Left Newark airport at 8:30 pm, flew through Munich (Lufthansa), got into Ankara around 3 pm local time (which is seven hours ahead). Got picked up from the airport by Mehtap, a really sweet coworker of mine. She brought me to the apartment, which is in Söðütözü (pronounced Sue-oo-two-zoo), which, put simply, is in the middle of fucking nowhere. Technically it's within city limits, but... there's nothing here. Except TOBB, the university I work at, which is pretty much next door. It takes 5 min to get to work in the AM, but like 25 to get anywhere interesting. So anyhow, I get to my apartment (on the 11th floor) and the door gets stuck for the first 20 min or so. We finally get it open and get inside, and I take a look around and the place is DISGUSTINGLY dirty. The girls who lived here last semester left crap everywhere- including milk, yogurt, etc still in the fridge, and the bathroom was gross, and then the basic dust and grime that builds up... not cool. Anyhow, I pick my room and the light bulb was dim, so I try to switch it with one from a different room, and then it doesn't work at all. So I give up on it and start moving my stuff in, unpacking, whatever, and the ceiling lamp FALLS. Made of sturdy stuff, I guess, because it didn't break, but it literally fell out of the ceiling, and the wires connecting it completely snapped. I have a decent window, so it's okay during the day, but I'm pretty much SOL if I want to do something in my room at night. Anyhow. So Mehtap shows me how to use the gas stove (open flame, woo hooooo), and the washing machine (instructions in all turkish) and such. Then we go out to the Armada to get food. The Armada is a huge, five story mall that's like five or six blocks away. Less than a ten minute walk. And it has more stereotypically American crap than my mall at home. I mean, everything from starbucks to converse shoes to la senza to mcdonalds, burger king, and KFC. And american-ish chinese food, which I have no interest in trying. So at the suggestion of Mehtap I got doner, (dough-nair), which was like a sub roll with roast beef, lettuce, tomatoes, dill pickles, and french fries. On the sandwich. Not bad though. So we catch a cab home, and Mehtap drops me at the door to the apartment building with the keys. So I use the one key to get in the building, no problem, I'm feeling pretty good about life. Mkay. And I take the elevator up to the eleventh floor. (The elevator has no door, by the way- well, the doors are connected to the floor outside. So you step in, and the elevator moves, and the door doesn't. It's very disconcerting at first.) So I get to my apartment, and turn the key... and turn the key... and turn the key some more... and it's at this moment that I realize I am 4,000 miles from home, I do not have a phone and even if I did I don't have the phone number of anyone in the COUNTRY, I don't have internet access, I don't speak the language, I had no money at all (hadn't exchanged it yet), it's 10 pm and I'm locked out of my apartment. So I just manage to keep myself from bawling like a small child, and keep trying the door... for 45 minutes. Miserable, I start knocking on my neighbors' doors (all complete strangers), and eventually some woman asks, through the peephole, something in Turkish, at which point I start babbling that my door won't open and would she please try to help me with it. In english. And somehow, between her bits of english and my bits of turkish, she got what I meant, and came out, and of course my door (which I have decided is demon possessed) opens immediately. And this tiny little Turkish lady sorta gives me a funny look, and walks back to her apartment. Gah. So that was adventure number one.
I crashed for a solid nine or ten hours, woke up to another gross, cold, cloudy day, with nothing to do. My suitemate, Alex, was supposed to be arriving around 4 or 5:00 pm, and I wasn't about to leave the apartment and let the door trap me in the hallway again. So I faced down the stove, made tea, stuck my earbuds in, and started cleaning. Scrubbed the crap out of the kitchen, bathroom, living room, windows, and my bedroom. For like eight hours. Figured out how to work the tv, which has a couple hundred working channels between 2-1200, less than a dozen of which were in english. And the only reason I found those channels was because the previous tenants left a list, which I found conveniently placed under the couch. Keeping company with dust bunnies the size of small house cats. So Alex and Mehtap showed up around 4:30, Alex picked her room (there's three bedrooms- two singles and a double that connects to the balcony. I picked the single closest to the kitchen and living room, she picked the double). We went out to the Armada and got food, pide, which is kinda like pizza without tomato sauce, cut into strips. And you can put parsley, hot peppers, and/or squeeze lemon juice onto it. Also very good. We met Ozge and Alsi, two more cowokers. I exchanged dollars for lira (1.5 lira to the dollar, not too shabby), and we got groceries and crap and headed home.
AH. Forgot to mention. My Macbook charger decided to die about an hour before I left for the airport. It's been tempermental the past couple weeks, so I thought it was just being itself and didn't worry about it. But no, it's dead for good this time. ASGFHGHHkjkk. So I asked around when I got here and found out the nearest Apple store is in the AnkaMall, a HUGE mall in Ankara, not too far from where we are. So Mehtap and Asli took us there last wednesday, and it turns out it is a RESALE apple store. Not licensed, and technically illegal, but Turkey doesn't do copyright laws. At all. So this store is almost completely empty, selling only whatever had been sold back to them. Which did not include any chargers. And as far as anyone knows, there are no other Apple stores in the COUNTRY. So I'm going to have to mail my charger home, where my dad can exchange it (it's still covered by applecare) and mail me the new one. The university is supposedly providing me with a laptop, but... we'll see how that goes. They sort of redefine disorganized here. Think about how a public American high school is run, and you've got a good idea of how it works at TOBB. It's a TINY school- three buildings make up the entire "campus"- and there are lots of illogical (but still enforced) rules. For example, the professors (and us, the "native speaker-student teachers", but we can break the rules occasionally) have to be on campus from 8:30 AM to 6 pm Monday thru Friday, regardless of when they have classes. Another example... Alex and I were told we started work January 5th (last monday)... but all last week was part of LAST semester, so we didn't (and couldnt) have classes. So we had to come to our offices every morning, and sit. All day. And do NOTHING. (Thank god I brought arabic and turkish stuff to work on- there was literally nothing to do for a WEEK, 8:30 to 6. Awful). And then we were told we'd start today... and this morning Inci, the director (I think- titles and jobs dont correspond exactly), told us we would start this afternoon or tomorrow morning at the latest. Mhmm. Whatever. But anyways, my macbook is dead, and until they provide me with a computer (or my dad mails me the new charger), I'm only online when Alex or my coworkers let me steal their computers for a bit. Which is what is happening now.
Only other interesting thing so far is our other roommate, a russian girl named Marina, came on Saturday. She's really nice, but speaks very little english- but fluent Turkish. She's here teaching Russian. So she's in the third bedroom. We hung out with her and her Turkish friend Mohammed and went to Kizilay, the downtown area, yesterday. Weather is finally a bit nicer.
Feel free to leave me messages here, I'll get them eventually. Love you and miss you all.
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