A Lull in the Action: ACI

Monday morning my mom, Irmak, Umur, and I woke up really early to go to ACI, which was the high school Irmak graduated from. We had a meeting at 11am with one of the vice principals to talk about restarting an exchange program in Izmir with ACI. The woman we met with was so nice, and she seemed really positive about working with ATAD again. She talked to us a lot about the school and how the education process works in Turkey, and we had a lot of fun sharing our stories and experiences with exchange students as well.

ACI is an American high school in Turkey where they teach almost all the classes in English (ACI stands for American Collegiate Institute). It is a private high school, and it is also pretty difficult to get accepted to. If you graduate from ACI, you have a pretty good shot of being accepted to a good American University, which is the dream of many Turkish students there. However, the education process is different there, and middle school students actually have to take a test and apply to both public and private high schools at the end of 8^th grade. If you choose to go to a school like ACI that teaches in a foreign language, the students take a “prep year” in which they only study the foreign language and nothing else. By the end of the year they know enough of the language to have all their classes taught in that foreign language. After learning this, it is no surprise to us that Irmak’s English is so good!

After the meeting Irmak gave us a tour around the campus. The school grounds are huge! She says this is unusual for high schools in Turkey, even private ones. There was even an outdoor amphitheater, where Irmak says they do the graduation ceremony each year. The buildings and grounds made it look like one of the college campuses in the US! There were even dormitories for students who were coming to ACI from other cities in Turkey and that needed somewhere to live during the school year. Going away from home for college is hard enough, I can’t imagine how difficult it must be to live away from your family at age 13 or 14!

After our tour we grabbed some lunch at a local restaurant near the school, and then we took a public transportation bus back to Cesme, since Irmak’s dad was working later into the day. The bus was tiny and had 22 people crammed inside, and it was SO HOT! Almost 2 hours later when we made it to Cesme, we were sweating and dying of heat.
As soon as we got back, Irmak and I threw on our bathing suits and jumped in the sea! It was so refreshing. We swam for about a half hour and then we went back to the house to change and go have tea with Irmak’s family’s neighbor across the street. They served us tea and also a ton of different kinds of appetizers! They were really delicious, but after I stayed and talked for a bit I realized I was starting to fall asleep at the table so I went back to Irmak’s house and took a 2 hour nap. After my nap we had dinner, and then Suzy, Dave, Irmak, and I played some poker before going to bed.

Julia Marie