Monday, I felt like my ear was a little swollen, so I decided to go to the doctor after work. And boy, was it an adventure!

I went to the Gaziantep University hospital, asked the information desk where to go for an ear problem, and was pointed to the ENT on the fourth floor. The ENT (or KBB, for Kulak, Burun, Boğaz) office secretary actually spoke pretty good English, but not well enough that there weren't problems communicating.

I will give the rest of the story from the Skype conversation I had with my girlfriend, copy/pasted below:

[17.05.2010 18:18:25] Jeremy Graves: then at one point, while I waited for an hour and a half, a lady from the public relations office came by, and he told her about me, and she hung around helping translate what the other guy couldn't say

[17.05.2010 18:18:41] Jeremy Graves: even though I'd figured most of it out by context

[17.05.2010 18:19:07] Jeremy Graves: oh, and I was waiting BEHIND THE SECRETARY'S desk this whole time!

[17.05.2010 18:19:17] Jeremy Graves: because that's where they invited me to sit

[17.05.2010 18:19:35] Jeremy Graves: then the secretary took me to the staff lounge or something for tea

[17.05.2010 18:19:41] Jeremy Graves: we chatted for a bit there

[17.05.2010 18:20:19] Jeremy Graves: then I finally saw the doctor, confirmed that it was an ear infection, got cleaned and vaccuumed out, and a prescription

[17.05.2010 18:21:01] Jeremy Graves: had to come back home, sort through old e-mails to find the number to give them for insurance

[17.05.2010 18:22:02] Jeremy Graves: went back, dealt with the PR lady again to get that worked out - it wasn't working (I guess from context), she apparently called Zirve, got it worked out

[17.05.2010 18:22:35] Jeremy Graves: then we wait for the secretary (his name was Mehmet), to physically walk me to the pharmacy across the street so I can get my meds

[17.05.2010 18:23:05] Jeremy Graves: only to find out the internet isn't working so they couldn't work out payment with insurance and I have to go tomorrow

Mehmet invites me for tea again, and I thought, what the heck, so I joined him for a while, he practiced his English and then he had to get back to work and I came home

But the story doesn't end there, actually. I went back to the pharmacy the next day, taking a taxi from work since there were no buses in the middle of the day because there were no students (exams had been finished that morning). The taxi driver who we've all used frequently invited me for tea, and at first I protested, but again decided "Why not?" and agreed. So he drives me to the pharmacy, waits for me while I try to get my meds. I was waiting for a long time, uncertain what was happening, when finally Ahmet, the driver, comes in to see what the problem is. He finds out the internet is down again, and finally convinces the pharmacy tech to take down my information and a telephone number (I gave them Zirve's, since I don't have a cell phone here, and am not going to get one with only eight weeks left), so that they could process these things later. Then we went and had tea.

And as always, a seemingly simple task turned into a huge ordeal. But that's part of the fun of living in a foreign country. And because of that, I didn't feel stressed or upset, just amused.

Untold Tales of Antep 1

Today on the way to my one-on-one tutoring session, I wanted a bottle of water, so before going into the office where I tutor, I stopped at the coffee shop below it, thinking it’s a coffee shop, surely they have water. But it turned out I was wrong. I asked for water, and the gentleman got up, walked out, and returned a minute or two later with a bottle of water from a store a yard or two down. I could have done that, of course! Wouldn’t it have been easier to tell me to go a couple of doors down? Not that I would have understood that if it were said in Turkish, of course...

The reason this falls into the untold category, since it only happened today, is that this isn’t the first time something like this has happened. Once, we were at a little restaurant, which claimed to be an Italian restaurant, but, as we found out, didn’t have a chef. They only had pizza and drinks available - although I use the term loosely. Because when we all ordered pizzas, one of the workers walked across the street to the market, bought the ingredients, and a full hour later we finally had our pizzas. The wait was long enough that one of our number left.

So why do these kinds of things happen? Well, it’s a hospitality culture. There’s an obligation to accomodate, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. The problem comes in when it’s applied and when it isn’t. My employer has accommodated me in many ways - gave me housing, helped me out quite a bit in my first few days. But there have still been lots of problems, lots of ways in which they have been most unaccommodating, some of which I’ve mentioned before. So this accommodation culture that demands a shopkeeper must serve you tea while you survey his wares can seem to be selectively applied.