The Turkish text messages I've been getting have been telling me I'm out of minutes on my calling plan. I know this because....well, here's the story.
Taking a left out of my apartment building takes me to the center of town. As I get closer and closer to the center, my hopes are rising. This is a big city with several nice boulevards, tree-lined streets, sidewalks, flowers, and landscaping. It's pretty. A few blocks closer to the center and I'm greeted by thousands of shops, lots of shoppers, lots of traffic, the smell of fresh baked bread, etc. If I change the alphabet on the signs, I can almost imagine downtown NYC without the skyscrapers. Keeping with my mission, I enter the first Turkcell store I see. It's a small shop, no more than an aisle wide and the shopkeeper speaks no English. After hand gestures and writing a few words from my dictionary, he's able to understand my request, I think, draws me a map and sends me to a bigger shop. But, before I get to the bigger shop, I run across a medium sized Turkcell shop with three employees. With my notepad, dictionary, pictures, and pointing I am unsuccessful and making any sense, but one of the employees pulls out his fall, calls a friend, and hands the phone to me. Here's the conversation:
Hello!
Hello! Do you speak English?
Yes. I lived 2 years in Arkansas. What do you want?
I'm trying to add minutes to my sim card so I can call my family.
Give me 10, maybe 15 minutes, and I'll right there.
Ok. Thank you.
So, I sat down in this tiny shop waiting for a Turkish stranger who had lived in Arkansas and spoke English to come help me. About 15 minutes later, he arrived and apologized for the time it took him to get there. (Can you imagine apologizing..here I was so grateful that he would come help me on the beginning of his holiday that I would have waited hours...and, no, I'm not exaggerating..I was that desperate for help.) I showed him my Turkish text message. I explained my situation. And, with his help, I was able to 1) get more minutes 2) learn about some great hiking trails near Malatya and 3) add and English speaking Turk to my contact list. As a matter of fact, I will star him as a "favorite."
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Tuesday, August 30, 2011
First night
12:05 am.
Restless and unable to fall asleep for the past several hours....motorcycles and cars racing by in a steady stream...horns honking...truck engines roaring...children laughing and playing...popped an Advil PM..read some more... got out of bed to turn off overhead fluorescent light...awake...turned on light...read some more...
12:45 am approximately
Turned off light and fell asleep...
2:30 am
woke with a start to the sound of drums beating a loud irregular cadence...noise getting louder and closer....5 or 6 large drums beating at the apartment doorstep...keeps beating...noise getting softer as drums pass and head down the street....drift off to sleep...
2:45 am.
more drums following same pattern...remembering a passage I read in Turkish culture book that explained these drums signal people in houses to awaken and eat last meal before sunrise for Ramadan...turn on light...read some more...
3:00 am.
drums play one more time and then stop...turn of light...fall back asleep...
5:00 am ish
muezzin begins prayer call from Mosque...much softer than the drums...fall back asleep
7:30 am
sun beaming in room and getting hot in there...lay in bed for 20 minutes afraid to open the window to see Malatya for fear of disappointment...finally garner courage to open curtains...the mosque is directly in front of my bedroom window...green trees line the boulevard...people are up walking around...traffic picks up...time to get up...
Goals for the day: buy towels and minutes for my sim card.
Restless and unable to fall asleep for the past several hours....motorcycles and cars racing by in a steady stream...horns honking...truck engines roaring...children laughing and playing...popped an Advil PM..read some more... got out of bed to turn off overhead fluorescent light...awake...turned on light...read some more...
12:45 am approximately
Turned off light and fell asleep...
2:30 am
woke with a start to the sound of drums beating a loud irregular cadence...noise getting louder and closer....5 or 6 large drums beating at the apartment doorstep...keeps beating...noise getting softer as drums pass and head down the street....drift off to sleep...
2:45 am.
more drums following same pattern...remembering a passage I read in Turkish culture book that explained these drums signal people in houses to awaken and eat last meal before sunrise for Ramadan...turn on light...read some more...
3:00 am.
drums play one more time and then stop...turn of light...fall back asleep...
5:00 am ish
muezzin begins prayer call from Mosque...much softer than the drums...fall back asleep
7:30 am
sun beaming in room and getting hot in there...lay in bed for 20 minutes afraid to open the window to see Malatya for fear of disappointment...finally garner courage to open curtains...the mosque is directly in front of my bedroom window...green trees line the boulevard...people are up walking around...traffic picks up...time to get up...
Goals for the day: buy towels and minutes for my sim card.
Malatya Apartment
August 28
After an anxious 20 minutes waiting at the curb for my ride from the airport, calling the number I'd been given, only to find out that my cell phone no longer worked, fighting back tears, and waiting some more, I was finally greeted by Ishmael, a friendly, polite young Turk. He, in turn, introduced meduced to Mr. Mahmet, our driver and the school accountant. It quickly became apparent that Mr. Mahmet spoke no English. Thankfully, Ishmael speaks pretty good English and is the high school grammar teacher. I learned that I will actually be teaching "speaking" in the high school and he eagerly told me how excited he is to welcome me and have a "native" speaker with whom he can learn and perfect his English. He was excited to show me my new "home"... emphasis on the word "home" and he hopes I will enjoy it. So far so good...
We drove thirty minutes to the apartment. We, and about five other cars, were actually pulled over for a random alcohol breath test of our driver. (Here's the kicker...I was actually thinking "cool", perhaps people do drink here. I had been under the impression that this is a fairly dry county..so to speak..) Upon arrival, we schlepped my 49 pound bags up to the 5th (top) floor of the building. I took their lead and removed my shoes before we crossed the threshold. Although the stairwell was very dingy and dirty, everything looked ok inside the apartment, new carpets, new tile floors, recently cleaned. I was starting to feel a little more relaxed until Ishmael proudly showed me the bathroom....a hole in the floor...a real Turkish toilet....My heart dropped, the tears welled up in my eyes, and I tried my best to keep the flood gates closed. I felt both disappointed and ungrateful. I had anticipated a lot, but I obviously had not anticipated this...Istanbul has quite modern plumbing so I hadn't given bathrooms a second thought. We came to one more door only to be disappointed again. This room included hose with a shower nozzles (no shower) and bidet. At this point I could hardly see anything as the tears welled up in my eyes. This is going to be harder than I had thought. And here's what I still, as an American, don't understand..a bidet?...I would take a real toilet and stand up shower any day over a bidet...
Now for more realities, the appliances are new but the stove is not hooked up. There is no hot water. There is no internet. And, tomorrow begins a five day holiday for Ramadan so nothing will happen until next weekend.
On the plus side, Ishmael bought me some fruit and a 2 liter bottle of water so I can have breakfast. And, there is an internet cafe two blocks away where, after only five minutes I was able to find the pound key so I could actually enter a password.
Hopefully, things will look brighter in the morning....
PS If I can't use my own keyboard for the next few weeks, do NOT judge my spelling, punctuation, etc. because the Turkish keyboard is just very different for ours and I'm not going to even bother with caps.
After an anxious 20 minutes waiting at the curb for my ride from the airport, calling the number I'd been given, only to find out that my cell phone no longer worked, fighting back tears, and waiting some more, I was finally greeted by Ishmael, a friendly, polite young Turk. He, in turn, introduced meduced to Mr. Mahmet, our driver and the school accountant. It quickly became apparent that Mr. Mahmet spoke no English. Thankfully, Ishmael speaks pretty good English and is the high school grammar teacher. I learned that I will actually be teaching "speaking" in the high school and he eagerly told me how excited he is to welcome me and have a "native" speaker with whom he can learn and perfect his English. He was excited to show me my new "home"... emphasis on the word "home" and he hopes I will enjoy it. So far so good...
We drove thirty minutes to the apartment. We, and about five other cars, were actually pulled over for a random alcohol breath test of our driver. (Here's the kicker...I was actually thinking "cool", perhaps people do drink here. I had been under the impression that this is a fairly dry county..so to speak..) Upon arrival, we schlepped my 49 pound bags up to the 5th (top) floor of the building. I took their lead and removed my shoes before we crossed the threshold. Although the stairwell was very dingy and dirty, everything looked ok inside the apartment, new carpets, new tile floors, recently cleaned. I was starting to feel a little more relaxed until Ishmael proudly showed me the bathroom....a hole in the floor...a real Turkish toilet....My heart dropped, the tears welled up in my eyes, and I tried my best to keep the flood gates closed. I felt both disappointed and ungrateful. I had anticipated a lot, but I obviously had not anticipated this...Istanbul has quite modern plumbing so I hadn't given bathrooms a second thought. We came to one more door only to be disappointed again. This room included hose with a shower nozzles (no shower) and bidet. At this point I could hardly see anything as the tears welled up in my eyes. This is going to be harder than I had thought. And here's what I still, as an American, don't understand..a bidet?...I would take a real toilet and stand up shower any day over a bidet...
Now for more realities, the appliances are new but the stove is not hooked up. There is no hot water. There is no internet. And, tomorrow begins a five day holiday for Ramadan so nothing will happen until next weekend.
On the plus side, Ishmael bought me some fruit and a 2 liter bottle of water so I can have breakfast. And, there is an internet cafe two blocks away where, after only five minutes I was able to find the pound key so I could actually enter a password.
Hopefully, things will look brighter in the morning....
PS If I can't use my own keyboard for the next few weeks, do NOT judge my spelling, punctuation, etc. because the Turkish keyboard is just very different for ours and I'm not going to even bother with caps.
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