From Manchester to Usak, Turkey

Since its inception in 1946, the Fulbright Program, an international educational exchange program, has awarded grants to over 310,000 recipients from the United States and around the world.

About 8,000 new grants are awarded annually, and this year Kara Peruccio, a 2007 graduate of Manchester High School, received a grant to study and teach abroad as an English Teaching Assistant (ETA) for a year in Usak, Turkey.

In May, Peruccio graduated Magna Cum Laude with Honors from Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, NC, where she majored in history and minored in Italian and Women's and Gender Studies. 

"I applied for a Fulbright grant because I wanted to do something meaningful and adventurous during a year off before graduate school. The Fulbright program was the perfiect fit because it provided me the opportunity to gain teaching experience and live abroad," said Peruccio.  

Peruccio said she chose Turkey becaue of her interest in Ottoman and Turkish history, adding that she also liked that ETAs in Turkey teach at the university level, which she believes will help her in her long term goal of becoming a college professor.

"Since my first history class at Wake, I've wanted to be a college history professor," said Peruccio. There she said she concentrated on 20th century American women's history but took several classes on Middle Eastern history that fueled her enthusiasm for Turkey.

Peruccio learned she had won the grant in July and left for the Republic of Turkey on Sept. 5. After arriving in the capital, Ankara, she went through an orientation and took the opportunity to visit Antikabir,  which is the mausoleum of Ataturk, the leader of the Turkish War of Independence and founder and first President of the Republic of Turkey. On invitation, she also attended the September 11th memorial service at the U.S. Ambassador's home, an unforgetable experience.

Since her orientation, she has been living and teaching in Usak, about a five hour bus ride from Ankara. Her students are in the engineering faculty at Usak University and she teaches conversation classes to first year students, most of whom have never met a native English-speaking person and who have never studied English at the university level.

Peruccio said she has been introducing cultural-themed lessons into her classes, teaching them about life in her home-town of Manchester, about American music and sports.

"Baseball is a foreign concept [for them] and I plan on making my students Red Sox fans," she said.

As energetically as she has been teaching about American culture, Peruccio has also been immersing herself in Turkish culture, travelling as much as possible and conversing with the locals, who she describes as incredibly hospitable and friendly. She's already visited several coastal cities as well as the Greek island of Chios and has plans to visit other countries as well, including Bosnia, Herzegovina, Macedonia, Montenegro and Albania. In her spare time she is traning for the Istanbul Eurasian Marathon's 15K on October 16.

"The language barrier has been a bit challenging, but I'm taking Turkish lessons," said Peruccio. "Usak residents have been very patient with me!"

As for her future plans, Peruccio said she is currently applying to grad programs in both the U.S. and Turkey.

"The ETA grant in Turkey is unique in that you can reapply for a second year which I definitely plan on doing," she said. "Regardless, I'll be somewhere in the U.S. or Turkey studying history!"

Kara Peruccio blogs at kaperuccio.wordpress.com.