Leave the Path

Aslan went to bed at 10 pm last night, woke up at 12 am, and then resisted all attempts to put him back to sleep until 6 am.  He cried inconsolably for probably 2/3 of the intervening time.  Maybe it’s jet-lag, maybe it’s teething (he has pre-molars coming in), or maybe it’s because he’s not been eating well and he was hungry, but nothing I did helped.   We have never had such a bad night — at least when he was a newborn he had limited stamina.  He and I awoke at noon today.  We went to the kuafor (haircutter) and to the park at Zeynep’s house and then we had dinner with the whole family.  We got to talk to Emre briefly on the webcam.  It was a good day but I was tired and grumpy because of last night.

Today Aslan and I got up late and spent most of our time in the apartment.  The rest of the family had things to take care of so we made ourselves breakfast and explored the house.  Aslan really wanted to go outside but the weather was gross and I didn’t have a key.  He kept seeing pictures of Baba or of himself and getting really excited.  I wonder if he’s confused: he’s never been here before but his photo is everywhere in the house.  Maybe he’ll think he’s really famous.  (Photo: Aslan looking extra Turkish in his socks and hurka, talking to Baba on the phone.)

Hakan kindly drove me to Hacettepe today (pronounced Hahj-ay-tey-pey).  It’s in an older part of town right next to Ankara University hospital.  This makes no sense to me – wouldn’t it be better for the hospitals to be spread out so that you’re always near one in an emergancy?  And if the universities are right on top of each other why didn’t they merge faculties years ago?  There must be some politics involved.  The directions I got for finding the Dean’s office started with “go to the sqaure with the Ataturk statue” which is about as helpful as saying “turn at the church” in the American south as every open space in this whole city has an Ataturk statue.  This one in particular was of Ataturk emerging from the sea ala Venus, best I could tell.

We finally managed to find the Hacettepe Faculty bulilding (I’m not sure I would have on my own) and got my official elective acceptance letter.  The person I was supposed to see about lectures and physician contacts was not there today but I have some names of people to contact tomorrow.  I didn’t realize how poor my academic vocabulary is or how hard it is to speak Turkish to strangers.  Hakan ended up being my translator and I hope I catch on quickly because I need to be able to navigate on my own.

The building where the dean’s office is located reminds me very much of the Joseph Fourier university where I studied in France.  It’s hard to pin down the similarity – maybe it’s the 1960’s architecture, or the lack of technology in the hallways, or the faint smell of coffee, cigarettes, and dust collecting in the stairwells – but it brought back memories for me, some fond, some full of frustration.  I also got my first glimpses of the hospital.  The shiniest parts (and none of it is as shiny or futuristic as UNC) were the Radioloji department and the Gloria Jean coffee shop just outside (this big American chain apparently got a strong foothold in Ankara, I’ve seen 3 shops now).  Most of the rest of the hospital has an architecture from an era of smaller rooms and lower ceilings and looked like it had been painted over quite a few times.  It looked clean and busy, though.   I recognized the worried parents in the waiting rooms and medical students running errands in their short coats; it felt like a teaching hospital should.  I still haven’t met anyone who I will work with directly, but I’m optimistic that it’ll happen and I’ll have a good experience.

We went to Volkan and Hanzade’s tonight.  After a day of begging to go out and being denied I thought Aslan would love it.  Instead he had a total meltdown at their door when I took off his shoes.  I wonder if he thought we were sleeping there.  (After all the new places he’s had to get used to I don’t blame him.)  His cousin was very helpful, though.  We went into her room and he cried himself out.  She showed him her toys one by one and eventually he calmed down and played nicely.  They drank pretend tea and she cut wooden fruit for us to eat (this is the first time I’ve seen Aslan make-believe eat) and then dumped all of her toys on the floor for him to choose from.  His favorite? He made a bee-line strait for the VW bus model — this is certainly Goko-son.  Aslan also got to meet more of his extended family here – Hanzade’s parents and sister and a cousin of Ali’s visiting from Tunceli.  Once he got over his spell he was at his cutest, smiling and posing with Zeynep.  He’s still tired from the trip, though, and by 9 pm he was standing at the door with his shoes looking plaintive.  He went to sleep easily again tonight and now I’m just waiting around for Emre to call.

For my friends and family in the states:  I have a Turkish cell phone for the next month.  I’ll have it on silent in the hospital but there’s a phone in our apartment that you can call if there’s something urgent and they will get in touch with me.  Send me an email if you want the numbers.   The time difference is 7 hours (e.g. noon in NC is 7 pm here) so it’s best to call before 5 pm but Turkish phones don’t charge for incoming calls so call as often as you like.

Addendum:  Just after I wrote the above, Aslan woke up and cried for almost 3 hours straight from midnight ‘til 3am.  We went to the kitchen to have milk and crackers (his schedule is messed up and he isn’t eating as well as usual).  Everyone else in the house woke up, too.  Now he thinks we have parties with cookies after he goes to sleep so he may possibly never sleep again.

We are now safely installed in Ankara.  Our trip was actually pretty uneventful.  The worst parts were at RDU before we even got on the plane.  We rearranged all of our bags at the ticket counter (baggage weight limits are to be taken seriously, by the way) and then Aslan got pretty bothered saying goodbye to Baba at security, but it was downhill from there.  Our planes were on time, people were helpful to us, and we and all of our luggage arrived safely.

Aslan was a surprisingly pleasant traveler.  He cried as we got on the plane all three times (maybe because he didn’t want o leave the airport) but he also slept through all of our landings.  The first leg (Raleigh-Charlotte) he sat quietly on my lap.  Perhaps the cutest thing that happed all the long day was when on that first little plane Aslan noticed the air-blower things on the ceiling and told us emphatically that it was a hairdryer.  I don’t think he made the connection that we were actually inside of an airplane so I wonder if he thought we were in a big group hair-dryer.

Aslan loved the Charlotte airport.  Thankfully since he was sleepy when we got off the plane I could just pop him in the carrier and we could move quickly with our hands free for luggage.  When we got to our gate at Charlotte I let him out.  The international terminal at CLT is perfect for kids.  It’s a big open glass room like a greenhouse and there’s a real one-man plane suspended from the ceiling in the middle.  Most of the terminal is carpeted, but under the plane is a 30 foot-wide shiny tile circle which acts as a child-magnet.  All the kids in the terminal (most of whom ended up on our flight) ran laps around and around the circle and would periodically lie down to look at the antique plane.  Every time Aslan saw a plane (even the indoor one) he pointed and clapped and made engine noises and then gestured to everybody waiting in chairs nearby as if to say “Hey, why aren’t you excited?  Didn’t you see that?!?”

Apparently only three types of people travel from NC to Germany on a Monday afternoon in March:  European families with small children, Grandparents returning to Eastern Europe after visiting their grandkids in the states, and people who don’t show up at all.  There were at least 5 kids under 2 on the plane and almost all of them were within 3 rows of us.  The families closest to us were Romanian and German.  A nice Polish grandfather gave everybody who would take it a piece of hard candy and an unintelligible story.  And half the seats were available for stretching out or diaper bag storage so we were actually pretty comfortable.   Nurten and I were seated a couple rows apart but with all the empty spaces it was easy to visit back and forth.  On that long leg I learned that Aslan likes people and he likes buttons even more.  Our seat had a built-in touch-screen TV and built-in friends so he was thouroughly entertained.  He charmed a friendly stewardess early on and she made silly faces at him all through take-off.  He played with his toys, talked to other kids, and discovered an empty, unlocked cabinet across the aisle from us.  He also loved the tiny button-filled bathroom, which we visited probably 10 times in our 8 hour flight due to some amazing cabin-pressure effect on baby kidneys.  The only snag was when we encountered an hour or more of “bad turbulence” after dinner which kept the seatbelt sign on and the toddlers all got frustrated that they couldn’t move around.  Aslan also had a hard time going to sleep because he could play peek-a-boo with the 2-year-old behind us between the seats, but by 11 EST all the little ones had drifted off.  Here’s a picture of him in his special bassinet, which looks creepily like a coffin in photos but really it was quite cozy.

With the 6 hour time difference 11pm EST is 5 am German time, though, so breakfast service started an hour later.  Aslan slept until landing, getting all of about 2 hours sleep.  Nurten and I didn’t sleep at all.

The third leg (Munich-Ankara) two thirds of the passengers were businessmen of one sort or another and they were all very helpful, volunteering to stow our bags or pass things to the stewardess.  Aslan slept the whole flight.  This worked well for me as I was really too tired to be entertaining at that point, but I was sure that he would cry something terrible when he woke up so I was afraid to move.  It’s a three hour flight and all I could think about was how having a toddler sit on your lap is definitely a DVT risk factor.  Thank goodness I don’t smoke or have cancer because I’m sure I had some venous stasis going on.

We arrived in Ankara last night and Aslan has adapted surprisingly quickly.  He was a little tentative and clingy at first but took very quickly to his “new” relatives.  He quickly discovered all of the dangerous or breakable objects in BabaAnne’s house.  He was charmed by his cousin Zeynep and happily shared toys with her.  He ate a big bowl of Efser’s yogurt soup and made his “yum yum” face over and over (a big compliment, he only does this if something is delicious).  The he willingly (for perhaps the first time ever) went to bed at a very reasonable 9 pm and slept for more than 13 hours, giving me a chance to unpack and talk to Emre on the phone (I really miss him) and still get a full night’s rest.

Traveling with Aslan was in most ways harder than traveling alone but it was also fun to share the experience.  It’s hard to find traveling companions who get genuinely excited every time they see the airport golf carts (indoor cars!!) or giggle hysterically about brushing their teeth in a public bathroom.  I kind of look forward to the return flight.

T-minus 2 days ’til my first trip in 2 years!  Tickets, passports, bags packed, ready to go!  We’re heading back to Ankara for a 6-week visit.  Aslan (the world’s cutest 18 month-old) and Nurten (my mother-in-law) will be flying out with me early Monday afternoon and 18 hours later Aslan will be meeting the rest of his family in Turkey.  Emre, unfortunately, won’t be coming with us just yet.  He’ll join us a couple weeks later (and believe me we’ll be counting down).

Planning for this trip is so much more complicated than any before.  Traveling with a toddler (or doing ANYTHING with a toddler for that matter) takes more patience and attention to detail.  20 hours worth of diapers and baby food takes our whole carry-on bag and where in my pre-Mom days I would have worried how much sleep I’d get on the airplane, I’ll count myself extremely lucky if we get through the whole trans-Atlantic flight without a prolonged screaming tantrum.

This is also the first time in 5 years I’ve flown without Emre.  He’s a good travel companion, reliable and easy-going, and he’s got a knack for making me laugh when I am anxious (which I’m likely to most of that long day with the sleep-deprivation and scared baby).  Nurten will be a huge help with Aslan (she’s basically his third parent) but I’m going to miss Emre terribly and I know he’ll miss us too.

And then there’s my plans for what to do once we (insallah) arrive safely and happily on the other side:  I’m going to spend a few weeks working with doctors at Hacettepe Children’s Hospital.  I had the incredibly good fortune to meet some people with connections at both UNC and Hacettepe (one of the best teaching hospitals in Turkey) and I intend to make the best of it.  I’m nearing the end of my third year at UNC, meaning I’ve spent many hundreds of hours participating in clinical activities here in the states.  I am really excited for the clinical exposure to another hospital in another culture with different epidemiology and treatment protocols.  With the current discussion of the future of the American health care “system” so much at the forefront I’ll also be watching for differences, subtle and not, in the way children’s health is approached on a population level.

This will be the first time I’ve been expected to use my Turkish in any kind of professional situation and I’m honestly a little nervous.  Being around Nurten has improved my fluency and vocabulary tremendously, but I still don’t understand everything I hear and I make many, many mistakes when I speak.  Hacettepe does much of its teaching in English and I expect I can communicate in English with most professionals.  Most patients, however, will speak Turkish.   In my experience most Turks are charmed by the novelty of hearing foreigner speak any Turkish, but I’ll get more out of the experience and be less frustrated if I can upgrade my language skills in a hurry.

So there’s the challenge:  keep Aslan happy through jet lag and foreign home, get by without Emre for the first time in years, learn some medical Turkish, and get something meaningful from time at the hospital. Luckily we have a whole wonderful extended family in Ankara.  (Aslan will even have his own tour guide — his 3-year-old cousin is anxiously awaiting the chance to show him the ropes.)  I expect the first couple weeks will be stressful, but then Aslan’ll be adjusted and I’ll know the folks I need at the hospital; by the time Emre joins us we’ll be relaxed and having fun.

This is going to be great!  Or at least that’s what I’ll be telling myself on hour 8 of the long flight.

Today was our last day in Turkey. I got up earlier than usual, at 9:30, and we skipped the big breakfast. By 11:00 we’d caught up with Emre’s aunt and cousins and we were on our way to another mini-adventure. This time we visited a lake made and maintained by METU (Middle East Technical University – Volkan and Hanzade went there.) I’d visited this lake once before, and my memories were tainted by the taste of the fish-and-mayonnaise sandwich which Emre forced me to eat, and which may, likely, have contributed to my vomiting spell which started later that night. That was a couple of years ago, when I first visited Turkey, though, and in a different season, so I was determined to give it another chance.

It started off well enough. We drove most of the way in, so we didn’t have to walk on the dusty road. We parked and walked for a ways to a place that Ugur wanted to try fishing. He had a fishing set with telescoping rods, but not reels. Emre had never fished with this sort of set, and he wanted to show him how. It sounded like fun. We all walked down the bank to the place where they would give it a try. Then the smell hit me. The place smelled absolutely horrible. There was a lime-green ring of algae around the shore, which is normal enough, but floating in it were a half-dozen dead fish. The fish may or may not have contributed to the odor. Other possibilities include the goose poo on the edge of the lake, and a mysterious “stagnant” force from lack of circulation. Whatever it was, it stank. We stayed an hour or so, and sometimes I thought I’d gotten used to it, and then it would hit me anew. It can’t be good or healthy for a lake to smell like that.

Emre and Ugur did eventually fish, with the 20-ft telescoping rods. In the process of making the rig to fish, a hook got stuck in Emre’s thumb not for the first time in his life (there’s a really bad story about a barbed hook that left a scar.) In this incident, though, the hook was thankfully small, unbarbed, and fresh from the package, so with a copious treatment of cologne, it was quickly forgotten. The casting looked like fun, but I didn’t want them to touch anything that came from that water, so I wasn’t too disappointed that they didn’t catch a fish.

After the fishing, we walked down the road for a while, mostly for the exercise and the view, which wasn’t half bad once you got above the smell. We stopped for tea and snacks at the METU club team restaurant. We told stories. Emre talked about fishing, and about how much he likes my grandparents and their house. It was pleasant to drink tea and watch (though not smell) the lake and share comfortable, unhurried conversation with good company. I think that may be the distillation of Turkish entertaining, in fact, and it’s really an unappreciated art.

Our next stop of the day was a further chance to enjoy this Turkish talent. Emre and I were invited for “tea” with Hanzade’s parents. “Tea” was actually a pretext for an enormous afternoon meal, with a dozen different vegetable dishes, lamb, cheese and wine, fruit, and nuts, and home-made baklava, and also ice-cream. The actual tea beverage was sort of an afterthought.

It was great, though. They have a lovely home, with lots of neat arches and niches and other architectural details that I didn’t expect to see in a big concrete apartment building. The food was excellent, as well, and we passed another long span of hours just talking and drinking tea. The most memorable topics of conversation were: 1) Bad things that Emre and his brothers did as children and why they were never adequately punished (they were just too darn cute) and 2) Babies. Hanzade and Volkan are expecting a baby sometime after the new year. They had their second trip to the doctor again today, so it’s finally sinking in. They did the good yuppie parent thing and got lots of tests and bought baby books. This will be the first baby on either side of the family, and one of the first among their friends, so everyone is already getting excited. Hanzade’s mother was so enthusiastic, even, that she tried to convince Emre that we should have a baby soon. Though I think it was at least partly in jest, Emre reacted exactly as he does every time someone says the word “baby” near him (and he’ll probably do it when he reads this): he turns pink and looks at the ceiling and stutters “N-n-n-oooo” sheepishly. I think it’s really funny and it’s fun to wind him up about it, though we have no intentions of actually having any children any time soon, and certainly not after I heard horror stories about raising the Saricicek brothers.

We eventually, reluctantly, left Hanzade’s parents’ and, with the company of Emre’s parents, brothers, and Hanzade, went to run a few last-minute errands in town. We frantically tried to find some things before the shop closed, and succeeded in only some of our quests. Then we all came home to drink even more tea and watch Turkish pop TV. Volkan and Hanzade left around 11:00. I didn’t really know how to say goodbye to them without adding “See you soon.” It’s hard to believe that I won’t be seeing them every day anymore. It’s really a shame that Chapel Hill and Ankara are so far apart. I hate that we’ll have to say more good-byes tomorrow.

I know that we have lots of little things to do before we go, though. Emre finished most of the packing, last night, but there’s always a dozen little things that need to be done, no matter where you are, and we absolutely have to do them in the next few hours. Emre is alternating between watching TV and eating sunflower seeds and purposefully, and even frantically, packing stuff. I don’t think he plans to sleep tonight. At this rate, I don’t know if I’ll get a chance either. And after all of the tea, I’m not sure it’s worth it to try.

This will, obviously, be my last post from Turkey. I’ll do at least one more post when I get back to Chapel Hill. I’m not sure whether I’ll keep it up after my travels become less exotic. I could complain about all of the weird cultural things that Americans do, now that I’ve been away from them for a while. Or maybe I could do more exposés about Turkish culture that I just haven’t had time for as of yet. But it’s alot of work, and I’m undecided. If you feel strongly about this matter, please leave encouraging messages and/or shameless praise in the comments section.

Wish me luck on the trip, and I’ll see some of you Stateside. And for everyone who’s reading from Turkey: Sizi ozleyecegim! Cok, cok, cok tesekuler ve hoscakaliniz!