Stuff and nonsense

My stuff came yesterday (Wednesday)! This is very exciting and a bit perplexing. I didn't think that stuff was that important to me, and maybe it really isn't but it is turning out more important than I expected. Anyway, this is not a philosophical discussion about stuff, it is a practical discussion. In case any of you end up moving to another country with four suitcases and 1.0 cubic meters of stuff, I want to let you know how it worked for me.

 Way back in March the school sent me an email with information for new faculty. It was kindly provided in both English and Turkish and it covered topics ranging from cell phones, to shipments, to buses and pets. It was helpful, but it was overwhelming. In it there were also people to contact if I had any questions and when I wanted to get various things started.

 I could fish out that document and quote it, but I think it is more instructive for me to report what I remember it saying, since this is what I went by. I thought it said that I could ship things and that I should expect it to take 6-8 weeks door to door. There were a lot of regulations about what could be in the shipment and that anything that you ship in, must also be shipped out. So, if you bring a toaster and it breaks in the first week, you have to keep it and take it out again so that when you leave Turkey has no net gain or loss of toasters. There were helpful warnings about the fact that the electricity is different and things designed to run on 110V will get fried by 220V and things designed to run at 60Hz, will run more slowly at 50Hz. They told me I needed two packing lists and how to label my boxes. I had the impression from reading this that this is what people did and that if I was going to bring any electronics, it should go in the shipment. Once I got here, I found out neither of these things is strictly true.

 Yes, some people do ship things, but most people do not. Instead they pay for the extra luggage on the plane out of the moving allowance the school gives us. (You get the moving allowance if you don't ship things.) And then they buy anything that they might need here. It turns out that Istanbul pretty much has everything you could want (with a few key exceptions) it is after all a city of 13 million people give or take. Regarding electronics, if you are going to ship electronics, they must be in the initial shipment (as opposed to being shipped later), however, it is best not to ship electronics, but pack them with you, since this is what gets held up in customs. Ok, hind sight and all that, now back to my story.

 The school contracts with a company in New Jersey or New York or somewhere to arrange the shipping. I email them saying I would like my shipment to leave my house on Monday July 10th. I think I said this several times, so when the last email I got from them before the 10th, was call us on the 10th to arrange a day to pick it up, I was frustrated. When I reiterated, they capitulated and sent someone to pick up the boxes on the 10th. My shipping allowance was 1.5 cubic meters, of which I used only 1.0 m3. To get an idea of how big this is, think about a cube that is 5 feet on a side. Many floor tiles are one foot square if you need help estimating that. Anyway, in three dimensions, that is pretty big. I had 8 cardboard boxes, 7 of which were shipped to Gunn with new microscopes in them from China, so I felt like I was almost closing the loop, bringing those boxes the rest of the way around the world. None of my boxes was over 50 pounds, as was required, and there was a packing list in each box as well as the two versions I sent to the shipping company.

 From my house the boxes went to the east bay somewhere awaiting a truck to New York. I am not sure how long they waited, or what path that truck took, but it was the first week of August before they got to New York, three weeks down already. Now the school was supposed to pay for the shipment, so I was surprised when I got an email from the shippers saying that if I didn't wire them $1600 by Monday my stuff would miss the boat. I told them I thought the school was paying, I emailed the school saying, I thought you were paying, and the response I got from everyone was, just go ahead and pay it and we'll work it out later. Oh, yeah, like I always have $1600 lying around to wire across the country. Well, I did wire it, with the help of my Uncle, since I was in Salt Lake City at the time and I thought we were on our way.

 I arrived in Istanbul on August 18th, 5 1/2 weeks after I sent the shipment. I have casual clothes with me, no problem; the first week is new teacher orientation and is very casual. My second week was the bayram, so no need for nice clothes, but 7 weeks after I shipped, the entire burro racy in Turkey stops working for a week. The shipper reports that it arrived on August 31st and should be in port, I just can’t get it. Ok, after the bayram we have another week of teacher meetings etc. which can be mostly casual. School didn't start until 9 weeks after I shipped. I was getting nervous. I made the mistake of shipping all of my teaching clothes and the school takes dress code very seriously. I shared my plight with enough people that eventually someone offered to take me shopping. This was great, I had clothes to teach in, but they were not my clothes and not really my style, not to mention that I had to pay a lot for them when I had just bought a bunch of new clothes for the trip.

 As soon as the bayram is over, customs can start and I may still make it, right? Nope, before anything can be done, I need a residency permit. The teachers who arrived the day before I did got their residency permits before the bayram, but for want of one day, I waited 10. Jack, Janelle and I ducked out of some technology training for a quick trip to the police station to get our permits. I am very grateful that I don’t have to do any of this on my own, the school is taking care of everything, they just say show up here at this time, sign this paper, go with this driver, etc. They make it easy for me and I know it is not the school's time schedule that is dictating how slowly things go.

 Ok, residency permit check, now I can get the boxes right? Where is the bill of lading? The bill of what? I didn't even know that lading was a word. Aylin takes me home in the middle of the day to get my binder of papers, but none of them are the right ones. I email New Jersey or New York and they say that it was sent with the shipment, but they have a pdf of it which they attach. I forward that to Aylin and we are back in business, but it is now weekend and so maybe next week, maybe next Friday. Ok, there goes the first week of school. I have three pairs of pants and three shirts, plus the one button down I packed as an over shirt. I don’t have any proper shoes, so I wear sandals for the first few days, but my conscience gets to me and I switch to cons, cons that don’t match. In the flag ceremony (which is worth an entire blog by itself) the head of discipline announces/reminds the student that they must be in dress code every day and that includes single colored socks. Really? No stripes, no argyle? No fortune cookies? No aliens? I am counting on no one looking too carefully at my socks, I know I'll distract them with my shoes, and there was nothing in the announcement that you shoes had to match.

Monday of the second week of school comes and I get an email from Tilek, Aylin's assistant, what time can I be home on Tuesday to receive my shipment? School gets out at 3:15, I teach last period on Tuesdays, if I hurry, maybe 3:30. Ok, it is scheduled to come at 4. This is the best news all week! I start to believe that it might actually happen; I hadn't had a specific time before. So, I email Elvan who is in charge of the maintenance of the teacher housing. Can I meet you at the furniture warehouse tomorrow; I'd like to choose a few book shelves and a bigger table? Yes, she can meet me Tuesday morning! Everything is coming together. What makes it even better is that I did decide to hire the cleaning lady, but just once a month, and she was also coming on Tuesday. I had a strong candidate for most improved apartment of the month going. Of course it didn't work out like that.

Dilek sent me an email just as I was leaving school on Tuesday, the shipment was delayed. I still left promptly and by the time I got home, she responded to my hopeful question, that perhaps it would still come on Tuesday, just not at 4, no, tomorrow. So I went for a walk, made dinner and tried not to sulk too much. The silver lining was that my apartment was very clean and the furniture hadn't arrived yet anyway. I may still make most improved apartment status on Wednesday.

Again I am home before four, anxiously waiting a delivery truck. Four flies by, five saunters by too. Six is getting ready to sneak by when I get a call, 'we are sorry for the delay in your shipment, would you still like it to come today? YES! I will wait all night, no problem, just send it. Ok, 30 minutes. Great! At 6:40 or so I get another call, the only word I understand is 'security' so I say, ok, I'll come down stairs, not that they could understand that. When I went down to the security office in my building, they had no idea what I wanted; apparently they weren't the ones that called. Not sure what to do, I went back up to my apartment just in time to get another phone call. The security who had called found a student to help translate.

Student: "You have a package."

Me: "One package, or many packages?" I guess it is possible I would get a separate package at the exact time I was waiting for my shipment.
Student: "One package, it is at the bridge gate."
Me: "How big is it? Can I carry it?"
Student: "you can carry it."
Me: "Should I come get it?"
Student: "No, they will bring it to the lower parking lot."
Me: "Great"

This sounds like it! I find shoes and knock on Christine and Danny's door, across the hall. I promise chocolate chip cookies if they will help me bring up my boxes. They say bribes are not necessary, and come down. We waited what felt like at least 5 minutes. The bridge gate is not that far, and it was at least three minutes before we were down stairs. Maybe my sense of time is not that accurate. Eventually a promising looking truck pulled up and the driver opened the back to reveal a big pine box. He worked on it with a crowbar for several minutes to get the top pried off but never could get the sides off. Eventually he just started lifting the boxes out from the top. The first two were just for taking up space and he opened them and showed me that they were empty before tossing them further into the truck. Then my boxes started to appear. The three of us took them into to the entry way as they came out. The first layer wasn't so bad, but to get the second layer, the driver had to turn the box on its side, which made me cringe a little. Once all of the boxes were out, Christine, who has only been here a year, but who put a lot of effort into learning Turkish asked him if there was anything I needed to sign, or papers he needed to give me. He didn't completely understand, but tried to call someone, who didn't answer, and eventually they decided that no, I didn't need to sign anything. Ok, we said good bye and thank you and then hauled the boxes up one flight of stairs to my apartment.

I spent the next three hours unpacking 6 of the 8 boxes. I didn't unpack the games since I didn't have anywhere to put them yet and I wanted to get all of the loaner things out of the kitchen before I unpacked that box. Besides teaching clothes, it was those two boxes that I was most looking forward to, so gratification was delayed, but anticipation was amplified.

Thursday after school, I cleaned out the kitchen and packed up the loaner items (sheets, pillows, towels and kitchen stuff) and put my kitchen stuff in its place. My furniture still hadn't arrived, but the carpenter had been in to hang up my mirror, a screw for my clock and the knife magnet I got at Ikea. I took the door off the corner cabinet, making it much more useful and I put all of my items in their places. For being so into cooking, I really didn't bring that much kitchen stuff. Like, why didn't I bring a cutting board? A cheese grater? Hot pads? A pitcher? Oh, I know, it is because I needed 500 t shirts that I can't wear to school anyway. What was I thinking?

I am glad to have more soap and familiar toothpaste. Sharp knives are fantastic and I can see hours of game playing. But I guess I was really doing all right with the minimum that I brought, I know now I can survive with even less than I think I can. This makes me think about all the stuff I didn't bring. Will I miss it? What will I do with it when I return? If I am smart, I won’t just reinstall it into my life without examining whether I really need it. And then there are things that I didn't bring but wish I had. A mornings shopping in Eminunu and I have a SCART connector, stamp pads, a pitcher and a cheese grater, so it is going to be all right, but if you come to visit, pack corn syrup and chocolate chips (-:

PS this is now Sunday and I am finally publishing this blog.  Several things delayed my finishing of it, none were bad, just inconvenient.  Thanks for your patience.