't go there with that much I think I went there with like a thousand dollars or something in my bag and it's very comfortable yeah well the school that I worked for they would put you up in a in an apartment furnished and a lot of the schools are like that too the private schools but I wanted to live in the city and you know do my own thing and see what that was like so I found a realtor who didn't speak any English and kind of went from place to place and I had a great time my first apartment was a disaster my second apartment was really cool and cheap - nice well would you recommend that someone has a job before they move there or should they move there and then start looking for work um it would be easy to do either I think really I I had a job offer before I moved there but the girl who found that job had just went there on the ground and went from place to place so she found a job they're always looking for teachers big city - okay great so either one works yes very cool so imagine that we have a job and we're ready to go to Istanbul how should someone pack what's the weather like um the weather's pretty mild it gets a little bit chilly in the winter but you'll see a lot of sunny days even during the winter rains a lot the summer is hot and everyone kind of evacuates the city during the summer and goes - really nice beach town so you're there during the summer that might not be that Pleasant foot okay are there any things that maybe you can't find in Istanbul or Turkey that you should bring from home it changed quite a bit from when I first got there till when I left even in those two years but I'm trying to think a merit maybe American processed food stuff like that might be a little hard to find but I could find almost everything okay how safe is it there you feel safe on a personal level well I got mugged when I was there but it's very crowded and there's a lot of people so I wouldn't recommend going places by yourself at night time that's what I can say and be aware of your surroundings at all times if you're not street smart at all then you might want to stay in groups at all times okay so was this a mugging or a pickpocketing this was a mugging so it was physical it was very physical yes okay and did the police do anything about it or yeah the police came and they kind of scared me almost as much as the mugger and I needed to go to the hospital and they were telling me that if I didn't come to the police station right away that you know they wouldn't try to find my bag or whatever and I just said fine my bags gone I just I need to go to the hospital so Wow all right how did you meet people um I'm I lived really close to a fine arts university and I met a few people who went there and they would have parties all the time there and so they were and not just parties but art exhibitions and social gatherings which would turn into parties inevitably and I made so many friends that way who just have really cool talents Istanbul is a very cool place if you are into the arts or fashion or anything like that it's pretty up-and-coming in that way okay so it sounds pretty easy to find new people to hang out with you just put yourself out of it yeah if you walk down the street actually the last time I visited a friend I was walking to go pick her up from her apartment and someone just put something in my hand and I there's a big crowd and it's an art exhibition and someone put a bottle of some type of mixed drink with Absolut Vodka was sponsoring it so you'll have art exhibitions all the time we've got a free wine free beer and just art and people socializing so you can meet someone over at the painting you're looking at or something like that very cool what can you do for fun in Istanbul um it's simple is very nocturnal there's a lot of people out there the main areas there's two main three main areas in Istanbul one is one is a stick Hall Street and it's a really long street ending in Taksim Square and beginning in the lattice Square so there are two squares where there's a lot of people and all the way in between there's just tons of people walking back and forth and like I said art exhibitions bars restaurants all kinds of stuff the other area is bought-out street and that's more of a shopping area and kata kuai which is more of just a little bar area so between those three areas you should always be able to find something to do okay so you told me earlier that you you learned a bit of Turkish is that right yeah and would you recommend someone studies Turkish before they moved there is that necessary I never really heard Turkish before I moved there and I became pretty fluent within two years and that's just because of how socially active I was able to be and I mostly oh that too my first year working with kindergarteners it's really easy to talk with them yeah did you have to put in a lot of effort to learn my first year I did I was just learning I had a little journal I carry around with me and I their alphabets really easy to sound out and read so I would just sound out words I heard and then ask people what they were or find it in a dictionary and I think I could understand close to 75% of what I was hearing within my first year well my second year I start talking so it's great that it's great do you think that Istanbul is a good travel hub why or why not yeah it's great because it's right there I mean it is situated on two continents so you could go eastward toward Asia or discover more of the Middle East or you could go west if you could tell us three interesting places that if you're living an estimable that you should definitely travel to number one is Cappadocia it's a small village in the middle of the country and I recommend that just because Istanbul can be really encompassing the way that it's always bustling always busy always million capital gives the opposite it's really beautiful natural rock structures there we go and old old ladies selling food on the side of the road and taking care of you everybody's really friendly a place is great Izmir by the water they call it the San Francisco of Turkey because it's it's known to be more progressive and forward-thinking and that's a really cool place too number three I didn't go to Bulgaria or Greece but they're right there so it would be very easy no that's not my answer number three is Bodrum Bodrum is a beach town and that's the Turkish summer holiday experience it's really great okay cool man if you could tell us what does a weekly or monthly budget look like in Istanbul okay um my rent for my apartment I had a really pretty spacious open a one-bedroom apartment and that cost around six hundred dollars a month I was my food was pretty cheap I would say I spent maybe $50 on groceries a week I went out all the time beer is cheap so like $3 a beer $4 a beer you could spend a lot on restaurants depending on what kind of restaurants you're going to so you could spend up to 30 40 dollars a meal or you could make it as low as five bucks a meal depending on what you want to eat and what are the different types of transportation oh that's good transportation in Turkey is really excellent that's the most efficient transportation I've ever seen so they have something called a dull moosh that I've never seen in any other country and these are these yellow big yellow bands they're shared taxis so you get in and you wait for it to fill up you pay a flat rate like maybe $3 or $5 and it goes on its route which is from one side of the city to the other and stops at several stops depending on who who in the taxi needs to get off so that was really convenient to be able to take that the ferry is really convenient and then of all oh there's a train Metro a tramway and then if all those fails there's a taxi - it's all cheap -

Channel: Expats Everywhere

Views: 66,015

Rating: 4.890244 out of 5

Keywords: Turkey, Istanbul, expatseverywhere, expats, living abroad, weather, safety, police, money, travel, teaching, private lessons

Id: 83hRFySlfeg

Length: 13min 31sec (811 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 11 2017