It’s been a while!

Posted on June 23, 2019 by Jules

I had hoped to keep blogging when I moved back to the U.S. It’s obvious that it didn’t work out. I was too absorbed in living my life, instead of being an observer, to keep writing. Many things have happened since. I continued working for my non-profit, my career advanced, I made new friends and found a new community. I have lived life to the fullest in Austin, taking advantage of the weather and live music and generally had a blast! I also got pregnant, had a baby, traveled for work, and continue to take advantage of the amazing city in which I live, with one more person in tow.

And now I am back! Four years after we left Turkey, we have returned for a visit. It has been fascinating to be back in Turkey. It simultaneously feels the same and different. While I missed some things, in others I am reminded why we wanted to move back to to the U.S. While I am here, I hope to have a chance to blog about it. This is one of the things, from my time in Turkey, I have missed.

Back, I hope. A Re-introduction.

Posted on October 23, 2016 by Jules

It has been more than a year since I have blogged. I have started different posts many times, but never finished. The last year has been exciting, fun, challenging and full of new adventures, as always.

Last year in August I started my job as a Computer Science teacher at a charter school in Austin. While the work was incredibly fulfilling, it was also very demanding. Not only did I have to master a new discipline (CS) but my work hours were 7am to 5 pm. Add an hour or more on either end of the day for the commute and it made settling in a new city difficult. Though we moved to Austin for its vibrant nightlife and music scene, I really couldn’t be a part of it. Rising every day at 5, getting home after 6 and spending most of my weekends grading and lesson planning did not leave much time for new Austin adventures. However, we did have some! We bought a house last September and celebrated our “Houseiversary” recently.

. house2

We also got adopted a puppy from the shelter in January. Butterfinger is more or less resigned to the situation at this point. He tries to engage her in play, but she is not really interested. In her defense, at 15, she is not as energetic as she used to be.

dogs2

This summer marked our first year in Austin, and the start of our new life here, the life we wanted originally. I started work for an exciting non-profit. One that is part of the education realm, bringing educational access to students in underserved communities. It is fulfilling in the same way teaching was, but with a work/life balance. Since I have started my new job Bülent and I have been incredibly happy. We are able to do all the things we looked forward to in Austin, while we were in Ankara. We go to live music regularly, during the week and on the weekends! We go hiking and biking, swimming and exploring.

Now that we have our “new normal” I am looking forward to many more adventures.

Anniversary

Posted on April 24, 2016 by Jules

I cannot believe it has been a year. The move and changes have consumed my life, but in an amazing way. I hope to start blogging again. Our lives are full and rich, with new friends, renewed friends and old friends. We now own a house, belong to a community and have exciting adventures on the horizon. My heart bleeds for the state of the political situation in Turkey, and I am feeling relieved that we moved when we did. More will be coming. The adventures are part of life, and unless things change, I will always be “Far from the Sticks”, no matter where I am.

Reblog: Published 4/18/2015

I talked about the reasons I had not been blogging, and part of it was that I could not fully express myself. We have had plans in the works, but they have been tenuous and uncertain. Bülent and I have been incredibly happy in Turkey. We have had so many adventures, travelled to so many places, and met so many people. When I first came, I was 24, young and excited. Everyday was an adventure. After six years in Turkey, everyday still brings joy and appreciation. Just last week I was stopped by strangers on the street while walking in my neighborhood, invited in for coffee and had a tour of their garden.

I have learned the language, and developed a deep understanding and appreciation of the nuances of the culture—my original goals. In the six years we have been in Turkey we have made friends, embarked on our careers, gotten married, moved twice, received a Masters and (almost) a PhD, and celebrated a decade of being partners. We have lost parents and grandparents, and we have loved. We have gained a deeper understanding of ourselves and each other.

Turkey will always have our hearts, and will always be home, we have so many friends and so much family here. We have loved our time in Turkey, but thinking about the future and our careers, we have decided it is time to move on. It is time for a new adventure. The next couple of months will be filled with packing, details, saying goodbye and excitement. We are moving back to the United States.

Wait for us Austin! We’ll be there soon!

Getting So Excited!

Posted on June 3, 2015 by Jules

I am waking up everyday so excited for our new adventure. It is getting more and more real! I packed up most of the shipment that will be staying in Turkey (at the summer house) as well as the stuff that will be shipped to the US. We are going to be staying with some friends in Dallas for a while which will give us time to get phones, buy a car, maybe even get Texas drivers licenses. I have to get fingerprinted for my new school as well. We will get all the bureaucratic things done in Dallas, and then we will go on vacation in Austin with our friends. They were the friends we toured Texas with in 2012, and they came to visit us in Turkey last year. I apparently have been very lax on the blogging as I did not blog about the epic international fun. Anyway, we are incredibly excited to be moving close to our friends, Shawn was Bulent’s landlord when he was a grad student in Texas in the early 2000s. Their bromance has lasted and deepened over the years. I met Shawn’s wife Larinda in 2012, two years after she made and sent (to Turkey) the most beautiful shadow box with our wedding invitation and wedding photo. I was so glad we hit it off, and so excited that we will be closer in distance! Whee! 27 days and counting to the move!

Getting Ready!

Posted on May 23, 2015 by Jules

Oh my! We have been paring down our belongings. What we are going to ship is already packed! And minimal! We have sold many of the things we will not be taking with us, the rest we will give to friends and family, or donate. My balcony is looking bare, since the flowers have been sold or given away, but I did keep keep the mesclun and chard plants. While Incek is far out of town, it is beautiful in the spring. We have been taking walks and enjoying our bucolic life while it lasts.

We have bought our plane tickets, which was more complicated than it sounds, as we bought our tickets so we could be together, but I am going to be reimbursed by my work for my ticket. It included several trips to HR, many calls to the purchasing office, and formal written requests. We have also started training Butterfinger to not completely loathe the carry bag she will be squished into and then in which she will be shoved under a seat. Poor baby. We have already given her her summer haircut so that she can recover from the embarrassment before she is completely demoralized from the bag.

Our next step is to get ourselves ready for the trip. We are going to get complete health and dental check ups before we leave. We have really comprehensive health insurance here, and procedures are pretty inexpensive. Wheeeeeee! I am so excited!

Changes

Posted on April 18, 2015 by Jules

Wait for us Austin! We’ll be there soon!

Alive?

Posted on March 28, 2015 by Jules

As you may have noticed, I have not been blogging as frequently. Or at all. Over the last year or so I had slowed down my pace. Partially because I was busy and partially because the main bulk of my blog was travel and exploration, and after living in Turkey for five years, the adventures had slowed down. I want to start writing again. I really appreciate being able to express myself and have a connection with my readers. I have been thinking about it for a while, and have put off writing until I think I could make a commitment again.

My last post was about moving. Our move had ben a big change for us. I am now in the “sticks” again.

The herd of sheep that regularly pass in front of our building.

I can no longer walk to the grocery store, have easy access to the town center or have my community of friends. I do have a new community of friends, but many of the friends I used to visit with on a day to day basis are back in the old neighborhood. Day to day life has changed, basic things like cooking and errands are more difficult due to sharing a car, and not being able to walk to neighborhood shops and the pazar.

However, there are many benefits to living on the edge of town. The air was clean all winter, the smell of coal smoke does not infiltrate our hair and clothes and the accompanying smog did not disturb us. Our view is lovely, and faces south west, so we have had lovely sun all year, and the floor to ceiling windows have allowed enough light into our home to keep our plants alive inside since the frost hit. We have also hosted and been hosted at many more intimate gatherings with friends. Since the restaurants and shops are more distant, we meet at friends’ homes rather than restaurants to visit.

Things have happened, which I will tell about.

Places have been visited, which I will share.

And adventures may be coming…I will keep you posted!

Moving. Is. Torture.

Posted on October 3, 2014 by Jules

The weekend after the first week of school I had to move. I didn’t schedule it, a change in corporate housing mandated the move. While I was trying to cement my classroom management and learn 200 students names, I was also making lists of what to pack each night. The move was quite daunting as we could not get the key to the apartment before we moved, and we had never seen it in person.

The apartment turned out to very nice. Farther out than I would like, compared to my last easy to get around neighborhood, but has the benefits of the boondocks. The air is cleaner, we will not have issues with coal smoke here during the winter, there are no traffic problems, and we have a great view of undeveloped Anatolian hills.

However, while the apartment is beautiful, it is a new building and there are some issues. Last night, after the 7th visit from a plumber in two weeks, the toilet FIANALLY stopped leaking onto the floor YAY! They also turned the heat on last night, which is great because it was REALLY cold. But now we have to turn it off because it is leaking.

However, to put it in perspective, my friend just found out that internet is UN-INSTALLABLE in her apartment. The pipes that lead into her apartment to allow the fiber optic to be snaked in was crushed and so there is no way to bring in the cable.

Packing was horrendous. I just hated it. It feels like I just did it. I did help my mother move our home last year. It was a lot of work. Even though out house is smaller, it still was a lot of work. Unpacking is a little better. Though at one point I got so visibly overwhelmed by the amount of work ahead, Bulent broke down all the boxes we had unpacked and removed them from the apartment. It helped significantly. Actually he turned Defcon 1 to something more like mild craziness. A miracle worker.

As of now, we are mostly all set. There are some paintings I have been unable to hang because the walls are made of concrete. But that is just a challenge. It is coming!

UPDATE: I just served coffee to a few men in my house. They have been working for over an hour on the heating. Things are looking up.

UPDATE 2: The man, who says that my eyes are like those of the people he met in Kosovo when he was a soldier in NATO, fixed my heaters and bleed out the air from the system.

Bulent’s Take on Airbnb.com

Posted on September 1, 2014 by Jules

This summer my husband used Airbnb.com to arrange for his lodging while he was participating in a program at the London School of Economics. Unfortunately he was extremely disappointed and felt exploited by the business. He asked me to post this because, as our friends and family know, he does not use social media, including Facebook or Twitter.

I recommend everyone to not use Airbnb.com. They exploit you like it is their business.

· Bulent rented an apartment in London for 6 weeks to attend a program at LSE.

· He completed the program at the end of the 3rd week, and asked the landlord to leave 3 weeks earlier than planned.

· She said “no problem”. Bulent notified Airbnb about the change, and came back to Turkey.

· After he came back, he realized that Airbnb charged his credit card as if he stayed the whole time.

· Because a chunk of the overcharge went to the landlord’s bank account, he asked the landlord to remind the Airbnb that his stay was only 3 weeks, and to ask for a refund of over a thousand dollars.

· Landlord said that she would “accept Bulent’s offer only if he agrees to pay her nearly twice the daily rate that they had originally agreed.”

· Bulent told her that this offer nearly a month after the whole thing was over was outrageous as she did not mention to him that she would want a higher rate when she accepted his offer to leave the place early.

· Landlord insisted on her condition.

· Bulent entered the case to Airbnb’s “dispute resolution” for Airbnb to resolve it.

· Dispute Resolution required him to accept their condition that “their decision will be final”

· Can’t possibly knowing what is behind that condition, and having no other choice; Bulent accepted it.

· Dispute Resolution reviewed the case, and “ruled” that they would refund $30 to him! (The amount Bulent was overcharged was little over a thousand dollars!!!)

· When Bulent asked how in the world they came up with that figure, they said that “stays shorter than 28 days are subject to weekly rates (his original agreement with the landlord was a monthly rate) and the weekly rate that applied to his case was such that they would only refund $30!”

· Bulent asked for a copy of the contract that shows this “policy”, and how they determine weekly rates.

· They sent him a webpage in their site that only talks about landlords’ options when they receive a request for early leaves (which are either to have Airbnb charge the guest for only the duration of his stay, or for the entire term). The site includes no information about this supposed policy to bump monthly rates down to weekly rates when stays are fewer than 28 days. Nor did it include any formula as to how they determine this weekly rate.

· Bulent pointed out these nonsense, and renewed his request for the 1,000+ Dollar refund.

· Airbnb answered by saying “as you accepted when you submitted the case to our Dispute Resolution Department, our decision is final!”

· Next week, Bulent will sue the company for violation of consumer rights to be protected against arbitrary and exploitative practices. He will also file a complaint to the Better Business Bureau in California where this company is registered. But as importantly, he asked me to disseminate this message to all my friends and family so they do not use Airbnb.com.

Tennessee

Posted on August 16, 2014 by Jules

This summer while I was home in the US, I was incredibly busy, scheduled to go here or there almost every day. One of the things I squeezed into my travels was a trip to Tennessee. I am very lucky to have two of my best college friends living in the same state.

I flew down on a Friday, and was supposed to arrive in Nashville at about 4:30 pm, when my friend would be getting off from work. After a hellish bout of “How long will that delay be?” with U.S. airways I arrived just at 8:30 (EST). My friend was very patient with the whole situation and entertained with the fun texts from me.

“We are boarding the plane.” “We are de-boarding the plane” “We boarded the plane!” “We are leaving!” “Just kidding, we are missing paperwork” “We landed!” “We have to wait for a gate” “We are going to get off….oh wait…still no gate.”

After all the delays and waiting on the plane for what seemed like forever (for a gate), we ended up just going down the stairs of the plane and walking across the tarmac to a lower level door to the airport. Which we could have done when we first landed. Mmmph.

Despite the inauspicious beginning, the trip was fantastic! My friend Kate lives in Nashville, the plan was to visit with her, then we would drive down to Memphis to visit our very pregnant friend Katie, or depending on the fates, Katie and her new baby.

After Kate picked me up from the airport, we stopped by her home to drop my things off before we went out for dinner. Waiting for us was a package from our other friend friend from college, Katie, who lives in Colorado. She had sent us a gift basket filled with treats for our visit! Can you feel the Wellesley love?

The next day we left for Memphis. Memphis is a three hour drive, so we were able to chat the whole way and had a great time. Katie politely stayed pregnant while we were in town, so that we could catch-up. I haven’t been able to see my Wellesley friends as often as I would like. We are scattered all over the US, and living in Turkey complicates visiting even more. However, when we do get together, it is as if no time has passed. I am hoping that soon they will plan a trip to visit me! In Memphis we relaxed, visited, played with Katie’s dogs and took turns feeling her belly when she was having contractions. Kate started to time them, but then Katie pulled out her phone to do it. Apparently there is an app for that! She didn’t have the baby for another week, but we didn’t let that keep us from getting some snuggle time with the baby. Katie and I were room mates, so she knows I am pretty hands on.

We drove back to Nashville and the next day we played tourists. Kate took me downtown to the Honky Tonk bars and the tourist areas. We wandered around for a while, listening to the country singers preforming on the street. We went to the Johnny Cash museum as well. Nashville is fun city, with beautiful green spaces, navigable, a vibrant downtown and nightlife and great food.

Now when in Tennessee, it is best to stick to local cuisine. BBQ. Kate knows I love barbeque and went out of her way to create a culinary experience. They have some of the best barbeque I have tasted, very different from other regions such as New England or Texas. Here, the pork is cooked slowly until it falls apart, and is served dry. You can then add BBQ sauce (here with a vinegar base) if you would like.

Pulled pork dinner from the iconic Loveless Café in Nashville, served with fried green tomatoes.

Pulled pork tacos with roasted corn from the Acme Feed & Seed in downtown Nashville.

OHHHHH. The best BBQ I have ever had is from B&C (full name: Bacon and Caviar).

It is not a fancy place, but you wouldn’t want it to be. They have several locations throughout Nashville. I loved it, the food was fresh and delicious and the people behind the counter friendly and personable. I am not that familiar with southern food, and they were very patient with all my food questions, some even unrelated to what they were serving. At B&C you choose your meat (pulled pork sandwich above) and then your sides. They had many sides, but I asked the girl behind the counter to serve me what she would have chosen herself. The sides are squash casserole, a sweet corn and summer squash bake topped with a little cheese, and the grits of the day. Yes, that is right, grits of the day! They have a different one each day of the week, in addition to the regular cheesy grits. These were buffalo chicken grits, slightly spicy, with vinegar and bits of chicken. DELICIOUS!

My trip to Tennessee was one of the highlights of my visit home. Not only did I get to see TWO of my dearest friends for the first time in years, but I also got to be a tourist in my own country and take in a bit of Southern culture. I would highly recommend visiting Nashville if you have a chance, even if you are just driving though.

Wellesley Mini-Reunion! Three 2006ers and a future 2032er!

Far From The Sticks

Parent, Educator, Adventurer, Advocate and Ally.

It’s been a while!

Back, I hope. A Re-introduction.

Anniversary

Wait for us Austin! We’ll be there soon!

Getting So Excited!

Getting Ready!

Changes

Wait for us Austin! We’ll be there soon!

Alive?

Moving. Is. Torture.

Bulent’s Take on Airbnb.com

Tennessee

“We are boarding the plane.” “We are de-boarding the plane” “We boarded the plane!” “We are leaving!” “Just kidding, we are missing paperwork” “We landed!” “We have to wait for a gate” “We are going to get off….oh wait…still no gate.”

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Wait for us Austin! We’ll be there soon!

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Wait for us Austin! We’ll be there soon!

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“We are boarding the plane.” “We are de-boarding the plane” “We boarded the plane!” “We are leaving!” “Just kidding, we are missing paperwork” “We landed!” “We have to wait for a gate” “We are going to get off….oh wait…still no gate.”

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