Nicer Dicer

OK, first, I feel a need to apologize for yesterday's post. I felt I complained a bit too much about the woman in my class. For a number of reasons, yes, she distracts me. I woke up feeling a bit ridiculous that I wrote about her here. Part of the reason I chose to write a blog rather than a diary was so it wouldn't just write about my day-to-day emotions. Having a potential audience, even one person, helps you fly right. So, my apologies.

Today, however, I had even more trouble with her than usual. Won't bore you with the details, but man, we just don't get along. I just can't handle her learned helplessness. I find it so frustrating. I know that she disrupts my learning, like this constant buzz coming from the far corner of the room. I also know the fact that we don't get along also drives me the most crazy. She seems to have no interest in making new friends here, relying on just her boyfriend and the people in Istanbul that she already knew from the States. Sure, I have come across a lot of people here and yes, I get on well enough with most of them. Perhaps the fact that I can tell she doesn't care for me is a part of what bothers me.

But please let's move on. I really must. I must say, though the honeymoon is over, I am really enjoying this next phase of being here. I feel a bit settled. Places are familiar, I understand most of what is going on. No, that doesn't mean that I really understand what everyone around me is saying. Unfortunately not. I do, however, feel fairly comfortable all the time. I know where I am most of the time. I have a basic understanding of how things work. Yeah, I feel a little like this is my home, at least for now.

This past weekend I went to Bakirkoy, an area that I haven't seen before except when coming in from the airport. Friday night, I went to a party with Seda, Cihan's Turkish English teacher. She works at a school that is run by an American university, and I had met some of the English teachers at a party the week before. I figured it would be an easy party for me for that reason. However, the party was mostly in Turkish. Not always fun for me, but very, very good. Learning a language is such a process. I feel on this I am also into the next phase. I can't say much but I understand a fair amount. Now, I will say, the nonstop chain smoking in a small unventilated apartment was not enjoyable for me, and, as hard as I try, the smoking here really bothers me.

The party was thrown by Alper, an English teacher at her school. He is an interesting guy. Besides being an elementary school English teacher, he is also the coach and impetus behind the new Turkish international baseball team. Yes, he has brought baseball to Turkey. He trained with the Milwaukee Brewers a couple of years ago. Alper was born in Turkey, but spent most of his life in Germany. I don't know where the baseball thing came from. The party was small, mostly teachers from the school, gossiping about the other teachers, gossiping about the students. After the party, I stayed over at Seda's house. Her cousin, a corporate lawyer with thinning hair, stayed over too as the traffic situation here means you really just can't get around at night. Ah, the traffic. We drank some Turkish wine, and Seda roasted some chestnuts. Seda's cousin is a really, nice, patient person. He was kind enough to insist that I talk only in Turkish. Whenever I switched into English, he pretended that he didn't understand me. Good for me, but not so much fun. Probably not so fun for him either.

The next day, Seda and I went shopping. Well, actually she went shopping, I observed. We went to a mall. There are so many malls here, including one of the biggest in Europe. One of them gave me vertigo, it had so many floors. The malls are open until like 10 or 11 at night. After that, we went to Ortakoy, one of my favorite areas in Istanbul. Ortakoy is on the Bosphorus, and has a number of little shops and restaurants. She parked her car on a corner with the hazards on, as there wasn't any parking for miles, probably. After she bought some boots and we picked up some "meat" sandwiches and aryan (salty yogurt beverage that I sometimes like), she tried to start the car. The battery was dead. Somehow she managed to find someone from a local garage to jump it in about 5 minutes. After he jumped it, she tried bargaining with him to get his low price down. He told her that she didn't have to pay if she didn't have money and then she paid him the asking price. Hm.

We drove back to my house in Beykoz and we ate our "meat" sandwiches. The drive took about 2.5 hours in total, to go maybe 20 miles, if that. I actually don't know how far it is and I feel like you can't ever know how far things are, because of the traffic. We hung out in my house. Seda was waiting for Cihan to start his weekly English lesson. I really hand it to him, he is very diligent in this. He spends all his free time on English. Burju, Cihan's daughter who I really like, was there. Burju is on break from college and just seemed so much like a college kid on break. The digital satellite wasn't working properly, so only the shopping channel was on. We watched the whole 30-minute infomercial for the Nicer Dicer, and Burju became obsessed with it. "Dad, if we had the Nicer Dicer, I could make breakfast for you in half the time." She then just started chanting, "Nicer Dicer, Nicer Dicer." Quite hilarious. At this point, Seda told me that the sandwiches we had in Ortakoy were made of intestines. That is why they had so many spices. I had noticed that they had quite a strong taste. Burju and I got bored while Cihan's lesson was going on, so we went in the garden, looking for cats. We saw one ("Fluffy") from the window, but he was long gone by the time we got there. We couldn't find a single cat. Typical Saturday night when the digital satellite is down.