So you might remember that I went to the TESOL Convention. But you might have forgotten that I had a job interview while I was there.  Turns out I got a job offer! So the Ebaby! teacher might go abroad. The job is on the beautiful coast of Turkey at a university with small class sizes and motivated students.

I am super excited about the opportunity, but as I was cleaning my house it hit me: where is all my stuff going to go? And what will I do without the fifty teaching books that I regularly reference like Zero Prep and my huge file cabinet of lessons (which of course I only have paper copies of)? I have heard EFL teachers talk about bringing one boo abroad (usually Azar).  But I just can’t imagine it.

And then I start to think about my other stuff: My poor furniture, clothes and colorful dishes that I’ll have to leave behind.  I know that is silly. I have lived aboard before and it is actually surprisingly easy to pack a years worth of stuff in two bags. I know that is really the least of my worries.

But truth be told, I am so excited about the opportunity and not really worried. I know it will be perfect. I still have a few weeks before I have to sign the contract, but I think my mind is made up.

As of last Sunday, Zeus and Kinski–the couple who met on English, baby!–have been married for a year. If it seems too soon it’s because we saved the video of their wedding for a Valentine’s Day release.

I wrote to Zeus, aka Faruk, to ask if he could write something brief about his anniversary for the site:

Hi Jason,
Thanks for your nice behaving for our first anniversary.Yes, if we were well we would do it but we are sick (flu) and on the bed, What an anniversary this is Just we can say, our marriage goes on perfect, Hope everybody has a marriage like ours Thanks God for this. And? what else? that’s all. Take care. Be happy and healthy.
Anastasiya and Faruk

It’s a shame they’re sick on their anniversary, but it sounds like everything is going well for them! I’m so glad that English, baby! not only produced a marriage, but healthy one.

Even though it’s been a year since I visited them, I still find myself talking about Zues, Kinski and Turkey to my friends at least once a week or so. I went hoping to get a few shots of their wedding and wound up spending four entire days with them. Since I had such an insider’s view on Turkey, I feel like a got a clearer sense of it than the short time I spent there would imply.

I mean, I rarely bring up Italy or the Czech Republic even though I’ve actually spent more time in those places. It just goes to show that it really pays to make friends before you visit a place. But you won’t find better friends than Zeus and Kinski.

The more time I spend interacting with the English, baby! community, the more I feel like a global citizen instead of American. I had a lot of fun on the 4th of July this year, but maybe someday there will be a holiday to celebrate global patriotism.

I took a few minutes to think about that idea–global patriotism–when I filled out a questionnaire for this feature on OPB.

Q: What does Patriotism mean to you?
A: When you have the sense that a complete stranger is your brother, that’s patriotism. When you take pride in the place that you live and want to make it better, that’s patriotism. As the word itself suggests, it’s the sense that those around are of the same paternity or fatherland.

But when I think of a fatherland, I don’t think of my country. I think of my planet. I guess you could say I’m a global patriot. I’m proud to be a citizen of the world and when I travel and meet other pilgrims, I feel a kinship with them. I also see pride for a global community emanating from every country in the work I do on English, baby! (englishbaby.com) a website where nearly a million people of all nationalities are learning English.

Q: Tell us about a time when you’ve felt patriotic, and why.
A: Last fall a Turkish man and Ukrainian woman who met on English, baby! got married in Istanbul and I got to make a video about the wedding.

Traveling with the bride and groom’s family members, many of whom don’t speak a common language, there was a sense that beyond culture, there are things that bind us: dancing, love, humor. It struck me that just as an interracial marriage is an American story, an homage to our melting pot and act of American patriotism, an international marriage between people who met online while learning English is a global story, a step towards forgetting borders and an act of global patriotism.

Q: Tell us about when you’ve felt LEAST patriotic, and why.
A: I think that the Iraq war is an example of provincialism and flies in the face of global patriotism. The decision to fight was made unilaterally by the US government without regard for the opinions of the world. If a state in the United States were to act so recklessly and illegally, it would be treason.

A similar example is the failure of the US to ratify the Kyoto protocol. As a state on this Earth, it’s our duty to keep it clean and assume responsibility for our use of recourses. That would be the patriotic thing to do, anyway. And on a global community like English, baby! it’s not uncommon to hear complaints when a nation fails to pull its own weight or justify its actions to the world.

Q: If you have lived in another country, how has this affected your ideas of patriotism and national identity.
A: As a student, I spent a semester studying in Spain in 2003. I met a lot of other young travelers from all over the world and felt that I had more in common with them than a lot of people in my own country. Our shared respect for other cultures and search for hunger to know about them was my first experience with global patriotism. As the Internet exploded in the years since then, I’ve seen this sort of community replicated online, sometimes on a massive scale as in the case of English, baby! They didn’t end up using any of my material, but it was fun to think all that stuff out, since global patriotism has been a concept in the back of my mind throughout my entire life. Apparently I’m not the only one with it on the brain, either. A man interviewed for this similar NPR story said, “I think we have to think more in terms of being earthlings than from one country or another.”

And if you make it all the way to the end of the OPB piece (which I recommend if you have time), there’s a little discussion about the Olympics, which was of great interest to me since we’re heading there in a month. A couple of sources on the program say they feel particularly patriotic at sporting events. But this episode’s co-host, history professor and author Matthew Dennis, replies, “I’m more fascinated with the internationalism of [the games] than the nationalism.” Hopefully Beijing will be a fine moment for global patriotism.

It’s no big secret that rhymes help people remember things. Kids can learn using nursery rhymes, so why not ESL students too? Perhaps that’s what EnglishToday had in mind when they set out to produce a series of video limericks to help you learn English.

It’s a valiant attempt, but rhyming is harder than you think. Sure you’ve got “right, tight; lefty loosie” useful mnemonic devises, but rhymes aren’t usually that convenient. You commonly have to compromise meaning or word choice pretty heavily in order to get the job done.

This limerick about Maggie the Millipede is one of the best ones. I had to double check if it was already an existing limerick, but I think it’s original.

Some of the limerick videos are just this very, very British man talking into the camera in funny hats, which is pretty endearing. They did a good job of structuring these for YouTube. The meat of the video (the limerick), is at the beginning and there’s a bunch of silly stuff afterward in case you want to keep watching.

The only problem here is that the limerick is almost a tongue twister and is actually pretty tough to follow (Is “nobbled” a common word in the UK? I had to look it up. Spell check doesn’t even recognize it as a word.). This one about a three legged cat is pretty tough as far as English vocab goes as well. But the extras after the limerick are hilarious. I burst out laughing when clip art started landing on the cat’s back near the end.