Turkish Muse

Having Your Cake and Eating it Too

A couple of weeks ago a summons for jury duty arrived at my parents' house for me. This was surprising to me for two main reasons: 1) I've actually never been called for jury duty, which is surprising in that I'm 29 and have spent the last decade as an adult American citizen; you would've thought I'd have been called earlier; and 2) I haven't lived at my parents' house in a decade.

It was really the second reason that made me pause. When I thought about it, not only did I realize that I have not lived in Mechanicsburg, PA in exactly 10 years, but I also have not worked there since I was 18. Strange that it took this long for them to send me a summons, when I never received one in the three years I lived as a tax-paying working adult in Philly or the one year I lived in Kansas.

The summons was for the month of October and did not specify a date or even a week I would be needed. Very easily, I went online and filled out a request for disqualification, which was granted in less than 24 hours, the reason most certainly being that I do not live in the state of PA. (I suspect that when the state says they will pay for your transportation expenses to and from court, they don't mean an $800 plane ticket.)

To be clear, I have nothing against jury duty; in fact, I think it's a privilege to serve and I am frankly aghast at how some of the most progressive, liberal Americans manage to "get out" of having to serve by lying or making up all manner of excuses. It's precisely those kinds of people I'd want to have on a jury. (The progressive, liberal kind, not the lying kind, obviously.)

It was about the time that the letter came that I made the decision to visit the US this month. This was a rather abrupt decision, completely unplanned or thought out really. After I booked the tickets, though, I realized I could spend a morning at the PA Department of Motor Vehicles getting my driver's license -- which expires on Oct. 24 -- renewed. This would work out great, I thought: I've got the jury duty summons letter as proof that I "live" in PA and can thus obtain a PA state's driver's license

(In case you're wondering, the US federal government does not issue driver's licenses; only individual states do and in order to get a state driver's license, you have to prove residence there.)

However, in the year since I have last been in the US -- when the rules to prove PA residencey were much more lax and I unfortunately forgot my social security card, a crucial part of getting a new driver's license -- the laws have changed and you now need two of the following in order to prove residency in PA:

1. Tax records;
2. Mortgage documents;
3. Lease agreements;
4. W-4 form (a form showing wages from employment);
5. Current weapons permit;
6. Current utility bills.

Let's all just do a collective "WTF?!?" on No. 5.

Now that's done, um, yeah, I don't have a single one of those things, so no driver's license for me. After Oct. 24, I will no longer be able to operate a motor vehicle anywhere in the world. That means no driving in Spain this Christmas and no driving the Aegean coast of Turkey next summer. Drats.

So I can't serve on a jury, nor can I get a driver's license.

At least I still have my passport and can vote for president.

Two-Way Ticket

This week I purchased two, round-trip tickets from Izmir to New York City to visit family later this year. It was a long time coming, as we haven't been back to the US since February 2010, which means that by the time we get there, it will have been some 20 months or so since our last visit.

Many of my non-Turkish friends head to their "home" countries much more frequently than that, at least once a year, maybe more, but Jeff and I average a trip more like every two years. We find it difficult to find the time -- Jeff is restricted quite heavily by his teaching schedule (not every teacher gets summers off, you know) -- but we have managed to plan this year's trip around Kurban Bayram, so that at least one week of it is a sanctioned holiday.

And though earlier this year, we entertained serious thoughts of going to the US this August (as in, next month), once we started looking at airfare we simply couldn't justify paying more than $3000 to fly to the American suburbs at the hottest time of the year. 

I always feel some anxiety about going back to the US, and it's not just because of the time and money factor. It's because I can never please anyone by going back, least of all myself (so that whole maxim about making yourself happy and everyone else be damned doesn't really apply here). Everyone wants something different from us, and I simply cannot make everyone 100% happy.

And I guess I'm feeling a bit of anxiety about something else too because I had this dream the other night where I went to the US and then I didn't come back to Turkey.

I can't remember the particulars of the dream, like where I was, or who I was talking to, but I remember quite clearly what I was saying and the sense of anxiety that pervaded in my dream. I remember listing all the reasons I couldn't stay in the US, that I had to go home:

"But I don't have a job here! Don't you know what the economy is like here? I have a really good job in Turkey, and I'd like to keep it!"

"What about my 4 cats? I can't just leave them in the flat! Someone will put them on the street!"

"But all my friends are in Turkey!"

"But my life is in Turkey! I can't leave it behind!"

Sometimes, when I'm being 100% rational, I know I won't stay in Turkey forever. Or maybe I will. I don't actually know. But every time I think about going back to the US for good, I cringe a little inside. Emotionally, I am simply not ready to give up the good life I've created for myself here.

Which is why, when I woke up, I -- I admit this is absurd -- I double-checked the confirmation email Turkish Airlines sent me and reassured myself that I had indeed purchased a two-way ticket, one that goes from Izmir to NYC and then back again.

As far as nightmares go -- and I have plenty of those -- this one was pretty tame. I didn't wake up still feeling anxious; in fact, I remembered the dream only much later in the morning, hours after I had woken up. I'm not big on dream psychology, but I do wonder if this whole episode is some kind of sign or something, like (at the risk of stating the obvious) that the real reason I drag my feet on going to the US is that I'm worried somehow I won't be able to get home again.

Or maybe this is me already fighting the onslaught of questions I am expected to hear that go along the lines of, "When are you coming home again for good?"

Happy Thanksgiving 2010

Today is the American holiday of Thanksgiving, my favorite of my country's holidays. This year I am thankful for something quite specific, something I have alluded to on previous Thanksgivings but haven't been able to articulate until now.

I have seen some of the suffering that goes on in the world and today I am thankful that my problems and struggles pale in comparison to some of the world's bigger problems. I am more cognizant than ever that my strifes are all first-world, middle-class, bourgeoise problems.

The universe has been very good to me, and today I am incredibly grateful for that. I am doing ok, in fact, better than ok. I am doing very well. I have a job, a nice place to live, friends who cherish me, a husband who adores me, and an entire family that loves me.

Istanbul, much like life itself, is full of layers. I live in a very small sliver of a layer, one that includes such middle-class concerns as ripped tights and late airplanes and cleaning ladies and Starbucks coffees.

But all around me are signs of other layers, some so small you'd miss them if you weren't really looking. There's a woman on the street with a black eye. There's a man talking gibberish to himself while shaking a plastic cup on a street corner. There's a little girl weaving in and out of traffic trying to sell flowers as drivers pretend not to see her.

I don't know who creates the dividing line between the haves and the have-nots. I don't know who decides who suffers in one way and who suffers in quite another.

But I know that I have been blessed by someone -- by the universe, by chance, by evolution, by something -- to be where I am today because I certainly didn't get here by myself.

And I am very thankful for that.

What You Give Up to Be An Expat

Just over three years ago, I was sitting in the office of my newspaper's executive editor. The editor was staring at me, stunned. I had just given her notice that I would be leaving, a whole year earlier than my contract technically allowed.

"Do you realize what you're giving up here? The industry is losing a very good reporter if you leave the profession."

I smiled at her, as professionally as possible without being smug, and told her that it didn't worry me, that there would be other opportunities for a "good reporter" like me, even overseas. I didn't mention that they likely wouldn't be at newspapers.

The decision to leave journalism to move to Turkey was a gut-wrenching one for me, one that seemed completely anathema to the years I had spent preparing for it, nurturing it, cultivating it. I spent four years at university, studying not only journalism, but politics, history, culture and literature to prepare me for the rigours of daily newspaper reporting, a job that requires a wealth of knowledge that extends far beyond how to write a lede.

I worked 11-hour days at a Philadelphia daily newspaper -- for free -- just so I could work alongside veteran city reporters who taught me way more than any of my journalism classes did. I drove my car many, many more miles than I was reimbursed for at my first job, just so I could attend city council meetings and chat up locals at coffee shops.

And then, after only two years in, I threw in the towel. At least in the traditional sense. I decided that I wasn't leading the life I wanted to have, and that I needed to go somewhere else to get it.

And so we moved to Istanbul.

Of course, giving up a job in newspapers wasn't the only thing I gave up when we moved to Turkey. There are many other things -- some small, others large -- that I knew going in that I would have to forgo: the ability to see my family more than once a year, if I'm lucky, being the biggest one.

But for me, living in Turkey offered me a chance to live my life more closely to my ideal: a life where pharmacies, markets, bars, restaurants, dry cleaners and the like are literally steps from my door. A life where owning and driving a car is not only unncessary but uncommon. A life that encourages social interaction in public spaces -- gardens, terraces, tea houses, pubs, sidewalks. A life where I could be somewhat on the fringes and no one would care.

In exchange for the things I gave up, I gained a wealth of a different kind of knowledge, the ability to travel more freely, to speak a foreign language in its native habitat, to meet people from all over the world who were leading completely different lives from mine.

Through the friends I made, neighbors I met, colleagues I shared office space with, I saw that life could really be what you make of it, that career wasn't everything, that getting married did not put a timeline on popping out a kid, that if I didn't buy a house by age 27, everything would still be okay. I saw these options, and I embraced them. I gained the tools to create a life for myself that I wanted to live.

I try not to think too often about what I gave up to move overseas or to be an expat. I don't regret leaving the newspaper industry because now I'm making my own way in my career, slowly but surely. I do sometimes wish, however, that I could be closer to my family, that I could have been there when my niece was born and at my husband's grandmother's funeral and for all the random weekend dinners that make a family.

Do you feel that there is something you've given up to live overseas? Do you miss those things? What have you gained in exchange?

My First Time

It was August 27, 1999. I was 16 years old and about to embark on the greatest adventure of my young life.

This was back before September 11, when families were allowed to walk right up to the gate with you. I waited in line to board my Lufthansa plane to Germany with my parents, my brother and my grandma all waving and hollering not 10 feet away from me. I had tears in my eyes as I stole one more glance back at them, knowing that as I rounded the corner towards the plane, I wouldn't be seeing them again for a whole year.

I didn't sleep the entire plane ride. I remember thinking somewhere over Eastern Europe that I'd never been that high in the sky before, nor indeed, in my head. Adrenalin rushed through my body, my fingers tapped my the armrests incessantly, my feet fidgeted under the seat.

When I finally got off the plane in Istanbul and made my way to the exit, I saw my host sister -- blonde curls bouncing -- waving frantically and smiling. My entire host family was waiting for me. We piled my luggage -- way too much of it -- into their teeny tiny car and drove along Istanbul's Sahil Yolu (coast road) towards Sultanahmet.

I remember gazing at my new home with my eyes wide open. I had never seen a mosque before. I had never seen so much traffic. I had never seen so many people, so many men and women and children pushing and shoving and careening and just moving forward.

I had never heard a foreign language other than Spanish before. I don't think I had even been in a car that small before. I was a blank slate, starting from scratch, from zero, and when I stepped off that plane, I absorbed every little thing I could see, hear, smell and touch.

It was like being in a Twilight Zone episode where everything looks the same -- there were, after all, cars and people and signs and roads and houses and apartments -- but isn't.

It was, in a word, wild.

I am remembering all of this today because this is the day my cousin comes to visit. For two months.

Yes, this is not just any old trip, a one-week jaunt to Istanbul to see the highlights, drink some raki and buy some lackluster saffron from the Spice Bazaar.

I guess you could say that this trip for my cousin will be exploratory. A discovery, if you will. This is his first trip outside of the US, his first time seeing not just any foreign country but one that I love dearly.

Part of me wishes that I could see Turkey through his eyes again, past all the jadedness, past the annoyances, the "been there, done that" vibe expats can get when they've lost their sense of wonder at someplace new. I've been guilty of that, for sure.

But for today at least, I am going to think about that wonder, that awe, that sense of complete and utter astonishment.

What about you? What do you remember about your first time overseas, or your first time in Turkey? I'd love to hear your reminiscences.

How I Keep My Cats Happy and My Kilims Safe

Turkey can be a challenging place to be a cat owner. Veterinarians are sometimes sketchy, cat food is expensive and finding a bag of decent cat litter can take me an entire afternoon sometimes.

Cat toys and accessories are almost non-existent and when you do find them, they're often pricey and were obviously designed by people who have no idea what cats like.

Take scratching posts, for example.

Scratching posts for cats here are generally about 12 inches tall -- not nearly high enough for a cat to get a good stretch -- and made of cheap rope, which tends to fall apart after a few months of rigorous cat scratching.

No matter how hard I looked or how many vets I visited, I couldn't find a single decent cat scratching post in Izmir. As a result, I almost went insane trying to have both kilims (Turkish carpets) and cats in my home.

And then, just when I thought I'd have to roll up my carpets for good, I found a solution.

And it only cost me $441.71.

Enter the Purrfect Post and its bigger, stronger cousin, the Mondo.

The two posts on the left, the Mondo and the Purrfect Post, were delivered a few weeks ago all the way from California. The third post is one we brought back from Istanbul recently. (Yes, you read that right: we actually had to go all the way to Istanbul for a rinky-dinky little cat post.)

The Mondo is a whopping 99 cm (39 inches) tall with not one, not two but THREE places for the cats to scratch: the bottom platform, the post itself and the top perch.

 

 

The Mondo, as you can see, is very loved by Frankie.

Of course, he's not the only one:

In the few weeks we've had these two posts in our house, the scratching of our carpets, rugs and sofas has gone down to nearly zero. For two weeks, I rolled up all the kilims and carpets and trained the cats to ONLY scratch their posts. With some complimentary catnip that came with the posts and lots of positive reinforcement when they scratched the post and not, say, my sofa, they very quickly learned what was up.

Now, these posts are not cheap. The two posts themselves cost $195, but the shipping -- oh, the shipping! -- almost made me faint. We paid $246 to have $195 worth of stuff shipped to us.

But was it worth it? Oh hells yeah. If you have cats and carpets, or if you live in a furnished apartment and don't want your cats destroying your landlord's furniture, these are awesome alternatives to your Ikea sofa armchair. And now my beloved Hakkari kilim is safe.

My next task: to stop Frankie "helping" me cook....

*Just so we're clear: The Purrfect Post company did not pay me to write this post and I have only done so because I really, really like these posts and wanted to tell you about them in case you too are trying to have a life with cats and kilims.

What does health care reform in the US mean for expats?

I'm taking a break from our "all Mardin, all the time" ride this morning to post this link to a New York Times article that breaks down what recent health care reforms in the US mean for expats abroad.

Here's the jist of it:

According to Tom Rose, chairman of the Association of Americans Resident Overseas‘ Committee on Social Security and Medicare, the legislation doesn’t have any effect on Americans abroad, except that it exempts them from the penalty for not subscribing to health insurance in the United States. “That is only logical as most Americans abroad have coverage in their country of residence,” Mr. Rose said.

For more information, check out the full article.

I Choose My Choice

I really thought I'd want to pack it in.

I thought that going to the US last week would make me want to move back.

Despite my conflicting feelings about going to the US, I secretly feared that I would become enamored with my home country in a way that I had never been before.

But it didn't happen that way at all.

Instead, I came home to Izmir with something altogether better than the desire to escape my life in Turkey.

Validation. Assurance. Confirmation.

I came back to Turkey feeling like I did when I first moved to Istanbul two and a half years ago. I feel giddy and optimistic. I feel like my life is full of joy and promise, that there are things to do and goals to meet.

I feel like I made the right choice to move here and that I keep making the right choice every day by staying.

These past several months in Izmir have been hard for me. Harder, perhaps, than I've let on to friends and on this blog. But you guys probably already suspected this.

I've been down, I've been grumpy, I've complained about pretty much everything. I've lamented moving away from Istanbul and was sour on Izmir for months, dwelling on only the city's negative attributes rather than celebrating its positives.

But I came back from the US with a completely different attitude. I remember now why I moved to Turkey in the first place and the kind of life I envisioned myself having while here. Even Philadelphia, my most favorite city in the US, wasn't able to convince me that life there would be any better than my current life here.

A little bit of distance gave me a new perspective on the life I've created for myself and what I have chosen to do with my time in Izmir. And I realized that I've wasted so much of the past six months. While I've been throwing back martinis and watching television, time and opportunities passed me by. And I did nothing about it.

But that's okay. I'm not going to shed tears for what I may have missed but instead make a resolution to move forward.

I chose to live here. I choose to live here. And more than that, I now choose to make the absolute best of my choice.

 

Jeff and me at my dad and step-mom's house in central PA (courtesy of my mom)

Empty Shells

No matter where we drive here in Bethel, Connecticut, they're there.

Scores of them. A custom framing shop. An electronics store. A coffee shop. Several restaurants.

All for rent or for lease or for sale or, simply, closed up and dark, shuttered remnants of a more prosperous time.

And even though there is absolutely no love lost between me and Bennigan's (good riddance to an awful restaurant, I say), seeing these empty store fronts, their vast parking lots bare save for some small piles of dirty snow, I can't help but feel bad for the people who used to patronize these shops, these restaurants.

Because it means that whoever these places' former customers were, they've likely hit on harder times than the corporate conglomerates they used to frequent.

Living in Turkey for the past two and a half years, I have seen minor consequences of the global economic crisis firsthand. A few of my very close friends lost their jobs (but were, thankfully, able to find others). Other friends had a much harder time finding freelance work for a while. We all started counting our pennies a little bit more "just in case".

My vet in Istanbul lamented for several months that business was slow, as people tend not to bring Fluffy in for a grooming or a shot when they're busy figuring out how to pay the electric bill that month. Handymen and carpenters and electricians have been telling me for months now that business is slow as people put off general repairs around the house.

But the impact of the economic crisis, of course, didn't impact Turkey the way that it did the US, I am seeing now. Sure, shops and cafes in Istanbul come and go in a matter of days, but a lot of that is simply Istanbul being the city that it is, not a result of the financial meltdown. (And, yes, I do realize that it's not really fair to compare Istanbul to Bethel, Connecticut, seeing as how, oh Istanbul is some 18 times bigger.)

But after reading in the New York Times for a long time now that jobs are scarce, people are scared, everything is closing -- seeing it in person is just much more jarring.

On Going Home Again

A little more than a week from today -- next Tuesday, February 9, to be exact -- I will begin the arduous, 14-hour journey to the US where I will spend 10 days visiting family.

I have many mixed feelings about this trip. On the one hand, I am looking forward to seeing my family, some of whom I have not seen for two and a half years, and on the other hand, I am dreading the travel time it requires to get from Izmir to Istanbul to New York City to Connecticut to central Pennsylvania to Philadelphia to New York City again to Istanbul to Izmir.

All in 10 days.

Gug.

Unlike some of my other expat friends, I don't get back to the US very often. In the two and a half years that we have lived in Turkey, Jeff and I have gone back once, in August 2008, when he defended his dissertation in Philadelphia. Our immediate families have all come to visit us at least once during the time we've been here, and for that reason, it has not been particularly pressing that we get back.

But it only seemed fair that we go back now because, after all, it's been a year and a half since we've last been. Plus, February is when Jeff has his semester break from school and airfare to the US is much, much cheaper now than it is in the summer months, when I would much prefer to spend my holiday in Cesme than the eastern seaboard. Sorry, Pennsytucky, but you got nothing on the Aegean.

There are some things about the US -- other than seeing family -- that I am sincerely looking forward to. Mexican food, for example. Indian food. Pubs. Stocking up on tampons and Tylenol at Target. And visiting some of our favorite old haunts in Philadelphia, where I plan to gorge on shopping and drinking and eating for 48 whole hours.

There is really not much that I miss about the US. Forgive me if that sounds flip or cruel, but it is true. Although sometimes I do get frustrated with Turkey and sometimes I do romanticize life elsewhere (although usually my fantasies take place in the UK or France, not the US), I really do like Turkey. If I didn't, I would hightail it outta here in a heartbeat.

I sometimes wonder if I am an anomaly among expats, like I should be really, really excited to go home all the time every time.

I am wondering how you all feel about going "home", wherever that may be. Do you go back every chance you get? Are you always excited to go back? Or are you conflicted about it like I am?