Monday, September 2, 2013
Post Secondary Education in Turkey
While talking to a new Turkish friend whose children either have gone or are now going to BLIS, I found that getting into University in Turkey is extremely competitive. In any given year, about 2 million students graduate from high school in Turkey and there are only 500,000 spots in all of the universities/colleges in the whole country. Students take a summative graduation test as a 12 grader in high school and their spot on the college acceptance list is determined by their score. Going to university in Turkey is free but if you do not score well and do not get a spot as a freshman at any university in Turkey your only options are to take a 2 year technical school course, not go to college at all, or go to college abroad which is very costly.
Church on Sunday----in a different country ---- well technically!
This past Sunday, I went to church. While this activity may not seem to be terribly interesting or adventurous, attending a Catholic mass in a Moslem country can be intimidating. I found a co-worker who has lived in Ankara for the last 5 years who is also a practicing Catholic. We decided to attend church together at the Mother Mary Catholic Church on the grounds of the Vatican Embassy which offers a mass in English at 10 AM on Sunday. So technically, when I set foot on the Vatican Embassy grounds, I was on the soil of another country, the Vatican!
So we set off on the free TMD bus which took us into central Ankara where the route ended very near the corner of Ataturk Boulevard and John F. Kennedy Street. By the way, that is the corner at which the American Embassy is located. Then we picked up a cab and took a 12 minute (13 Turkish Lira or $6.50) journey to the Vatican Embassy grounds; we got there about 50 minutes early for mass. If we had taken the later TMD bus, we would have been 10 minutes late for mass! The TMD bus runs once an hour on the weekends.
I was shown around the church which is quite small. In the church basement is two CCD rooms and a resale shop that benefits the Iraqi refugees. I met Fr. Jean Michel who is a French Jesuit. He also runs the sister congregation in the Ulus (old, Ottoman, section of central Ankara) named St. Therese of Lisieux Church which offers mass in Turkish every Sunday.
During the mass, we sang several hymns very familiar to me and the constant nature of the mass filled me with content because I was suffering just a few small pangs of homesickness. And just like at many churches I have attended in the US, a special collection for the poor was taken at the end of mass because it was the 1st Sunday of the month.
After mass, because it was Hospitality Sunday, there was a gathering in the courtyard for all parishioners complete with baked goods and soft drinks/coffee. As a side note, the new mass text for the English language which has been effect for over a year in the US has only been in use for 4 months at Mother Mary Church. And like any Catholic church, in the back was the newspaper from the local Catholic Press. It was L'Osservatore, the English language version of the Vatican weekly newspaper!
After church and the social gathering, my co-work and I reversed the process and took the cab back to the bus stop and then the TMD back to campus. By that time it was noon and instead of going back to my apartment, I took myself out for brunch and did some shopping at the nearby mall. All in all a very satisfying Sunday.
So we set off on the free TMD bus which took us into central Ankara where the route ended very near the corner of Ataturk Boulevard and John F. Kennedy Street. By the way, that is the corner at which the American Embassy is located. Then we picked up a cab and took a 12 minute (13 Turkish Lira or $6.50) journey to the Vatican Embassy grounds; we got there about 50 minutes early for mass. If we had taken the later TMD bus, we would have been 10 minutes late for mass! The TMD bus runs once an hour on the weekends.
I was shown around the church which is quite small. In the church basement is two CCD rooms and a resale shop that benefits the Iraqi refugees. I met Fr. Jean Michel who is a French Jesuit. He also runs the sister congregation in the Ulus (old, Ottoman, section of central Ankara) named St. Therese of Lisieux Church which offers mass in Turkish every Sunday.
During the mass, we sang several hymns very familiar to me and the constant nature of the mass filled me with content because I was suffering just a few small pangs of homesickness. And just like at many churches I have attended in the US, a special collection for the poor was taken at the end of mass because it was the 1st Sunday of the month.
After mass, because it was Hospitality Sunday, there was a gathering in the courtyard for all parishioners complete with baked goods and soft drinks/coffee. As a side note, the new mass text for the English language which has been effect for over a year in the US has only been in use for 4 months at Mother Mary Church. And like any Catholic church, in the back was the newspaper from the local Catholic Press. It was L'Osservatore, the English language version of the Vatican weekly newspaper!
After church and the social gathering, my co-work and I reversed the process and took the cab back to the bus stop and then the TMD back to campus. By that time it was noon and instead of going back to my apartment, I took myself out for brunch and did some shopping at the nearby mall. All in all a very satisfying Sunday.
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