The Grass Is Always Greener...

Sometimes I really don't know about this whole living abroad thing. What's wrong with me?! Why can't I just be satisfied in good ol' North America?

The weekends are the hardest part of being overseas. You'd think I would relish the time off, especially my new-found time off. My weekends that are actually weekends. Forty-eight solid hours of unplugged-from-the-job. Sweet. Or not.

Usually on Wednesday or Thursday night (if I'm lucky to put it off for so long), depression and/or extreme frustration set in. Whatever insubstantial human interaction I've had that day replays over and over in my mind until I've become frustrated and wounded by it.

For example, today we had the flat cleaned. It was basically a hazardous area and two women spent 5 hours (that's 10 total for you math challenged) cleaning and shaking rugs and mopping and bleaching and windexing and dusting and wiping and de-greasing. The woman in the flat below us was less-than-thrilled by the noise at 5pm, so she came up to ask what the hell was going on.

I opened the door to her grumpy face, asked sweetly in my horrible Turkish if she was ok, and watched her and the cleaning ladies had an exchange since I am incapable. Her husband is sick and the noise is bothering him. Ok. We'll keep it down. Have a good day. She looked slightly less grumpy after I kept smiling and apologizing at her, but still. Fucking dour.

Anyway, I decided that I would give her and her ill husband a couple of my fresh strawberry/ginger/vanilla muffins that I just made tonight. Part of me doesn't know if she'll eat them--Turks (and here goes my fed-up over-generalization, so write this off but I have to type it) don't like to try new things--and wonders if she'll just throw them away. It's my irrational, "Everybody hates us because we're the yobancıs of the building, and what kind of young women live alone all this way from our families and occasionally have a man come to our flat" behavior. But I decided that so be it if she hates us, or hates my muffins, or if her husband is allergic to cinnamon or something.

Maybe my tiny little peace offering will be excepted and even enjoyed. The possibility that she might throw them away is a small price to pay for establishing American generosity and kindness abroad. But as I made the muffins, and then cleaned up from the mess, wondering if she could hear my dishes clinking, and if she was maybe gritting her teeth, I thought about what I'm doing here.

What AM I doing here?! Learning how to teach, I suppose. And trying to make friends, though it's incredibly difficult to meet women (they're at home all the time--another exaggeration), and the men I've met either want to be my boyfriend or nothing at all (that's not really an exaggeration). So. Ok. That leaves me with... right. No one, basically (after my boyfriend and all my co-workers have gone to work).

I'm trying to make lemonade, but on Wednesdays and Thursdays these lemons are really f-ing sour. At least tomorrow I'll be busy again and I can prolong these depressed thoughts for another five days.