Home Sweet Home

Good news everyone! Chris and I found a place to live, and it’s not a box in an alley like we feared! Rob, one of our tutors from the CELTA course, put us in touch with one of the teachers @ IEU who had a FURNISHED apartment to rent in Izmir. Umm, can we say PERFECT? A landlady who speaks English, an apartment that is furnished and air conditioned (believe it or not, this is not the case in all apartments in Izmir, even though I think it should be a crime not to with as hot as it is!), and in the city we need it to be! We were also about to be kicked out of the dormitories, so we needed to find a place quick, although many Turkish friends offered us a place at their apartments. (Thank you, all of you, we really did appreciate your generosity.) Anyways, we looked at the apartment Friday, moved in Saturday morning, and we’re here now. I will describe it, although I’m sure Chris will put up pictures as soon as we get internet connection (I’m doing this in the internet café down the street.) Oh, and I should preface this whole blog post by saying I’m sick, doped up on cold medicine, and really really groggy, so if something doesn’t make sense or I don’t finish sentences, you know why.
What sold us right away (well, besides the English-speaking landlady, the furnished state, and the location) was the view. OMG. If we thought our view at IEU from the dorms was amazing, this blew us away. Believe it or not, even better than the view in GR (sorry, Gina!). Mostly because we not only see the city, but we look over the bay. There are huge windows everywhere, so it’s even better.The apartment is quite high up, so it’s quite a panoramic view. AND we see a beautiful sunset every night over the water and behind the mountains. I couldn’t ask for a better view!
The apartment has 2 bedrooms, one bathroom with a washing machine (finally!), a kitchen, a living room, a balcony complete with a clothes line (YAY!) and ( my favorite room), a sunroom with windows on all sides, facing the bay, perfect for breakfast and plants. Mom, you will LOVE this room! Nesta, our landlady, redecorated a couple years ago, and basically it’s exactly like how I would have done it! So yes, we feel VERY lucky to have gotten this place, and at a very reasonable rent rate as well. Oh, and did I mention that, unlike some parts of Izmir, it’s not stinky? This was a huge requirement for me; as we’ve walked around a bit in the past, there are certain areas that smell like sewage pretty strongly. I did NOT want to live in such an area! Gross. I think we’re high enough up that the breeze of f the bay takes care of that for us. It’s pretty much perfect.
Or at least it was until we woke up this morning to no running water. We hoped it was just a quick thing, but after about 10 hours, we walked next door to the building manager, who said that it is a huge area without water, and is supposed to remain that way for 4 days. Four days without running water, so no laundry, no showers, no washing dishes, no washing hands, flushing the toilet, etc etc. omg, I don’t know if I can handle this. UGH.So those of you taking hot, long showers, think of me and try not to laugh. And I will think about it and try not to pout. I’m just glad we had the job interview yesterday! We called Nesta and she said that this happens about 3-4 times a year. I was afraid it was going to be every other week or something! But I guess since the water pipes are quite old, I can understand them needing to fix leaks and such. Understand, yes. Stop whining and feeling sorry for myself, no.
Despite this cold that I managed to get right after CELTA ended, we have some leads on promising jobs. One possibility is at IEU, where we took the CELTA course. We’re waiting to hear from them, which should be within the next couple days. That would be a plum job, health insurance included and being paid on time a given. Ahhh, the luxuries! It’s just a really nice place to work, and many people have to work at crummy language schools before universities will hire them, if then. We got lucky because our tutors loved us J The other job was the one we interviewed for yesterday in Çeşme. It’s for a language school, but different that other language schools in that it’s more one-to-one tutoring, and getting students prepared to take SAT exams to study abroad. The pay is quite good, the hours flexible (possibly a little too flexible? We’ll see), and the couple who own it seem like good and honest people. The husband was actually born and raised in Chicago, so he knew where GR was! And BethAnne, he regularly sends Turkish students to MSU, so he’s quite familiar with that area too. Chris and I got along with them quite well. At least I thought so, I was so doped up on cold medicine we could have completely flubbed it and I wouldn’t have known. I guess we didn’t though, since they offered us both a job, starting this week. We kind of wanted to wait to hear from IEU, but if they don’t hurry, we’re taking this one and we’ll figure out what to do with IEU later.
Well, I can see that as usual, this is way longer than I intend for it to be. One last thing though: Sherri from CH, I think if I’m going to stay in Turkey any length of time, I may need a WTF stamp like you have. Seriously. Miss you all, and hope to get internet access soon as I can start actually sending individual emails to you all again.