What next?

I'm sitting here in my "office hours" at school. This is the extremely useless time where us foreign teachers have to sit in a cage down in the front office so they can show us off like monkeys at a zoo. Well, in the two and half hours we might get one or two placement tests (where we have to look at a person's placement test score and chat with them to determine the level they should start at), but usually I don't even get one. Mostly we just play on the internet or prepare for whatever our next class is that we have to teach.

I've grown to despise the weekend, Sunday in particular. The weekend is our busiest time, and Sunday happens to be my crap day. I have a morning class that I come in to prepare for at 8:30, then I almost always get scheduled for an activity class and/or office hours after that. I get out of office hours at 4:30 and then my night class starts at 6:10. So, in the whole day I get to go home for like an hour and half or less to chill. And I get out at 9pm. So pretty much go go go from 8:30am to 9pm. Ugh...

I've been contemplating a lot what I'm going to do when I come home in May. I'm freaking out a lot about coming home to what I hear is the highest unemployment in the country and trying to find a job. I will probably have to come home for a few months and then run away somewhere else so that I can afford to pay my bills. I've been thinking a lot about Korea. I've heard that I could pay over a thousand dollars a month towards my loans and still have a lot left to live on. That would be awesome. But the question is, will I be ready to go off for a whole year again after being gone for 8 months? It's crazy how time has flown, and now I'm at the point where I have to really figure out what I'm doing and when exactly I'm coming home because I really need to buy my plane ticket before the prices start skyrocketing. I'm now past the half-way point of being here, as I have been here for 5 months and I have 4 more to go. Crazy!

I really want someone to come visit me here! I really want to be able to share my life here with someone, so they can see what it's like, taste the food, etc. C'mon people - you can come in April for I think $700 or so. Once you get here it's really cheap, and you can stay with me. *sigh*

Egypt Videos

Right when we first got to Cairo... going into town in a taxi... driving over the Nile.


Riding camels...

Fixed computer and border run

I always forget that in this country, you're lucky if you get one thing done per day. The last few days, I have had to do several things in a day and it has exhausted me so much more than I would have thought. I forgot how tiring it is to try to actually get things done here. First of all, my computer needed to be fixed, which I already wrote about. I really had no clue what to do or where to take it. There was also the looming fact that I needed to get out of the country to renew my visa. On both counts our DOS was being completely unhelpful. I finally got him to call a mac place I found online and he wrote down an address and said, "Go here." I had no clue where it was or how to get there. The place is in Şişli, and I had never been to that part of Istanbul before. So, I took the number of the place and the address to a Turkish teacher, Turcan, who is always very helpful. He called the place, they told him a website to visit and he went there and printed out a map for me and then said, "well, Ali wrote the street name completely wrong, you never would have found this place." Thanks for nothing, Ali. Then he told me exactly which buses to take to get there. So, two days ago I set out to take my laptop to be fixed. We did eventually find it after a 45 minute bus ride and a long walk. When we walked in the store and tried to speak to them, we realized that nobody that was there spoke English. The lady at the desk called someone and then handed me the phone. I explained why I was there to the voice on the phone, and then handed it back and he explained to her what I had said. Then she shouted to the back room and sent me back there. The guy spoke very little English, but I was able to tell him what was wrong and he told me that I just needed a new hard drive. The total cost of the new hard drive and the work was only 140 dollars, which I was quite satisfied with. They told me that they couldn't recover any of the data from the old hard drive and that really pissed me off because I have backed up almost everything on my external hard drive-- except all of my music! They told me to come back the next day (yesterday) and it should be ready by the afternoon. So yesterday I needed to teach my morning class, go to sisli and get my computer, figure out my bus ticket to Bulgaria, get back in time to do a Conversation Club at 6pm and then teach night class. That's entirely too much for one day, but I somehow managed to get everything done. After I taught my morning class I talked to Turcan again (he's pretty much the saviour of us foreign teachers here) and he offered to walk with me to a branch of the bus company that is in Bakirköy. We walked for about fifteen minutes in the cold and got to the bus company. I wanted to buy the ticket then to get it out of the way to I didn't have to worry about it at 8 o'clock this morning. That was all fine and dandy, only 30 lira and I need your passport please. uh.... my passport? Crap! So, I had to trudge back fifteen mins to my apartment to get the stupid passport and come back to pay for the ticket. After I did that, I had to find a bus stop and wait for a bus back to Mecidiyeköy, ride that for 45 mins, walk twenty mins to Şişli where the computer place is. I did that, and I had good luck and my computer was actually fixed when I arrived at the Mac repair place. Thank God! 195 YTL lighter and one ibook heavier I left the repair shop and headed to the mall in sisli to look for a book for my long journey to Bulgaria and back. I did find a book and it was "only" 16 YTL (that's cheap for English books around here....) and even ignored how broke I was and got myself a starbucks coffee to keep me warm on my journey back. When I got back to the bus station in Mecidiyeköy, all of the seats on the bus were taken and I had to stand the 45 mins back to Bakirköy. As soon as I got off the bus I had to hurry back to work and do a conversation club for an hour and then give an exam for two hours for someone who was sick. Needless to say I slept like a rock last night. I had to wake up at 7am to take a quick shower and head off to catch the service bus to the Otogar. When I got in the shower I just touched the shower head and the hose somehow came partly disconnected and started leaking everywhere! It was the most horrible shower of my life, and when I was done the bathroom was like it had a river running through it.















I am now almost to Bulgaria and all of the trees and grasses are frosted over with ice crystals! I am really unsure of how I am supposed to do this exiting the country and then catching a bus back thing! Of course Ali was completely unhelpful in this department, saying he didnt know anything about it and wondering why I would expect such a thing from him. Heaven forbid the company that is employing me illegally should know something about border runs... Supposedly I have to exit the bus and then walk for quite a ways back over the border in the freezing cold, buy a return ticket and wait like an hour in the freezing cold for the return bus. Hopefully it works out with a little less of me standing in the freezing cold.. but I 'll let you know what happens.

Well I was right about the waiting and about the freezing cold. After we got stamped out of Turkey and into Bulgaria, the girl working on the bus was trying to talk to me, and had to ask who on the bus spoke English so they could talk to me. She wanted to know if I was just doing an exit and re-entry. She said that I would just get out and cross to the other side and that soon another bus would come. I was like what the crap, how do I know where to wait and what to say to the new bus that comes, I don't even have a ticket! So she comes with me, goes over to the passport stamper guy in the booth and tells him I'm just doing an exit. He tells me to come inside and wait. So I go into the booth and just sit there all awkwardly watching him stamp passports of people in cars for about ten minutes. Then, he says, "Come with me," and we cross to the other side, of people going out of Bulgaria and into Turkey, he explains to the guy at that window what's going on. This guys speaks no English. So, he stamps my passport and gives it back and basically motions for me to get out of the way and just wait. And wait I did. My fingers almost froze off. I found a bathroom and it was godawful. I almost fell in. I went back to waiting, and I must have waited about 45mins and finally a Metro bus comes! However, I didn't really know what to say, they didn't speak English and I speak barely any Turkish. I just said, "bilet, Istanbul??" and they motioned for me to get on the bus. Phew! Then we waited about another two hours in between Bulgaria and Turkey for the five other passengers of the bus to get their passports returned to them after they'd been stamped. ugh. Then there was the standing outside to buy a visa and to get my passport stamped for Turkey. Then there was the everybody getting off of the bus with all of the luggage to get it and the bus searched. Now, we are finally on the stinking road back to Istanbul, thank God! :) Its 4:45pm, and I'm hoping I'll be back home by 8:00. It might just be a dream, though.

Well, I rocked up to my apartment at about 9:15pm after waiting an hour for the service bus that goes to Bakirköy. I guess 12 hours to leave the country and come back isn't all that bad, even though it's only actually 3 1/2 hours to the border... shows how much time is wasted in customs.

P.s. I promised some videos of Egypt so here's one of them, I'll get a couple more up soon! :)

RIP ibook

Well, I've been meaning to update with a few videos I took while in Egypt, but my computer has been acting a little crazy and now I believe she is actually dead for good. Well, hopefully I can find somewhere to get her fixed (if it's not too expensive)... She won't even turn on now, but stays at the loading-up blue screen forever and then a strange little icon shows up with a flashing question mark... So yeah, if anyone has any advice as to how I should proceed I'd appreciate it. I think there is one official Apple store here so as soon as I get paid I'll have someone call them and ask prices an such. Until then, I'm going to be a sad little girl... :(

egypt

Well here's a slideshow of my Egypt pics.. it isn't very good quality, so if you want to see my pics in better quality look at my photobucket site (name mandi311). Also, I'll be putting a couple videos up when I get time, of me riding a camel, etc.

Make an on-line slide show at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Nothing better...

Well on my way home from grabbing some McDonald's tonight, I was thinking about how I don't have anything to put on my blog, and I thought maybe somebody would get a kick out of the way that they package the take-out (cuz I do). When you buy a meal, they put your hamburger and fries in a bag, your drink in a bag (because apparently you can't just carry your drink), and then they put them together in another huge bag with handles. It's not enough that you feel like a fat loser for getting greasy McDonald's at 8:00 at night, but they need to make you carry something as big as a billboard so that everyone on your way home will see from a mile away! haha...

Christmas decorating

hahaha! What a crazy Charlie Brown-ish tree it is!

So, we've decorated a little for Christmas so far. We bought some lights to decorate the living room with but we haven't put them up yet, and I need to finish putting up the cute window window clings my mom sent us! :) It feels a little like Christmas because in the malls there are Christmas-y window decorations, and that feels like home. However, the lack of snow is a little disheartening. I'm still holding out hope that we'll get at least one snowfall for Christmas.

NINE DAYS UNTIL EGYPT!!! I can't believe it's here already! ahh!

December

It's December in two days! Ahh! I can't believe how quickly time is going by. I feel as though I just arrived in Istanbul, and yet I feel like I've been here forever.
I "put up" a Christmas tree today. Well, I don't have any decorations yet... except for one that I got from my sister. I will buy some little lights and put red and green yarn on it for garland so it won't look so much like a Charley Brown tree. I'm excited for Christmas.... I really just wish it would snow...

Thanksgiving

Here's an example of what the invitations I made looked like. Each one was a little different.

Well Thanksgiving has come and gone, and I didn't miss home as much as I was worried I would. We had the teacher's party the day after, and the meal was delicious.
appetizers...I didn't find a whole Turkey, but was able to get Turkey breasts, so we got four of those. I had to borrow a huge pan from the Diko Cafe, and then bring the seasoned turkey to their oven to cook it! It was pretty funny walking down the street with a pan of turkey breasts, and then I had to go there every half hour to check on its progress. I also made stuffing with Turkish bread that I cut up and let get stale. I seasoned both with sage, thyme, salt, pepper, celery (which is hard to find), and onions. It was soooo good. I also made homemade salsa (even though I couldn't find cilantro..), and triple berry pie (with raspberries, blackberries, and sour cherries), a salad, and ranch dressing. Plus the other teachers brought a lot of other food. We even played Christmas music at the party to make ourselves feel at home, and we are hopefully going to set up a Christmas tree tomorrow. :)
3 1/2 weeks until Egypt/Christmas! I'm getting so excited I can hardly wait.
Time is flying!

Thanksgiving

Well, today is Thanksgiving. It doesn't really feel like Thanksgiving. There was no parade to watch on TV, no rush to get the final cooking done for the party. We are, however, having a Thanksgiving party tomorrow with co-workers at Dilko (even though there's only one other American besides Leyla and I). I made home-made invitations for everyone that were really cute. :)
We are still trying to figure out if we can get a turkey, but more importantly if we will be able to cook it...Regardless of if we get a turkey I'm planning on making some stuffing, salsa, a salad, and probably a pie. If we get a turkey i'll probably be the one to season it and cook it... even though I've never done that before! haha. It'll all turn out great, even if not absolutely perfect. Here's hoping it's a success!

Saturday is Teacher's day here, so my students made me come to class today even though I don't teach them today. They had gotten my co-teacher and I gifts, and one student made a cake and they had coke to drink. It was really fun, and at that moment it did feel like Thanksgiving for a moment because I was very thankful to be here.