Hey DigiTurk Hey DigiTurk

Please let me offer you a quick apology: apparently due to some inappropriate video postings constituting potential copyright infringement, Blogger has been temporarily blocked in Turkey pending litigation with the Turkish company DigiTurk. Thus it is easier for me to post at the university, where websites are not blocked, and where I have access to a Turkish keyboard, but typically when I am at work people are always calling on me to "teach English" (the NERVE). In any case I promise to add some updates this week because I went to the East for the first time and it was absolutely gorgeous.

A well-oiled machine

I am writing this post on a Pamukkale bus line. This cross-country bus...has free internet access. This is a bus in the middle of nowhere, somewhere between Ankara and Uşak...and I am on the internet.

Pamukkale is one of the more reputable Turkish bus lines. They make some attempt to regulate how the drivers drive (such things as 'staying in lanes' and 'obeying speed limits'), but of course all other drivers still pose a major threat. Turkish buses are many in number and variable in quality, but I am really impressed with what I've seen of them today. The drivers get personally fined if they do not leave the station on time, so at 10:30AM (my bus left at 11), the station abruptly emptied of buses, and five minutes later new ones pulled in. It's amazing.

As I was leaving, our main Fulbright liaison asked if I was excited. I said yes, and she said, "I know, it is a new life!" And now I'm on a bus in Turkey, using the internet for now, but about to start re-reading The New Life. How ridiculous is this?

MacGyver would be proud

While the overall intent of this blog is to provide some informative observations on Turkish culture and a way for people at home to keep track of me, I must take a brief moment for self-congratulation. (It's actually couched in a story about how things in Turkey are not always perfect, so I guess it is still blog-worthy without my disclaimer.)

Last night when I returned to my room at about 10PM, none of the lights or electrical outlets were functioning. Since it was late and I was lazy, I decided that, rather than ask the front desk or somesuch for help, I would play it by ear. Now, the bathroom is a separate room into which no light from the outside world penetrates when the door is closed. How could I bathe in abject darkness? Simple: I took Lil' Brudda into the bathroom (normally a terrible idea, but you know what they say about desperate times), turned his screen up to its full brightness, opened a blank word processing document so the screen would be white, and voila! -a bathroom with enough light to bathe by.

Hopefully I can bring this kind of resourcefulness into the classroom when the time comes...and that time could be as early as Monday. I have my bus ticket to Uşak in my purse already. Heyecanlıyım!

No! Really! Thanks!

So far, Turkey is great. It is beautiful and has actual hills and other changes in land elevation, unlike certain states I could name. On the extremely short (40 minute) flight from Istanbul to Ankara, they served us a full meal (!), including the delicious yogurt I can't wait to eat all the time. Also on that short flight I had my first Turkish tea in Turkey (well, technically, several thousand feet above Turkey). The sizable group on that Istanbul-Ankara flight arrived at the hotel utterly exhausted, and we headed to dinner in search of water more than anything else, when lo and behold the extremely attentive staff started trying to serve us a five course meal. After some hesitant bites of the first two courses, muttering "tamam" ("okay"), and general awkwardness, they discerned our meaning and skipped the main course...but they brought dessert out anyways.

But enough about food (ha ha JK! but I have the whole nine months for that). Let's go back in time for a minute to when I was still at the Ankara airport. I had long since decided my bags were too annoying to drag aboard a shuttle bus, so I took a cab with another Fulbrighter. Since we all have pretty ludicrous amounts of baggage, at first the other girl and I thought we wouldn't be able to fit in one cab. Suddenly a small taxi-directing man, cigarette in mouth, appeared at our side, spoke to our driver, and from somewhere a bungee cord was produced, and before we knew it all of our luggage was haphazardly secured bulging every which way out of the trunk and generally ignoring the laws of physics. Turkish driving entails a lot of ad libbing where the laws are concerned, for as our cab driver deftly demonstrated, the painted lane lines are there as guidelines only, and car horns are useful for either alerting other drivers' to your presence in the in-between-lane-zones or to tell a pedestrian they'd better decide RIGHT NOW if they want to run for it or hop back on the median, because this car is not slowing.

Now fast forward to tomorrow, when what basically amounts to an all expense paid vacation in a hotel in Ankara begins, featuring free WiFi in the lobby (YES!), and of course lots of meetings and lectures disseminating information about Turkey and how to live here without causing too much trouble, other than occasionally confusing attentive waiters and the unavoidable suchlike.

Zonsopgang in Amsterdam

I had almost forgotten how delightful the language of the Netherlands is. It's like a more adorable version of English, with more shushing and tsking strewn throughout. Thirteen sounds akin to "dirtteen", making it an unclean teen if I ever heard of one. I have never ever forgotten how delicious stroopwafels are, however, and had the sublime privilege of buying one from a vending machine here in Schipol Airport with Euro coinage I found in my room from way back when I went to Paris, in aught-six. I hope I always have enough foreign currency laying around in the dark corners of my dwelling spaces to buy myself coffee and country-specific pastries in situations like this. Speaking of coffee, hilariously enough, the Starbucks right outside my gate had a sign telling thirsty and sleep-deprived travelers, "Due to a technical difficulty, we regretfully cannot serve any beverages that are made with hot water." Oh-ho, how awkward!

Let me also take a moment while I have nothing better to do to relate my in-flight experience. Despite mad preparations for combating in-flight boredom wherein I got a bunch of subtitled Japanese movies (since reading the subtitles is much easier than listening over ambient airplane noise) and a monstrously large battery for my laptop, I actually never opened my computer (henceforth known by his true name, Lil' Brudda). Turns out the fine folks of KLM provide each of us back-of-the-plane cheapskates with our very own on-screen entertainment center! Each had a remote on a cord that, when turned sideways, became a control for various video games that one can opt to play rather than enjoying the many movies or TV shows from the lengthy onboard film library. This system even offered basic Berlitz language lessons complete with lame and ridiculous review games, which was totally the most awesome part of an already impressive piece of technology. I brushed up on my Turkish words for months, numbers, and some short sentences, and then I tried my hand at Russian for kicks. So, thanks for that, Dutch airline!