Death

Back on Christmas (Friday), I wanted to make an apple crisp. I didn't have a glass dish large enough, so I went across the landing and borrowed one from my neighbor, Gül (whose name means "rose" in Turkish). I promised to bring it back soon, and when she asked what all the fuss was about, she came over to check out our Christmas tree. Her son--about 16 or 17-- took a photo of me and my flatmate in front of our tree. They left and that was that.

Then on Monday, I came home from work, and my flatmate told me she thought there'd been a death. Some girl had come around the building, bringing people some kind of (cinnamony, sweet, savory, powdery) food. She'd seen people crying a lot. But we didn't really know what was going on. I asked my friend what to say in Turkish when someone dies--there are lots of fixed phrases for social interactions, thankfully--and memorized it in case I needed to say it. But a little scared by the prospect of death in the building, I had hung onto the glass dish.

Tonight, Wednesday, I came up to our flat and noticed that Gül's door was ajar. It seemed opportune. I ran into our kitchen, grabbed the glass dish, and knocked quietly on the door. Her son answered the door. He looked rough. Without knowing what was really going on, but figuring that maybe the grandmother had died...

I said, "Başın sağolsun (literally, My condolences, although less cheesy)."

"Thanks," he said.

"Ummm... Who?" I asked.

"My mother."

I was shocked--she'd seemed fine and young... "What happened," I asked.

Something I could only interpret as a heart problem.

Not understanding, not really wanting to believe, in my horribly naive yabancı Turkish, I asked,

"Is she ok?" Now. Present simple. Implying life.

"No," he said simply. "She died."

I felt so, so, so stupid. So horribly inept. I made him say it.

"I'm so sorry," I said.

He nodded.

I had no idea what to do.

"See you," I whispered. "Good night."

And went back across the landing.

"Christmas"

There once was a turkey in Turkey, roasted by Kipa. It was adorned with fancy-cut vegetables, a tinsel-like sparkly thing, and--best of all--a little plastic Christmas tree on a toothpick. It cost 50TL and it tasted damn good.

The mini Christmas tree could only stand so proud with the mighty Christmas tree looming behind. But why the arrogance, Mighty?! You're made of plastic, too.

React!

I just changed my blog: You can have reactions to my posts by clicking on the little buttons under this post. Now you don't have to sign in to leave me feedback. I have StatCounter--I'm watching you--I know you visit my page! (No one could be more surprised by the numbers than me, but there were actually almost 100 unique visitors attempting to find something to read in my dry, dismal month of December--sorry for being an irresponsible blogger but all my free time was spent on the phone or in İstanbul. :-P)

Anyway, please, react to it! (Or tell me to add other buttons--I can change the labels for things.)

Fiasco?!

Well, I sure learned my lesson about making plans and waking up in the wee hours of the morning. This is what happened over a month ago.

I packed my bag. I wrote my blog post. I set my alarm for 3:50 a.m. I went to sleep. I woke up looking at light streaming through my window... I was immediately stressed because it doesn't get light until... I looked at my mobile. 6:50 a.m. I checked my alarm. I had set it, but I hadn't woken up. I screamed as silently as possible.

My flight left at 7 a.m. while I, in my pajamas, beat my pillow. I grabbed my bag and left for the airport anyway, determined to get to Munich.

I cried most of the way to the airport. I went through security. I stood, looking at the departure board like a shocked witness to a murder. Indeed, my plane was gone. I cried all the way on the walk from the international terminal to the domestic terminal. I went through security again (#2).

I bought a ticket to İstanbul that would connect me to a flight to Munich an hour and a half later. I went through security again (#3). I went to the gate. I learned that the flight was delayed and would miss the connection to İstanbul. I went back through security. I got a refund for the ticket I had purchased approximately 10 minutes before. I cried on my way back to the international terminal. I went back through security (#4).

I began to feel very embarassed in the empty terminal, the obvious return customer who can't figure out which fucking terminal to stay in, who can't seem to get on an airplane to save her life.

I pled with SunExpress for a new ticket (€150 one way?! No, thank you, I really, really can't afford that on top of what I'd spend in Munich anyway). I roused the Lufthansa travel agent from her cup of tea, which she glared daggers at me for, and then had tears slipping uncontrollably down my cheeks when she announced it would be €300 to Munich. I cried on the phone to the travel agent who'd booked my flight, then visited their branch at the airport and cried some more to the sympathetic but unhelpful man who only gave me a free cup of water.

After giving the airport personnel plenty to gossip about, I, defeated yabancı, finally gave up around 10:30 a.m. and went home. I looked intensely sullen and blotchy-faced, and I cried some more. Snivelling, I got home, threw down my backpack, pulled off my boots, and took a nap.

I woke up and booked a flight to Istanbul. I'd figure it out. No point in planning, right?! Why did I miss my plane?! I'm not the kind of person who misses anything scheduled. Not in my deepest of college-stress-sprees, not in my most sleep-deprived states have I ever had a problem waking up on time. If my alarm goes off, I wake up--but I didn't. It can only mean one thing: divine intervention.

So, when life pelts you with lemons, don't cry too much. Just make your lemonade. Take photos of sunrises over the Bosporus...

... and cotton candy and minarets (when in Edirne)...

... and the occasional opportunity to add to the Reflected Me Collection...

Yabancı Takes A Break

Kurban Bayramı, the Feast of the Sacrifice, starts Friday. It's a four-day national holiday in Turkey and everyone is going to be travelling. Lucky me, with my days off on Wednesday and Thursday, I have a six-day break. But, due to the desire of everyone in Turkey to get with their family, domestic ticket prices have skyrocketed. When I debated the merits of paying 500 lira for a flight to Trabzon, Turkey, or 230 lira for a return flight to Munich, Germany, the choice was clear. Get another stamp in the passport and indulge in pork and beer and first-world organization.

I'm staying with a family friend for a couple days in Grafing, then meeting up with some fellow American English teachers from Izmir (who, independent of me, also discovered that the cheapest flight out of Izmir at Bayram lands in Munich). We'll meet up for some of the time, but I'll likely spend a chunk of time on my own. There are Bavarian towns to discover, Christmas markets to plunder, Neuschwanstein to explore.

I leave tomorrow morning. My backpack is packed. My camera is charged. My earplugs are ready for use in a hostel. All that's left to do is change some lira into euros (watch that stack of money disappear into a much smaller one...), grab my toothbrush and head out the door at 4 a.m. tomorrow.

There will be adventures.

You're the yabancı, not me

(Continued from the previous post, Soy Sauce, below)

He came bearing fresh ginger and cashews. As he washed the carrots and green onions he told me about how he had watched some video on Facebook about Chinese food. Gotten himself all scared about the experience. What, did they kill a dog on camera?! *sigh* He prepped the ingredients and I put it all together. I told him about my quest for the soy sauce and he was appropriately sympathetic. Maybe it added to his appreciation. That and he was already starving.

As the soy sauce/orange juice/ginger/garlic/red chili pepper concoction bubbled amidst chicken and cashews, he hovered with his cell phone camera, making a video. Yes, cultural experiences in a kitchen near you brought to you by Tür J.

"Have you eaten this before?" he asked me.

"Yes," I fibbed. I'd never eaten cashew chicken, but how could it be bad?!

"Have you made it before?" he asked.

"Yeah, lots." Another lie. It was a stirfry coming together easily enough. How many times did I make those in college? There was enough ginger in the pot to make anyone happy.

He kept sniffing the pan as it bubbled so I gave him a little of the sauce juice as a preview. His eyes got big: "Mmm delicious!" It did smell good, and I was pleased with it, but was he putting me on?! Ok, I reminded myself. He's never had this before and he's been thinking about it all day, and watching that damn video. When it was finished, I dished up a portion over rice and handed him a spoon and fork. When I came out to the table to eat, he had his camera out again, taking photo after photo until our cashew chicken looked mildly appetizing in the horrible incandescent light trapped by his 1.3 megapixel phone camera. You know, a trophy to show his friends.

I could imagine him later, replaying it again and again, me looking horrible in my weekend sweatpants, boasting how we had made Chinese food. Having witnessed its creation, he could attest that there were no insects, no dogs, nothing strange whatsoever.

All in all, it was a successful day. Yabancıs were lost and found, soy sauce and ginger were consumed, horizons were expanded.

Not only does this Turkish male's palate seem trainable, but so do his kitchen skills: we washed the dishes together.

If you'd like to try the cashew chicken recipe, click here. As you're gathering ingredients for your stir fry, take a moment to appreciate your centralized, simplified, North-American shopping experience. *wink*

Afiyet olsun (Bon appetit, basically).

Soy Sauce

Any Turk who wants to try food from different cuisines should be whole-heartedly encouraged. That was why, when my friend suggested Chinese food for dinner (adding with a smile: "Just no dogs or insects, ok?"), I immediately whipped out my laptop to search for a recipe he would find appealing (cashew chicken, but with no garlic--ok, I'm going to sneak a little in anyway-- and no sherry--he's Muslim), and then spent the new few hours wandering around gathering ingredients.

It is possible to find the ingredients for cashew chicken, they're just not all in the same place. Although I got almost everything else, soy sauce could not be found in my neighborhood shops, so I decided to go to the giant Kipa (which I previously complained about if you read my rant). I found myself in the metro station parking lot at exactly 12:04, looking for the free service bus to Forum Bornova, the giant, big-box, nauseatingly-American-look-alike mall a few kilometers from my house.

I found a white service bus, next to which a couple women patiently waited, and checked the sign over their head: "From metro to Park Bornova." The bus was scheduled to leave 10 minutes later. Not bad, I thought, for getting a free ride on no planning. The driver and his friend came over a few minutes later; everyone (me, four other folks, and the two drivers) piled onto the bus. At 12:13 the engine started. At 12:15 we left the metro parking lot, circled around the round about, and were on our way.

After we didn't turn right where I thought we would, the older woman next to me turned and started yammering: "blah blah blah by Aegean University blah blah turn blah blah Forum Bornova blah blah?"

"It goes back to the metro," I offered lamely.

"Blah blah blah blah blah," she continued, since I clearly hadn't answered her question. So much for trying to fake it, J...

"I'm sorry I don't know," I conceeded.

So the woman tapped the driver's friend on the shoulder and asked him the same question.

"No," the drivers said. "Blah blah blah doesn't go."

"My friends and I blah blah blah," went the woman.

She had gotten on the wrong bus and the driver politely pulled over and advised her to take a taxi. Where could she possibly want to go?! I wondered. We're going to the mall. It's obvious. It's written on the sign. When she got off the bus, the other three people got off the bus, too, leaving me with the drivers.

We all had a good chuckle about Turks not knowing where to go in Turkey. Boy did I feel smart. The drivers continued to lament Turks stupidity at having got on the wrong bus, when, after all, it's written on the sign that we're going to Park Bornova. Not Forum Bornova. It dawned on me slowly, through the lightning storm Turkish, as they continued to rake the previous riders over the coals for being daft, that I, also, was not going where I thought I was going.

Big. Internal. Sigh.

What is this Park Bornova, I wondered. As we wound through neighborhoods new to me, the unpleasant but familiar sensation of mild panic and stress pulsed somewhere by my esophogus. We passed a break in the buildings, I could see Kipa's mega sign in the distance--a taunting beacon of my own stupidity. I forced myself to relax and enjoy a free ride through a neighborhood but I kept wondering, "Will there be soy sauce?!"

We rounded a corner and I spied a rundown playground. Peeling paint on teetertotters, a sad swing set, something like crabgrass sprouting defiantly in the dirt. I took a breath, steeling myself for the possibility that this was Park Bornova. But the bus rolled on. Exhale.

By this point, I was way too embarrassed to admit to the drivers that I too wanted to go to Forum Bornova, not Park Bornova. I thought to myself, "But I'm the foreigner..." No, they would laugh at me, too. Nope, I was sitting on that damn bus to discover where it went.

Finally, at a stoplight, I spied the Park Bornova sign peeking above a car dealership. The answer was close. As we rounded the street, I saw written under it, "Outlet Center" (in English--strange). And a Max Tansas--a biggish supermarket. Score! We finally dinked over the parking lot speed bumps; I got off the service bus like any professional Park Bornova-goer, thanking the driver. I had exactly 12 minutes to find the fabled soy sauce and get back to the parking lot for the same service bus to go back to the metro.

Once through the metal detector (standard in all Turkish shopping malls), I raced to the Tansaş. I asked the bored-looking guy at the customer service counter if there was soy sauce.

"Let's have a look," he sighed and moseyed down an aisle, looking lamely between bottles of red pepper paste and olive oil. "Hmmm... There isn't any."

"Maybe it's in another place?" I suggested, hoping, hoping.

"No... It would be here."

I huffed a thank you, cursing the Maxi Tansas gods for their lack of product, and skulked down an aisle when, lo and behold, I spied the soy sauce. Little bottles were only 2 TL. I grabbed two. I didn't want to come back. Then I saw a big bottle on the top shelf--hmm--maybe it would be cheaper. I grabbed that too and wondered if they would have my toilet bowl cleaner of choice. They did.

Life was suddenly looking up for this dumb yabancı who was ready to take a taxi from a neglected playground back to civilization.

On my way to the checkout I saw the unhelpful clerk and held up my treasure: "I found it!" I told him with a smile.

"Oh," he looked totally unsurprised and apathetic. Or maybe he was masking intense curiosity as to what the fuck I could possibly need three bottles of soy sauce for. In Turkey.

Finally I made it home with all the ingredients. But it was worth it because, like I said, Turks need to be encouraged to eat non-Turkish food. Anything to broaden some horizons.

Yabancı Soap

I was in this shop--cramped and stuffed with everything: dishes, silverware, electrical cords and extensions, dust brushes, plastic bags, dish drying wracks, sponges, soap. I was picking through. I wanted rubber gloves but didn't know the word for it. I kept my mouth shut--I didn't want them to overcharge me for the gloves if they realized I was a foreigner. They offered me some Coca Cola, which I politely and briefly declined. After a couple more minutes the guy said to me--in English: "Where are you from?"

I wanted to die laughing at myself. There I was, trying to be discreet about not knowing the words for rubber gloves, and yet I still oozed some Invisible Yabancı Vibe that he could sense. How?! How?!

In the end I found my rubber gloves, to which I added a Danon water bottle filled with bulk liquid dish detergent--I paid two lira total, not a bad price. For a yabancı.

Treasure or Trash?!

I was walking along the street today--past those guys who sell random stuff on the street (mobile face plates, cheap key rings, horrible imported toys sold for dirt cheap)--when I saw the most boring book title staring up at me. It was some kind of "brief overview" of "plastics." You know. For specialists. From the 1960s. Amused, I stopped and picked it up, thumbing through the glossy but water-damaged pages. Amidst the extensive two-columned text discussing god knows what about the history and use of plastics in the booming global industry were scattered black and white photos of quaint items. Here was a die-cast, two-tone ink well. Over here, a bizarre molded part for an air-conditioner that looked unlike any air-conditioner I'd ever seen. Thank god there were captions or I wouldn't have known what the hell I was looking at.

Certainly not going to be required reading for a class anywhere in Izmir. It was the kind of thing that would be perfect as a gag gift for my boss's birthday. Thinking it might be cheap enough to consider, I asked the seller how much it was.

Response: "I don't know blah blah blah blah foreign book blah blah blah antique blah blah very old blah di blah blah blah I don't know but very expensive blah blah blah blah 80 blah blah blah."

Me: "So--how much is it?"

Response: "blah blah blah very expensive blah blah blah blah foreign book blah I don't know blah."

Me: *getting bored* "How much?"

Response: "blah blah blah expensive"

Me: *smiling sweetly at him and setting the book back down on the sidewalk* "Ok, it's very expensive. Thank you."

Response: *him calling desperately after me as I walked away* "Fifty is ok!"

Fifty?! FIFTY?!?!! After I almost died laughing, I felt legitimately bad for the guy. Here he is, in Turkey, obviously speaking ZERO English, thinking that he's hit on some gold mine of an antique book that must be worth a small fortune. I mean, with such a long, pretentious-looking title embossed in gold of all materials, and such wide glossy pages, who could blame him?! I mean, he must have seen the die-cast two-tone inkwell, or the molded part for the air-conditioner, but without understanding the English captions, mistaken the thing as a plan to save the universe. Hell, I'd want 50 lira for that, too.

But WHAT is he going to do with this book? I fear he may try to hang onto it forever. He'll wait for the perfect price, when really, any church in America would pay someone fifty cents just to take the damn thing off the table at their rummage sale.

No, no, no. It's up to me to rescue the man from such a horrible fate. I think I'll go back tomorrow and see if he's still there. I'd give him five lira for it, just to be able to tell the story.

Public Safety Restored, Yabancı In Custody

~~ You know in films how there are those dream sequences that are a blend of reality and fantasy? ... It's all true until the assault... ~~

İZMİR --- Turkish bankers and innocent citizens nearly lost their lives today at a local İş Bank. The psychopathic Yabancı--who claims to be the Turkish popstar, Ajda Pekkan, but looks nothing like the 63-year old plastic surgery posterchild, and who speaks Turkish with an American accent--had become increasingly frustrated over recent days and finally "went postal" when she had almost finished a bank transaction. Police have leaked to our exclusive reporter the following events which led to the Yabancı's terrifying behavior.

The Yabancı realized on Sunday, October 4th that she had neglected to deposit sufficient funds in her HalkBank account--thereby botching her monthly electronic transfer to her landlord's İş Bank account.

Monday morning, the Yabancı proceeded to a neighborhood HalkBank branch, waited in the queue behind fifty other customers, deposited her 600 lira and inquired about the electronic transfer, only to be told in barely-comprehensible motorboat Turkish by the unsympathetic bank teller that she must go to the branch where she originally authorized the monthly electronic transfer. No. It could not be done from the neighborhood branch, despite being the same bank. Frustrated, the Yabancı went to her employer's Turkish accountant for help that very afternoon.

İş Bank, which has nearly 100 branches throughout greater Izmir, requires a 30 lira processing fee if a customer from another bank (such as the Yabancı, who uses HalkBank) wishes to deposit money into an İş Bank customer's account unless the transaction is completed at the branch were the İş Bank customer officially opened his or her account. The Yabancı was very displeased to learn this. After sufficient tribulation, the Yabancı was able to ascertain the address for her landlord's branch--which was, purportedly, in the Yabancı's neighborhood. There are, however, four or five İş Bank's in a 2 kilometer radius.

Monday, the Yabancı was further irked by the ruffle shirt she wore--which she later admitted to police had been a horrible fashion mistake. Her co-workers were quite amused by the ruffles, likening it to that worn by the flamboyant Welsh interior designer, Laurence Llewelyn Bowen, and one of them eventually took pity on Yabanci and composed a poem in her honor (police found the poem crumpled at the bottom of the Yabancı's purse):

Lines Written on the Occassion of Yabancı's Display of Sartorial Flamboyance:

Yabancı, who, after banking woes,

Appeared considerably peeved,

Waged war upon financiers

By rolling up her lacy sleeves.

Only to come to work to face

A barrage of satire

From the green-eyed monsters that beheld

Her splendid attire.

Yabancı, unacquainted with the iron

Though fond of fringe and ruffle

Rose above their childish taunts

With ne'er a brawl or scuffle.

She disregarded those whose garb

Was ragged or pathetic

And she triumphed over their mean minds,

Their mediocre aesthetic!

Tuesday morning the Yabancı prepared for the day only to discover that her milk had gone bad. Her unspoiled cereal on the counter, she left the house at 9:45 resolved to (a) withdraw 600 lira from HalkBank; (b) go to İş Bank and resolve her debt; (c) purchase milk. Before she left, she called the water delivery man and ordered a bottle--leaving her flatmate at home to pay the man on arrival. The Yabancı left her flat and walked due west to the HalkBalk ATM where she withdrew exactly 600 lira, discovering that she had no extra money in her wallet with which to buy milk, an interim breakfast snack, or pay the İş Bank processing fee, should she find herself at the wrong bank branch. The Yabancı then proceeded to the İş Bank, doubling back past her flat, and walking another kilometer and a half.

After some wandering she found it, asked the security guard in the lobby if the address on a slip of paper matched their physical location, told a teller her landlord's name and account number, followed the security guard to the ATM outside the building, gave him her tax identification number (police are still not sure what the fuck any of this had to do with anything), and answered her incessently-ringing mobile: It was the water delivery man who, though he had found the apartment (not for the first time as the Yabancı is his frequent customer) found no one at home when he rang the bell.

"My friend is home--number nine," the Yabancı repeated every time the water man said something in horribly accented, slurred Turkish. Eventually, the Yabancı simply apologized to the water man and hung up on him because she couldn't understand him anyway, and the security guard was trying to explain...

She must visit a different branch in Bornova because her landlord hadn't opened his account in the place she was standing. The branch the security guard described to her was closer to the Yabancı's flat, about 15 minutes away on foot, and approximately ten meters from the HalkBank ATM the Yabanci had visited earlier Tuesday morning.

Incredulous, the Yabancı stalked away, returned home and ate her bowl of milkless cereal. Her jaw worked furiously over the flakes of corn and rice. She set out once more, this time ready to rant if need be. She reached her destination at 11:17, received a number for the queue--3352--and endured another 30 minutes as tellers dealt with the 34 customers in front of her. The Yabancı also endured an annoying mother and child have this "conversation" for approximately 10 minutes: "Mom!" "Yes my dear?" ... "Mom!" "Yes my dear?" ... "Mom!" "Yes my dear?"...

When her number was finally called and she reached a window she was ready to knife someone--only to discover the teller quietly on the phone:

"Hi! What are you doing?... Mmmhmm... I'm good. You?... blah blah blah... blah blah blah... Ok... blah blah blah..."

At which point the Yabancı bitchily cleared her throat and thrust all of the paperwork across the counter. The teller put down the phone with a watery smile but the Yabancı just stared back and in halting Turkish explained her situation. Some six minutes later the Yabanci had

completed the transaction that had been plaguing her life for the past 36 hours and was told by the chipper teller, "O kadar! That's all!"

It was this final remark that sent the Yabancı over the edge. She lost all self control and brandished her weapon, opening fire in Turkish and English with her vitriolic mouth. What began as an assault aimed at the teller quickly escalated into a systematic assault on İş Bank, HalkBank, the Turkish banking institution as a whole, the culture that allows children to be publically molly-coddled to the point where the sanctity of The Bank is destroyed, stupid water delivery men, spoiled milk, traffic, gevrek hollerers, cobblestone streets, stray cats, door handles which don't turn properly, unfit people, rain, uneven sidewalks, Efes Beer and Laurence Llewelyn Bowen.

Bank employees and customers alike looked on with horror as the Yabancı sprayed the room with wave after wave of English/Turkish babble. Security guards wrestled the Yabancı to the floor, attempting to tazer her into submission, but she escaped at the last minute, hopping onto a dolmuş.

The police were called and they began a search of the area. They were fruitless for hours until they followed a tip called in by a dolmuş driver. After an altercation between the Yabancı and the dolmuş driver about the false advertisement of his route--ending a fair kilometer from the neighborhood the Yabancı thought she was going to--the driver called the police. The driver's description of the Yabancı matched that given by the İş Bank teller. Police searched the radius of the dolmuş' last stop and found the Yabancı huffily walking.

Backup was called, the Yabancı was surrounded and cornered by squad cars, and police were able to bring the dangerous woman into custody for questioning. Her employer was notified and the expat community there sent an immediate and heartfelt display of solidarity in composing extra poetry:

Perseverence

When dabbling in finance

A host of woes await

And banking tribulations

Are unlikely to abait.

But the Yabanci maid

Has braved the trials

of bulls and bears in spate

and has reimbursed her landlord even if

her rent was late.

The Yabancı is unavailable for comment but police say she has vowed never, ever, ever, ever ever again to (a) let there be insufficient funds to process her monthly electronic transfer; nor (b) wear the ruffle shirt.

Gevrek Geliyor (or, The Bagel is coming)

I've heard him many times before. Walking around the neighborhood, hollering something to draw attention. And despite his daily tour and incessant wailing, I could never understand what he was saying--is he collecting junk? talking about vegetables?--until yesterday. I left the house at 8:28, still in a fog of sleep. As I stepped onto the sidewalk, a teenager sauntered by with a tray of gevreks (the Turkish equivalent of the bagel--only waaaay cheaper and more common and CAKED in sesame seeds) resting on his head.

He hadn't finished his first holler before I recognized him. It's you! You're the one disturbing the neighborhood's peace. Every. Day. At about 8 am. I sped up, wanting to evade his path. When I was a mere meter in front of him, I could sense an immanent holler. The air behind him was sucked into his massive lungs and experienced a momentary vaccuum right before he wailed.

"Sicak gevrek." (Hot gevrek.)

God it was loud. Sort of sing-songy but unappreciated since I was still technically asleep. My hollerer kept hollering.

"Gevrek geliyor!" (The gevrek is coming!) I walked faster, joining the few other people heading to work. No one looked particularly excited about the hot, coming gevreks, let alone rush over to him to buy their own piping hot gevrek before all the gevreks are gone. In fact...

"Sicak gevrek... bir lira... Gevrek geliyor!" (Hot gevrek... 1 lira... the gevrek is coming!)

... Everyone else was ignoring him, too, rushing away, trying to avoid the blast of sound emanating from his fit, soon-to-be-man lungs. He should still have been in school. Maybe he's practicing to be an imam, I wryly considered. He could do the call to prayer without the frigging megaphone broadcasting to the neighborhood.

I kept my pace up. After awhile, he stopped hollering about the gevreks being hot and simply kept repeating that the gevrek was coming.

Eventually The Hollerer must stop and set up his tray somewhere like all the other gevrek vendors. God only knows where he stops, but he uses my neighborhood as part of his route to the eventual resting point. It's a trade-off: Would I want him anchored to my corner, hollering all day, or would I be happier with his current morning route? I don't know but I'm just glad it's not me doing the hollering.

Local Newspaper Article -- Statistics of Turks' Perceptions of American Politics

I read this today on Hürriyet Daily News and Economic Review, one of the local English papers.

Obama-mania hits Turks too

Interview: Mr. Finn

My blog readership is up--an astounding 3 followers. Now that the masses are all hooked on what Americans do best--rambling self-importantly about nothing--it's time to throw a surprise punch. That's right: interview a special guest.

My special guest today is from Finland. I met him and his coworkers in a bar in Izmir. They were speaking English and I couldn't resist the opportunity to make new friends. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Mr. Finn--the only Finn you'll ever need to meet.


Where were you born?

Funny that you would ask this. Way before the answer would have always been "in sauna," but when I was born we already had hospitals. So I was born in a hospital, I'm told. I don't remember much about it though.

When were you born?
I was one of the lucky ones born in seventies. On April 1979 to be exact. Oh I so miss the seventies.

How many people live in Finland?
I cannot give you an exact answer since it changes all the time, but on January 2009 that number was 5,326,314.

How many cousins do you have?
Who can keep up with that? I cannot give you an exact answer but its between 25 and 35.

Are you an English teacher?
No.

So you have a real job?
No I'm an engineer.

How long have you been living in Turkey?
I would rather say that I'm visiting here not living. In total it's something like 13-14 months. You can hardly hear finnish accent from my turkish anymore.

How many / which languages do you speak?
I speak Finnish, yes we do have our own language. Then English and little Swedish. I have been studying German, but most of it I have forgotten. And then I know few words in Turkish. I try to use one at the time. Well I could speak more than one but then the one who is listening would need to understand also more than one language. It's just easyer this way. Does it make any sence?

Yes, it does. When did you start learning English?
In third grade, which means that i was 10 years old. You get to choose when starting the third grade wether you will learn English or Swedish. The other one comes later on. Who would choose Swedish? They speak pretty good English in Sweden anyway.

Is that a normal age in Finland?
To choose between English and Swedish? Yes I would say it is, unless you have started the school 1 year earlyer at the age of 6. Then you would make this big decision when you are 9.

How do you find Turks?
In Turkey they are just everywhere you dont have to search too much. I like most of the Turks. They are friendly and ready to help you in any ways. Some times they might charge you some money for the favour, but they really are willing to help. When I think about it those friends are your friends even before you have seen them. You just hear "My friend" from somewhere and there they are willing to help and willing to charge. The real Turkish friends will share everything with you selfless and they make you feel welcome every time.

How do you find Finns?
Just by accident I found couple of them in one mall here. They were not as warm as the Turks so the conversation took about 2 minutes before I realized that it's time to say good bye. Since there is just few of us in the rather big country, we are used to be on our own and not interfere too much with each others. It takes time to get to know us, but I would say were are reliable and also friendly when you get to know us. First impression will mostly be cold.

How do you find Americans?
They are the greatest nation in the world. If most of them say so, how could you argue with that?

What do you find strangest about life in Turkey?
When there's a problem, there's always a solution which me as a Finn wouldn't even dare to try. Sometimes it works but every now and then it doesn't.

Can you give an example?
There are many examples in the traffic or in constructions or where ever.... Well this is not something that a Finn would not try but did not really fit to the consept for the place. A while ago i visited in a good hotel in Izmir. I was in hotel sauna when I happened to drop my locker key under the bench. There was no way to get it from there so I asked from personnel to help me. He did not understand or something else, but he promised to come back soon.

After waiting around 10 minutes I asked from another person who called third one over there. This guy got my point and asked my locker number. He promised to come back soon. I stayed waiting and thinking that ok they have spare key for the locker, but no. This guy comes back with a huge screw driver and forced the locker to open. I could not help thinking why he needed to know my locker number before getting the "key". Do they really have different spare "key" for all the lockers and he needed to know which one he should take with him when coming back?!

What do you miss the most from Finland?
My own space and silence. Green forests. Potatoes and dark bread.

But there are potatoes in Turkey...

Yes they have french fries and they have some times serve few potatoes slices on the side of your plate soaking in oil. I miss the potatoes which are just boiled in a water and then served. Instead of rice just loads of potatoes and some sauce on them.

Have you ever tried typing on a Turkish keyboard?
Yes I have indeed. I used to have a problem to sign in to my mail since i did not realize that in Turkish keyboard "i" is in different place. Afterwards I have been helping other people with the same problem. It makes me so happy to be able to help someone in their gratest trouble.

Do you have a business card? Maybe you should include "Turkish keyboard specialist" after "Engineer"...
Yes I do. I could do that, but then it would be official. And that would basically just mean more work, more travelling and more away from home.

What's your favorite Turkish song?
Hele bi gel, from Pinhani. (Pinhani has generously made their music available free online here.)

What's your favorite Finnish song?
Years on the road, from Peer Günth

What language do they sing in?
Pinhani in Turkish and Peer Günth in English. Can you believe it! Finnish band singing in English.

What's the biggest difference between English and Finnish?
There are two things that comes to my mind. First of all we don't have any prepositions. Instead we just add something in the end of the words. And then we don't have the word "please" in our language. We are cold and impolite so we just left it out.

What do you hate the most about English?
The prepositions and "please."

Globalization or Bust

I made the mistake of going to IKEA today. From the second I stepped through the sliding doors and was whisked up the elevator, I could have been anywhere in the world. For free, I had taken a trip to a country within a country. You can visit the same place in San Francisco, New York, London, Paris, İzmir. It's the same damn thing everywhere. I don't know why, but I find it creepy and disconcerting that millions of people unwittingly have the same living room.

The other day I was reading a new book--The Girl Who Played With Fire by Steig Larsson [which I HIGHLY recommend after you read the first, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo]--and the main character (in Sweden) furnishes her new apartment entirely from IKEA. Larsson inventories her purchases and some of the consonant-laden item names rang bells (Lak, Billy, etc etc.). If that's not sick, I don't know what is. And remember IKEA in Fight Club? That was already years ago...

In America, IKEA is not particularly haute couture. It's nice enough, and it can be expensive, but it won't break the bank. Some things in Turkish IKEA are cheap bargains, but others are freaking pricey. From the designer purses and convincing dye jobs I witnessed on the women eating in IKEA's cafeteria, my opinion of the socioeconomic bracket shopping there solidified.

As if that weren't depressing enough, I wandered across the massive parking lot and paid a visit to Kipa. I wanted to see if they had any specialty import foods I couldn't get in my neighborhood. If Kipa were in America, it would be like Safeway or Fred Meyer or Giant Eagle or some grocery store chain like that. Here, there are mini Kipas (maybe twice the size of my living room) in neighborhoods, and then there are mega Kipas (in which an entire camp of refugees could be housed).

I hadn't been in a store this big in ages. Shopping in İzmir is usually a crowded, hustled experience. In mega Kipa, however, space opens up around you. Aisles are wide enough to drive a car down, the brightly-painted warehouse ceiling soars stories above your head. Is this what America is like? I tried to remember. I think so. It was surreal--Walmart-worthy. Why are stores this big? Everything was there: the bakery, the fish counter, a land of dairy products, freezer cases seemingly stretching for ages. Children played on carts in the open spaces. Where's the merry-go-round?! I wondered cynically. I shuffled up and down the aisles, overwhelmed by the size. I felt like a slow, hobbling, ancient woman who had long grown comfortable with a crowd, but was suddenly thrust into a grotesquely huge _____. **I still can't think of a noun...**

What was ultimately strange, though, was my slow realization that other than the size, this Kipa was inherently Turkish. But it was trying, it seemed, to be more. I encountered a wall of juice and then noticed the pattern of 150-odd identical juice boxes. It's all peach, I realized. I started looking around, comparing it to my mini Kipa close to home. Everything was the same here, there was just more of it.

Imagine going to buy juice and looking at a wall of Cranberry Oceanspray. You want juice, ok, there's Cranberry Oceanspray. You can pick from the top, the middle, the bottom shelf, from here or from further on, but it's all the same.

I floated to the soda aisle. It boasted four different kinds of soda: Coca Cola, Pepsi, orange (Fanta or Yedigün, the Turkish brand), and Sprite. That's it. You want soda in İzmir, pick from one of those. But the aisle stretched just as long as a normal American store, but Coca Cola twelve wide, four high and god-knows-how-many-deep lined the shelves. Rootbeer? Mr. Pibb? Its competitor Dr. Pepper? Mountain Dew? Some Turkish-created flavor that is only available here--maybe made from local ingredients? Nope, nope and nope.

The beer aisle was like the juice wall: Efes, Efes or Efes. The pasta and bean aisles offered more choice simply because pasta comes in different shapes and beans in different colors. The cereal aisle plunged me into dispair again. Cereal isn't very popular here, and I supressed a cynical laugh when I saw the NesFit boxes lining the shelf: Seven wide, one deep. A bizarre, Hollywood facade of food. Or like seeing the Wizard of Oz behind the curtain. I don't know which metaphor fits more closely...

I found some imported Barilla tortellini I'd been looking for, and picked up some scotch tape and a plant pot all in the same place. Despite the absurd obesity of the store, there was hardly anything new that I haven't already seen in some other little store. It was fascinating. And depressing.

Moral of the story #1: Once you've seen a Turkish supermarket, you've seen them all. The massive, mind-blowing variety that exists in America (yes, I dream about the ice-cream and beer aisles) is simply absent in Turkey (although they would give our cookie aisle a run for its money). I don't know if this is a good thing or a bad thing. I've been forever spoiled by The Land of Plenty. Can I learn to be content with less?

Moral of the story #2: To be determined... I don't yet understand this strange feeling enough to articulate it beyond this stupid rant. I feel guilty even writing about this. As though I'm exposing a stain that should only be known to people living over here. But here I am, gossiping about something they're probably proud of. *sigh*

Bank Banked Bunken

I did some banking today. Let me rephrase that: Ferhat, the exceptionally nice gentleman at HalkBank, was able to pick through the plane-crash of Turkish that landed on his desk and do my banking for me. Ferhat, I love you. Since you don't speak English, and I don't speak Turkish, and I wouldn't be attracted to you even if you weren't married, I'd like to offer my firstborn to you as a token of my appreciation. That speaks for itself.

They'll never know or read this, but I would like to publically thank all of the people who deal with me on a daily basis--who stick with me after that initial "Oh shit, what the hell is she trying to say" moment and help me accomplish what I'm there to do. Multiple people a day, almost a year of being here. That's a lot of people to thank.

Being a yabanci has fostored an extremely high tolerence for never knowing what the fuck is really going on, for never feeling like a capable adult. Yeah yeah, speak at me. I'll tell you I don't understand; you'll speak at me again, I'll repeat that I don't understand, but somehow we'll get through it. Tears of frustration no longer prick the backs of my eyes. Talk about learning how to go with the flow.

Settling In: New Flat

I haven't had Internet since I moved last weekend. It's an interesting deprivation--I check email at work but no longer spend hours connected to the web, mindlessly absorbed by stupid websites. I've written a lot more since moving--things I've had floating around in the back of my brain for weeks have finally made it out into the world (You know how demanding Facebook can be). The result: mini-stories being posted in different tags.

I love my new flat. The natural light is great and there's cross-ventilation that keeps me cool despite melt-worthy temperatures. It's on a quiet side-street. The kitchen is ridiculously small (imagine the absence of a single drawer; and putting my little oven in the living room next to the television), but it's manageable. I'm in a shady, tree-lined neighborhood. A couple of restaurants and clothes shops are nearby; outside my door is a bookshop and a flower shop. It kind of feels like my warped memory of Portland--people are strolling around, enjoying life--except that here's there's a mosque directly across the street. I guess that's not quite Portland.

But I was right: moving out of teachers' accomodations is forcing me to speak more Turkish. Practice practice practice. Unfortunately, my collection of tourist phrase books have long been obsolete--Berlitz's Turkish phrase book and dictionary; A Practical Course in Turkish; BBC's Get By In Turkish; Türkçe Öğreniyoruz (We're Learning Turkish); and a couple other random learning tools--they sit gathering dust. I don't even bother to flick through them.

Any sections on how to call an electrician to get him to extend a cable into my bathroom so the electric water heater guy can come back and mount it on my wall? Any key words or sample dialogues with the speed-talking landlord who uses tenses I haven't studied yet?

Nope. Only some stuff about buying fruit and vegetables, or asking for directions to the nearest mosque--no problem there, I can see it from my balcony.


Letter
Dear Turkish toddler,
You don't know me, but I can hear you. I just moved into a flat across the alley from you. I hear you howl every morning and night.

I know that I haven't been here very long, but I feel confident to speak on behalf of everyone on the alley with you: We're all looking forward to the day when you know more Turkish than I do, and when you can do more than shriek "Mooooooooooom!!!!!" at the top of your tiny, toddler lungs.

Love,
The resident yabancı

Türk Yüzüm (My Turkish Face)

"You look Turkish."

I get it more often than you might think. Turkey, you're thinking deep, dark Middle-Easterners. Arabic-style. Swarthy, almond-eyed, black-haired, coffee-eyed, olive-skinned. Ok, some of them are like that, and in general, their hair is darker, but you've also got your fair share of whities with varying eyes. Blues, greens, hazels. Milk white skin, pink-white, yellow-white. Caucausian, basically. Me.

I was buying a dress a couple days ago. The shop keeper was telling me that I have a Turkish face. And that he had thought I was stringing him along, pretending to be a foreigner. We had a good laugh about it. But I've had cab drivers, cashiers and my own students tell me that... The people who occassionally stop to ask me directions obviously think I'm Turkish.

Beauty like that knows no home...

I saw a sexy Headscarf today. Ok, it's derrogatory to call her that. A couple of my co-workers started and it's shorter to say "a Headscarf" than "a woman wearing a headscarf." I don't mean it in a disrespectful way, but I would probably be irritated if I knew that you called me a Tattoo or a Pants or something like that.

But she seriously was sexy. I've seen a few of them since I got here--only a couple that stand out in my 11 months. One was ages ago, when I whizzed by her on the bus, catching her truly seductive, star-quality face floating above an alluring black number that covered everything. But it worked--she was sexy.

The other was today. I was coming out of the metro and the first thing I noticed were her white patent-leather heels--shiny and clean and elegantly tapered. Sophisticated, not like the matron-worthy oxfords or slovenly tennis shoes I've seen. Above the heels flitted a gauzy white skirt. Gauzy. See-through. Can they do that?! There was a white slip under it, but the slip was noticeably shorter, like, almost up to her knee. Her deep purple long-sleeved shirt hugged her torso and ass. Can they do that?! And her headscarf. Well, that was gauzy white and see-through, too. I could see her hair. Can they do that!??! I tried to keep up with her pace so I could keep looking at her but she was too fast for me and eventually I let her leave me.

Stick With What You Know

Yesterday I had the opportunity to overhear a Turkish wedding. The song being blasted over the loudspeaker for the ceremony was the American group, Evanescence's "Because of You." If you're not familiar with it, it's a slow, Celine Dion-worthy ballad that sounds like a love song until you realize the lyrics are actually a scathing accusation of being emotionally-destroyed by her father. It's the kind of song you hear on the radio and immediately change to a different station. It was so absurd to hear it played on someone's celebration of the most important day of their life.

So before you run off and get that tattoo of Chinese characters you can't understand, or before you choose a foreign wedding song that will be video-taped into family history forever, have someone who speaks the language make sure it's appropriate...

Gravity

Things fall on the ground. It happens around the world. But what people do when something falls on the ground changes around the world. Or so I say, having lived in all of two countries. :-P

From my journal on the metro a few weeks ago: There's a waterbottle that fell of the ledge at the end of the compartment. The bottle is rolling around on the floor. A guy was standing next to it. He considered picking it up--that sort of flinching hesitation--but stopped himself. It's rolled over to a kid's foot. We're all watching it be a nuisance. Now we've stopped. The door opened at it rolled over--but not out. Will the kid kick it? His foot's next to it in that perfect relationship to give it a little tap, but he doesn't. The door closes and it rolls to the other side of the metro compartment.

When we get to the last stop, I finally walk over to it and pick it up. The guy who'd been standing next to me watched. I defiantly carried it out of the metro, looking for a trashcan, only to discover that there actually, in a 100 meter radius, wasn't one. In the end, defeated, I left it in a shallow concrete planter (without any plants or vegetation--just scrabbly dirt).

Littering: 1. J: 0.

The other incident was in a restaurant on Sunday. Lots of food places have a mini-döner kitchen on the street to lure customers and meet the needs of the modern Turk. Löp Löp is one such restaurant; I sat in the neighboring restaurant, enjoying my soup on the sidewalk in the summer air. The street chef at Löp Löp dropped a knife on the sidewalk. It clattered and attracted my attention. I watched the chef slowly pick it up. He looked around and noticed me. I looked at him.

He looked at the knife for a moment and then set it on the counter. It stayed there for a minute until he picked it up again. He had a cloth in his left hand. He wanted to just wipe it off and keep using it. I could tell. But something stopped him. Did he remember that I had been watching him? Maybe, because he looked around again, cloth in hand, and noticed me looking at him.

Busted, buddy. I will not be eating at your fine establishment.

He guilty put the cloth down and pawned off the knife onto his co-chef who dutifully trucked off to wash it. Or just wipe it down away from prying eyes.

Yabancı Eats In

Tiffany--an American with obscenely-limited Turkish skills (for two years in İzmir)--continues to delight me and embarass our community of fine ex-pats.

The following is an undoctored transcription of an entire dialogue I took while she ordered lunch on the telephone in the teacher's room one day:

"... Paket servis? Yes... Uh-huh... Yes... Spaghetti bolognese... Spa-get-tee bowl-uh-nase. Bolognese. No... Evet... Cash... Yes... Mmhmm... Evet. Teshekkurlar. Bye!"

That's right. You read correctly. Three of those words were in Turkish (evet = yes x 2; the total mangling of teşekkürler = thank you), but all of it was mortifying. Hopefully they can't tell the difference between American pronunciation of Turkish from British pronunciation of Turkish.

What was even funnier was a few days later when she ordered some chicken, but despite repeated attempts:

"Chicken parmesean... parm-uh-zhan... No, parmesean... Evet, tavuk (chicken)... tavuk parmesean... *huge frustrated sigh*"

To no avail, she finally abandoned her desire and instead ordered what even the most frustrated Turk can understand: "izgara" (which just means grilled). I could have died laughing.

My First Phone Call

The adrenaline-induced elation that occurs when I accomplish something in Turkish is real. I've been here for almost 11 months and have avoided doing anything on the telephone. God it's intimidating. I don't know why...

I needed to make an appointment with my doctor. He speaks English but the thought of talking on the phone was intimidating. What if we had a language problem? Oh well. When you need to see the doctor, you need to see the doctor. Stop fucking around and just do it.

I called the number on his card, thinking it would reach him. Wrong. A secretary answered the phone. Fuck.

I stumbled my way through making an appointment. She quickly realized that I was a foreigner. The following dialogue has been translated into English for your reading pleasure:

Her: Blah blah blah Clinic. Blah blah blah
Me: Doctor Hakkan, please.
Her: Blah blah see blah blah blah appointment blah blah?
Me: Yes! I want to make an appointment.
Her: Oh! You want to take an appointment. (Ugh damn differences in verb collocation from English to Turkish. We take, they make.)
Me: Yes!

Her: Today?
Me: No.
Her: Tomorrow?
Me: No. (Dammit, she's just so fast, I can't think of the words quickly enough to be anything other than stupid!)
Her: Monday?
Me: Yes!
Her: What time?
Me: Uhhhhh (brain stalling to convert first to 24-hour time and then to Turkish and get the prepositions in the right places). At 14:30, please.
Her: Ok. 2:30?
Me: Yes.
Her: Name?
Me: (spelling it in Turkish for her.) But I have two last names.
Her: I found you here.
Me: Great.
Her: blah blah blah control blah blah blah?
Me: I don't know. (both of us laughing)
Her: Ok. No problem. 2:30 on the 10th.
Me: Yes. Thanks!

That wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. I strutted around my apartment for a few minutes, amidst the boxes and the mess of moving. I felt good. Really good. I just made my first phone call in Turkish. That's right, yabancı succeeds at doing something that an 8-year-old Turkish kid could do. Shouldn't I be encouraging this elation by making phone calls more often?

Why not now? I needed to fill my propane canisters and I had avoided going down to the street. I peered over my balcony at the phone number on awning of the water and propane store across the street. I'd talked to the guy before. He'd remember me, surely.

... ring ... ring... ring...

Some girl, or prepubescent boy, answers the phone.

Me: I want a new propane. Mine is empty.
Person: blah blah blah your address?
Me: You very close I am. (Dammit I should just stick with the simple sentence structures and not try to do fancy things like say: I'm close to you). Sema Apartment, 399 Midhatpasa.
Person: (seriously confused) blah blah blah blah
Me: uhhhhhh
Older guy who remembers me: Hello?
Me: Hi! I'm the foreigner!
Older guy: You want a new propane?
Me: Yes!
Older guy: The tall one or the fat tank?
Me: The fat tank.
Older guy: blah blah blah sixth floor, right?
Me: No--the fifth floor.
Older guy: Ok.
Me: There's only a fifty lira note--is that ok?
Older guy: No problem.
Me: Thanks!

Wow. Two phone calls in one morning. I feel like I've accomplished a tremendous amount. It's going to be a good day.

Change of Pace

Change of Pace
I found an apartment in the student neighborhood--it's a quiet neighborhood with a limited view of some trees and a building with a sweet red-tiled roof, and a mosque with a beautiful garden across the street. The cross ventilation is fabulous. It feels like it's in village BUT it's only 7 minutes from the metro and 3 minutes from bars and a fabulous nightlife. I'm so excited!

I signed the lease two days ago on Saturday. I'm moving my stuff this next Saturday. Hiring movers to negotiate a washer, two couches, a fridge, a bed, blah blah blah blah up and down the stairs. Like I have time or energy to manhandle it myself.

So begins the voyage into dealing with this stuff more independently. It's a little intimidating to think about whether or not I can cope with bills and paying bills in Turkish, but it'll be a learning experience. I haven't died yet.

I teach dead people...
The students in one of my summer classes barely have a pulse. I say hello, they stare at me. I teach them grammar, they stare at me. I give them instructions to practice said grammar, they stare at me. I say goodbye, they stare at me.

On a good day, I can make them laugh for a few minutes, but then they remember how much they are supposed to hate English and they're back to being dead.

On a bad day, they're just dead. It's like trying to prop a giant, 1600 pound puppet (a rough calculation of their collective weight [12 fit twenty-somethings at roughly 130 lbs apiece) made entirely of Jello, and convince the puppet to talk. It just flops over and lays there, staring at you. Hating you. Silently. Is their silence the only thing between them and a cathartic grammar-induced killing spree?!?!

On Friday, however, I started to hate them. Here's what happened, Lola (the other teacher who I share the class with--classes that meet for 4.5 hours a day, 5 days a week NEED two teachers) and I had a miscommunication about one of the supplementary exercises she had used with the class the day before. Basically, I go in to practice Present Continuous with them--get my picture of a crazy beach scene (people playing volleyball, swimming away from a shark, building a sandcastle, blah blah blah) on the overhead project, go about teaching them the vocabulary to talk about it, and get to the point of giving them their own copy of the worksheet when... an ASTOUNDING six minutes after I begin this activity, they tell me that Lola already did it with them.

"What?" my voice is sharp.

"Yesterday, Lola... We write names... Finished..."

I stop dead, staring at them.

"Finished?" I echo. I probably got that crazy I'm-About-To-Knife-Someone edge to my voice, because, despite their deadness, they nod. Sullenly.

"You did this yesterday?"

They nod again. I blink angrily a few times. I'm not angry at Lola. I'm angry at their deadness. Their watching me repeat something for minutes and minutes, and the slow dawn of consciousness that eventually seeped over them.

"I'm happy you told me," my voice is like slow steel pushing into their deadness. "Thank you for telling me six minutes after I started... It's good to know you finished it... Now."

I stare at them. They stare at me. Guiltily.

"Ten minute break," I announce. Though it's usually a relief for them, the reward for finishing something, it became a punishment.

They tried to explain when I came back to class but I didn't even care. And when class finished, and I said goodbye, they stared. So what am I going to do tomorrow? Stare back. Damn straight.

Random Stuff

Digital-Schmigital
My recent trip to Ayvalık was carefully documented in digital. Due to a computer glitch, they deleted themselves after I formatted my memory card. So Ayvalık is lost. Take my advice: Just go there.

Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?!
Young learners are not so bad. Their grammar is actually amazing, considering that they're 16 years old. They can--and will--happily plow through a grammar worksheet. But when I hand them a speaking activity they freeze up like molasses in January. One girl, bless her, actually cowers when I walk towards her to listen. She keeps her head down, but I can tell when she's noticed my feet approach her--she sort of sways back, trying to get away but! Damn! The wall is there, trapping her. And I'm looking at her with a smile: "Speak a sentence!" I say. And she tries, but her eyelids flutter, she sputters and dies in a whispered failure.

With my incessant smiling and my ludicrous classroom antics (today's included demonstrating "plead" by getting down on my knees--in a skirt--and wrenching on Gizem's hand, all the while crying "Please, please, please?!?!?!" with a look of tragedy on my face), I would think to be non-threatening.

Melt-worthy hot.
Dinner is a slice of bread with cheese spread on it and a cucumber, followed by three times as much sorbet. If it didn't just exit a fridge, I don't want to eat it.

And yet... Turks sit outside--wearing jeans, trousers, long-sleeved shirts, the occasional woman in the çarşaf and the quite usual woman in a headscarf (the mere sight of any of these makes me wriggle; imagine the trickles of sweat that must be pooling and creeping down the backs of their legs, or the disgusting damp pinch of an armpit-soaked t-shirt)--and they drink tea. Hot, steaming tea. In temperatures inching towards 100°. It's unbelievable to me.

People do wear shorts and skirts and tank tops, but it's totally normal to be covered to a degree that would make any American cringe.

California, I'm Coming Home

Not me. Sondra. And not to California, but to Minneapolis, Wisconsin. She finished her nine-month contract, packed her bags, had a farewell beer (ok, multiple, actually) last night, got a taxi and headed to the airport. I expect she's hanging around the terminal about now, waiting to board her plane in half an hour or so.

The flat is eerily empty. Two water bottles, a bottom drawer full of abandoned toiletries, and the dirty sheets in the hamper are all that remain in her room. The mattress bears a puckered indentation of Sondra. I've long-considered commandeering her mattress--white and pillow-topped--to replace my wretched futon contraption, but now it seems like stealing from a warm corpse. Maybe I'll give it a day.

In August I'll be sharing the flat with one of my co-workers while she transitions to her new job in the Mediterranean. In September-ish I'm going to move away from my stodgy neighborhood to a newer, more exciting one. I'll live with the new teacher at PEE. She's young, hip and I hope we'll have a great time living in the student section of the city. More international folks, more tattoos, more music.

Change is good.

Did I Make Myself Clear?

I didn't even have to confiscate mobiles.

My mobile-talking, carpet-peeing puppy of a student didn't even come to class tonight. A co-worker of his told me that for whatever reason, he is unable to attend future classes. What a shame. Really, my heart aches.

Maybe I'm becoming an authority.

Thy Will Be Done...

Tonight one of my idiotic students--the kind who can't handle being back in school because he's not actually in charge--and to be bossed about by a young yabancı in a skirt, no less--surreptitiously answered his mobile in class while I was doing an exercise. I noticed him, just stopped mid-sentence, looked at him, caused the entire class of eleven to look at him hunched over his desk, hand cupped around the mouthpiece to muffle his voice, waited till he noticed us, ended his call, walked over to us to participate, apologized but said he was very busy and important with work, looked me in the eye and received his "No," from me, like he was a puppy who had just peed on the rug.

Tomorrow I will confiscate everyone's mobiles at the beginning of class as punishment. :-P

I have eight words for you:

Conversation class for 16- and 17-year olds.

Eight hours a week. For eight weeks. What the hell would you talk about with them?! Oh god... At least I can pretend to be a good ten years older than them.

Is this what getting old feels like? A blur?

I am nine days away from being in Turkey for 300 days. I am 2 days away from turning 24 (but 26 to all my students, to whom I've been lying...).

It seems fitting, in light of the numbers, to recall a year which has passed with blinding speed.

• I have flown, driven, or bussed almost 10,000 miles.
• I drink Nescafe on a daily basis.
• I still miss good beer, avocado-smothered burgers, real fries and Thai food. But the longing has lessened.
• I still miss home. One of my students asked me how long it will have been by the time I go back. Two years, I said. His face dropped--respect? disbelief? a brief admission of my insanity? That's a long time, he said. Yeah, I nodded slowly, not really smiling. It is a long time. And some little sensation of home--apple crisp, the pond, and a smile--flitted through me, and immediately, right there in the classroom, I could have started balling like an infant. Could have. But somehow averted it and didn't.
• I can detect a yabancı from twenty yards away.
• I have been conditioned into Izmir's general modesty about clothing and am scandalized when I see the rare excess of thigh, or a tank top displaying a tattooed shoulder, or (this only happened one time) a white dress through which one can clearly determine a thong.
• In general I have less pride. I'm no longer overwhelmed with sadness or embarrassment at being an obvious fool, with clearly limited communication skills. I just laugh, smile, draw a picture or point to a word in my dictionary and somehow manage to get by.
• In general I have more pride. My presence as a teacher has grown tremendously. I will be a good teacher, dammit. If that means that I play charades or use my horrible art skills, or embarrass myself otherwise to convey the meaning of verbs, adjectives or nouns, so be it. But they will realize that I am giving it my all.
• Either I can bullshit better, or I understand English more than I did before. Nine months ago I couldn't tell a grammar lie to save my life. In fact, I repeatedly fell on my face with horrifying clarity. Three days ago one of my students asked me why "Six bed dorm room" had no plural "s" on "bed." I don't fucking know! I looked at it for less than a second--"Because 'six bed' is an adjective here and there are special rules for plural when a noun is an adjective." She nodded, pacified: The guru had delivered a satisfactory answer. But sure enough, I checked a Wikipedia entry later and buried amidst horrible linguistics jargon I found a bit about compound adjectives having special rules for plural. But I'd never studied it before...
• I'm learning how to relax. Balancing my intense work ethic is the fierce determination to sit on a beach and do nothing productive for six or seven hours. In university, I couldn't have such a simple separation of church and state, as it were. Work and fun constantly bled into each other. But especially over the past couple months, I've been able to establish boundaries.
• I can't change my students. They've grown up in an intensely patriarchal society and women are here where America was in (get ready for a huge, over-generalization that is very likely FALSE because I wasn't even alive and can't really know about...) the 1960s. I haven't had that many problems but there is the occasionally open, mocking, sexist student who finds the picture of the female pilot or female chef amusing. Or the students' general repulsion by Chinese and Japanese food. Or their claims that Indians are dirty and Bollywood films have strange dancing. What can I do? Isms (racism, sexism, age-ism) exist and I can't single-handedly eradicate them from my classroom. I just roll my eyes, or raise my eyebrow, and move on with whatever I was doing.
• I have even less of an idea of "what I'm going to do when I grow up" than I did before, but this year has shown me that I'm going to age faster than I thought I would.
  

Çeşmeye gidiyorum (I'm going to Çeşme)

It's finally my weekend again. I have one plan for today. Indulge in more of this:

Locked Out

A few weeks ago I forgot my keys in the flat. My flatmate, Sondra, wasn't home and wasn't going to come home for awhile. I ended up going to a friend's to wait it out, but vowed to fix a spare set of keys inside our mailbox, so that I could avoid future incident.

Did I follow through?! No. Do I have anyone to blame but myself?! No.

So when I was on the bus tonight, rummaging though my bag to find my keys, I was fucking irritated to discover the lack of distinctive jangling at the bottom of my bag.

And once again, Sondra wasn't home and wasn't going to come home for awhile. I was lucky because the restaurant a meter from our building door--which had gone out of business for a couple months--reopened just yesterday. I called the waiter with a rather surly disposition and grumpily parked myself in the chair closest to our flat. I bitterly ordered a tea to wait for my housemate.

It dawned on me after awhile that she might not be coming home at all--her days off are now different from mine, and tonight (though Sunday) is the end of her workweek, so she might be going to party. What if I just sat here all night waiting for her?

I fumed over my tea, sipping it to make it last longer, looking up longingly at the fifth floor (which in any country but America is actually the sixth floor). So close, yet so far. I wondered if I could lower myself to our balcony from my upstairs neighbors'. I had left my balcony door open for the breeze this morning, and I could easily get inside once I was on my balcony. In my head I made some sentences to ask Orhan: "Benim anatarlarımı unutdum. Senin balkonın kullanabilir miyim? (I forgot my keys. Can I use your balcony?)"

It would be risky, and I doubted Orhan would be happy. How would I explain to him that I have gone rock-climbing and rappelling? How would I assure him that I could do it? Would people across the street notice me climb down? I envisioned the neighbors watching me dangle above the concrete. "Crazy yobancılar," they would mutter. But what, I defended in my head, would they do if they got locked out?! Surely Turks, too, must forget their keys occasionally.

I concluded that my descent would be easier if I had some kind of sheet or rope to tie around the railing. However, when I checked my immediate memory for "sheet" or "rope", I found no Turkish equivalents. I doubted that neither İsan (the corner market owner) nor the new restaurant waiter would permit me to snoop through their closets.

Unable to explain my needs, I would have to perform my death-defying stunt relying only on my hands. But my hands would be sweaty from anticipation. I remembered my days of rock-climbing and pool-playing. I needed chalk to absorb the sweat. Would Orhan have any chalk? Highly doubtful, but flour would work. His wife must surely have flour. Any Turkish woman worth her weight in kebab would have flour in her kitchen.

The waiter brought me a second cup of tea. The wind was starting to blow harder, and it was getting darker. My mood blackened further. I was tired and wanted Sondra to come home. Why the fuck had I forgotten my keys again?! Would spending all night waiting outside for Sondra, or splattering onto the concrete after slipping as I tried to get from one balcony to another, help me learn my lesson to be less scatterbrained?

To facilitate wallowing in my own pity, I pointed up to the fifth floor and told the waiter that I lived here but had forgotten my keys. My housemate wasn't coming home soon. Oh woe is me.

Before I'd even finished explaining the situation, he'd flipped open his cell phone and called his locksmith friend. He spoke ludicrously fast, despite my repeated attempts to slow him down and repeat things, but I understood that someone was coming to open my door for 25 or 30 lira.

As my third cup of tea arrived, so did the locksmith. The waiter accompanied us up to my flat. About ten minutes after the he'd called for help, my door was open.

What's more?! When I handed the locksmith a twenty and a ten note, asking if he had five in change (only to be told no, he didn't), the waiter handed me back my ten, opened his own wallet and paid the remaining five. I offered my money to him-- "Çay için (For the tea)." He declined. "Lütfen! (Please!)" I tried to give him the money again a few seconds later but he clucked his tongue, batted my hand away, got into the elevator and disappeared.

Moral #1: Never underestimate the hospitality of a Turk.
Moral #2: The amount you can accomplish in your own language is staggering. Life is supposed to be this easy, J, you dummy. Prolonged exposure to being an Other is obviously hazardous to your mental health.