Yaramaz Went Away

Tomorrow is May Day and they are closing much of the city, as usual. The barricades are already up in Taksim.  Classes for teachers living anywhere near Taksim have been cancelled due to a complete lack of public transportation or open roads. Last year on May Day I ended up in the hospital unable to walk for weeks after being caught up in a 5 car pile up on the super-congested city-bypass highway coming home from the non-day-off from work. 

Nuray sent Steph and I an email detailing all the closures around the city tomorrow, which we had to translate for the teachers. I really like the succinctness of the red translations.

Early to work,  readying brain for a 4 hour dose of Turkish, plowing through a simit and cheese and giant mug of tea. Sun is shining, car horns minimal outside my open office window. I think I do better on Mondays and Wednesdays- my Tuesday nervous breakdown seems very far away indeed. My relatively sane mood is a miracle in itself, as I was up half the night listening to Lola noisily hunting lizards in the bedroom and adjoining kitchen.  She has tortured two to death so far this week, with last night’s one still missing in action. On the plus side, she didn’t leave us the gift of a massive furball on the floor as she has on previous mornings. We have decided to enter her in the 2008 Jimmy Dean Breakfast Links International Furball Projectile Upchucking Competition in Ankara in August.  I have no doubt she will win, at least in the presentation category.

Our toilet has totally lost its structural integrity and the little stream that used to flow through the tank and into the bowl in perpetuity is flowing with more vigour now, and I can’t open the lid of the tank to check the plunger or the valve or the seal or anything because some dumbass  stupid bloody plumber decided to seal it all shut and make any investigative or self-remedying procedure all but impossible. I pushed the little flush button on the top of the tank this morning and it went down and stayed down. I managed to wedge me fingers into the inch or so of openness that I was able to pry open between the lid and the tank and with my pinkie pushed the little button up from beneath. Still won’t hold water or flush.  Argh. I hate hate hate how everything here is held together with roughly slathered glue and putty and plaster to make up for the fact that nothing is assembled properly to begin with and that the mess slathered atop is just to hide that fact and usually makes fixing anything f?cking impossible.

Argh.

Roar.

 Had a small nervous breakdown before work, adding in my latent neuroses about expensive flights home in autumn and baggage restrictions and possibly not ever getting my 2-months damage deposit back because the flat is disintegrating as we speak and trying to figure out how to get rid of my fridge and washer and stove and wardrobes and rocking chair and bed  in a city that doesn’t do second hand shopping.

*head desk*

I had kept myself in a perpetual state of low grade panic all weekend about the imminent Turkish classes (4 hours on a Monday morning/afternoon, incorporated within a 12 hour day in school), certain that I had misclassified myself, overestimated my abililties both in language and in stamina, culminating in a half hour of complete indecision shortly before setting foot in the classroom.

And it was okay. In fact, it was strangely easy, and the teacher afterwards pulled me aside and told me I must have a knack for languages if I’ve learned this much this accurately with no real formal lessons.  Apparently I am actually at a much higher level than the other students who have been studying 12 hours a week since September. Dang. We did a thing on imperatives, with the practise bit being giving directions for a taxi driver (which is something I have done a trillion times here– the dialogue she handed out was almost word for word the exact script of most of my taxi journey, right down to the bit where they ask me if I am German and I say No, I’m Canadian and they ask me if Canada is beautiful and I say yes and…blablabla) and explaining a recipe (which I haven’t done but I do know a lot of random cooking vocabulary due to the fact that I buy and cook food from scratch a lot). I explained in great detail how to make a chicken vindaloo and the teacher actually asked me to write down the recipe in detail for her later because she wanted to try it out.

So that was fine. I’ll go again on Wednesday and hope it’ll continue to be fine. It’s weird finally taking lessons just as I am preparing to leave, but I feel I owe it to myself and to my time here. I can’t just bugger off after 6 years with a brainload of made-up Turkish.  At least this way I can leave saying I’m mid Intermediate- Which doesn’t mean much to anyone but me but it still seems necessary.

Dreamed that D. didn’t make coffee this morning as usual but instead left a note saying he was too rushed to make it but had left me some grits and honey in the fridge.

Very odd.

I escaped early today, home by 6, a possible world’s record for me this year.  I had already finished the timetables yesterday (including making all the millions of borderlines in the Excel program clearer and enhancing the colours of every colour coded class, just for the hell of it) so all I had left to do today was to add any last minute changes and to transfer all the data onto individual schedules (all 43 of them) to print and email. This was done by 2pm,  with a lovely long lunch downstairs full of penne arrabiata (with enough for leftovers) and a lovely big latte for dessert. A few niggly changes came out around 4 or 5 but I dealt with them coherently and unrushed. I was out the door by 5:30.

This is not normal. It feels lovely. It feels…strange. I feel almost- dare I say it- rested.  I am now on the balcony wrapped in my purple shawl against the unexpected cold wind, admiring our opposite-neighbour’s laundry hanging skills (sheets flying up in the breeze), sipping a glass of Bulgarian merlot (from last autumn’s Sofia sojourn).

I am okay.

Because I work for a language school, I am technically eligible for free Turkish classes. However, in the 5.5 years I have been in Turkey (3.5 of those years spent working in places that provided free classes), I have only ever attended one course which was in Suadiye in my 3rd year- the new-teacher Beginner Level crash course- and it was way too low for me so I dropped out after a month. I briefly popped into the Pre Intermediate course that was being offered that year to non-teachers but left because the teacher was a terrible drone who just did worksheets and reading aloud like drones.  

Thus, since late 2004, all my Turkish edjamacation has been done by osmosis and deduction and a lot of looking up of words on Zargan.com.  All the free courses have either been Beginner level or at times that conflicted with my work schedule.  I have started to believe that my knowledge of Turkish is completely fictional, that most things I say are wholly fabricated by my subconscious and that the grammar and vocabulary I use daily are like a surreal reinterpretation of a language by someone on the fringes of society.  

Thus, when the email came my way from the Turkish Department at school announcing a newly opening 10 week PreInt course three times a week, 4 hours a day at midday, I thought I really ought to jump in and reassess my figment of linguistic imagination.  I hope my brain can handle 12 hours of lessons during a 60 hour workweek. 

Shit.

I just realised that the fact that it is nearly May means that I have only just over 4 months left. It’s a very odd feeling.

Last night around 8:45,  through my haze of whatever it is that afflicts me, I had a sudden flash- Janine! Asked for a morning off! Wednesday morning! But which Wednesday? This (ie tomorrow)? Or next? Is there a cover teacher? Does Steph know? Shitshitshit!  

So I lurched inside, tripping over cat and curtains, and discovered that my mobile phone (with all my needed phone numbers) was down to zero bars on the flashing battery icon.  I managed to send off a quick message to Janine to ask if she had indeed booked this wednesday off and could she please confirm asap so I could arrange a cover teacher, and a message to Andrew  to let him know he might be needed, and one to Steph to ask her to check my holiday chart next to my desk when she got in at 7am in case I couldn’t hear back from Janine. Then the phone died. 

I dreamed elaborate timetable dreams full of errors and miscalculations and omissions, mixed with waking dreams of shaking bedroom and suspiciously blowing open-balcony curtains and the sound of chairs blowing across the balcony, and woke early in a panic about finding a teacher to cover Janine. I switched on my phone, which had a sudden after-hibernation burst of energy that lasted just long enough for me to receive a text message from Janine saying that it was indeed this Wednesday (ie today) but that I had already arranged a cover for it on monday and had done all the paperwork and given out the materials to the cover teacher. 

I had completely forgotten.

Thankfully my autopilot is working efficiently without my conscious self being involved.

I just started working on next week’s timetables and was shocked to discover that it will be May next week. How did that happen?