Heat of Spring

It's been some time since my last post and I apologize for that. I'm now in Istanbul, living with two Turkish people (a brother and sister, Ilkay and Deniz respectively) and a Polish girl, Natalia. I met them on my first visit, through another friend, and I "surfed" their couch for a week or so, becoming friends with all three of them along the way. When I arrived back here, I stayed with the sister of my Turkish roommates, Kezban, then was asked to move in here, with them. So, I've gotten to know their whole family quite well, even their mom, who doesn't speak a lick of English.

It's been difficult in some ways to move to a new country with no job and no job prospects to speak of. However, knowing them has made it much easier than it could have been and I'm grateful to have such good friends in such a short time living here. They've been helpful with my foray into learning Turkish, but unfortunately their English is so good, that English is the language mostly spoken at home. Along with the three of them, we also live with a cat, who Deniz rescued as an abandoned kitten. She's about 7 months old now and currently teaching us about the cycle of life, cat style. She's entered her first heat and for the last 36 hours has been almost constantly mewing. Loudly. She has never been the cuddly type with me, but for the last 36 hours, she has decided that I'm her best bet at mating. Apparently she doesn't know that I don't swing that way...I'm not "into" cats. But, she's got her little heart set on mating with me and has been underfoot and scratching at my door nearly incessantly since this all began. Funny at first, it's now a little disconcerting that she's aimed her entire attack at me. I must have some kind of hormones spewing from my body, unbeknown to me, that attract mating female cats. I'll just have to add this to my list of attributes. I wonder if I can put that on my CV? Under the "Skills" section, I can list something like, "Drives female cats wild while in heat". At this point of my job search, I don't see how it can hurt me!

As for the job hunt, I've given into the cliche American thing to do, and have begun interviewing at English Language teaching centers. I was the "guest teacher" at the Istanbul Bar Association's English language class one week and it was actually pretty fun. I have a friend who is a lawyer here, and learning English. She asked if I could come in to talk to the class, so they could practice their English on a native speaker, since their teacher is Turkish. Little did I know I would be teaching the ENTIRE lesson. So, I whipped something up in the 5 minutes I had to prepare and I think it went okay, considering. At least, it went well enough for their teacher to recommend me to a colleague to teach his wife and daughter English. I'm going to meet with them tomorrow to see if I can help at all. Other than that, there are not many opportunities here for a foreigner like myself who does not speak Turkish. So, I'm studying Turkish in my copious free time and actually getting better, little by little. Wish me luck with the cat situation and pray that my roommates decide to get the little thing fixed!