I'm legal!

Life here seems to have settled into a routine (for now) for us....language school in the mornings, maybe hit the grocery or fruit stand on the way home, go to the gym, cook dinner, watch some tv/do homework, go to bed.

It's a little embarrassing because every morning in class the teacher asks: "Sen dün ne yaptın?", which means "what did you do yesterday?", and for sure the other folks that are either 25 and spending a lot of time in bars or are only here for 1 month have much more interesting stories than us.  But it feels like a life now, not a vacation. 

What we HAVE been spending a good bit of time on recently is getting me legal here.  Our tourist visas only last 90 days, so you have to apply for a residency permit.  The process is straightforward, in a way, if you know what you're supposed to do, but it definitely makes the DMV back home look like a piece of cake.  No one speaks english, and there is very little in the way of sinage or directions in the building telling you where to go or what you need to do. 
It was a 5-step process, basically: 
1) get tax ID number from random local tax office.  Cost: Bus ride & 30 minutes of confused wandering
2) open bank account in Turkey to put in enough money to prove you can support yourself here.  Cost:  +30 trips to the ATM, plus many phone calls to USAA.  But we saved $600 by not wiring the $?
3) make appointment online & bring required forms + bank statement to main police station.  Cost: 45 min metro/tram ride, 3 hrs of waiting, 10 minutes of finger-crossing & sweating while he looked over my forms. Oh and I made the appointment back at the beginning of aug.
4) Go back the next day to pay for permit, since cashier closes at 3pm, while agents see people until 5pm.  Cost:  ~500 TL.  Surprisingly pain-free.
5) Go back 3 days later to pick it up.  Cost:  Stand in line outside a random door in a random room while waiting for your name to be called.  On the plus side, maybe you'll meet some folks who speak english & know what the heck is going on, since they've done this before.

Result:  I'm legal until July 2014.  Dennis's fancy NATO one hasnt even shown up in the mail yet, and he went to Ankara like a month ago, hehe. 

I still think it's wacky that they want to know your parents' names.  Even the bank account people wanted that.