Electronic Meltdown

This post has been updated: see postscript.

Despite my sensible decision a year or two ago to stop buying electronics "back home" -- the money saved was not worth the hassle of getting things repaired or replaced under warranty from here in Turkey -- I admit I've bought a couple of items in Canada since then, and have regretted it each time. 

Today my latest mistake arrived.  In what I can only explain as a sleep-deprived under-unusual-stress-induced impatient decision, I bought it online and found a way to get it here mid-year.  I'm embarrassed to say (but will do so in a minute anyway) how many people were roped into my obsessive plan and ended up contributing to this scheme in some way.

And then what did I do?  I plugged it and its 110V insides into my 220V sockets with a plug adapter forgetting that I also should have used a voltage adapter!!!  

What makes this really sting, though, is that the appliance was the "Tot Clock" I'd been looking forward to for months and that I'd gotten my 3-year-old all excited about.  I'd ordered it on Amazon because only they would take a non-American credit card, and therefore paid way too much for it, had it sent to a friend's house in Ohio, who had her husband bring it back to Istanbul, who in turn  had his assistant drop it off this afternoon.  I'd spent way too much time and energy on this silly thing, but so convinced was I that this would be the perfect solution for my son's too-early wake-up time, that I was blinded.    

There we were this evening -- my kids and I are on the floor, opening the box.  Everyone's grabbing at it, pushing the buttons, dropping it ... It's madness, and I'm acting just as crazy as the kids are.  B's grabbing the manual out of my hand and insisting on "reading" it, because that's just the 20-month-old phase he's in; K's pushing all the coloured buttons, trying to change the colour of the clock face, since he's colour-obsessed (always has been); and I'm trying to set the damn clocks while reading the instructions in the manual that keeps being moved, page-turned, flipped upside down.

And then the clock face goes dark and the digital clock on the back goes blank and it's game over.  I thought I'd smelled something funny a minute ago ... Turns out it was the insides frying.

And so once again, tomorrow morning at about 5:45, I'll be woken to the sweet lilting voice of my 3-year-old, calling from his bedroom across the hall: "Mommy?  Is it wake up time?"

"No, not yet," I'll softly call back.  But it'll be too late.  The baby will be standing at the crib railings and the dog will be stirring in her crate, and I'll have about two minutes until they start to noisily insist on being set free to start the day.

12 hours later: my older son did indeed wake up at 5:30am, and in his whole-house search for the clock, woke us all up.  But on the bright side, with the extra hour this morning, I decided to give the clock another try.  I dug up a screwdriver and popped four AA batteries into the battery compartment and ... it worked!  So as long as I keep those batteries charged, I should be able to forget this ugly incident ever happened.

Halloween

This blog has never been a journal, a record of all the daily "adventures and frustrations of life and motherhood for an expat in Turkey." But when I returned to the internet after my three-week 'cleanse' and saw that several of the bloggers I follow had posted about Halloween, I was overcome with a sense of 'Oops.'

How could I not have written anything about my children's first official Halloween, since the challenge of maintaining Canadian traditions for my kids here in Turkey is something I grapple with every few months? I felt it six months ago at Easter, then last month at Thanksgiving; both times I was 'saved' when friends invited us to celebrate with them, thus eliminating the stress of sourcing turkey and ham, chocolate bunnies and Easter egg dye.

I almost missed Halloween this year, swamped by the craziness that comes with two children under the age of two, a husband who works in another city and is therefore away Monday through Friday, and still being nanniless. But in the last minute a friend picked up a Superman costume for my two-year-old at a nearby party store and more than enough chocolates for the twenty-five trick-or-treaters we were expecting, and we took our kids around to the dozen or so homes here on campus that were participating.

It was better than I could have hoped: the crisp fall weather, the darkness (daylight savings time had just ended), people's decorations and costumes ... Somehow the atmosphere of the evening was exactly as it had been on my own Halloweens as a kid.

Meeting People Part 2

My recent post about an expat's difficulty meeting people led me to think of another difference between expat and native social norms, namely the 'hows' of meeting people. On more than one occasion, I've noticed that the way I meet people here in Turkey reminds me a little of dating.

Random Public Place Meeting:

At a mall, gym, park, etc., one or the other overcomes initial shyness, no doubt the result of a subconscious fear of rejection, and "makes the first move," starting a conversation.

I have noticed that Torontonians and New Englanders are particularly loathe to use this method of establishing contact, perhaps afraid that we might be bothering the other person. On more than one occasion I've explained to my Turkish husband, much to his bafflement, why I didn't say something to that tourist we just saw. He's led me to question my assumptions about others -- that they have an itinerary and are too busy to make conversation; that they want to meet Turkish people, not fellow Canadians; that they would be insulted at my presumption they need help, having in fact well-researched their trip.

Organizations:

Book clubs and rugby teams, professional women's organizations, mom and tot groups are all great ways to bring together people with similar interests. A fun distraction, while you surreptitiously see if there is one person in the group with whom you might form a closer friendship. Kind of like taking a cooking class in an effort to find a boy/girlfriend?

An introduction by a mutual friend, aka The Setup;

followed by The Getting-to-Know-You-Better Coffee Date.

In the end, you're left exhausted and defeated; perhaps you should just settle for the people you already know. Sound familiar?

Meeting People

Meeting people as an expat hasn't been difficult; but meeting people who can make up for the fact that my best friends are thousands of miles away, has been. We've been in Istanbul exactly a year now, and believe it or not, I'm only now starting to feel settled. Of course that's mostly because I threw myself into my new job immediately upon arriving (and I feel very 'settled' there!); during my non-working hours I was busy being a mother. And so I devoted little time to my social life.

Yes, I socialized at work with colleagues; yes, I arranged play dates for my toddler and enjoyed coffee with the other mothers; yes, I joined an expat womens' association; and yes, I joined a book club. But in my thirties, I've noticed one doesn't usually become instant best friends the way one did as a teenager or even in one's twenties; in fact, I've found that as an expat, such friendships never end well. Drawn to each other out of loneliness and relief of recognizing a familiar accent, it usually takes a few weeks or months to realize you would never have been friends with this person back home -- and for good reason.

One needs time to let friendships develop. But who has that time? When you're working, mothering, navigating a city whose infrastructure is such that small errands take hours ... Come evening, you only just have the energy to take a hot shower, have a glass of wine and go to sleep, rather than head out to meet people for dinner.

But perhaps none of this is unique to expat life; I'm sure my friends in Toronto report similar exhaustion. The difference, presumably, is that they've got old friends nearby with whom they can pick up where they left off when they see them once every few months.

Going Native

Image by PowerupMobile.com via FlickrIt's one thing to bring in a child car seat from Canada that isn't available here in Turkey (I didn't do this, but a friend did), or to stock up on pantry items (liquid vanilla, peanut butter, grains!) and Lululemon when you're home visiting. Some specialty items really are cheaper and better in North America; and who can argue that a little taste of home now and again in the midst of your expat life isn't good for the soul?

But I regret having bought a phone that isn't widely available in Turkey. Now, I have to interrupt my story here to say, I was not trying to be different, as my husband teasingly keeps insisting. But I absolutely wanted a phone with Windows Mobile, and my options here weren't great. I could either choose to spend a lot more than I knew I would for the same product back in Canada (Blackberry or a high-end Nokia), or buy an HTC, a brand I didn't know much about. Besides, I had loved my Palm Pilot years earlier, and felt a loyalty towards the brand. And then I found an inexpensive unlocked one in Canada.

Now that my Palm phone isn't working, however, there is only one place (in the whole country!) that I can bring it. Luckily it's relatively near to where we live. Still, two lessons learned: no matter how I justify it to myself or anyone else, it is high-maintenance of me to insist on buying certain things abroad. Two: going without a phone for a while will be a useful exercise in being unplugged.

E-Books -- An Expat's Necessity?

Image via WikipediaFor a few months now, I've seen colleagues, friends and even traveling relatives carry around either a Kindle or an iPad, and I can no longer ignore what seems to be a growing trend. I need to decide: do I buy into it? (And is it a trend, or will e-books indeed become what MP3 players now are to music?)

If I still lived in Toronto, if I weren't an expat, there's no way I would even be considering this. But an expat I am, so here goes:

Cons:

• an immediate expense (especially if I choose the iPad, which is way more than an e-book)
• new technology = being replaced by improved new technology ... so would my Kindle quickly become 'old' the way the first iPods quickly did?
• being unable to borrow from and lend books to friends, which is just plain fun
• guilt: my school's library has a lot of books and magazines, and I should take advantage!

Pros:

• Never again having to pack, move and unpack books, as I already have so many times in my life, as I did this summer, and as I undoubtedly will again.
• Being able to 'buy' a book and start reading it instantly (or so I'm told). This is especially key as English books are not easy to come by in Turkey. Or at least they weren't in Tarsus or Adana. Although they are in Istanbul, as I discovered much to my delight yesterday when I walked into Remzi Kitabevi and the first thing I saw, opposite the entrance, was a huge shelf of recently published English books, including several by Malcolm Gladwell and Elif Shafak's latest novel. Not your standard 'bestseller' fare. So anyway, perhaps this particular point is moot now that we live in Istanbul.
• English books in Turkey are expensive; e-books cost the same everywhere (I would think! Please let me be right!)
• Ordering books from amazon.com to Turkey has just gotten more complicated and it has nothing to do with the bookseller.
• E-book readers really aren't expensive at all, averaging around $150. If I buy 5 English books from a Turkish bookstore, I've spent around that much. 10 if I buy them on a trip home to Canada. But then of course I've got to lug them back with me ...

With all the 'pro' arguments, why haven't I just gone ahead and bought a Kindle? None of the items on my 'con' list are enough to dissuade me. What it comes down to, then, is this: I'm afraid I'd miss the feel of a book in my hand; would miss the smell of books; would miss holding one page between my thumb and forefinger as I read the previous page, anticipating the next; that I wouldn't be able to underline or otherwise mark up passages I find particularly inspiring. And most of all, that I'd miss seeing my collection grow on my shelves, grow until the next big heart-breaking purge.

A Visitor at Home

It's nothing new for an expat to feel she no longer fits in at home, that her adopted country has changed her; I've felt the change slowly happening over the past four years.

My first visit home, four months after moving here, I over-identified with everything Canadian; ditto the following year. But at one point, I started to see things I'd never noticed before -- how cold Torontonians are compared to Turkish people, or how stingy they appear compared to Turks.

And then I started forgetting to re-adapt on trips back to Canada, standing too close to the person ahead of me at the bank machine, or rushing to get onto a bus instead of patiently hanging back until everyone else had gotten on.

But this summer I was truly amazed at the 'Turkishness' of my cultural observations:

• I couldn't get over how dog crazy everyone was, and found myself slightly appalled at the sight of dogs on furniture (note: I used to have 2 Labs who slept with me on more than one occasion -- no judgement, dear Canadian friends!);
• I couldn't keep up with everyone's punctuality, nor did I understand their impatience when dinner wasn't ready before 8pm;
• I was surprised by the casualness of men's and the skimpiness of women's summer attire!

As lovely as it was to be 'home' again, I seem to have lost the ability to just step off the plane and right back into the culture I grew up in; it seems if I ever move back to Toronto, I'd have to go through a process of acclimatization not unlike what I went through when I moved to Turkey.

Luggage Limits

Image by j.cliss via Flickr

I'm going to make a comparison I never thought I'd make: the millions of Turkish people who travel between Germany and Turkey each year and myself, preparing to travel to Toronto this summer. And the particular focus of my comparison centers on luggage.

For the trip to Toronto, I not only need to bring clothes for all types of weather, but I'm packing all the paraphernalia that comes with babies -- diapers, changes of clothes, toys to occupy during the flight, food mill for making fruit and vegetable purees, bottles ... In my defense, there is a lot I'm not bringing; I've made arrangements to borrow a stroller, car seat, crib, high chair, and toys in Toronto. But still, I was dismayed to learn that Air France's baggage allowance is pretty meagre: 1 bag per person; and that my son's allowed baggage weight is half of mine.

You see, there are also all the Turkish delights I want to bring to Toronto. Several litres of pomegranate syrup, for one thing; and of course freshly ground Turkish coffee and baklava; plus a few trinkets to give as gifts -- some copper ware, a small woven rug.

And returning to Turkey, I'm going to want to bring back all kinds of things, mostly foodstuffs. Cilantro, yellow tomato and sweet potato seeds (I'm determined to grow some veggies this year), celery salt and all-spice, quinoa, spelt, kamut and teff, and maple syrup. Oh, and hard honey. And so much more; I just know that as soon as I start roaming the isles at Loblaws, that I'll buy a suitcase's worth!

I suppose the bane of expat life is that you're forever straddling two worlds, always painfully aware of the one or two things that you can't have in one place or the other, unable to take the best of each culture and create your own utopia.

Turks travelling to Germany bring a season's worth of homemade salça and cheese, or else a favourite cookie; those travelling in the opposite direction bring uniquely German candies or herbal remedies, or else a brilliantly engineered piece of household equipment that one just can't find in Turkey.

Which brings me back to luggage. A few years ago, I was outraged at the audacity of three separate women in two different airports who asked me to check in some of their luggage under my name. I was travelling between Adana and Dusseldorf, Berlin and Adana, and I had painstakingly reduced my luggage to just one small carry-on bag. I was an instant target. Caught off guard, and unable to just say no, my stomach twisted into knots and my weak knees threatened to buckle under me as I waited in line at the check-in desk. Each woman had given me perfectly sound explanations for her need to travel with excess baggage; one was pregnant and had brought with her everything she'd need after the birth. But I hate breaking rules, and I knew airline luggage policies were strict for good reason. What if one of the bags contained a bomb?!! Or, more realistically, citrus or meat or some other banned food item?

In each case I told the woman at the check-in counter that the people behind me were welcome to piggyback on my unused luggage allowance; grabbed my boarding pass and ran through customs. I didn't see any of those people again.

Now I look back at those incidents with an ironic smile; how much I've changed, how much I've grown to be quite similar to those travelers who offended me so much a few years ago. Of course I will never, not in even the most desperate of circumstances, ask anyone to check in my luggage for them. But I wouldn't take offense to their request.

Too bad I'm no longer a target, though.

Temporary Expats

The sad part of my expat life is that many of my foreign friends here in Turkey are not expats; rather, they are just passing through Turkey on their way from Taiwan to Mexico, or from Colombia to Sweden. They are true international teachers, making their way around the world, and they just happened to land in Tarsus for a few years.

Two years ago, it seemed as if all the people I'd just spent a year getting to know suddenly left. Thankfully, a wonderful group of new people arrived; and when they returned for a second year, it seemed a real expat community had been formed. But their two years are up and most of them have decided not to stay, so once again I've had to face the reality that my expat life is not shared with other expats.

However, I don't feel too entitled to complain, since this year we too are leaving, even if we're just relocating to another part of the country. I've heard that many of the foreigners in Istanbul really are expats, even if they never intended to stay, and so I am heartened by the prospect of friendships that won't lead to heartache.

And on another positive note: there's nothing like knowing you're about to say goodbye forever to push you to tie up loose ends -- I finished my painting!

Expat vs. Immigrant

I have long been aware of the benefits of being an expat; the numerous ways my life here is easier than back in Canada; the countless advantages I have over locals. And I admit I enjoy my expatriate life.

However, every so often I am reminded of the flip side, immigration, and feel guilty. It's not fair that I should so easily be able to change countries and adapt to a new life, while the reality of millions of immigrants, many of them likewise well-educated and having had good jobs in their home countries, is a constant struggle. Whereas I am considerably advantaged as a Canadian in Turkey, especially since I've learned the language, Turks in Canada, for nexample, are more often than not disadvantaged.

Does the difference lie in the person, or in the destination country? My brother and fellow expat just got his Leave to Remain in Great Britain. A Canadian citizen like me, well-educated and well-employed, he doesn't 'need' to stay in the UK, he just wants to. However, the application process he went through was slow and cumbersome; it was the same process immigrants to Britain go through.

Canada is, like Britain, a first world country, and Turkish immigration applicants don't have an easy time of it. However, more often than not, even once they've become citizens, their new life is difficult. Their degrees may not be recognized, and where they may have had a whitecollar job back home, they often find only labourer positions in Canada. It is their children who will benefit from the move to Canada, not the migrating generation.

This is all horribly simplified, I realize. If I had time, I'd turn this into a thesis or a book! But for now, just a few musings. Of course all this becomes irrelevant every time I reenter Turkey and spend two hours sweating in line waiting to go through customs at Ataturk Airport. The area is badly ventilated, under-lit, and under-staffed -- in glaring contrast to the area for Turkish citizens.

Happy Birthday!

A few months ago I discovered ExpatWomen.com, and my only regret is that I didn't know about the site sooner. This week the site is celebrating its third anniversary; I've been in Turkey three-and-a-half years, and definitely would have benefited from from the site during my first few years, as I struggled to adapt to my new expat life! But better late than never; I especially love the links to other women's blogs!

Anyway, Happy Birthday!