As a young man living in Northern California, I always yearned to live in a big city. I always thought – like many young, ambitious types there – that it would be San Francisco, just five hours’ drive down the 101, or perhaps New York.

When I arrived in Istanbul for a teaching job eight years ago, after a long sojourn in Prague, I sensed instantly that I’d finally arrived. The brisk, salty smell of the Bosphorus, the majestic sweep of the bridges connecting two continents, the jar of traffic, vaulting skyscrapers and the minarets of the great mosques, the streets jammed with people – all of these things were electrifying and intoxicating.

An endless city, carrying as far as the eye could see in every direction. Not just any big city, but perhaps the great city of the still-young new millennium. Constantinople, Istanbul, the capital of the Near East, Eurasia – a 6,000-year-old imperial city of superlatives, of seismic mood changes, of seemingly unlimited potential.

The city, on the whole, has been good to me. It has given me adventure, not a few lessons in history, several volumes of stories. It has given me my wife.

One of the things I like most about living in Istanbul is that it’s always changing, always growing. You can never get bored of it – there’s always something new, a kaleidoscope of vibrant colors, shifting perspectives that’s pleasing to the restless eye. If you get fatigued – and city fatigue is quite common for Istanbullites – you can always jump on the nearest ferry. The swell of the sea, the birds swooping up and down with the motion of the boat, the stirring breezes, and a cup of hot tea served on the deck, can instantly-revive the sense of romance and pre-destiny that the city offers.

With a new year, and a new job, I thought it was time to make another change. After five years of “Letters from Istanbul,” I was bored. Why not a rebrand? Several titles came to mind, “Notes from the Near East,” “Our Man in Istanbul,” “American Refugee,” and “The Cataclysm Belt” all came to mind, and were dismissed for a variety of reasons. I wanted to have something new to say.

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As a writer, if you reach a dead end, it’s best to move on, make a change of some kind. For me, that change came in the shape of a new job. Two weeks ago, I started teaching at an English prep program at a medical university in Fatih, an old district on the European side of the city.

With the new job came a wholesale change to my routine. Now, I’m up at 6 a.m., catch the minibus down to the waterfront in Uskudar, where I get the Marmaray, a subway that runs beneath the Bosphorus. Another subway ride takes me to Fatih, where a shuttle bus takes us to the university’s prepatory branch in Sultangazi – about an hour’s commute all told. That should give you some idea of the size of Istanbul. Even after an hour’s journey, you are still surrounded by cityscape for miles around.

My students are learning English as part of their general studies. Later, they’ll move on to the main campus in Fatih, where they’ll embark on their “real” studies, in medicine, dentistry, and pharmaceutical studies.

“That’s how we motivate them,” my new director says. “We remind them that one day, they’ll all be saving lives, delivering babies into the world, treating the sick, finding new cures for diseases.”

And fixing broken smiles too, I suppose.

At any rate, they are good students – on the whole, much better than university students I’ve been exposed to in the past. They generally have good attendance, are respectful, and actually make an effort to produce something in class. 

This past week, we’ve been learning about the old Silk Road, a trading route between Asia and Europe that lasted for 1,500 years. Europeans wanted silk and other luxury goods from China, while the Chinese dynasties wanted horses (and later gold) from Europe to use for war with the Mongols. Istanbul was also part of this vast network, with its strategic location between Europe and Asia.

My students seemed interested, so we expanded the topic and talked about the New Silk Road, also known as China’s One World, One Belt project. This massive, trillion-dollar effort seeks to revitalize and expand the ancient network, with most of the money aimed at improving ports and other infrastructure (including a train that will go directly from Beijing to London).

Inevitably, Istanbul also figures to be part of this New Silk Road. A third international airport is set to open soon, and the city has invested huge sums of money already, adding  a third transcontinental bridge, as well as a still-incomplete metro system that rivals (is actually better than, if you ask me) New York and London.

My students and I talked about what the New Silk Road holds for them. After all, they are the future. Certainly the network will create new opportunities for the medical field as much as anything else – medical equipment for hospitals, drugs for pharmacies, not to mention new technology – the old Silk Road also traded information as much as products, and I suppose the New one will as well.

To be honest, I envy them somewhat: the possibilities seem as endless as this great city.

At least I get to participate in some fashion, even if it is only by giving them some English that most of them seem to think they will never use (maybe they should be learning Chinese, you ask? Who knows?)

Yet I arrived at last at the realization that I too, am a part of life on this new Silk Road, just as I have inexorably become a part of this endless city Who knows, maybe someday Northern California’s Lost Coast may be part of it too?  Maybe it all depends, to some degree, on the size not only of China’s ambitions, but those of my new students – not to mention the sense of common purpose, the hopes and dreams, of my beloved countrymen and women back in America.

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James Tressler, a former Lost Coast resident, is a writer and teacher. He lives in Istanbul.