Spring Has Sprung

The foggy, cold haze of March seems to have finally lifted and now the city is full of flowers blooming everywhere!

Introduction to Istanbul

Ok. I no longer live in Izmir. I moved to Istanbul. Long and complicated story. Too boring to be repeated, so here are new things to nibble on.

I arrived a month ago and settled, in this sprawling city of 15 million, in the heart of the old Istanbul itself: Sultanahmet (technically on the European continent). A three minute walk from my house is the Blue Mosque, and across from the Blue Mosque is the Aya Sofia, and just behind that is Topkapi Palace, which housed the Ottoman sultans for 400 years. Or a three minute walk in the other direction takes me to the Bosporus where I can wander along the ruined walls of the Ottoman fortress. This is the true, cliche, original Istanbul. So naturally, it's become the mecca of ultra-high-powered-in-your-face-Hey!-you-tourist-who's-here-for-two-days-and-you-want-to-experience-the-capital-of-the-Ottoman-Empire-so-we're-gonna-fucking-show-it-to-you Istanbul.

The Blue Mosque

The Aya Sofia

So I live in Istanbul, but it's the Istanbul that is the face of All Things Turkish. My street is a strange pocket of Turkish life within the larger bubble of Sultanahmet, an area largely inhabited by tourists. Many of the old, Greek buildings have been renovated into swanky hotels and restaurants. The concentration of hand-woven carpets per square meter is probably higher in Sultanahmet than anywhere else in Turkey.

But if you wander just past the train tracks of Sultanahmet, you'll find a few streets which haven't yet been absorbed by tourism. And here, in an old crumbling Greek building surrounded by other old crumbling Greek buildings, packed with Turkish families--women hanging out the window to shake laundry or chat with a neighbor who's also hanging out her window; kids playing in the street; mopeds zipping over cobblestones; men roaming the streets pushing

carts full of pastries or fresh vegetables--I live.

My apartment isn't modern. The windows are old and I can hear everything on the street. But it has this incredible, beautiful charm to me. High ceilings with huge crown molding which has been painted light blue. The living room has a raised wood geometric pattern of squares, hexagons and stars in it. A heavy front door with big brass door handles and an old-fashioned keyhole above the newer one that locks securely.

And I leave from here and go to work. I lock my door. I walk past the cluster of teenage boys on the corner, duck under the elevated train tracks, walk through the hoards of street sellers convinced I'm another tourist until I blow them off in Turkish, between the Aya Sofia and the Blue Mosque, and get on the tram. I cross the Golden Horn and, at the end of the line--still in Europe, but further north--I scuttle down into a tunnel that gives me a transfer connection to the bustling hub, Taksim. If I chose to go aboveground here, I would be spit out at a shopping avenue that could be likened to Times Square in New York... maybe. But instead, I stay underground, and go further north, still in Europe. After the quiet, predictable precision of the metro, I arrive above-ground in a shiny, sky-scraper-packed business district. Men and women in sharper clothes than I hurry by. We pick our way through the cars. The cobblestones of Sultanahmet are long gone; traffic crawls over smooth asphalt. I stand at a bus stop and wait to be picked up. The bus zips down hills and grinds up other ones. Finally we reach a toll bridge and we're crossing the Bosporous.

I love this part--because even on the steamy, tropical, condensation-saturated bus, even here, I find myself in awe, looking through the fog-blanket at the fancy estates that dot the hill around the 600-year old Rumeli Fortress. And then, we're in Asia, technically. But it's an event that every bus-goer is extremely oblivious to. They're going to work. And it's 8 o clock in the morning. And the drooping eyelids show how they wish they were back in bed. Europe?! Asia?! There's very little glamour. We take an exit off the freeway and we find ourselves again in a glass and polished steel world of baby sky-scrapers five to fifteen stories tall. Corporations waiting to grow big and strong.

Here, in a city within Istanbul, I work. Again, teaching English, but this time private lessons rather than classes like in Izmir. The change of pace is very appreciated and my students are growing on me. My boss is flexible (I can have a holiday) as well as generous (she's offered to give me free Turkish lessons). She arranged for one of her friends to give me private tutoring twice a week.

Tuesdays and Thursdays, I sit across the table from Aylin, my tutor. She's a 35-year old mother of two and she's gone back to school to get her MBA. A smart, busy, ambitious lady, this one, but she patiently sits with me and plows through the endless field of Turkish with me. We communicate in a mixture of 85% Turkish, 15% English. She speaks quickly, and I've given up trying to get her to slow down. I get the gist.

Yesterday, at the beginning of our lesson, she was filling out a survey about life in Istanbul, so after I peered at hers, she gave me my own.

Name. Age. Occupation. District where you live. Do you like Istanbul? Do you miss Istanbul when you leave the city? Do you own, rent or free-load? Ok. Easy enough. I ticked off my answers.

Do you feel like yourself in Istanbul? Uh... Myself. I played with word in my mind. Do I feel like myself?! What kind of question is that? I don't even know where to begin. Ok, next question.

What kind of city do you want Istanbul to be in the future? Again, I'm stymied. But now not because I don't know the answer, but rather because it's not my city. I tried to explain my conundrum to Aylin--"But I'm just here; I'm just watching; this isn't my city..."

I don't remember what I ticked. But God! The questions that nagged me. On such a rainy, foggy, mundane, unglamorous Tuesday afternoon in Istanbul, here I was reminded that I am still, and little more than, a visitor. No matter if it's Europe or Asia.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Domates--Bir Kilo, Bir Lira

I am living the life: sitting on my balcony in a light breeze, drinking my morning Nescafe and eating my muffin, watching the waves a few hundred meters away.

A truck rolls slowly down the street. The driver is on a loudspeaker blasting: "Fresh tomatoes--one kilo for one lira." The message ricochets off the tall walls created in the corridor of apartment buildings lining Mithat Paşa Street. His son stands in the bed of the truck, yelling a similar message at a lower volume.

The truck--laden with tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers--stops midway between the two small grocery stores in front of my flat. The driver gets out, stands in the street and hollers about his tomatoes again.

Women in the flat directly above the truck start to notice. A couple poke their heads out of windows and lean off of balconies, craning their necks to see the produce. One on the sixth floor confirms the price with the driver and disappears into her flat, only to emerge a few moments later on the street to buy.

A head appears in a second floor window; her friend from the sixth floor buys her tomatoes for her.

The driver, as he looks around at the tall flats and balconies, notices me peering down at him. He hollers about tomatoes at me, but I sink back in my chair, out of his line of sight. Thankfully I didn't have my camera out right then when he looked at me. What a yobancı...

No one else comes to buy and he climbs back into the cab, his son braces himself against the truck walls and they continue their crawl down Mithat Paşa.

This kind of thing happens regularly in İzmir. Farmers with local, fresh produce park their truck--often in the street--and set up temporary shop. I can't imagine that local manavs (green grocers) are happy about this, but what can they do?!

Maybe I never lived in a big-enough city in the States, but this approach to food is entirely new to me. I think that there would be all sorts of red tape stopping my farmer and his son from selling their veggies on the street: no business permit; health and cleanliness standards that someone in a white coat would be willing to quibble about; disturbing the peace with all that hollering.

Then there's the moving traffic violation of his son enjoying the morning sun in the back of the truck... Not to mention the crime of selling tomatoes for so absurdly cheap: At today's exchange with the American dollar, that's 32 cents a pound for fresh, farm-picked tomatoes that actually taste like tomatoes. Beat that Monsanto.

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.

Knit Like A Turk

I was watching some home crafts show today and couldn't resist making a video (of horrible quality...) of this woman knitting. For you Western-World Yarn Fiends out there, you'll probably be interested in the way she wraps the yarn and carries it in her right hand. I've never seen a Rightie knit with such speed before... Good luck figuring out what she's doing...

An Adventure A Day...

It's easy to become a creature of intense, ingrained habit. After shopping in particular stores enough times, I know what the clerks expect, and they expect me. They also know not to talk to me too much, and I'm left in peace to puzzle over the words on a package of biscuits, or to laboriously compare one brand of laundry soap to another.

However, one becomes tired of routine and novelty is required. When you're a yobanca, it is impossible for a new social interaction to occur without some mistake or misunderstanding. Even browsing in stores, a seemingly simple in-and-out procedure, can't pass without incident. In other words, everything that should be completely mundane is a potential adventure.

Today, inside a giant store comparable to Safeway or Walmart, I was reprimanded by a clerk for trying to pass the cash registers and get out the exit door without anything to purchase. Accompanying her words was a confusing hand gesture which I understood as: "Go back through the store and exit via a different route." Ok, but once I realized that there was only one exit door, I got really confused.

I finally gave up guessing and not wanting to set off any alarm bells or be chased after by store security clerks or whatever happens to Naughty Yobancıs, I asked a clerk giving away free cocktail weenies. God bless him if he understood whatever the hell I was trying to ask; I didn't even know what I was trying to ask. In my moment of infantile communication, I was once again grateful that human beings possess arms and hands that can point--for when my ears fail to comprehend.

Then there's the issue of money. Turkey is constantly playing with it currency to compensate for inflation. For example, what is known officially as five lira in 2009's new money can also be called five million lira in the old money. While many Turks take the terminology for old money in stride, I am often puzzled.

Take this morning's börek (a pastry filled with cheese, spinach, potatoes, etc.) shopping experience. When I asked how much it cost, the dictionary translation of her answer was, "Fourteen hundred and fifty." I tried not to look at the cash register as my brain chewed on the numbers--You can do it, J! You can do it!--but eventually my eyes were tempted to the glowing numbers: 1.45 lira. Hmm... I didn't beat myself up too much about my abysmal comprehension.

There are days when I wonder what it'll be like to live in North America again. Part of me longs for the easy comfort that would exist for me if only I chose to come home from this ridiculous chase I'm on. But when I successfully exit a store, or manage to pay without looking like a complete ass (instead of a partial ass), I get a little buzz. And that little buzz is addictive.

Rain rain go away

The rain has been unrelenting. Even now, in my new room--with a window that affords sounds of Izmir that I didn't hear before (like the rain, the Call to Prayer, dog and cat fights)--even now, at 9 o' clock, the rain is pouring. It was pouring when I woke up at 7 this morning to go to work, and it is still drip-dropping down the trees. Thunder rumbles. It is beautiful and cozy, so long as I am inside and free of work.

The rain clouds blanket the city in its own warmth. And on rainy days, the bus is a microclimate of its own--tropical in its steaminess--and densely packed with silent, sullen Saturday- and Sunday-morning stiffs making their way to work or school or wherever.

After a few months, we have worn a path through the city. Habit. After we pile out of the bus with possibly 30 to 40 other people, we break away to walk the six blocks to the tall building where PEÉ is located. We walk past restaurants and shops, down a road used heavily for bus transfers. Uniform sidewalks do not exist on these side streets. A marble-tiled sidewalk may be in front of one posh restaurant, but then abruptly disappear a few steps later. A wood walkway changes to bare dirt becomes ancient cracked concrete switches to a different height of ancient cracked concrete. The incessant shifting demands a certain level of attention which is always absent at 8:18 am. It is much easier to brave the road with cars and buses rumbling just inches away.

Normally on Saturday and Sunday morning we shuffle to work. Tired and less-than-enthused about the 9 hour teaching day yawning before us, we shuffle. But in the rain, the movement changes; the pattern varies.

The heavy rain causes the familiar side streets--planes of uneven asphalt that would drive a perfectionist to suicide--to become a foreign territory that requires a new attention. Puddles appear, deep enough to soak my entire foot. Rivulets stream through the shallow gutters and spread over the road in slick pools. Motor oil glistens in rainbow designs on the dark road. This morning, brains still fuzzy from sleep, Sondra and I scuttled around puddles, trying to make it the six blocks with dry feet.

We had only a couple blocks to go when I heard her cry, "Shit!" from behind me. "Did you step in one?" "Yeah," she groaned.

Getting home was equally treacherous. Our jackets--soaked from 20 minutes in the rain--are on the laundry rack in the living room with the fan blowing on them. They'll dry in time, but hopefully it'll have stopped raining by then.

Shoddy wiring in the flat blows on New Years...

I would just like to remind everyone that Turks are probably the nicest people on earth, and that, no matter how many unpaid hours I work for PEÉ (and there are a lot of them...), I remain eternally grateful that I can call someone any time of the day and get help with real-world problems that would otherwise leave me in frustrated tears.

Example: When our power went out at 7:49pm tonight (Sondra had just conditioned her hair in the shower), and tinkering with the fuse box in our flat didn't work, and tinkering with the fuse box in the lobby didn't work, and asking our sweet upstairs neighbors didn't work, and asking plaintively at the market outside our flat didn't work, there was no one left to call but the savior of a secretary who works for PEÉ.

Me: Müjde! Help! Our electricity is out! Sigorta attı. (The fuse is blown.) We don't know what to do.
Müjde: Tamam, canım, (Ok dear) no problem. I will send my electrician friend. Don't worry.
Me: Thank you!!! You are wonderful!
Müjde: No problem, canım. I'll call him now.

Five minutes later Müjde phones back to say that some guy is on his way. Müjde's name actually means good news. Surprise.

Fifteen minutes later Sondra and I are letting a smiling gent into the lobby of our building so he can fuss with the fuse box. We run back upstairs to get him a chair so he can reach the fuse box (and he puts on little blue plastic booties before standing on it so as not to muss the upholstery-- çok Turkish), and within minutes he has us back on the grid. We are so grateful that we let him smoke a cigarette in our living room while he phones Müjde to translate some details, instead of shooing him outside to puff on the balcony.

So that's it. There's no good way to close, except that I love Turks. And their blue plastic booties that keep them from tracking dirt into the Pristine Turkish Home (except we're filthy yobancalar who work nearly 50 hours a week each, and we don't have time/energy to clean, so I'm always super embarassed when they try to take their shoes off and I have to gesture that it's better to leave them on because the flat will get them dirty...). Bless 'em.