How to get to work- an ostensibly simple tale of commuting

Home to work is generally a four stop process.

1. Walk to the bus stop
2. Take the bus downtown
3. Walk from the bus stop to school
4. Take the elevator to the sixth floor or, if I had a big dinner, the stairs

In the United States, this would be a completely unremarkable commute, in which I would don my iPod and zone out until I reach the office.

But this is Turkey. Nothing is ever as simple as it seems.

There are two separate bus routes that come by our neighborhood and head down into Kızılay, the more downtown-ish area where my school is. Buses tend to come by every ten minutes. Sometimes. No, that's a complete lie. There is no discernible pattern to the bus schedule. At times I've waited twenty five minutes for a bus, only to then see three buses coming along, bumper to bumper, one in front of the next like a big blue caravan. It's quite difficult to know when I should get to the bus stop when I can't predict when a bus will come.

Paying for the bus is the next adventure. One of the first things I learned to do in Turkey was buy a bus pass, which is a pre-paid card good for ten rides. However, not every bus accepts the "Ego Kart" bus pass. No, a good two-thirds of the buses on our route only accept cash. It's a good idea to walk around at all times stocked with both a bus pass and a healthy amount of change. With the inconsistency of the bus schedule, only a fool passes up a cash bus to wait for another vehicle. The cash is collected by an attendant who sits at a desk near one of the doors, handing out change and making mysterious phone calls. It's a painfully isolated and dull job. I like to imagine that these guys are all novelists who brainstorm through the monotony of work and then go home to flesh out their ideas.

So once you get on the bus and empty your wallet of all the 5 and 10 kurus coins, the most exciting part of the adventure begins. The average bus seats around 33, but has standing room for another 66 people, and I'm convinced that they frequently exceed this maximum capacity. Social convention dictates that on a crowded bus, young, healthy people relinquish seats to the elderly. While I could probably pull the foreigner card to duck out of this, I generally choose to stand as the bus fills, which brings its own set of hazards. One's personal bubble ceases to exist in the standing-room section, and there might be uncomfortable encounters with a stranger's shoulder or elbow. But the real danger is Turkish traffic, which means the bus ride typically is comprised of a series of jolts and jostles as the bus careens around taxis and pedestrians, sudden stops and starts that send the average person flying across the vehicle.

While many view this as an annoyance, I've come to embrace it as a challenge, giving me ample cause to develop a skill I like to call bus surfing. In this, my goal is to remain standing without holding on to anything. Success varies depending on the bus driver's speed and ability to shift gears smoothly, but overall I'm getting pretty good. The key is a solid stance, feet slightly more than shoulder width apart, knees slightly bent, body parallel to the length of the bus. This way I can anticipate stops and starts, and shift my weight accordingly to maintain balance. Usually I can survive an entire bus ride without falling, but there are still occasional mishaps in which I make a crash landing into the person next to me. But have no fear- one day I will master this skill.

Typically I work in the evenings, which means my trip in to school is timed just perfectly to coincide with the worst of rush hour. Picture a bus with people packed in like so many pickles in a jar, trying to squeeze elbows and shopping bags into any available crevice, and more people trying to board the bus at every stop. Then the last three blocks of the trip takes a good five minutes because traffic is invariably at a standstill and we can't seem to move more than ten feet at a time.

Once we finally escape at our bus stop, the ride isn't over. No, before we can breathe a sigh of relief in the sanctuary of the office, we must first survive the elevator. My school is on the sixth and seventh floor of a ten-story building which has two elevators. One of these is a normal size that can hold eight people, while the other is a four-seater. Both of these are rather sensitive to weight, and if too many people try to jump in a warning beep screams. I hear rumors that if there is too much weight, the elevator protests and leaves the occupants stuck in the no-mans-land of the shaft between floors.

The other weird thing about our elevator is that its stops appear to be dictated by a phantom rather than buttons. I've had several experiences where the elevator stops on floors three, four, and five, only to skip my stop on the sixth floor and take me instead to the ninth. Or it'll get down to ground level and decide to go back up without stopping to let me off. And there are always mysterious stops on floors where the button is lit up and there's no one waiting to get on. Half the time I opt for the stairs rather than subject myself to the whims of this machine.

Sometimes I long for American efficiency, but if nothing else I always have something to keep me on my toes while I'm trying to get to work.

Yeni Yıl?!

Before moving to Turkey, I had somewhat steeled myself to the idea of a December with no holidays. It's only natural: no Jesus, no Christmas. There's no reason to have a celebration in late December, right?

Wrong. In mid-November I walked into Starbucks only to be struck dumb by the sight of Santa Claus, reindeer, and decorated evergreen trees all around. Bags of Starbucks Christmas blend were laid out on display tables, and the familiar Starbucks mix of jazzy Christmas tunes played in the background. I was nonplussed, to say the least. What on earth was Starbucks thinking; didn't their marketing team realize that Turkey doesn't celebrate Christmas? Does retail homogeneity have no limits?

However, as I waged my own mental war with Starbucks during the next few weeks, the city of Ankara rolled out all its decorations. Suddenly my daily commute became an adventure, as each day I noticed more trees covered in lights, or images of Santa smiling and saying "Mutlu Yıllar!" While the holiday cheer can't compare with any U.S. town, it was certainly more than I'd anticipated. One bakery has a giant sign reading, "Happy Christmas! Frohe Weihnachten!" My students were getting into the holiday spirit too. One of my classes proposed a "secret Santa" gift exchange for later this month, and all of my classes began asking about my plans for Christmas.

But to be fair, any mention of Christmas in Turkey ought to be accompanied by a hint of sarcasm denoting quotation marks. To Turks, there is no difference between "Christmas" and New Year. For this we can thank Starbucks, Hollywood, and anyone else who's helped import Western culture. It seems that the multitude of holiday traditions and celebrations built up around December are irresistible, even to those who don't care to commemorate the birth of Jesus. So at some point in the last century, Turkey adopted a number of Christmas traditions, bumped them all back a week, and claimed that it's all a New Year celebration. Gifts, trees, "Noel Baba" -- all of it is geared toward December 31.

This causes confusion to the point that my students don't understand that in the West, we have two separate holidays in late December celebrating two different events. I've had a number of interesting conversations in which I have to explain that we don't celebrate Christmas on December 31, and that Western New Year celebrations mostly involve staying up until midnight to toast with champagne.

Our school was gracious enough to give us the 24th and 25th off, so I'll be able to have some time with friends and attend midnight Mass at the chapel of the British Embassy. My students aren't so thrilled about this, as it meant four-hour make-up lessons, but they've been good sports about it. They understand that it's not easy to be so far away from family and friends during an important holiday, and when I mentioned that I never get to go to church because I work on Sunday mornings, they were sympathetic.

To make it up to them, the other two Americans and I decided to treat our classes to a couple Christmas carols. With a borrowed guitar and a couple slapdash rehearsals to finesse something resembling three-part harmony, we dragged our groups to the school's restaurant and sang to them. The response was mostly positive, even though some students were coerced into singing along on "We Wish You a Merry Christmas." I have no doubt that there are videos floating around somewhere on Facebook by now, considering the number of students whose phones were pointed at us the entire time. If nothing else, the guy from the accounting office seemed to get a kick out of our serenade.

In other news, all our snow has melted and it's been in the fifties so far this week. I hear this is supposed to continue through the week, so the odds are not looking good for a white Christmas. But it's still significantly colder than my past few Christmases, so I'm mostly okay with it. The main point is that no matter your location or environment, Christ was still born, and he dwells among us. This is the Charlie Brown minimalist approach to Christmas I've developed, and I'm content with that.

Merry Christmas to you all! 聖誕快樂!

First snowfall

Yesterday it rained like mad most of the day. But as we walked back from the bus stop last night, we noticed that the raindrops were floating more than falling, and that they were starting to look white and puffy. It was snowing! I didn't think it was cold enough for the snow to stick, but today, this is what I saw when I poked my head outside.


I've reverted to little kid excitement at the moment. I haven't seen snow since college. However, considering how much the rain jammed up traffic yesterday, I shudder to think what it will do to my commute to work today.

Submission

Hair grows. This is an inevitable result of the passage of time. Usually it's no big deal, but as with most aspects of life overseas, it can become a source of terror as you realize that you can only postpone a haircut for so long before you will have to suck it up, walk into a hair salon, and submit yourself to a stranger's razor.

This doesn't sound like it's worth stressing over, but hairstyles can vary greatly from country to country. And as much as we like to say that all people are the same, it's also true that ethnicity is a factor in the thickness, texture, and color of your hair. In this regard, we are not all equal. I once learned this the hard way in Taiwan when I allowed a stylist to give me a haircut that looked super cute on Taiwanese girls, but resembled a dead rodent when combined with my thin hair and heart-shaped face.

The other problem with haircuts overseas is that salon vocabulary is not a priority in any language training. No beginning level books will teach you essential phrases like "Are these layers too long?" or "Do you like your bangs straight across or angled?" or "Just a couple inches off the back, please!"

So it was with a great deal of trepidation that I climbed the stairs to a salon in Kızılay, a block or two away from my school. Last week a fellow teacher had recommended this place to us, which was helpful because there seems to be a disproportionate number of salons in Ankara. I would guess there's one salon for every six people here. How do you find a good one? Ask a friend with good hair, of course.

The staff greeted me with a friendly "Merhaba" and asked what I needed. I was only able to respond, "My hair.." and make a snipping motion with my fingers representing scissors. The woman smiled, and asked if I simply wanted a cut or a [garbled rapid Turkish], which I can only assume meant any number of hair services from perms to dyeing to God knows what else.

I was directed to a chair, where a man came to take care of me. For some reason, all stylists here are men. I have no idea why this is. But this guy was also very friendly, and tried chatting with me despite his complete lack of English. After shampooing my hair, he plunked me down in front of a mirror and started asking me what I wanted from him.

This was the scary part. There's no way I could even come close to coherently explaining in Turkish what sort of cut I needed. He did his best to visually represent several options, giving me a choice between "hands swooping forward" and "hands making horizontal sweeping motions." I hesitantly chose "hands swooping forward," which seemed like a nice, nonthreatening gesture.

The next step was asking how long I wanted it. Again, this was accomplished mostly through sign language, but when I showed him my desired length, he looked at me quizzically and said, "Really? That long?" I reiterated that yes, it's what I wanted, and he kind of shrugged. I began to wonder if "hands swooping forward" was not the style I thought it was.

He then started reaching for things in the tool belt he wore around his waist like a mechanic. My hair was soon pinned up, and he deftly took a razor to the back of my hair. The next thing I knew, he was holding a mirror up so I could see. "Like that?" he asked. "Yes, that's great," I replied. Or at least that's what I thought I said, but it's quite probable that I was wrong, because he immediately whipped the razor back out and chopped off another inch or so. I watched in horror, but really, what can you do? Once it's short, that's it.

There was nothing left to do but sit and watch as he kept chopping. I'm used to being in this childlike state where I put myself in the hands of others and hope that they point me in the right direction, but I felt myself slipping into a sort of despair as I realized that I had no choice but to let this man have his way with my hair. There was nothing I could do but sit there, smile, and trust that he was professional enough to give me a decent-looking result.

In Islam, a "Muslim" is defined as "a person who submits to God." The whole religion is about submission, about putting ultimate trust in God, seeking his will and then following it wholeheartedly. For some reason, sitting in that chair, I thought of this and wondered if that kind of submission does indeed bring peace, or if it only creates more fear, as it did for me, putting a large part of my physical appearance into the hands of a man I didn't know.

Then I realized that the submission doesn't have to be about fear. As a Christian, I also believe in submitting to God's will, but for me, it's more like the way I submit to my hairstylist in Taiwan. Penny also doesn't speak a lick of English, and the first time I went to her my Chinese wasn't much better than my Turkish is now. But over time, I came to trust her, to realize that she knows a lot more about my hair than I do, and that her taste is better than mine. She is a jealous hairstylist, who chewed me out once when I came in after having visited another barber. But she was completely right; my hair didn't look as good when I'd strayed. I was better off sticking with Penny. After my salon Chinese improved enough that I could talk with her about my hair, she still ignored most of my suggestions. "No. I'm not going to do that," she'd respond. "That would look terrible. Here, let me do this." And I'd shrug and let her do whatever she wanted, because it always ended up looking good. Similarly, I trust God because I know him, I have seen how faithful he is, and I know that his will always ends up being better than my own.

So while I was philosophizing, my stylist was still snipping and blow-drying his heart out, whipping things in and out of his tool belt like some sort of cartoon character. And while I still would've liked more length, everyone else seems to like the result he came up with. I don't know; what do you think? Is this guy worth trusting next time I need a trim?

Travel diary, part 4: Caution, it's about toilets. Stop eating now.

As I've traveled overseas, I've marveled at the human brain's ability to adapt to new situations, at how we initially react with shock and confusion to unfamiliar things, but over time we learn to accept different realities. We can even grow so accustomed to these new situations that we eventually regard them as normal. Culture shock doesn't last forever, and you can even reach a point where you forget what things were like at home or how you felt when you first encountered the new culture and all its trappings.

The thing is, when you're completely immersed in the culture, you don't notice the gradual shifting of your mental schema. You might not even discover how much you've changed until someone points it out to you, or you find yourself in the company of someone who is still in the initial stage of coping with the new situation.

Why am I rambling about culture shock and adaptation? Because, dear friends, I feel that there is one aspect of life in Turkey about which I cannot adequately present an American viewpoint. Traveling in India and southeast Asia has forever changed my definition of "gross," and Taiwan has given me a new sense of normalcy. I am speaking of this:


The bane of American travelers in any country where it might appear: the Turkish toilet. The squatty potty. The hole in the ground. Nothing is quite so shocking as when you walk in expecting a toilet and find only this. It's like your worst travel nightmare.

And yes, they're everywhere in Turkey.

However, they're also everywhere in Taiwan. I've heard arguments that they're actually more sanitary because there's no contact with a gross seat and that squatting is a healthier position. (Take this with a grain of salt; these are the same people who tell me that hitting myself repeatedly in the arm is good for my skin and that drinking cold water is unhealthy.) At any rate, after numerous occasions where the only choices were the squatty or a bush, I've ceased to regard it as an issue. The Taiwanese toilet came from Japan, so it has an anti-splashing design and always has a flushing mechanism, as you would expect of the high-tech, germaphobe Japanese. In Cambodia, instead of a flush, there was a cistern full of grimy looking water next to the toilet, with a small pitcher for scooping out this murky water to wash everything down. And sometimes a bidet. I won't even tell you about India.

The point is, these things don't faze me anymore. I'm sorry, I should have blogged about this a few years ago when I could have offered a more entertaining perspective. My poor flatmates, on the other hand, could probably give you a nice rant on the squat toilets, as they're both still reeling from the initial revulsion. They're probably not comforted by my assurance that after a while, the question "Is it a squat or a sit?" won't even come up when using public restrooms. However, there is another aspect of culture shock in this story, one which I haven't worked through and adapted to.

If there's one principle that I stand by, it's that two things in life should be free: drinking water and toilets. In Turkey, they charge you for both.

The water at least makes sense. Local water is so full of minerals that you wouldn't want to drink it, and so we order large bottles of water that are delivered to our house every week or so. I don't like it, but I can accept it.

But I haven't yet found it in my heart to forgive the bus company for their stinginess. It's a twelve hour bus ride to Trabzon, and the buses, while equipped with wireless internet and several television channels, lack facilities. There are a couple of rest stops along the way, full of overpriced cafes and gift shops. However, as you walk into the ladies' room, you'll be greeted by a man sitting behind a window in the entrance, asking you for an entrance fee. It's only one lira (US $.65), but still. It's not fun when the smallest bill you have is 50 lira and your coins total .75 lira, in a country where people hate making change. So I have to confess that when faced with this circumstance, I did something morally reprehensible: I didn't pay for the toilet. I happened to be walking in amongst a crowd of women, and in a state of panic, I simply slipped through without the guy noticing. It's probably a form of shoplifting, but that's what happened. Yikes.

The worst part is, the bus ride is setting you up. During the first leg of the bus ride, we were served drinks twice. Don't tell me this isn't some sort of scheme: fill up the customers with tea, bring them water after that, and then drop them off at a pay toilet? Please.

Just don't tell airline companies; we don't want to give them any ideas. The ocean is too wide for that.

Travel diary, part 3: The Byzantines

Trabzon is a very historical city, having been an important port on the Black Sea for millennia. It was part of the Silk Road, which means it was home to a myriad of merchants and traders from all over and had many cultural influences.

In antiquity, Trabzon was a Greek colony, and has always been heavily influenced by Greek culture. Later, from 1204 to1641, Trabzon was the capital of the Trebizond Empire, one of the successor states that rose as the Byzantine Empire collapsed. Trabzon is full of old Byzantine churches that have been converted into mosques, and a couple of these sites have been preserved as museums. Today the city has one functioning church, with about a dozen members.

Probably the most famous attraction in the region is the Sumela Monastery, located in the mountains about 45 kilometers inland from Trabzon.

This monastery sits on a cliff, surrounded by mountains. It's at least ten miles to the nearest town, and even from the nearest road you have another ten minute hike up to get to the entrance. It's about as remote and peaceful a location as hermits could dream of.

The monastery was first founded in the 4th century AD by two monks who had a vision of the Virgin Mary on this cliff. It grew and reached its present form in the 1200s, during the rise of the Empire of Trebizond.


Even during Ottoman times, this monastery received special protection and grew and flourished until it was seized by the Russians after World War I. It was finally abandoned in 1923.

Sumela is known for its beautiful frescoes of scenes from the Bible. Unfortunately most of the artwork in the monastery has been badly damaged from wear, tear, and vandalism.

The inside of the rock church has the least damage, because the vandals can't reach the ceilings as easily.


We spent close to an hour climbing around in the cells of the monastery. It's a pretty incredible place, especially when you think about people living there five hundred years ago. The rooms are very dark and cold, since they're all carved out of stone and the windows are quite small. The nearest village is at least a day's journey away by foot, all up and down steep cliffs and mountains. Those monks must have been pretty dedicated to live up there.

The other big thing to see in Trabzon is the Aya Sofya (Hagia Sophia) museum. This old Byzantine church overlooks the Black Sea, and was also built in the 1200s.

The church was converted into a mosque in 1461, and then was seized by the Russians and used as a hospital during World War I. Later the mosque received a grant for restoration and has been a museum since the 1950s.

The architecture is lovely, with lots of stonework on the outside and more Biblical frescoes on the inside. Unfortunately, as in the monastery, much of the artwork has been defaced and destroyed by centuries of people and conquerors.

A painting in the narthex depicting the wedding at Cana.

The inside of the sanctuary has a lovely high vaulted ceiling. The acoustics are incredible. I'd love to bring a choir in and sing here. But that might be weird, since it's a museum.

On the front wall is inscribed this surah from the Qur'an, which reads, "True temples belong to God only and therefore shalt thou worship no other but God."

Walking around Trabzon, there are tons of other things to see. The castle wall from the old Trebizond days still stands, and runs through the middle of the city. For an American, it's pretty odd and awe-inspiring to meander around and see the ruins of a castle nestled between the pastry shops and houses.

But for me the best part of Trabzon was all the outdoor tea gardens. Throughout the city, in the plaza, at each tourist attraction, there are outdoor pavilions where people gather to sip a cup of afternoon tea and talk with their friends. As we wandered around, we noticed that this seems to be a favorite pastime for many people. I saw many people who parked at a table all afternoon, sometimes to play backgammon, but mostly just to talk and enjoy the weather with their friends.

What better way to spend an afternoon on vacation than in a tea garden high on a hill, overlooking the whole city and the sea, with good company and good tea?

Travel diary, part 2: Turkish hospitality

Sheep in a truck last night, unaware that it was their last night on earth.

Happy bayram! Yesterday we spent the afternoon in Amasya, a town midway between Ankara and the Black Sea coast.


It's known for its classical Ottoman style architecture and the castle built into the mountain overlooking the city.

We had some friends to show us around the town and cook us a nice Turkish dinner. Then this morning we began the more exciting part of our travel.

Let me back up a moment. Last week we went to buy bus tickets in Ankara. We wanted to get to Amasya, spend the night there, and then go to Trabzon the next day. When we went to the bus company, they told us that they could get us to Amasya and no further. So when we left on this trip, we had three tickets to Amasya and simply prayed that we would be able to find tickets to get us the rest of the way.

When we arrived in Amasya last night we had no trouble getting tickets to Trabzon today. Our Turkish friend gave us a lift to the bus station this morning and showed us off. It was an eight hour bus ride along the coast, and we arrived around 8:30 with a vague idea of where our hotel was and no clue how we were getting back to Ankara. I was a little nervous as we pulled into the bus station, because I knew that although we could get a taxi, there were probably other shorter, cheaper ways to get to our hotel, but that we couldn't find them with our complete lack of knowledge of the city and minimal knowledge of Turkish.

We were in for a surprise, though. When we got on the bus, our Turkish friend in Amasya had told the bus driver the name of the hotel we were staying at, so when we got off the bus in Trabzon, the bus driver, who spoke no English at all but was very patient with our awful Turkish, told us to wait and he would get us to our hotel. He called a guy with a mini-bus to take us there.

While we were waiting for the mini-bus, we went over to the ticket counter to see if we could get back to Ankara on Saturday. The bus driver followed us over there, and when we asked him about tickets, he looked at us with a raised eyebrow. "This Saturday?" he asked. He glanced at the ticketing agent, then he shook his head and clucked his tongue. "That will be very difficult." The other guy behind the counter, shook his head and told us that there were no tickets available. At this point the mini-bus driver had arrived and was waiting to take us to our hotel, so we resolved to give it up for tonight and try again in the morning.

However, our chauffeur had no intention of stranding us in Trabzon. Along the way, he suddenly pulled over and took us to another ticketing office for his bus company. The ticketing agent there also told us that it would be difficult to find tickets, but they worked and finagled things until they scrounged up three tickets to Ankara on Sunday night. Then he dropped us off at our hotel, where we're relaxing now.

It seems like everywhere we go in this country, we have been running into the nicest people. Everyone is so willing to help us out and take care of us. We have been really blessed so far in the people we've met.

I'm also really looking forward to exploring Trabzon now that we made it here and we know we won't be stuck forever. Check back for more pictures later!

Travel diary, part 1: choosing a destination

Once we realized that we had a seven-day break for the bayram, and that everyone we know will be either feasting on roast lamb with their extended families or escaping from Ankara, it seemed pretty obvious that we should seize what may be one of our only opportunities to explore other regions of this beautiful country.

Therein lay the problem. Turkey is a huge country, filled with a range of historical marvels and natural beauty. If you only get a couple of vacations, where should you go?

Here was my list of top destinations when I arrived in Turkey:

1. Istanbul, because--well, duh.

2. Cappadocia, a region three or four hours' drive south of here. The rock formations here are insane, and the history of how people used these caves and underground cities throughout history is fascinating.

3. Izmir, a city on the west coast that is supposed to be one of the most beautiful in Turkey. It's also very near Efes (Ephesus) which has some of the best preserved Greek and Roman buildings in Turkey.

4. Çanakkale, a city in northwest Turkey where the British and Anzac troops stormed Gallipoli during World War I, and were demolished by the Ottomans. In many places the barracks and trenches have been preserved. It's also near Troy, the ancient city of literary and equine fame.

5. Antalya, the beach town on the Mediterranean that everyone recommends visiting. I like beaches.

Since I began teaching, my students have eagerly adopted the role of travel agent for their homeland. Everyone has been telling me the best places to visit, when to go, what to eat, etc. One class even sat down and made a list of fifteen places in Turkey that I must see before I leave.

A recurring theme through these travel discussions is the unparalleled beauty of the Black Sea. I keep hearing that this is absolutely the loveliest part of Turkey, especially in comparison to dry, brown Ankara. It's so beautiful that my pre-intermediate level students can't even put together sentences describing the scenery, but instead blurt out detached words like "green," and "hilly," and "green green green!" accompanied by dramatic hand gestures tracing the mountainous skyline.

This somehow sold us on the Black Sea. After a bit of research, we decided to head north and east for the bayram, to explore the towns of the northern coast. Our primary destination is Trabzon, a port city founded in the 7th century BC and, if my students are correct, home to some spectacular scenery.


Turkey is a huge country, much bigger than I seem to think it is. Trabzon didn't look that far on a map, but it's 462 miles away, about the equivalent of St. Louis to Jackson, Mississippi. It's a twelve hour bus ride from Ankara. Unfortunately my sense of distance has been compressed by a few years on Taiwan, where a three hour train ride to Taipei is "too far for just a weekend trip." In twelve hours you could drive around the island and end up back where you started. And that's counting stopping for the restroom and meals. So I'm not entirely certain what I'm going to do for twelve hours on a bus. Hopefully I'll think of something.

Kurban Bayram

I'm supposed to teach tomorrow (Saturday) but as of right now I'm not sure how many of my students are going to show up. For many people, tomorrow is the beginning of a nine-day vacation from work and school, and so a lot of people are getting ready to skip town. Even tonight was a bit sparse at school, as many people cut out early.

What's the big deal? An Islamic religious holiday known in Arabic as Eid el-Adha, and in Turkish as Kurban Bayram. For many Muslims worldwide, this is the time of year to perform the hajj, or pilgrimage to Mecca that Muslims are required to make sometime in their life. In Turkey, it's treated almost like a Thanksgiving-type holiday.

What I was able to catch from students is that it's an important time for families to be together. On the day of the actual holiday, most families will purchase a live cow or sheep, and then sacrifice it. The animal is then cooked for a large family feast, some of which is set aside to distribute to the poor. I asked the students why they do this, and they replied that it is to thank God for all the blessings he gives to them and to remember everything God does for them.

A little more digging into the subject revealed that the holiday celebrates an event recorded in both the Bible and the Qur'an, God's test of Abraham's faith by asking him to sacrifice his son. Abraham, completely obedient to God, is prepared to do it, but of course God stops him and gives him a ram instead. The sacrifice performed on Kurban Bayram is a commemoration of God's provision.

This is also a big shopping time, as many people buy new clothes for the bayram. Why not? Any excuse for new clothes. I was told to avoid the malls next week, because they'll be crowded. Gifts of money are also commonly distributed to children, so young people in particular look forward to the holiday.

Our school is giving us a full week off for the holiday, so right now the plan is to head north and east to the Black Sea coast. I've been told that while the Black Sea is dangerous and too cold for swimming, the coast is lush and green and full of historical places. I'm looking forward to going and then coming back to share pictures!

Conversation

One thing I greatly appreciate about the school I work for is its emphasis on communication. I've seen too many schools, including many in the United States, where foreign language classes spend more time teaching about the language than teaching the language. Raise your hand if you've sat through years of Spanish or German class memorizing verb conjugations and masculine/feminine endings but still can't carry on a decent conversation with a native speaker because you don't have enough experience putting all that grammar to use.

So I was thrilled when the director of our new school instructed us to get the students speaking as much as possible in class. Yes, we teach them grammar, but it's useless unless the students are able to understand it in a variety of contexts and use it to express themselves.

To that end, we spend a lot of time in class simply talking. Conversations are often inspired by the topics in our textbook, and I try to keep it somewhere in that realm just to be sure that target vocabulary has opportunity to come up. But you also learn a lot about people when you just sit and talk.

One of my classes is very pessimistic, as I tell them every day. We've been learning to express predictions about the future, which leads to conversations like this:

Me: "Do you think humans will be extinct someday?"
Student: "I hope so."

or
Me: "What might cause the birth rate to decrease?"
Student: "Well, women get ugly after they have a baby."

At least they find their own cynicism hilarious, and people could easily mistake our classroom for a comedy club with as much as they crack each other up. However, they're still at a pre-intermediate level, which means their ability to express themselves is limited. This also induces snickers, when people utter such odd sentences as, "Next week I will cut a cow." (He meant that he will sacrifice a cow, as part of a religious festival which I'll write more about later.)

I'm also getting a more rounded view of the entire country, since many people in Ankara came from other places, and inevitably view their hometown as vastly superior to the humdrum business-oriented gloom of the capital city. But it means I'm getting lots of lessons in geography and what to do in various regions of the country if I ever get time to travel.

So basically, grammar is the necessary evil that allows us to get to the fun stuff of communicating and getting to know people. Work feels much less like work when it's simply facilitating conversation. In fact, I'd say that getting people to talk to each other is a pretty cool job.

The story of my life

As I've spent more time overseas, I've felt a bond of kinship with David Sedaris, a humorist who's spent a good portion of his adult life in France. Few writers can adequately describe the absurdity of being a foreigner like he can, and there's one story of his in particular that I feel completely captures the essence of what my life has been like the past three or so years. The essay is titled 'Jesus Shaves.' Here's the audio version, which is about ten minutes long, but well worth a listen. (FYI: There is one curse word at the end, but it's bleeped. Consider yourself warned.)




The story is entertaining enough in itself, but I cannot tell you how many times I have had conversations like the one he describes here, in my EFL classes and in daily interactions with people I meet. For adults trying to communicate in a foreign language, especially in an educational setting where one person in the conversation is far from fluent in the target language, linguistic skills hinder the more complex philosophical and comparative cultural conversations we'd like to have.

Often enough I'm the teacher in the scenario, trying to be patient but completely confused as to what my students are trying to tell me about their personal philosophies. But I've certainly had my share of moments as the student, using a stilted ungrammatical mutant language to try and talk to a native speaker who is struggling just to figure out which words are coming out of my mouth, let alone comprehend the implications of what I'm saying. When you say something the other person doesn't expect, due to a cultural or theological difference, it's easy for them to assume that you simply made a language mistake. The temptation is to give up when communication isn't smooth, and that can cause all sorts of problems.

However, God can and does work through these moments. Later on you might look back and laugh at the miscommunication, or be inspired to go and research these questions further to get a better understanding of what your friend was trying to tell you in the first place. I've learned a lot from simple Google searches inspired by incoherent explanations, and had great conversations prompted by asking a more fluent English speaker for clarification on what Joe Six-Words-of-English tried telling me earlier. There is much to be gained from a foray into the wilderness of cross-cultural communication, if you look at it as an opportunity to learn and grow, rather than simply an awkward embarrassing encounter.

Home sweet home- a photo log of cleaning up

When our supervisor told us about this apartment he'd found for us, he was very excited. It's in a nice area of town, it's got three bedrooms, it's completely furnished- we couldn't find anything else better for our price range. We signed the contract Sunday, with a few stipulations: we wanted an oven, we needed another bed and wardrobe for the small room, and we wanted the former occupant to clear out her personal belongings.

Well, we got the bed, we got the oven, and she did clear out a number of things before we arrived.

Nice living room, isn't it? Furnished apartments are so convenient, freeing us of the hassle and expense of finding our own furniture and decorating. However, I do feel that there is a threshold of how much furniture is useful, and once that threshold is reached, additional furniture becomes simply clutter. Our apartment definitely falls into the category of "you can't walk two steps without running into a cabinet or wardrobe." Every room is filled to the brim with more storage space than I would ever hope to need.

The master bedroom not only has a wardrobe spanning the length of one entire wall, but also two nightstands, a dresser, and a separate cabinet. You can only open the door halfway because there's furniture in the way. So far half the wardrobe is being used to store extra chairs, the ironing board, an extra fan, etc.

This is my bedroom, which came with a bed, table, nightstand, wardrobe, and this tall bookshelf. It's not bad furniture in itself, but it did take about an hour of playing around to get everything to a point where you could access more than one corner and open all the drawers while still having room to walk. There's simply too much for the small space.

The smallest bedroom is blessed with a balcony, and the presence of whoever that creepy picture is. What you can see in this picture is the entire width of the room, and yet the owner decided to buy a double bed for it. It's interesting, to say the least.

It was a full day's work to get furniture rearranged into a pleasing and useful configuration, including the exile of a few pieces, such as a giant wicker and glass bookcase, into the tiny storage closet that used to be a guest bathroom.

We were also dismayed to walk into the apartment and find that personal belongings had not all been moved out. Nor had she cleaned. As we poked around, it became apparent that the dirty dishes in the sink were not the only gifts she had left for us. Believe it or not, this selection in the refrigerator is a significant improvement over what we had seen last time we were in this place.

Thankfully the eggs were out of the refrigerator, but she did leave us some beer, mayonnaise, and other various goodies. We did actually try the halva, a dessert substance with the taste and texture of the inside of a Butterfinger bar. In other cabinets we found a good supply of coffee, curry mixes, tea, etc.

And then there's the alcohol collection. The Baileys is all gone, but there is still a healthy supply of assorted whiskeys, rum, rakı (a Turkish liquor that tastes like black licorice), and several other libations.

I mentioned that there was coffee, but as we further investigated the jars of Nescafe, we discovered some little friends:

Yes, there is some sort of larvae living in this bottle of French vanilla Nescafe. Please wish these little friends a pleasant journey and safe travels into the garbage.

Besides the treasures in the kitchen, we found a whole host of other decorations and knick knacks which have now been safely stowed away in closets. Here are some highlights:

Cute night light with a bear sitting in a crescent moon. Sure to give you pleasant dreams.


A collection of dolls on shelves in the bedrooms. For some reason we decided not to keep them.

She also left us her collection of stuffed animals, probably to give the place a homier look.

Chewing gum on one of the night stands. If memory serves correctly, the official playground term for this is ABC gum: already been chewed. Or perhaps, like Violet Beauregarde, she was saving it for later so she could continue working on her world record in chewing.


The bathroom was well-stocked with her pink floral bath mats. We're also fully equipped if we ever decide to have friends over for a girls' night: nail polish, facial masks, skin creams, potpourri...


And in case we're not feeling so well, there is a basket overflowing with medications, presumably for any affliction that might come up.

This woman has an interesting sense of decor. She has candles like this one, full of gel and dotted with evil eyes. We also filled a box with pictures of Egyptian pharaohs, small bronze lamps, tiny Chinese folk god figurines, cat-shaped candles, cutesy Japanese cats, and several other things that seem to have been acquired through either travel or friends who travel.

The cleaning and moving in process is far from over. But we've at least made a good start on clearing out most of her junk and hiding it in storage spaces to make room for our few things, or at least to open up some space. And we're going shopping today to stock up on other things like bedding and supplies for the kitchen so we can actually start living.

Despite the setbacks, it does feel oh so nice to be sleeping on a bed and to have a wardrobe for my clothes. No more living out of a suitcase!

teaching

Rule number one of teaching at a dershane (cram school) in Turkey: flexibility is the only way to survive.

We started teaching at our school in downtown Ankara on Saturday morning. We found out what we were teaching Friday afternoon. I found out about my evening class tonight only when I called this morning to ask about weekday schedules. Needless to say, the first lesson was a little shaky, as I had very little time to familiarize myself with the material or figure out how to pace the three hour lesson.

For the next four weeks, I'm teaching three different groups of pre-intermediate learners, and my schedule looks like this:

Group 1: Saturday/Sunday 10:00 am-1:00 pm
Group 2: Saturday/Sunday 1:30 pm-4:30 pm
Group 3: Monday/Wednesday/Friday 7:20-9:20 pm

And that's it. Look a little weird to you? It certainly feels weird. My heaviest working days are the weekends, which means church is out of the question. On the other hand, I have nothing during the day on weekdays, and only work every other evening.

The school is a little chaotic. We received books and minimal instruction on teaching policies, course structures, assessment, or, well, anything that teachers want to know on the first day. This sort of information we gleaned from coworkers we chanced to meet in the teachers' room or in the hallway. Paperwork is underway for work permits, but I have yet to get registered in the accounting office so who knows the real status of what's going on. All I know is that I show up and teach and so far there's no record of me being there. TIA.

What I do know is that my students have put me at ease. My weekend groups are comprised of senior high and university students, all girls. This is an age group I'm comfortable with, and I really like all the students. The senior high group in particular doesn't run away during breaks, but uses that time to bring up conversation topics that interest them more than our current unit on environmental protection. They've already chatted with me about everything from their hopes and aspirations for the future to their favorite pop star, Tarkan.

My weeknight group is a little more sedate and not quite so bubbly, but they're mostly men in their early thirties, so that's to be expected. They're in English classes hoping it will improve their job opportunities, so they take it pretty seriously. Not bad, just different having students who are concentrating intently on the grammar instead of checking Facebook on their cell phones and giggling.

Overall I'm feeling good about the students, less than excited about the school, and overall still missing Taiwan so much it hurts. Transitions are hard, and I think the culture shock that bypassed me the first ten months in Taiwan has already hit me hard here. Hopefully the homesickness will start to pass as work fills up more of my time and I get to know people here. I'm confident that being here in Turkey is no accident, and I'm hoping to find ways that I can be used here.

29 Ekim Cumhuriyet Bayramı

Here's a little game. How many Turkish flags do you see in this picture?


I counted nine, but there could be others lurking in corners. My neighborhood doesn't always look like this, but it so happens that today was a holiday.


October 29 is Republic Day, the anniversary of the founding of the Turkish Republic in 1923. It's a national holiday, so schools and many businesses were closed. There was a parade this morning, but we didn't attend. But we did see that everyone was flying their national colors today. These ranged from very small:



to very large:
I already knew that Turks are very patriotic, but today I got a much better glimpse into how proud they are of their country. Just walking around you could get a sense of the pride they take in their republic. People had flags and little pictures of Atatürk on their car windows and hanging from their rearview mirrors driving around. Every bus had a flag flying on the front corner. Some guys on the bus saw us looking and pointing at the sheer quantity of flags displayed, and proudly asked us what we thought about it.

And remember how I said they really like Atatürk? I wasn't joking. He's everywhere too, more so than usual. He's even on the Google logo!



Quite a sight, isn't it? And it was like this all over the city. Rather inspiring, I think.

T.I.A.

Things are finally starting to come together, in a very Asian sort of way. I don't mean this in any derogatory sense; it's just that Eastern cultures operate on a completely different plane than Western cultures. Americans enjoy precision, planning ahead, and knowing exactly what to expect well before something happens so we can be prepared for it. Well, welcome to Turkey. On a superficial level, you'd be fooled into thinking that you're in a Western country with familiar values and operational systems, but the culture and way of thinking is simply never what you expect.

We were very thankful that all three of us were hired at the same language school. Last weekend we were asked to visit several classes for observation, so we went over on Saturday morning. Nobody seemed to know why we were there ("You're supposed to be observing? Erm..."), but some teachers welcomed us into their classrooms nonetheless. After the first tea break at 11:00, one of the administrative assistants approached us and said that they needed a substitute for a conversation class at 1:15. Huzzah! At the 12:00 tea break, she came back and said they needed another substitute for a conversation class at 1:30. Huzzah!

We've been waiting since then to hear about schedules and which courses we're teaching. Tonight we finally got phone calls saying that we start Saturday morning, and we can go to pick up our schedule and course materials tomorrow. That gives us a whole afternoon to prepare for teaching! Huzzah!

The next step was finding an apartment. In typical Turkish fashion, we were introduced to an apartment owned by a friend of a friend of a friend's sister. The place is located about a block away from the Russian embassy, a tall gloomy-looking apartment complex painted green and garnished with barbed wire. Cheery neighbors, those. But it is a nice central location, within walking distance of work and fairly near other Ankara hot spots.

The apartment has two bedrooms and one Harry Potter closet bedroom. It's furnished, not only with the sofa and chairs you'd expect, but also all the former occupant's belongings. Shoe boxes, eggs in the unplugged fridge, rows of empty beer bottles, a treadmill, Russian nesting dolls, even a poster of some Turkish pretty-boy celebrity smiling down at us from high on a wall. Poking through the cupboards in the kitchen, the woman showing us the flat smiled and remarked, "Look at all these curry mixes! You can have curry every day!" Hm. Well, I do love curry.

Junk aside, the flat is pretty nice and we're looking forward to occupying it. It's cozy and homey, nice but not extravagant. Just about perfect. We're negotiating and praying that it gets cleaned out a bit more before we take over.

Back in Taiwan we had a saying about this feeling of being overwhelmed and lacking any sort of mental schema to explain our surroundings. "TIA- This is Asia." (We stole it from Leonardo DiCaprio's character in Blood Diamond.) It's a metaphorical shrug, as if to say, "Well, let's just take it for what it is." At times, it's the only way to stay sane when everything around you appears to have descended into madness. Technically, I'm still in Asia, so I'm going to keep using this phrase when I'm completely perplexed.

"TIA" moments don't all stem from frustration, however. Turks have already provided me with lots of experiences that both baffle and delight me.

For example, last week my two flatmates befriended the flower man who runs a streetside stand a block or so down. When we went back to get flowers for a friend's birthday, the man greeted us each with a kiss on the hand. He arranged our floral bouquet with flourishes of the hand and expressive gestures comparing the beauty of the flower with the beauty of the ladies before him. Then he threw in an extra flower and kissed the tips of his fingers in melodramatic satisfaction at his handiwork. TIA.

Another time, we were cooking a pot of beans on the stove when our Turkish teacher arrived. Somehow in the ensuing conversation, we mentioned that we liked black beans. He told us that they don't really have them in Turkey. The next day, he showed up with a big bag of black beans for us, because he knows the one place in Ankara that you can get them. TIA.

Creepy clown garbage can sure to scare children away rather than encourage them to throw their garbage in an appropriate place: TIA.

I looked out the window the other day and saw a middle-aged woman across the street crawling out her fifth-story apartment with a squeegee to clean the outside of her window. She accomplished this dangling by one arm, so caught up in her war against smudges that she didn't notice how high up she was. TIA.

Most parks have an exercise area with lots of equipment like this. Many of them have clear functions, but a few of these gadgets are pretty odd. TIA.

Yep, little joys, moderate frustrations- it's all part of the ride. This is Turkey.

Tidbits

Well, our first four weeks of "orientation" are coming to an end. We're getting close to having an apartment, work starts on Saturday, and soon enough this will stop feeling like vacation and start feeling more like real life. But here are some things that I've learned in four weeks of orientation:

• Ankara has a delightful website called "Yemek Sepetti" where you can order food online from many restaurants, and they deliver straight to your door. No awkward Turkish phone calls necessary! I've heard you can also have groceries delivered, but we've yet to try that.
• Turkish people eat a lot of bread. At the grocery store there's always a stockpile of fresh loaves of bread. We usually pick up one or two. Everyone else in line has like ten. Last night we ordered in, and my soup came with like half a loaf of bread.
• Every morning, if the muezzin calling people to prayer at the mosque doesn't wake you up, the simitci probably will. Simit is a traditional snack, a round pretzel-looking bread that tastes something like a bagel covered in sesame seeds. There are stands all over town selling these snacks, but simitci (the vendors) also wander the streets in the morning with a stockpile on their heads, hollering and calling for people to come buy breakfast.
• To say "no," Turkish people will often tilt their heads back and click their tongue. I have yet to get used to this.
• Movies at the cinema have a smoke break in the middle. Our English classes also have "tea" breaks, but I noticed that it's more often used to sneak out to the balcony for a cigarette. There's a lot of smoking.
• University students view cheating as "the rule." Every teacher I've talked to has talked about what a rampant problem it is. Cheating is culturally viewed as clever if you can get away with it. Some students I talked to the other day said that it's a problem, but there's no way to fix it because it's so prevalent. (That might have been their way of saying they cheat without admitting to it.)
  
• Worldwide, Turkey has the third highest percentage of Facebook users.
  
• Forget your stereotypes of women in burqas. Plenty of women on the streets cover their heads and wear modest long skirts, but just as many are out there wearing leggings as pants. Or better yet, tights as pants with tops that definitely aren't long enough to count as dresses.
• There's a fairly large Chinese community in Ankara. I have no idea why, but I hope this means I can somehow get my hands on ingredients to make Chinese food with some snooping around.
• Turks like tea a lot. Everywhere you go, you'll be offered tea. This is brewed exceptionally strong, but they are willing to add some water to dilute it for foreigners. However, if you want to impress your Turkish friends, you'll ask for "rabbit blood" tea, which means it's super strong. I haven't the guts for this.
• Soccer (or football, as I must now call it) is very popular here, but allegiance is not related to geography. People here are mostly fans of the three Istanbul teams. Ankara has a team as well, but apparently this is the team for "hooligans."
• I have to lie about what's in my wallet. Nobody likes breaking large bills and giving change, and if you hand one to a cashier hoping to get some smaller bills, she'll usually ask you if you have anything smaller. Smaller stores are often willing to give you a 50 cent discount rather than try to make change from a 5 lira bill. I have not yet figured out how I'm supposed to get the coins to pay in change when nobody is willing to break my large bills and give me coins in return.

Gainful employment and some sound advice

Good news: I am no longer unemployed!

God is good and always provides. We managed to find a dershani (cram school) willing to hire all three of us as full time English teachers, and will begin teaching classes at the end of the month. My two cohorts have already been recruited to substitute for some classes this week, while I escaped and still have a little time to crawl about the city before getting into the daily grind.

Today we were able to go in and observe some classes, to get a feel for the course material and the lessons. Classes are taught in three hour blocks, broken into chunks of fifty minutes with tea breaks in between. It's pretty intense. Most of the students are university students hoping to improve their English, and there are also quite a few professionals. One girl I talked to today graduated from university last year and wants to be a primary school teacher. These days, there's a growing demand in primary schools for English instruction, so she's learning English to increase her chance of getting a good job.

I visited three different classes this morning, with three different teachers and levels of students. Their abilities varied, but overall the teachers were helpful and the students were enthusiastic. One of the teachers decided to utilize his visitor to spur some practical conversation practice with his students.

They asked me a few questions about myself and my hometown. I used my standard answer of, "You've never heard of Missouri, but you know Brad Pitt? He's from Missouri." Works every time. They think it's an awesome place. Then I asked them about Ankara and what's fun to do here. They all answered, "Go to Istanbul. Go to İzmir. Go to Eskişehir." Basically: Ankara is boring. If you want fun, go somewhere else.

Things took a more interesting turn when the teacher asked them to advise me on things not to do in Ankara. The students started with the standard big city advice of don't go out downtown alone at night, keep an eye on your purse, don't go to pubs alone unless you want to be majorly hit on, don't make eye contact with beggars or they'll follow you, etc.

Then a guy in the class perked up his head and said, "Don't speak to apaçi!" When I asked for clarification on who or what is apaçi, all the students scratched their heads for a moment. The guy continued: "Apaçi are strange people. They have strange hair."

The teacher stopped him. "That could mean anything. Draw it on the board." One of the girls took a marker and drew a rough version of this:



Hair sticking straight up on top, hanging down on the sides. I recognized this from the streets. We'd noticed that some guys here walk around with partial mohawks, gelling up only the top portion of their heads and letting the rest hang loose. To be honest, it looks like they just gave up on their hair halfway through styling it.

The student, whose hair was tame and completely lacking in gel or tackiness, finally thought of the word he needed. "Heidi, do you know emo?" I nodded and he smiled, glad that he'd found a way to communicate. "It's like emo, but dangerous. Don't speak with them."

Well then. I'd never thought of emo kids as a particularly dangerous breed, but apparently there's an offshoot of the movement in Turkey that is creepy enough to warrant some cautionary advice. I shall keep my eyes peeled.

The next class I visited was taught by an Englishman who has a rule that if a student speaks Turkish during class, he receives a strike. Three strikes and you have to bring cake for the class. It so happened that I arrived on a day when two students were being punished for speaking Turkish in class; one man had brought a cake and another drinks. The lesson finished early and we all got to chat and enjoy a lovely cherry-chocolate cake. I think I like this disciplinary measure.

If our goal is building relationships, this seems like a great place to start. Once I get my own students, we'll be together a lot through these intensive English courses. The school emphasizes conversation and getting students to speak, so there are lots of chances to build rapport and positive relationships in the classroom. I'm looking forward to it.

Where's Dr. House when you need him?

So Friday night was pretty great. The team got together for a time of fellowship and American-style hamburgers. A friend tempted me to gluttony and I actually ate a hamburger for once, as well as cheesecake and a nice Turkish beer. All was well, until I got home and curled up in bed.

Suddenly I was beset by an intense itchy feeling. It started on my legs, but soon spread to my entire body. I spent a sleepless night wracked by intense pain. At first I thought my little room was the next victim in the epidemic of bedbugs I keep hearing about in the news. But when I got up and looked in a mirror, I saw that I was covered head to toe in hives.

What on earth could have caused this? I'm in a new country, in a completely new environment. I could be reacting to anything. The possibilities were myriad. Was it

A) something I ate?
B) a new soap, shampoo, or detergent?
C) my supervisor's new cat?
D) stress?
E) air pollution?
F) the curse of the Phrygians come to haunt me?
G) my blanket?
H) my toothpaste?
I) paranoia?

Seriously. Everything here is new. Sights, smells, foods, microbes, you name it, this is my first exposure.

The hives got worse through Saturday and Sunday. Eventually they spread to my face, and like Quasimodo, I became disgusted by my ghastly deformity and cloistered myself in the house while my two flatmates went out for coffee with friends, job interviews, and jogs. (It was at this point that I recognized the sole virtue of the burqa, a garment seldom seen here but which I would gladly have donned for the privilege of going out without revealing my disfigured appearance.)

They did come back bearing gifts: roses sprayed in some odd sort of wax to make them brighter, tiny evil eye trinkets, and--best of all--some antihistamines procured from a Turkish pharmacy. Way to go, flatmates!

These "nazar" trinkets are a common sight here. In the superstitious traditions of folk Islam, jealous eyes are portals for evil spirits to cause harm. Nazar are thought to protect the bearer from the evil thoughts emanating from other people's jealous eyes. Clearly Lady Gaga has become jealous of my great beauty and charm and thought to inflict me with an allergic reaction of epic proportions.

Or maybe it was the laundry detergent I found in the bathroom and used to wash my clothes last week. This was my eventual conclusion as I ticked through my mental list of possible culprits. I spent most of Saturday and Sunday doped up on the Turkish equivalent of Benadryl, which left me pretty loopy. When I finally recovered from my stupor Monday morning, my hives were gone and my face was all puffy like a cartoon chipmunk. However, the hives returned when I put on a top I'd washed earlier this week. When I changed, the hives receded again. Bingo.

So now I'm only slightly deformed, and washing all my clothes twice: once with a new detergent I bought, and again without detergent to make sure everything is super rinsed out before I let it touch my skin. Lesson learned: a few extra dollars is sometimes worth it.