Competent Me

I had a nice boost to my confidence on Friday night upon meeting an absolutely impressively unimpressive individual. 

I remember all to well a few months ago when I was trying to make the decision whether or not to come to Turkey. Pretty much everything in the no column was related to work. 1) I’d have to give up a job that I love and 2) I didn’t have a clue whether or not I’d be able to find something for myself once in Turkey. In the end I was able to keep my beloved job, though I certainly miss the actual classroom, and things are looking pretty optimistic regarding finding work here.

On Friday night Akin and I met a group of his English speaking friends. They were mostly Canadians, but there were a few Americans and a couple Turks. The common link was that they all taught English. I was quite excited to meet these individuals as I myself am hoping to eventually find a job teaching English here. I figured that I could pick their brains and perhaps get some tips on how to go about searching for work. Unfortunately, the bar we were visiting was a Gothesque locale and the music was quite loud-good, but loud. This meant that I was pretty much restricted to holding conversation with the girl directly next to me. 

This woman, not to be named, is the aforementioned ‘impressively unimpressive individual. I was quite eager going into the conversation as I’d learned that she was also from Middle America. She had an overly articulated hipster visage complete with 1950’s style print top, loose-clinging sweater, tight-rolled jeans, antiquesque cameo locket, large nerd glasses and Chuck Taylors to pull it all together. It looked good, but she soon proved to have an attitude just snobbish enough to go along with it.

Our encounter began with the usual pleasantries. I learned that she had come to Istanbul about a month and a half prior and that she was working at a grade school nearby. She was training to become the first grade English teacher when the current one went on maternity leave. I told her that I was hoping to also find some work teaching English in the future, but that I was in the process of getting certified to do so at the moment. From this moment on I learned more than one would expect in a short bar conversation about this spurious beatnik.

When I uttered the word certified she literally scoffed and flipped her hair behind her shoulder. “I’m not certified,” she said in a splendidly pretentious tone, “I’m highly illegal here. I don’t have a contract so I guess I could be fired at any moment, but I know crap about my school so they won’t fire me.” Quite impressive I thought to myself for the first time.

Because of the audacious nature of her presence in Turkey, she was in the country on a 90 day tourist visa-- the same as me. This wasn’t a problem for her she assured me, it simply meant that she had to leave the country for 10 days at the end of this time and obtain a new visa upon reentry. It just so happened that she and her boyfriend were leaving for a trip to Lebanon the next morning, which she claimed would accomplish this end. “Its not the most opportune time for me to leave given that my visa has only half run out, but whatever, I’ll get a new one and start over.” At this moment I pointed out, “You know that your current visa is good for reentry within the 90 day period, right? I’m not sure if they will want to give you a new one given that your old one is still valid.” “Oh.” she said, and changed the subject.

The conversation continued and she confided in me that the children in her class were idiots because they spoke to her in Turkish and just couldn’t comprehend that she didn’t understand them, and that she had absolutely no intent of learning ANY Turkish. After all she, “already spoke two languages and had no desire to pursue a third.” The children here were just dumb she had concluded, and it was just too much work teaching them despite the fact that she claimed to be well paid and got off at 3:00 every day. 

In the end, she had decided to stick with the job. It wasn’t that big of a deal, she told me, given that she wouldn’t be staying in Istanbul long. She had applied to grad school in England and was going to be a professor. I didn’t bother bursting her bubble regarding the roses along this path. 

Thus far it may seem as though I’m being overly harsh and nothing, but cynical. Perhaps this is correct, but I would like to close with telling you why I was absolutely delighted to meet this young woman. If this girl, who has absolutely no clue whatsoever and clearly has not desire to put forth any effort in order to pursue her goal, can find a well paid job teaching English in this city with no experience and no certification, the I should be golden!

TURK GÖBEGI

I find food to be a very intimidating in Turkey. Don’t get me wrong, the cuisine here includes some of the best I’ve had anywhere in the world. Food is taken very seriously and plays an important role in Turkish culture and it is something of which they are exceptionally proud. In addition, the frequency and quantity consumed is greater than I’ve encountered anywhere else in the world. All of this adds to the intimidation factor. 

Last weekend Akin, his uncle Hakan and I visited a couple of different relatives. First on the list was another uncle who lives on a quiet plot of land on the Anatolian side of Istanbul away from the hustle of the city center. I was very excited to spend some time around so much green and animals. I was told early in the morning that we would be going there for BBQ.

On our way to see Amca (Uncle) we stopped at a grocery store to pick up a few items for the evening. I was confused when Hakan also went into a restaurant across the street and beckoned us to follow. I figured he was a bit peckish and couldn’t wait until we got there to eat as it was quite some distance and it was getting on dinner time. When Akin asked if wanted something to eat, I grinned and reminded him that we were going to eat BBQ and that I was fine to wait until then. 

Akin understood the grin that went along with my answer. When I was here for three weeks last summer, I was constantly confiding privately in him, that I was having a difficult time dealing with the eating culture. Everywhere you go, people want to feed you and literally will not take no for an answer. This became wearing both psychologically and physiologically. I certainly was not going to start myself from behind by indulging in this superfluous food stop. 

As it turned out, Hakan was actually picking up the food that we would be eating at the farm. Fortunately he didn’t ask either I or Akin whether or not I’d like to eat and went ahead and picked up more than enough for all of us. As usual, it was çok güzel (lovely).

Our next stop was at a cousin of Akin’s home. We did not arrive here until somewhere around 9:00 and were only planning to have a few drinks with them, but I was not at all surprised to when I saw one of our hosts grilling on the porch. Shortly after our arrival Hakan yelled, “Wynter, Senin tabak!”. 

While I was busy trying to figure out what a tabak was, one of the hosts, Didem, came in and asked me, if I had eaten. I replied that I had eaten and wasn’t very hungry, but that it smelled very nice and I would love to try a small bit. Hakan had followed her into the room and upon hearing my reply he retorted, “You did not eat. When did you eat?” He was waving a plate in his hands, which I then learned was a tabak. 

I was very confused by Hakan’s accusation. At first I thought he was kidding and sort of coyly played along, but I soon figured out that it wasn’t a joke. My next guess was that it was somehow rude of us to have eaten before we came and that I should not have revealed this information to and simply ought to have shut up and eat eaten so as not to offend the hosts. Fortunately this was not the case and the truth was far more entertaining. 

It was Hakan who came to my rescue and inadvertently clarified both the current situation an important element of Turkish culture. He continued his address, “I was with you today. You ate six hours ago. You never ate supper. What did you eat?” Well, it had actually only been about two hours since we had eaten, somewhere around 6:00 pm, and he knew full well what I had eaten as he was the one who ordered it. This had seemed like perfectly logical supper time to me and what we had consumed was certainly enough for me to consider it a legitimate meal though it was not extravagant. 

At this point, I timidly replied that I had eaten three times that day including the kebab at the farm and that I felt that this was a sufficient amount. Didem then began to laugh and said, “That’s not enough. Its Saturday.” "Of course." I thought to myself, "How could I have forgotten this crucial piece of information. Its Saturday. What? What the hell does that matter.” Now I was really confused. “You have to eat at least four times on a Saturday,” Didem continued. 

At this point, a very important cultural lesson had been reaffirmed and I was left without a leg on which to stand. I appreciatively took my plate and headed into the dining room for one of the most delicious meals I have had since arriving here.

Passport

Moving is inherently a unique gauntlet. This is further perpetuated when the move is from one country to another. Not only are you faced with all of the bureaucratic and infrastructural tasks of ensuring that your transport from point A to point B will be executed effectively, but there are a whole host of of other dramas to be encountered such as the emotional stress of saying good bye to loved ones and the actual physical strain of tugging, pushing and pulling to move all of your worldly possessions. 

Of all these tasks, the most basic and yet the most important is keeping up to date with your passport. This nasty little bugger was the bane of my existence for a devilish two or three hours on the eve of my departure. To be honest, it is completely possible that the whole ordeal took less than half an hour, but in my mental state, it was eons. This is what I teach students in my philosophy class to refer to as ‘psychological time.’ 

After running around all day trying to accomplish the rest of the formal tasks on my ever growing list, I was exhausted. My parents and I had planned to work for a couple of hours cleaning up my old flat and playing a tormenting game of jigsaw to fit all of my accumulated crap in their basement and then to meet my grandparents and brother for a good bye dinner. Unfortunately we were never able to make it to dinner that evening as fate had a sick game to play on me. 

As is so often the case, I was the catalyst in the onslaught of my own torment. As my parents were working late and I couldn’t bear the thought of tackling the remainder of the apartment alone, I decided to go about my final pack job of items that had made the cut to come with me across the world. It was this task that led me to make an exceptionally disconcerting discovery. My first step in my final pack job was to make sure that I had all the absolutely essential items that I needed for my travels and life abroad. Things like, plane ticket, my computer, textbooks for the classes I will be teaching, money, credit cards and of course that Lord of all international travel, my passport........shit, my passport. 

Needless to say, it wasn’t in any of the ‘supposed to be’ places, which sent me into a frenzy. I knew that I had seen it recently, but recently for me meant within the last 3 months. Not good news, especially considering that I had spent the whole last week carefully packing away everything I own in the aforementioned jigsaw game. To make matters worst, I had no idea. Well, not exactly, I had lots of ideas, but none of them proved to be correct. To make matters worse, I was completely alone, which led to a feeling of utter desperation. At one point, I literally crawled in a ball on my bed and began to groan like a crazy person. 

After a long series of fruitless attempts to meditate on and channel my passport in order to learn of its whereabouts, I resorted to flat out desperate tearing through everything in sight. I wasn’t very efficient with this method either as I would constantly change my mind about where or what I wanted to search and basically ended up walking in aimless circles between my parents’ house and my flat. Fortunately, soon after this (though it still seemed forever in my mind) my parents returned home and joined in the effort. Whenever I had a spark of revelation, they would diligently finish sorting through whatever place I had designated while I abandoned it for further useless insight. 

None of my attempts to intuit my own brain for bits of information like, “Where would I think is a ‘safe’ place for things?” or “For what sort of things might I get my passport out?” I was not alone in these efforts. Everyone, it seemed was asking these questions not only of me, but of everyone who could possibly be involved. I had given several bags of clothing to some of my student and upon hearing my dilemma from a third party they began tearing through those items in hopes of discovering the rogue document. Everyone had their own theory. Dr. Mummert was convinced that Kali had eaten it upon learning that she would not be accompanying me to Istanbul. My father claimed, that he only hoped not to be the one to find it so as to avoid accusations of being the perpetrator. 

In the end, however it was my father proved to be the victor of the eve. As I was still running in circles, my parents set themselves to the task of simply opening every box that I had painstakingly packed throughout the last week, removing every item and replacing in in hopes of finding the blasted thing. IT WORKED! After who knows how long-remember, psychological time-my mom yelled, “Look at this.” They wouldn’t tell me if they found the damned thing, which was partially annoying, but I figure that had to be the only explanation as anything else would just be cruel torment and my mother is not cruel.

When I returned to the basement, my father was crouched over a box, whose electronic contents had been spread all around him. In the middle was my printer/copier/scanner. I had never effectively set up this wonder machine for most of its proclaimed functions. When I reached him, my father lifted the lid of the exclusive all in one office assistant to reveal my passport neatly lined up in the corner for some sort of documenting purpose. At this point, I remembered the fateful day when I scanned a copy of this Lord of documents for a job application. Not willing to stop there, I became greedy and determined to also make a paper copy. While the scanning function worked like a charm, I was never able to coax it to copy and my poor passport remained abandoned on the glass for several months until it was packed away and sealed in a box, who knew when to be resurrected again.

What did I learn from this whole debacle? 1)DON’T WAIT UNTIL THE NIGHT BEFORE YOU LEAVE TO FIND YOUR PASSPORT, especially if you’re ‘sure’ you know where it is. If you’re wrong, you’ll be left with nothing. 2) When you lose something important, GET HELP. Other people are so much calmer and pragmatic in a frantic search. And 3) There really is some sort of psychological deficiency in teachers, which predisposes them to laose things in a copy machine 

Jetlag

I don’t understand jetlag math. It is currently 6:00 am. I have been begrudgingly up for an hour. Last night the same thing happened. After playing on my computer in the middle of the night in a finally successful attempt to wear myself down, I fell asleep around 6:30. After loosing so much of my ever precious slumber time, I gave Akin the death stare when he woke me up this morning. 

I wanted nothing more than to argue as to why I ought to be able to sleep as long as I wanted until his words actually created meaning in my half fried brain, “Babe, get up. Its 1:00.” One? What the hell? Are you serious? I slept until one? That’s just ridiculous. My frustration with the fact that I had missed half the day was only equaled by my frustration that I was now left with no leg on which to stand in the argument as I to why I ought to be left alone in my slumber. 

What I don’t understand is the numbers. As I understand it jetlag is a failure to adapt to a new time zone. Your body is accustomed to your home time zone and refuses to take the rhythm of the new location. So what the hell is my body doing? 

Turkey is an 8 hour time difference from Missouri.This means that when I am waking up at 5:00 in the morning, my body theoretically thinks that it is 9:00 pm. What kind of time is that to wake up. Its closer to time to go to bed than it is to wake up. I suppose it makes sense for me to be groggy in the morning (or at 1:00 in the afternoon), but not for me to be bright eyed and busy tailed right now. Its just plain annoying. 

Well, morning prayer is going  off now so I guess I will have to take solace in knowing that I’m not the only person up bright and early on this lovely Monday morning.