Although Emrah and his family were truly wonderful hosts, I must say that it was rather challenging to sleep in their living room after traveling all the way from Argentina.  Honestly, I do not think that he intentionally deceived me by telling me that there was an extra room (which there was clearly not), I really just think that his English skills are seriously lacking.  Since I did not have a bedroom, I was woken up each morning for breakfast.  However, despite being ridiculously exhausted, I must say that the breakfasts were absolutely divine and a welcome, healthy change from the dulce de leche filled facturas that I used to eat in Argentina!

Another really bizarre thing was the fact that his parents’ friends who I had met on New Years Eve when I first arrived have a daughter who works for one of the companies that wanted to hire me to teach English.  However, this was not really a great thing because the job was much less than ideal due to the fact that it was hourly and included working every weekend.  Therefore, I had been continuing to look for other employment opportunities and I had actually found a much better job that I was working on securing.  Therefore, all of this was rather awkward and it was rather difficult to effectively explain all of this to these people since I do not speak Turkish!

Furthermore, over the next couple of days, the people from this company kept calling Emrah and he would just put me on the phone with them, which was totally stressing me out!  Although I had explained that I was exploring my options, he just did not seem to understand that I did not appreciate being thrown on the phone with them!  Number one, I did not want to work for the company, and number two, I am somewhat of a phone-o-phobe!  Seriously, I really don’t care for talking on the phone at all!  Why do I despise it?  Well, if I actually DO want to speak with someone, I prefer to see him or her in person or on Skype.  In addition to this, when I need to discuss work related matters, I prefer to converse over email so that I have everything in writing.  So having the phone shoved in my face was starting to really drive me crazy!

Finally, it was time for me to make my way to go and stay with my new roommate, Müge, who had just gotten home from work.  Thankfully, Emrah and his dad helped me to bring my gypsy bags all onto the metro and to her place, which was extremely kind of them.  However, both of them wanted to carry the bags on an angle, with just two wheels on the ground, which is a problem because I just had both of those bags repaired and I was totally reprimanded by Samsonite for carrying them in this way.  Instead, they said that the bags need to be rolled on all four wheels.  Therefore, numerous times I had to stop and attempt to explain this to Emrah and his dad, which was by no means an easy task!  I even told them I would just carry them myself, but then thankfully, they finally listened to me.  Of course I appreciate the help immensely, but I do not feel like having to take them to be repaired here in Istanbul where I do not speak the language!

When we arrived to Müge’s place at last, I was so grateful to see her face and to be able to communicate with her in English!  Luckily, she has a pretty good level of English and we had a lovely evening having some dinner and chatting about all kinds of stuff!  Her place is super cute and I feel very comfortable staying with her and having my own room in which to sleep!  Really, I believe that we will become super great friends and I am very grateful to have her to help me to acclimate to life in Istanbul!