Living Arrangements

Alrighty - so now that you have a job in Turkey, where do you live??  Great question...

I was very fortunate in that WSI put me up in a hotel for the first week of my stay.  Despite the lack of training, there was actually quite a bit of support in helping me find accomodations.  Depending on where you want to live in Ankara, rent can be very cheap or very expensive!  Generally though, cost of living is pretty reasonable here.  Finding a furnished place to live can be difficult so going through word of mouth and any other connection you can find yourself is your best bet.  Turkish people are very welcoming to foreigners (especially teachers) so making connections will be easy! 

Anyway, back to me! 

After about 3 days of looking at crappy apartments (yes, you can find a lot of crappy apartments even on this side of the world!!) I was getting disheartened...I didn't want to live in a hotel forever!!  Then I found out, quite by accident, that WSI has a 3 bedroom teacher's apartment that had two rooms vacant!  Why hadn't anyone told me about this sooner??  Simple - the present occupant of the apartment didn't know if we would get along and was somewhat hesitant to offer me a room.  I should tell you here that it was not this person's choice who was permitted to live here as the apartment belongs to the school and not this particular individual.  However, since this person had lived there for a rather long time, they felt like it was their own place.  And, since my manager was on his way out and couldn't really be bothered to help out, he "forgot" to tell me...These actions should have set warning bells off in my head!!  However, I was so blinded by the opportunity of a room that was not a hotel room that I jumped at the chance and moved in that very night!  The apartment was quite nice!  It was recently renovated, clean and had a very large living room area!  The bedrooms were kinda tiny but I had one all to myself!  It certainly was a change from my extra large master bedroom at home with walk-in closet and queen-sized bed, but it would do!

Let me tell you here about Turkish homes...a home is really an apartment for about 95% of the population.  There are very few single family homes in the major cities.  You can see apartment complexes as far as the eye can see in the big cities...They are described like this: 2+1 or 3+1, etc - the first number indicates how many bedrooms and the second indicates how many living areas.  They don't typically count bathrooms like we would in North America...And the biggest difference I've found is that generally there are no built in closets as we know them.  Closets are wardrobes and are typically small...some lucky (rich) people have big, North American, walk-in closets...but alas, I am not one of those lucky (rich) people...in my room I had a crappy built in closet that had been painted so many times that the doors didn't quite close properly.  But I could hang up my clothes and put away my socks and stick up all my photos and cards from Canadian friends and family - and at that point, that was enough for me!!

Also as a disclaimer, I no longer live in the WSI apartment...a better opportunity presented itself just before Christmas and early in the new year I moved out.  Now I live with a different fellow teacher from Australia through whom I can vicariously relive my youth!

Also, I want to add here that Turkey has all the modern convienences of home!  I only say this because during a recent phone call, my step-mother was amazed to learn that we had a microwave oven - "Really??  You have those there too!  Wow, it's just like home then, isn't it?"...I kid you not, this is a real quote...  So yes, for all those people who think that Turkey is a desert with no electricity and no modern efficiencies and only camels for transportation, you are WRONG!  We have washers, dryers, dishwashers, electric and gas stoves, ovens, blenders, toasters, grills, BBQs, mix masters, LED and LCD televisions, Blueray players, Wiis, and any other electronic device you can think of!  Yes, some of the citizens may look old-fashioned and very Mid-Eastern, but looks can be deceiving!!  (Like the 50 something year old covered woman who was sitting which her traditionally dressed husband at a tea house in a small Eastern town whose iPhone rang to the tune of "I'm a Barbie Girl"...yeah, you heard that right...)