Don't Sweat the Small Stuff

Easier said than done, especially when it's 95+ degrees every day. :) sorry, poor joke, but i couldn't resist. as you can probably tell, i'm in a much happier mood than last time i blogged. mostly because we got our water back! showers and flushing toilets are a beautiful thing, that's all i'm going to say. i'm just crossing my fingers that the power isn't next, i can't live without AC right now! (Although that WOULD be a perfect excuse of why we just have to spend every day at the mall....)

Chris and I went out to Cesme last week on Thursday, and taught our first students! Poor kids. One of my students must have known what she was in for, she canceled! Chris is doing SAT prep (thank goodness, that's the more difficult one!) and TOEFL, I am doing TOEFL and one General English course. TOEFL is mostly for students here who want to get into good universities here in Turkey, if they do well on that exam, they can skip the prep school year in which they take English courses before they can enter university. the SAT prep is pretty self-explanatory. we got paid cash at the end of the day, so that was brilliant! we're headed out there again tomorrow and thurs, and hopefully after that the students will be back in izmir with their families. (we've been out in Cesme because everyone except us is on vacation.)

still no internet in the apt, this is turning into quite a fiasco. lucky for us, we have WONDERFUL turkish friends who have been helping, but it's just a complicated process. we wanted to get the 3G offered by turkcell. however, after phone calls (made by our turkish friends, of course) we found out that even though it's being offered all over the tv and billboards, they had problems with it and right now it's not available. So we looked into turk telecom. In order to get internet, you need a phone line. in order to get a phone line, we're pretty sure you need a utility bill to prove your address. and all of this requires going to several places, making several phone calls, etc. again, all in turkish. we owe our turkish friends a drink, i think. (i won't subject them to a home-cooked meal, they've been punished enough with this fiasco.)

other than those things, it's going well. we still love our apt (i did laundry, yay!), we're finding our way around, and chris' turkish is getting better. mine is still non-existent. i may need to actually start trying...

anyways, this may be my shortest post yet! but i've been sitting in this chair for over an hour, and my rear is numb. i'll type more later. as usual, we love and miss you all!