**unpublished blog from a few days ago** "islam for education"

you never see it coming when you first begin a new class, a student who you previous think will be a problem will eventually become one of your closest friends. this happened to me in two circumstances, both randomly and beautifully. the first was a young kurdish girl who sat in on the level six english class i was to observe when i first started working for the school named Surayya and the second was one of my level four students named Mehmet. Surayya is a very bright student who has every intention on being certified for her TOEFL so she can become a university student in the USA to study genetics. i loved talking with her after classes because her english was fantastic and she enjoys the practice. in one way or another we became to speak of religion and i told her i was interested in learning more about islam. she passed along a few pieces of text that were written in relatively good english and i found them to be very insightful. we became good friends and after long i would be helping her to apply for a few universities including wayne state, which was a tremendous honor. Surayya and i would meet almost every weekday to talk about religion and other walks of life until she finally finished the six basic levels of english ready to go on to the TOEFL course. Mehmet on the other hand is a student i currently have enrolled in my class. in two weeks Mehmet is going on to serve his military service, which is compulsery for Turkish men, for six months. it has been great getting to know him because at first i thought he was not at all interested in my class. he was very quiet and the expressions he wore on his face during class did not seem to suit his personality. over time i got to speaking with during break. we both have a crush on the same girl and this comes to good conversation and practice of english and turkish.. its kind of funny.. i caught on after a while that Mehment is an extremely religious kid and i really grew a liking to his conversation. i asked him one day if he would take me to a mosque service and he very nicely agreed. now, in the last few weeks of Mehmet's civilian time, he has become my inside to many wonderful experiences here in istanbul. in the next few days (when he sends them to me) ill post some really good pics of my level four class. til then this tragrically and unjustly does not give credit to my experiences with either however its late and i dont feel like writing...



mehmet is the guy all the way to the left in this pic: