It’s funny, when you live in a foreign country where you don’t know the rules and don’t quite speak the language, not to mention have to travel everywhere on foot or use public transportation, simple transactions seem to take 4x as long. We set out this morning (well, maybe it was more like noon, ok maybe 1pm), to get SIM cards for our phones, and a printer/scan/fax thingy. Four hours later, we do now have a printer (no paper, of course), and SIM cards that do not work in either of our phones. Since our house phone does not have voicemail, it would be REALLY HANDY to have a cell phone here to contact people, set up deliveries or services, etc, so that was one of our top priorities. I’ll have to get back to you on that, after we hear back from AT&T on why they can’t seem to find the code to unlock Dennis’s flip phone, and I suddenly become a tech-whiz and “jailbreak/unlock” my Iphone. Sheesh.
At least we found a cool bookstore & got a pocket dictionary so we don’t have to continue to rely on the sales person at the tech store having to go to a Google Translate page on a demo laptop just to tell us that they can’t help us and we need to go down the street to the cell phone store. And now we have an alarm clock so we won’t be late for meetings, assuming we stop being jet-lagged and sleep regular person hours at some point soon. Although I do need to remind myself to figure out what the “cool” Turkish radio stations are, because clearly if I am to wake up to music I can’t understand, it should at least be hip.
We learned a good lesson about Ramazan (google it if you have never heard on Ramadan, that’s what they call it here). Since those who practice break their daily fast at the end of the day, one shouldn’t pick a “traditional Turkish restaurant” to show up to at 6:30pm. All of the tables seemed reserved, and were being set with pre-ordered meals. They let us sit & eat in a corner, but there were no menus and we were hurried along pretty quick. Would have been the only time it would have made better sense to eat at the TGI Friday’s across the street. Did find (stumble across) an awesome grocery store on the way home. Note to self: spend the extra Lira on wine that’s not made in Turkey if you don’t want the bottom of the last glass to be full of sandy sediment gross stuff.
We may have real internet within the next 7-10 days. Fingers crossed.
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| Your fridge would be sparse too if you had to hand-carry all your groceries home from the store :-) |
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| the water jug |
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| yes, i didn't waste too much time finding a store that sells wine |
But just think, you can literally 'drink to the dregs!' That's how ancient awesome people partied (before you could 'drink to the foam'). Are the shops only open crazy hours during Ramazan? In Bahrain they'd be open like 0900-0930, 1330-1345, and 1730-evening prayers. Needless to say, it was difficult to get sweatshop suits made.
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