Right, so ıt turns out some things are really hard here...

Like buying a bed. Today, Mark and I spent 7.5 hours total in getting furniture for our new room and the rest of our apartment. If you've ever been to IKEA, you know that the experience can be a bit overwhelming. Now try to imagine using a public transit system to get there in which you're never really sure where you're going to end up and you haven't really figured out how to ask anyone where you are or where you're going, and the megolith of a store is in a distant part of a very large city in a neighborhood where you've never been before. And then you have to shop at IKEA and get your furniture delivered, again without speaking the language. Today was pretty exhausting, to say the least.

Five of those 7.5 hours were spent walking, ferrying, busing, taxi-ing, and domuş-ing to the foreign area of Umraniye and back (over the course of the journey I managed to take every mode of public transportation available in Istanbul). IKEA itself actually wasn't that bad, since we found three different people who spoke English and helped us get what we needed and get it where we needed it.

Other things are hard, here, too. Ordering food we've more or less figured out, though it usually involves a bit of gesturing, but the other day we had to buy the little runner thing that you mount on the ceiling and slide curtains on it. See, I can't even describe it in English. But we managed that - we are so fortunate to have so much help from Sasha, Ayçe, and our Turkish-Australian neighbor downstairs, Ilke. But a few weeks ago we tried to independently buy a cellphone, which means we paid more than we intended to for a pretty crappy phone, but we were so frustrated with not being able to find what we wanted that we just took it. And it's not just because we don't speak the language. It took Ilke (who is quite bilingual and utterly competent in his Turkish) an hour to order a pizza the other night (which you can kind-of do here, but it costs you an arm and a leg) because people were just being difficult. So it's not just the language barrier. Some things here are just really difficult.

A few things have been going really smoothly, though. I just signed my 8-month contract with They Who Must Not Be Named (apparently it's against our contract to use the school's name online, which I found out three weeks after I posted it), and I start teaching a couple of classes next Thursday. I'm really excited about this whole teaching thing, and depending on how this year goes...well, I'll spare you all another of my wildly enthusiastic life plans, but let's just say that I think I could get used to the idea. And as far as I know, Mark has also signed his contract this evening (I'm at school now, and so is he, so perhaps he can update later on his details). But, speaking of school, the "bell" just wrang (it's the MOST annoying sound - a really bad digital Fur Elise that plays VERY loudly and always only the first 2.7 bars, then it sharply/mercifully cuts out), and now I must go observe more classes to prepare myself for the ventures ahead.

I apologize for not being more eloquent/witty, but somehow I'm just feeling a bit factual. Oh, and I am now finishing this post after having watched the above mentioned lesson, and I certainly learned something (which I really already knew): it's not really a good idea anywhere, let alone in Turkey, and certainly not on the first day of class, to have your language-learning students who don't know each other very well debate gay marriage. Just a tip.