Trust the Chickens

Tory and I arrived in Kastamonu. Our, sort of contact,(she is from the international office that has no international students) finally came to get us at the bus station. She took us to the faculty guest house, which is no where near the university and there are dead ants all over the floor The shower is a small stream of hot water and not enough to even bath in!. There was no tour of the town, but she took us to the grocery store called Megros. This woman was not the most friendly and said that they were "surprised" that we where coming. She has no idea what we will teach and says that the students, "don't want to take English and may not come to class". Promising, I know!

Anyways, she will come to get us on Monday to see the Wizard of Oz, I mean the Vice Rector......so he can sort this out. The only way I am writing you now is because we found an ethernet wire and I circumvented around the block to get online. This Better get better!

tear count: none yet because at least we have each other

This is what I posted to the Fulbright Turkey Google group about our arrival to our home town of Kastamonu. As you can see, we were alittle worried when we first arrived on Saturday evening. It was dark, and our only contact from the University picked us up and took us to eat and get groceries without much more explanation. She had no idea why were there and only knew that someone told her to pick us up.

Today we are at the University administration building to meet with the Vice Rector and find out our schedule and hopefully more about everyday life for us. Luckly, we have been put in the care of an English lecturer who calls himself Neo (like Matrix he says). He has been great! He sat in on our meeting with the big boss and translated for us. He made sure that we received a laundry service and housekeeping. Thank God! He knew that we were coming from the get go and was the one that translated all of our paperwork for the administration. Things are looking better and our flat(apartment) is being fixed.

At lunch, Neo escorted us to the manager of our residence and had him fix the aformentioned problems and we recieved a house phone. We asked him why are there so many chickens roaming around the grounds of the complex. At first Neo didn’t know what we were talking about, but soon saw. By the way, when I say complex, it is like a little fortress. There is a high fence around the place and security guards 24 hours a day. So, the manager explained to Neo that the chickens where brought in from Ankara to get rid of some killer bugs in the area. What! What bugs? How do we know if we have been bitten by these killer bugs? Neo just said, “Trust the Chickens”, so this is what we will do.

As for our positions at the University. We are still a little unclear as to the exact nature of our positions. We have proposed a speaking tutor sessions or English club that may be possible. It seems that the schedule has already been made and we are not fully teaching classes. I am not too broken up about. I will be able to assist in English classes of the two lecturers that I share an office with. By the way, my office is fabulous. Its in an old building with beautiful large wooden doors and high ceilings. Pictures will be coming soon.