Househunting in Turkey: A Saga

I've been meaning to write this particular blog post for a couple of weeks now, but because this is Turkey, the resolution to my current adventure has been continually postponed to the point that I've adopted a theme song that I hum every time I visit the real estate agent:

Life is full of twists and turns, and one of the pitfalls of leaving your life open to whatever God throws at you is that He sometimes decides to throw you the unexpected and your plans can suddenly change. I'm not complaining about this; these curveballs have generally led to adventures grander than any I would've planned for myself, and while God has continually surprised and challenged me, He hasn't yet disappointed me and I am doing my utmost to remember this fact and trust Him with whatever the future may bring.

Anyway, thanks to these twists and turns my plan to move back to Taiwan at the end of June has been neatly terminated, a development which happened too late to join my flatmates in the adventure of applying for teaching jobs at a university here in Ankara. What this means is that I'll simply stay at my current school, but my flatmates are moving to the university, since they provide free housing for foreign teachers.

But like I said, God is faithful, and it so happened that about five minutes after I suddenly realized that I needed to find new flatmates, I fell into a conversation with one of the Spanish teachers at my school who happened to be looking for a third flatmate to go in on a new place, so we decided to join forces. ¡Que magnífico!

So finding new flatmates was the easy part, but then we jumped into the world of Turkish real estate, an adventure which has inspired me to describe our little Spanglish-speaking family using the initials of our first names: Team AAH!!!

Day 1: The beginning of the story sounds a lot like the introduction to a racist joke-- a Spaniard and a Cuban walk into a Turkish real estate agency. The American was at work and couldn't come--wait, is that the punchline?? Anyway, the goal is fairly straightforward: we'd like a 3-bedroom apartment in a particular area of town that's centrally located and near our workplaces. The real estate agent obligingly takes them to a number of places, highlighted by such attractive features as dead pigeons in the kitchen. But the agent gets excited about one place, which she says is lovely. "Wait," says the Spaniard. "This has only two bedrooms. We need three." The real estate agent is unfazed. "But the kitchen is really big. You can put a wall in the middle and use half of it as a bedroom!" Needless to say, the hunt continues.
Day 2: Team AAH!!! assembles in full for the first time and spends an entire day househunting. This is like culture shock all over again, because as much as I like to think I'm adaptable in new cultures, there's a part of my American brain that insists upon punctuality and efficiency. So when we arrive at our scheduled time only to be told that we must wait an hour, I'm already a little put out. But I'm trying to pray, and remember that life is not a race and sometimes the process and relationships built along the way are just as important as the end goal. This is the Turkish way.

The first place we see is absolutely beautiful- everything is brand new and clean, it's got three balconies plus a terrace large enough for some decent barbecue parties, the landlord plans to repaint, the price is far from exorbitant. The real estate agent encourages us to jump on this place now, because if we wait we might lose it. And by now, she means within the next five minutes. We look at each other, unnerved by the fact that we have little time to discuss the situation. But carpe diem is our motto, and so we decide to take it. The real estate agent excitedly dials the landlord, and comes back five minutes later telling us to forget the whole thing. The landlord wants to rent to a family, not a group of young single people, particularly foreigners, and will not accept us as tenants. This is to become a recurring theme in our endeavors. Foreigners have a reputation for destroying places and throwing wild parties, which causes landlords to eye us with suspicion.

The second place is a hipster pad straight out of a sitcom, located on the fourth floor of a building situated in the center of the urban nightlife scene. The view is spectacular and the place is gorgeous and artsy, but it's expensive, noisy, and has sun coming in from all sides. No go.

The third place is much nicer, and we all fancy it immediately. It's on a quieter street, has no spectacular features, but is large enough to be comfortable and small enough to be cozy. At the end of the day, this is the place our minds wander back to. The real estate agent is hesitant, partly because this place is being rented through a different agency and she won't collect a commission if we take it.

Back at the office, she gives us a piece of advice: "This is the end of June, so a lot of people are moving. If you wait a week, there will probably be a lot more apartments opening up, and you'll be able to find something nicer than the one you saw today." This is a risk, since apartments in this area tend to go quickly, so much so that if you hesitate for a day you're likely to lose the place to someone else. The Cuban has to move out of her current home by July 1st, so she's reluctant to wait, but for some reason we decide to do it.

Day 3, Tuesday of the next week: Team AAH! arrives at the real estate office hopeful and expectant. We learn that not much new has opened up since last week, but there is one new place nearby and if we come back tomorrow we can look at it. So we schedule an appointment for 5:00 Tuesday to check this place out.

Day 4, Wednesday: We come back and the real estate agent has forgotten that we were coming, so she doesn't have the keys, hasn't contacted the landlord, and asks us to come back tomorrow. We ask about the other place from last week, and she says that another family is looking at it, and we have to wait and see what they decide. This is Turkey...

Day 5, Thursday: Our afternoon appointment hasn't been forgotten this time, but the agent has a sad look in her eyes. "Çocuklar," she says (it means "children" in Turkish, and is what she always calls us), "The owner says he doesn't want to rent to foreigners, so we can forget that apartment. The other one is still not rented yet. This other couple is looking at it, but they want a home office and the owner would rather not have a business in the building, so you still have a chance. The landlord is coming tonight- can you come to meet with them?" Team AAH!!! is all working that evening, but I manage to call and cancel my class in order to meet and try to convince the landlord that we're nice people who deserve this apartment.

And it's the most bizarre meeting of my life. I come back in the evening and am told to wait, so I spend some time chatting with the real estate agents. I'm secretly irked at what seems like their incompetence in forgetting things and possibly losing us this apartment by giving us bad advice, but then on the other hand these ladies are so sweet it's impossible to feel angry with them. They're incredibly kind, and patient with my bad Turkish. They seem genuinely concerned for our well-being and want us to find a nice place to live. The annoyed part of me is quashed, and I make a conscious decision to not be in a hurry tonight, not to be quick to point fingers and criticize, and simply try to be patient.

This turns out to be the right decision, because in Turkey business is all about relationships. Relationships trump performance, which happens in the States too, but not to the extent that it does here. And as the evening progresses, I see that my chances of getting this apartment rest entirely on the landlady's impression of me as a human being.

And in true Turkish fashion, the first twenty minutes of the meeting are spent chit-chatting about things entirely unrelated to the apartment, and I'm all but ignored for a while so I just sit and try to see how much of the conversation I can pick up. Eventually the topic winds around to real estate, and the agents suddenly become my personal advocates, sticking up for me and my flatmates. I start to feel a little bit like an item for sale, with the real estate agents talking up my features to a half-interested customer. The landlady herself eyes me with a similar look, as if she's trying to picture how I would look in the living room next to a houseplant. All I can do is smile as sweetly as possible and answer any questions directed at me. Then, before I know it, she's saying she's 90% certain she likes us, but wants to discuss the matter with her husband first. She'll let us know in the morning.

Day 6, Friday: The Spaniard calls me in the afternoon to say that we have the place and we can come in the next day to sign the contract and pay the deposit. The other thing we have to bring is a guarantee from our school proving that we really have a job. The school readily provides this. I do a little dance in the teachers' lounge to celebrate.

Day 7, Saturday: We meet with the landlord, who speaks decent English. The one thing he impresses upon us is that there are families living in the building with us and that we shouldn't be too noisy or host crazy parties. Later we revisit the apartment, scope out everything that needs to be cleaned or changed, and then retreat to the Spaniard's house to make a list of things we have and things we need. My Turkish teacher had said she has a bunch of old furniture she wants to give away, and after a quick phone call, we are able to cross off everything on the "things we need" list. Life is good.

Day 8, Monday: Team AAH!!! is almost ready to move in and start cleaning. My students are excited about this, and have volunteered to come help clean or carry things this weekend. We might have a moving party.

And who of you by being worried can add a single hour to his life? And why are you worried about clothing? Observe how the lilies of the field grow; they do not toil nor do they spin, yet I say to you that not even Solomon in all his glory clothed himself like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the furnace, will He not much more clothe you? You of little faith! Do not worry then, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear for clothing?’ For the Gentiles eagerly seek all these things; for your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. So do not worry about tomorrow; for tomorrow will care for itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own. " Matthew 6:27-34

It's so easy to forget, but it's true. There were a few days in the midst of this when I didn't sleep because I was so stressed out about spacy real estate agents and fickle landlords. Or to be more honest, there were a few months where I didn't sleep because I was trying to find a way back to Taiwan, a plan which was frustrated at every step and hasn't come to fruition. But worrying is completely useless. It seems that when Jesus says God will take care of us, he means it. And he means it every single time, not only occasionally. Even when my plans fall through and I have to stay in Turkey instead of moving back to Taiwan, hope is not lost. God is here, he's providing, and whatever he has in store for the next few months is probably far beyond anything I can imagine for myself, in the best possible way.

So now, I feel a bit more like this:

5 Stages of feeling progressively less stupid in a foreign language

Time for a confession here: one of my favorite perks of this lifestyle I've signed up for is the excuse to learn and speak foreign languages. I'm not always sure why; it's a long, painful process that usually involves lots of embarrassment, frustration, exhaustion, and social awkwardness. I'm sure a lot of people can relate to the feeling of acing every grammar and vocabulary test only to be plunked into a real-life situation where all your classroom knowledge flees to a dark corner of your brain and you are left completely tongue-tied and ashamed. Thinking of the right way to say the right words at the right time is a lot more difficult than it seems, sometimes.

Three years into learning Chinese, I felt pretty comfortable with the language, and as is the way with these things, I kind of forgot how very excruciating the early stages of learning can be until I took up Turkish and was suddenly hurled back into the world of baby talk and gesturing. But now I'm reliving the magic of wanting to curl up in a ball and roll away every time I'm forced into using the language.

Most people go through a series of stages in acquiring foreign languages, so just for kicks, and to remind myself that what I'm doing now is normal and I'm not incredibly stupid, I looked up the stages of language acquisition from an online book called Classroom Instruction That Works with English Language Learners Facilitator's Guide, by Jane D. Hill and Cynthia L. Björk. I found a good chart outlining what students are capable of in each stage and how teachers can help them, but what I couldn't find online is how it feels to progress through each of these stages. So I thought I'd share what at least has been my experience of trying to learn foreign languages.

1. Preproduction (0–6 months)

The student

• Has minimal comprehension.
• Does not verbalize.
• Nods "Yes" and "No."
• Draws and points.

What it feels like
This is "the silent period" that we're often warned occurs in the beginning of the language learning process. You're a small child all over again, except this time your lack of ability to speak is not cute, but simply bewildering or annoying to others. You survive by pointing and by offering big smiles to everyone you meet to communicate that you appreciate their friendliness.

In this stage, when you try to speak your brain automatically reaches for whatever "foreign language" is stored in your memory and tries to use whatever it comes up with first, whether it's your target language or something completely unrelated. Inexplicably, you find yourself saying "muchas gracias" to a Turkish baker.

The language sounds mostly like static at this point, an incomprehensible blur of sound with an occasional recognizable word popping through.

Sometimes people try to talk to you, but after about ten seconds they roll their eyes and switch to English. Your English-speaking friends all want to help you practice because it's like a game to practice a few scattered words and phrases, but it only lasts about five minutes, which isn't long enough to get boring.

2. Early Production (6 months-1 year)
The student

• Has limited comprehension
• Produces one- or two-word responses.
• Uses key words and familiar phrases.
• Uses present-tense verbs.

What it feels like
This is the comfort stage that is hard to break out of once you reach it because you can now survive in most everyday situations, like going to the grocery store or the bank. You have a few stock phrases that you understand now, and a few set responses that you've mastered. However, the moment the other party deviates slightly from the expected discourse, you're lost again and you feel like you're back at stage one. "I thought I knew this by now!!"

A few people might say they want to help you practice, but grow bored with the limited dialogues of four-word sentences about the weather and your daily routines that you are able to offer. On the other hand, the learning curve is still enormous during this stage and the regular dramatic improvements are a nice confidence booster.

*If, at this point, you find a friend who is patient enough to let you utter a choppy, hesitant sentence without interrupting, finishing your thought for you, or switching to English, hang on to that friend. This is golden, because this person cares about helping you develop communication skills enough to put up with your childlike stammering, which means they probably genuinely care about you in general. "A friend in stage 2 of language acquisition is a friend indeed."

3. Speech Emergence (1-3 years)

The student

• Has good comprehension.
• Can produce simple sentences.
• Makes grammar and pronunciation errors.
• Frequently misunderstands jokes.

What it feels like
This is the most frustrating stage of all, because here you understand a large percentage of what is said to you, but lack the ability to respond in detail or contribute to a conversation in a meaningful way. Not being able to fully explain yourself when someone asks a question looking for a genuine answer feels like it verges on rudeness.

At this point people actually try to engage you in conversation because you appear capable of holding your own. And to a certain extent you are, if people don't remind repeating themselves or listening to you struggle for the right word or grammatical construction. But you're certainly not the life of the party, and for a lot of people the novelty of speaking to you has limited fascination. Be prepared for people to suddenly lose interest in talking to you, or to appear uncomfortable and annoyed with your linguistic skills.

The mental energy required to sustain a conversation or read a book is overwhelming. My calculation is that one grande Starbucks coffee provides enough energy for two straight hours of foreign language, after which you'll go home and sleep like a log.

This stage lasts a long time and can give the impression that you've hit a wall and have stopped improving.

4. Intermediate Fluency (3-5 years)

The student

• Has excellent comprehension.
• Makes few grammatical errors.

What it feels like
Breaking through the barrier into this stage after a long stint in the purgatory of stage 3 is the best feeling in the world.

Finally, you feel like you can comfortably walk into any situation and hold your own. The language starts to slip out of you without a massive concentrated effort, and you sometimes even forget that you're not speaking your own language. You can communicate any idea about any topic that you want to discuss. More importantly, you can start to sound intelligent when you speak and people seem to enjoy talking with you rather than just tolerating it. You feel like a real human again, able to participate in social life without being a burden to those around you.

5. Advanced Fluency (5-7 years)
The student has a near-native level of speech.

I'm still working on getting to this level, so I can't tell you what this feels like. But at least seeing a professional say this takes five to seven years makes me feel better about where my Chinese is after four years. Perhaps there's hope.



At the moment I'd assess my Turkish at the beginning of stage 3, which is of course the frustrating stage and probably explains why I felt compelled to blog about this. But on the other hand, being aware that stage 3 is the long, nightmarish stage, and equally aware that it doesn't last forever, makes it a bit easier to deal with this time around.

Friends, this is hard, and it doesn't happen overnight. I have so much more admiration now for those foreigners who come to work or study in the United States and persevere for years even though people laugh at their accent and mixups.

Election

In case you haven't heard, Turkey is having an election this coming Sunday. I'm sure you can find out plenty about this from other valuable news sources, but I am not one of those. I am merely an apolitical U.S. citizen who is living in the capital city of Turkey, and who works at a school on the main street of town, on the seventh floor of a building opposite the prime minister's office and the park where political protesters tend to gather. What this means is that I hear a lot of noise.

Most of it comes from the trucks that come down the street every ten minutes or so blasting music loud enough to drown out whatever's happening in class at the time. Yes, trucks. With music. Apparently the thing to do here in Turkey is have a campaign song to help your cause. It's a little bit reminiscent of O Brother, Where Art Thou? where the candidates drove around with a live band on the back of a truck. Here are some songs from the main parties in Turkey. I'm fascinated by the various styles that they use to advance their message.

The MHP has gone all out with a rap/hard rock sound, which I personally find a bit unnerving as part of a political campaign.



The CHP, on the other hand, has opted for a more traditional sound.



The AKP prefers a fusion of traditional Turkish sounds and techno.




While I haven't been following the campaign too closely, there is one thing that I have picked up from my students, who've been posting mysterious videos about "puskevit" on Facebook. Turns out in Turkey, as everywhere else, politicians are falling prey to YouTube, where notorious moments from their speeches can be immortalized through increasingly ridiculous remix videos.



The gist of this viral clip is the guy saying, "Kids are sitting at home, and they see ads on TV for chocolate and for cookies, and they start to ask their mothers, 'Mom, I want chocolate too! I want cookies! Why aren't you buying them? WHY DON'T WE HAVE ANY COOKIES?'"

It's a pretty bizarre little quote in itself, compounded by his pronunciation of "bisküvi," the Turkish word for cookie, as "püskevit." The youth found it hilarious. Soon things like this started popping up:




"Mom, why don't we have any püskevit?!"

Or this, which I've seen more frequently.



"The kids on TV have chocolate and püskevit. Where's my chocolate? Where's my püskevit? Mom, why don't you buy them for me? Why don't we have any püskevit?!"


I'm not sure what, if any, coverage the election is getting in the USA, but I'm quite confident that these aspects of the campaign haven't been on CNN or Fox News. There's probably a reason for that. So, that's the view from Ankara, for whatever it's worth.

Simiiiiiiiiiiit!

Every morning, an army of vendors takes to the streets to bring breakfast to Ankara. On every side street, past every house, on every street corner, their mission is to ensure that no single person in this city of 7 million misses out on the opportunity for a freshly baked morning energy boost. Some of them set up shop with a cart in the middle of the sidewalk to feed the pedestrian population. Others venture out on foot, their wares balanced expertly on top of their heads as they wander up and down the streets, bellowing to inform the world that breakfast is waiting just outside your apartment building should you care to come down and fetch it.



Ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to introduce you to the simitçi, one of the few traditional street peddlers whose trade has not yet been swept away by modern life. In Turkey fifty years ago, the streets were filled with vendors pushing carts and coming around to every house selling yogurt, ayran, ice cream, vegetables, or anything else you can imagine. But as streets grew more crowded and Western-style supermarkets started to open up, these vendors gradually started to disappear and these days it's rare in my neighborhood, at least, to see any of them. The one exception is the simitçi.

Every morning they walk by our house, and I don't know what sort of vocal training these guys get, but every single one of them has the lung capacity to be heard from at least two blocks away. Each one of them has a unique call, much like birds, and their bellowings are completely unintelligible. They might be saying, "Simit," they might be saying, "Luuuuuuuu," or it could also possibly be something like, "Heeeeelp meeeeeee," but since they spent too much time working on projection and not enough time on diction, it is impossible to say which interpretation is correct. A few of them might not be saying anything at all.

The truly amazing thing about the simitçis is their sense of balance. I think I've mentioned this before, but Ankara is hilly. You'd be hard pressed to find 200 feet of road that doesn't have a significant slope. But the hills and the fact that they have a hundred or so simit balanced on their head does not slow the simitçi down in the slightest. These guys are pros, and they can whip these boards on and off of their head as easy as if they were simply taking off a baseball cap. It is a fantastic sight.

Just as fantastic is the simit itself. This has grown into one of my staple foods, partly because of easy accessibility and cheapness, and partly because it's a tasty thing to snack upon. Picture a cross between a bagel and a large soft pretzel, hard on the outside but soft and chewy on the inside, covered in sesame seeds. They're boiled first, and then baked in a stone oven, and they come out looking like this:


Now picture having one of these with a cup of tea in the morning. Mmmmm. This is the traditional variety, and the one which you'll find piled on boards and carts on every sidewalk in the morning, but if you go into one of the many simit cafes you can find many variations on the simit theme. Some of them are larger, doughier, or made with other flavors, but I have yet to find a simit I do not enjoy at all.

The prices in the stores are set, but the magical thing about the simit carts on the street is that the simit get cheaper as the day goes on. If you go out in the morning you'll see signs on the carts advertising simit for .50 lira apiece (1 Turkish lira is about US $.65) or 3 simit for 1 lira. Not a bad deal to begin with, but then once it gets to be about 10 am, the signs change and suddenly it's 4 simit for a lira. By mid-afternoon you can get six or seven simit for a lira, and if you really want a simit at 5 pm, the simitçi will probably give you all the simit you can carry for the same price.

4 for 1 lira? Even the prime minister can't pass that up!

Traditional Turkish breakfast is more varied, and usually includes cucumbers, tomatoes, olives, cheese, and eggs along with the simit, but for the busy city folk sometimes this little munchie is just perfect to get you through the morning.