My teaching practice in Turkey

My first experiences with teaching began in Tukrey where I spent 6 months as an Erasmus student. In fact, that was my first, let's say, formal' teaching, because previously I was only giving some additional lessons to my frinds who needed some help in English. 
The first day of my practice in Tarsus (a town in Turkey) was just an observation. I was very surprised by the way the headmaster and the teaching staff welcomed me at the school. Every teacher was interested in where I come from, what I am doing in Turkey, why I chose Turkey and so on and so forth.
The English teacher I was observing was a very nice woman in her fifties. She has been teaching English for almost 30 years, so she was a very experienced teacher.
The moment I got into the classroom with my teacher, the students were very surprised and looked at me in a suspicious way. After the teacher introduced me to the learners, they were all looking at me for the whole lesson. I said a few words about myself and they seemed extremly interested in my person. I have to say that at the beginning I felt really uncomfortable, because everybody was looking at me and talking to me in Turkish, but I could understand only single words, which made me too confused and embarrassed. The first day of my observation finished with a lunch, which I was invited for by my teacher and the headmaster of the school.
For the next few days I was still observing my teacher and the learners, in order to get aquaintant with them and prepare myself for my own teaching that was approaching rapidly!!!!
When the great day of my first 'formal' lesson came, I was so stressed that I couldn't even eat anything in the morning. The thing that worried me the most was my communication with the students who have just started learning English. I was afraid that I will get stuck at a certain moment, and I will not be able to go further and to communicate with my students. But fortunately, before I started my school experience in the junior high school, I was attending a Turkish langauage course at my university and that made me more confident.
When the first lesson went on I felt less and less stressed, because fortunately everything went according to my plan and the learners did their best in order to cooperate with me. Only at the beggining they seemed to be quite shy and hesitant, but then they go used to the new situation and surprised me in a very possitive way. 
My next lessons were becoming less and less stresfull for me and better and better in terms of my communication with my learners. The lesson I liked the most was the one I conducted in a school canteen teaching children how to buy a meal in English and how to call certain products. I think they liked the lesson too:)
The day I had to say goodbye to my students was very sad and moving, beacasue they told me they would always remember our lessons and would miss me...:(
My teaching practice in Turkey was an interesting experience, which made me much more confident as a teacher. I had a chance to observe how English teaching looks like in another country, which has increased my knowledge and expanded my methodological qualifications:)