Semester Abroad: Long Awaited

I want to take a moment to say how much I love my family and give a shout out to grandma who just celebrated her 70^th birthday. I appreciated the chance to talk with my relatives as they were together for this event and I wish I could have been there as well. I also loved the picture from my cousins and sister saying they wished I was there. Congratulations also goes out to my uncle Stephen and aunt Renee as they are expecting their second child! All my friends and family (especially my parents) have been so supportive of my time abroad and all that goes with it and I appreciate everything they have done and continue to do. Thank you all, you who are reading as well, for your prayers and support.

It’s been quite a while since I have written anything on my Blog here… this is not because there has been nothing to tell by any means. Got very ill the weekend after my latest blog and fought with something much like the flu for a week or more. During this time I got quite a bit behind in my school work and whatnot and have had to play a mad game of catch up so that things don’t get out of hand here. So here are some of the things you have missed since my last post:

I apologize for the length and promise you that I have taken my mental Metamucil and will be much more regular with my posts now.

Resident’s Permit Fiasco…

Possibly one of the most frustrating things about Turkey is also one of the things that makes it so wonderful and vice versa. The fact that life in general happens much more leisurely is something I have grown to love. Turks do nothing of great significance without having a break for çay. This is a type of lifestyle I can certainly get used to. While one would be hard pressed to find this mentality in the traffic systems in Turkey, it is generally true in everyday life. For instance, I have a class that is scheduled for 3 hours one day a week. In classes in the States like this I have had, we simply sat through the 3 hour session… and then you leave. Not this class though. We have class for about an hour or so and then break for tea and cookies, generally finishing off the class a bit early as well as the rest of the cookie. Though I can’t quite figure out if it has more to do with the Turkish culture, or the fact that my 89 year old professor for this class treats all 7 of us in the class like her grandchildren!

As for the negative aspect of this characteristic… Turkish bureaucracy… STINKS! I can’t stand it. The fact that no one in the structure seems to perform their tasks with any sense of urgency grates at my American cultural insides. This is especially true for anything you want to do, such as a resident’s permit. To explain what is going on here: My student visa allows me a single entry into Turkey, good for a 5 month duration. This means that if I wanted to leave the country travel, I would have to buy a separate travel visa, which is also single entry… however, having a student visa allows me to attain a resident’s permit. Making me a ‘proxy’ citizen, in the fact that I can move about and out of the country as a normal citizen would be able to. This is highly desired as I plan to visit places like Bulgaria while the semester is still going on!

This process is ridiculous though. I began the process when I got to Turkey and immediately realized that this is something I should have done before I even left (though the school tells you not to). You must first make an appointment for a meeting to submit your documents and such for your permit. As it happens, the first open date for an appointment was March 22^nd… please keep in mind that I arrived in Turkey the first week of February. This meant no outside traveling for me for almost two months… this was okay though because as you have been able to see a bit, I have been to some beautiful places and had some great experiences. Fast forward to the day of my appointment; luckily enough was on a day which my only class for the day had been canceled! So our appointment was for 2:20pm and it takes about an hour and a half to get all the way there using the public transportation and possibly more depending on the time of day. We got there at 2, a little early just in case… much to our chagrin they were on numbers 150-155… our numbers were in the 300s! So exciting; so we sat there in the hallway-turned-waiting-room, and waited for our numbers. A little over three hours later our numbers were called. Adulation and relief overwhelmed me until a woman with an upset visage made her way out of the room informing me that the police would inform me that the systems were down and we had to come back the next morning. Still having a sliver of hope I rushed in the room where my number was called and my two friends to their rooms to see what we could do. I was to be disappointed though as the man whose window I was at told me what the hallway oracle had already foretold.

I decided to check on my two other friends to see what their plan would be with having to come back in the morning. Instead of meeting equally upset compatriots I was greeted by friends who had not only paid for their permit, but had their papers accepted and their return date set, all in spite of the systems being down. The next 15 minutes was filled with frustration and a bit of anger (of which I am not proud of). This was due to the fact that from that moment on, I became someone the police who were working (or rather packing up to leave) could mock and laugh at. Regardless of the fact that they did not need a system to process any information (they only needed to take my file and give me a return date) they refused to hear me out. Even as my friends stood by me arguing my case as well, talking about the distance and time it took to get here, the fact that I would have to miss classes to come again… they merely laughed and told me to come back later… then they offered me baklava. I was too upset to enjoy its sugary flakey goodness as I marched out of the police station upset with the day’s events.

The end to this story is much less stressful. I went the next morning, skipping my morning classes as it took me 30 seconds once I was in the building to give them my papers and receive a return date. My return date was for the next Wednesday. The next Wednesday I made the same 3 hour round trip for the third time and came away with a tiny booklet… all that hassle and it was all I had to show… oh well. This is Turkey.

Picture from the Police Station which I visited frequently.

The rest of these are pictures from last weekend when we went to the Prince's Islands. It is a really pretty place about an hour's ferry ride from Istanbul. Here there are no cars allowed except emergency vehicles. You can chose to walk around, hire a carriage ride, or rent bikes like we did. We spent the day riding around and found a nice little alcove where we sat and enjoyed the afternoon. It was so pretty as we left as the sun was setting. When we got back I headed to an Irish bar in Taksim with some of my Scandinavian friends to watch the Norway vs. Denmark game. It was quite fun to watch it with a room full of Danes and Norwegians as they chanted for their teams and against each other. The game ended in a tie which was good enough for me but let them still rag on each other the remainder of the night.