Turkish Opressıon

A story in May 21 addition of Turkish Daily News was as follows-

Hasan Başar, married wıth two children and working as a civil servant, is suing the General Directorate of telecommunications for rejecting his request for a discount because of his stutter. Başar claims that due to his stutter he pays nearly four times more than a person without hıs dısability. The General Directorate of telecommunications reviewed the claim and said... no.

reporting from Ankara, Turkey, this is Spacemonkey signing off

Driving

Driving in Turkey is quite amazing. Or crazy, whichever you like. Since we do not have a car we walk or take the bus everywhere. The only problem is that walking is a danger to your health. The drivers here are crazy. All street signs are taken as suggestions. For example, lines on the road......suggestions. Red lights........suggestions. Not running people over.........suggestions. The idea is that they are in the car so everythig else should get out of their way. The only consolationis that the curbs are really high, about 50 inches I've been told. We figure the reason that the curbs are so high is so that the pedestrians walking on the sidewalk do not get run over as much. Even with all this I have yet to see an accident in Turkey. I only hope that I get used to being almost run over because I have 3 months left of walking around Izmir.

A slightly large flag on the front of the PPL (post office) building in Konak

Darren, Tom and Sarah at the clocktower �n Konak 

Flıght

The start of our(Tom and I) journey set the precident for the rest. Our ticket attendent ın Kansas City put the wrong tag on our bags. They were now going to Istanbul, and we were going to Izmır. As we left her she said that she was going to go change them after the next person in line, but we were still skepical and wondered if we would ever see our luggage again.

The flight over was interestıng to say the least. First off, we flew Turkish Airlines. I have nothing against Turkish Airlines, but it was an experience. To start with, the plane left about an hour late because everybody showed up late. Now most trips I have taken if you are late the plane leaves wıthout you. But not this time. We finally left Chicago.

This is the first long trip that I have taken since I turned 21 so I wanted to get a drınk. The stewardesses came down the aisle with the drınk cart and I had my money at the ready. As soon as I could see the cart I was amazed. All it had on it was alcohol. Vodka, gin, whisky, scotch, beer, wine, everything. And even more shocking was that everybody was ordering it!! Apparently thats just what happens on Turkish Airlines, everybody drinks. Oh, it dıd not cost anything either. Everything was free.

Finally after 11 hours the flight was over and we were ready for the next dısaster. Sınce our plane left 1 hour late, we landed 1 hour late. Our next plane was scheduled to leave at 1:00pm, and we landed at 12:55pm. After a mad dash through visa and passport check, and another mad dash (well really it was like a marathon run because Istanbul airport ıs really, really long) we arrived at our gate only to find out our plane had left. We got new tickets for the 4pm flight and now had 3 hours wait. But the wait would be interesting. We had our first experience usıng a pay phone wıth a Turkish callıng card. It turned out to be fairly simple wıth some help. Anyway we called Space Camp and cleared our arival time and then went to sit and wait and try not to fall asleep. As usual our next flight left late, but we fınally arrived wıth our luggage and went to Space Camp.