I woke up and organized my room this morning before housekeeping came to do their weekly cleaning. I should do that every morning because my room looked amazing after my long stressful day.
Earlier today, I decided to tackle loose ends with the bank Yapi Kredi. I waited approximately 20 minuets to see a teller. I told the teller I wanted to pick up my bankcard and also transfer money to my student ID card so I could buy my Xerox copies. The teller called over another Koc student to help since she did not speak English. (So much for my account privacy.) The student took me outside to a machine that is only in Turkish. She placed me card inside and then pressed 1, enter asked me to enter my pin. I then told her I wanted to put on 50TL ($35.44). She put in .50 and said that it would save as 50TL. I graciously said thanks and went to the basement of the library to purchase my copies.
I waited online for 30 minuets. The wait was extremely long because Koc students all believe their request should be top priority. So they skip and speak to the workers in Turkish to speed their order up. Then they look at my angered body language. I finally get to the front of the line and offer to pay to only find out that I only have .50TL on my card. I became furious at that moment because I could have handled my own banking issues by myself if there was an English button on the machine. (I don’t understand how I can be at an English speaking university and only classes and a few food court workers know how to speak English! This is extremely frustrating.) I looked at the clock and I had 7 minuets to get to my 2 hour Turkish class.
Class let out at 14:20. I rushed over to the Science building and order tavuk pilav (chicken pilav). After 5 minuets of inhaling the food and 2 minuets of walking to the engineering building I arrived at class. Not my class because I confused my schedule times. My class actually started at 15:30 and not 14:30. I had spare time so I decided to go back to the bank and transfer money. I got back to the library to find a long line for the copy center. I went to my last class, which a quarter of was spoken in Turkish and then translated later to me and the four other exchange students.
After class I went to the Xerox center. This time I bombarded the line and got my order in no time. I’m learning quickly. I must say this experience has made me miss the US and the way we do business.
At 6:30 Jasmine and I left campus for Istinye Park mall. We got on a pimped out dolmus with a red velvet interior and blue rope lights. This bus was slow as heck since it picked up everyone in the world! We went for snacks at a bakery when we finally got to Sariyer. After a 5-minuet walk we were on the dolmus to the mall. This was an interesting ride. I watched the driver count a wad of money, light cigarettes, answer phone calls, drive on the road and almost run over passengers.
Jasmine and I roamed around the mall and then grabbed dinner from Burger King. The Whopper tasted just like the ones in the States. The only difference was the soft shoestring fries and the addition of mayonnaise to my plate. Nonetheless that meal brightened up my day. For dessert we had Haagan Dazs I had butter pecan, which was creamier. I just want to point out that here sprinkles are called vermicelli. In the States vermicelli is a noodle, along the lines of Ramen. I found Pupa the Apple reseller and purchased my charger for 251TL ($177). 38TL was just in tax. I did a price check on MacBooks, which start at 3333TL ($2364).
We left the mall at 9:45 and waited 40 minuets for the bus to come. We saw about 10 dolmus going in every direction but Sariyer. Two women helped us figure out whether or not we were on the right side. The older woman of the two was so friendly that she would not stop talking to me in Turkish even after I took out my Turkish paper that said I do not speak Turkish. Finally Jasmine and I decided to hop in cab. The driver told us the cab would be between yirmi (20TL) and yirmi bes (25TL). We took the cab to campus and ended up paying 27TL because we forgot to finalize a price before getting in the cab.
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