Working and learning Turkish

March 18, 2002 - Started to learn turkish and to work

First day at work and the first kick on learning this weird language. My day at work was completely free but I noticed that maybe my boss did it to see how I would work without pressure. I decided to work hard then and almost finished 1 week work only in 1 day.

I think I could do more if 2 nerd turks from our IT deppartment didn't want to install a fingerprint identificator in my machine. There are so many computers here at the office, why mine? Anyway, they expent a lot of time there, almost 2 hours, and always when I tried to check my fingerprint... nothing. I think this cold weather erased my fingerprints. After they left I decided to try more and more and finally I could register it. I hope everyday I can open my computer easily.

After work, I went to AIESEC office to find out where I can develop my photo film, where I can wash my clothes (in turkish house there isn't place to wash it, neither a place to hang it to dry), where I can buy some bateries to my digital camera, and so on... I met Onur there and he told me Claudia called him telling she bought a book to learn turkish and wanted to know if I was interested to join her and Katerine, the colombian trainee, to study. For me is great, I'm not going to expend a cent with classes or books because she already have one. We studied till 10pm when I decided to go home. Before go home be brave to walk in 2 degrees weather... but I'm alive.

Kisses people... today I'm so tired I think I'm not going to have more news tomorrow. I just want to sleep a bit after dinner in my very simple but confortable bed on the floor... at least it is very hot.

March 19, 2002 - I just wanted to sleep, but...

I just wanted to go home early and sleep but...
I left work and went home to change my clothes because it was very cold and I was frozen. I dressed 2 moleton pants, 2 t-shirts, a pullover and a jacket over... I was ready to fight against the cold outside.

I don't know if there is a work to express it in english but there isn't in Portuguse... it was not only cold... it was minus 2 degrees. My clothes were enough but my nose frozen. At least only for 20 minutes, when I was walking till AIESEC office.

From there we went to dinner at the same place but this time I decided to try something different... I went for Manti. I liked a lot and I'm thinking about to eat it more times, also because ot is cheaper than Yogurt'lu Kofte. I was starving and only this plate was not enough... I need to eat some bread at home.

At the restaurant Mehmet (one of the AIESEC'ers) destroied my weekend plans. This weekend there will be something for new member and they need some help again. Ok, no problems, next weekend I'm planing to go to Istanbul to 3 Ankara trainees and the next one maybe a brasilian party here. Mehmet also put my film to develop today. Soon I will have some pictures and I already found out that there is a scanner in my company. I just need to convince the guys, in turkish, to scan them to me.

After dinner we went to a pub to watch Galatasaray (the biggest turkish team) versus Barcelona. Before the game starts I said, just to play, that Barcelona would win for 1x0... guess what happened? Exactly, Barcelona did it for the same score I said!

Now, more than ever, I have to find a safe place to watch the game between Brasil and Turkey for the World Cup. BEcause of this match at the pub I went home to sleep only at 1am.

Kisses,
Alex