Istanbul

As I said about New York, visiting and living in Istanbul are two very different experiences. Given that Istanbul is an absolutely beautiful and amazing city but that setting up life here is extremely difficult, I would highly recommend visiting but not living. Unless you want to lose your mind and go crazy.

 I love Istanbul!! It is everything that everyone told me it was like and more. Istanbul really is where old meets new, where conservative Islam meets liberal Westernism. Everyone looks different – from the skin color to the hair color. I don’t think there is any other place in this world where a Muslim woman is dressed head to toe in black and is walking arm in arm wit

h another woman wearing a tank top, mini skirt and 4 inch heels. That is totally accepted here and no one thinks anything of it. People are free to be religious (although the secular people don’t like the conservative practicing Muslims) or not be religious. Turkey is the only Muslim country in the world that is a secular democracy. 99% of the population is Muslim. It makes for such an interesting and dynamic place.

 I do have to keep in mind though that Istanbul is not representative of Turkey as a whole. Istanbul is a very liberal metropolis of 16 million people. The rest of Turkey is extremely conservative. Still there are millions of conservative practicing Muslims living side by side with non-practicing Muslims in Istanbul. At first I could not stop staring at all the women who wear headscarves and now I

 don’t even notice it. I’ve already had many conversations with students about the religious, political and economic aspects of Turkey and it has been very interesting and insightful. I’m sure I will have many more future posts to come that discuss specifically those topics.

 For anyone that has ever studied or cared about religion, philosophy, politics or history Istanbul is the place to visit. I’ve already visited many of the major historical sites around the city including the Blue Mosque and Aya Sophia. I visited the area of Uskudar on the Asian side and I also went to the area of Eyup which is the fourth most holiest place in the world for

 Muslims. We climbed up to the top of an ancient grave site and had caye at a teahouse overlooking the town and the Bosphorus. It was very conservative with no tourists around and I always carry a headscarf with me because I have 

to wear one to enter a mosque. I have taken some photos inside mosques, but sometimes I feel uncomfortable doing so because of all the people that are actually praying. I cannot believe the beauty of all the hundreds of mosques around the city. I hear the Muslim call to prayer 5 times a day and it sounds beautiful.

 I have already learned so much about the battle between the liberal secularists who want to westernize and modernize Turkey and the conservative Muslims who feel Turkey is loosing its identity and religious roots. It is so fascinating the religious and political struggle that this country is going through right now. The struggle is so obvious I sometimes notice it with my own eyes.

 The Bosphorus is amazing. I try to travel by ferry as much as possible. I plan to do as much sightseeing as I can while I’m here. Going out into Istanbul and sightseeing always puts m

e out of the bad mood that dealing with the university puts me in.

 One last thing: Istanbul is very expensive. I consider the cost of living to be higher than Seattle. I am going to be completely broke by the time I am done here, but to have lived in a place that is as fascinating as Turkey will probably be worth it. 

Koc University

Koc (pronounced Coach) University is a private, non-profit university founded in 1993. The university is supported by the financial resources of the Vehbi Koc Foundation, set up by Vehbi Koc, a leading Turkish businessman. The Koc family is a very well known and wealthy Turkish family that own a holding company with several Koc named businesses in Turkey from insurance to the university. Attending Koc is pretty much like going to any college campus in the U.S. Its students come from very wealthy Turkish families and they are very westernized and super trendy. I cannot believe all the nice cars that the students drive into campus. Koc’s campus is practically brand new and very nice (by U.S. standards). I work out at the gym which is very nice but doesn’t open until 9am!! That is so ridiculously late for me so I can’t work out in the morning before class. In Turkey though 9am is considered early (of course). Because this is a very nice private school, the security is very good. Everyone coming into the university campus has to pass through a security gate and show id. They sometimes question people although its in Turkish so I don’t know what they’re saying. I just say

“exchange student” in my American accent and they figure I’m ok to pass.

 Koc University is located at the very north of the European side of Istanbul. Its campus is located up on a big hill in the area of Sariyer. It is about a 10min shuttle (dolmus – pronounced dolmush) down to my apartment from campus and about a 10min dolmus ride to downtown Sariyer from my apartment. Riding the dolmus costs about $1 every time I ride. Downtown Sariyer is a small town where fairly conservative Turkish people live. It is not touristy at all and hardly anyone speaks English. I go to downtown Sariyer whenever I want to get away from campus and my apartment. I go there to go grocery shopping and to drink tea (caye –pronounced chai) and walk along the Bosphorus. Its very beautiful and Turkish people love to sit and have caye and stare out at the Bosphorus.

 There are about 3,000 students at the university. There are not many graduate or PhD

 students, but I have met most of the Master’s students. They are all very nice and there are a few Americans doing their Master’s programs here for two years. Its so nice to talk to Americans and native English speakers. I have made very good friends with Marisa who is from New Jersey and here doing an MA in Anatolian Civilizations and Cultural Heritage (don’t ask). She’s been a great part of my support system here because 1)she’s American and understands the cultural differences 2)native English speaker 3)she’s already lived in Istanbul for 6mo during her undergrad through an exchange program 4)speaks a little Turkish! The MBA program here is very small. There are only about 30 people per class. There are only two other MBA exchange students here; both are male and one is from Germany (Conrad) and one from India (KG). They are great guys and are also part of my support system here because they have gone through a lot of the same things I have since I arrived here. They also cannot believe the backwards and inefficient manner in which everything is done here so we usually just sit around and laugh as we share out nightmare stories with each other.

 While Koc is certainly nice and very modern, I don’t like that its far away from downtown Istanbul. With traffic it takes about an hour to get to various places in the downtown area. I am getting better using public transportation everywhere I go except that the bus drivers never speak any English and I never know how much a bus ride costs. The bus fare depends on how far you go and so I just hand the bus driver 2YTL and he gives me some change. There are no bus schedules posted anywhere nor are there any signs that explain the fare. I’m not surprised. Like everything else about my life here, I have had to embrace riding public transportation as an uncertain adventure. The first two words I had to learn in Turkish in order to get off the bus were dur lutfen! (stop please!). The bus drivers are very crazy and aggressive!

 

 

The Academic Situation

When I came to the business school on Monday the 6th I found out that all the information that had been communicated to me regarding my class schedule was incorrect. It was my understanding based on information communicated to me last spring that the university runs on a semester system but that the semester is broken up into two 7 week parts: part 1 and part 2. I explained to the university that I am on a quarter system and would like to take all my courses during the first 7 week part of the semester. They said that this was fine. I decided to take two International Relations classes and 1 Econ class since all the MBA class choices they sent me I had already taken during the first year of my program at UW. I confirmed with them last spring that the classes I had chosen were indeed offered during term 1 of the fall semester and it would be no problem to compete my classes by mid November. None of this information is in fact true and I realized all of this when the business school told me that the classes I had selected were in fact 14 week courses and two of them were not even being offered this fall. 

 What actually happened was that the person at the bschool in charge of handling my entire exchange experience sent completely wrong class and schedule information. Starting this year, Koc University put a one-year 10-month MBA program in place of their 2yr full-time program. The two part broken up semester schedule is ONLY for the new 10 month program, but that was not communicated to me. I was sent the class and schedule information for the 10-month program. When I found out about this miscommunication, I told the school that I have travel plans in place and am only able to stay in Turkey until mid November because I had based my entire school and travel schedule on the information that was sent and confirmed with me last spring. 

 In addition to that, the woman in charge of handling every aspect of my exchange situation quit the first day I arrived here. I finally managed to meet and explain what had happened to the two women who run the graduate business school. They are U.S. educated, speak fluent English and are actually competent. They acknowledge that this was a big mistake on the part of the University and now have taken responsibility for my academic situation. They contacted the professors to find classes that I could complete during the shortened time that I am here at school and still get the full 3 credits. I am taking two Econ courses and doing an independent study with a Finance professor. The econ classes are ok, but a lot of what will be taught in the courses I have already learned through previous econ classes I took as an MBA last year or as an undergrad. I feel good about my independent study as it relates to banking and will actually be challenging for me. The disappointing part is that I paid thousands of dollars to the UW for classes and I’m certainly not getting my money’s worth in terms of academics. I expected that coming here, but I did not expect to end up with classes that I wasn’t even going to take in the first place. I realize I am here more for the cultural experience, but given that I paid so much money for the academics is very disappointing. Koc University completely messed up my entire situation for academics, housing and various other things.

Oh ya, I forgot to mention I also got food poisoning the first week I was here. 

My Living Situation

Setting up life in Istanbul has been significantly harder than I expected. I arrived here on Friday Sept. 4^th and fortunately there was a second year MBA student at the airport to pick me up. We arrived at campus late on Friday and we went straight to the dormitories to get my room. I gave them my name and told them who I was and they said they had never heard of me. I was expecting to have a single room in the dormitories since that’s what the business school told me they were reserving on my behalf. Since the dormitories said they did not know who I was they put me temporarily in a shared room with some 19 yr old undergraduate chick that smoked all day long and had her boyfriend staying the night. Long story short I ended up staying in that room and living out of my suitcases for 5 days until my housing situation was figured out. The business school never told me that there are two types of living arrangements for students: undergraduates live in on campus dormitories and graduate students live in off-campus apartments owned by the university. The business school never explained this to me. All they told me was that they had a single dormitory room reserved for me which I assumed meant I had my own room on campus. What they actually meant was that I would be getting my own bedroom in a shared apartment off campus. However they never made a reservation for me either on or off campus at all. This is why the dormitories had never heard of me and didn’t know what to do with me. To make things even more confusing, the people that work in the dormitories do not speak English so you can imagine the confusion when I arrived confused about the living arrangements and they are confused because they don’t know who I am and on top of that we are each trying to explain the situation in our own languages. It was not until mid week when I finally was able to get a Turkish student to come with me to the dormitories to translate and explain to me the off-campus set up for graduate students was I able to finally get assigned to an off-campus apartment.

 The off campus apartments are about a 10-15min bus ride from campus so I asked if there was a designated person to help students move and they said no that if I wanted my stuff moved I need to call a cab. The dormitories dept. didn’t care one bit that I didn’t even know the number for a cab let alone speak any Turkish to tell the cab driver where to pick me up. Its not their job to help students with moving so they didn’t care how I moved my stuff they just told me I needed to be out of the on-campus dorm room so the person with the reservation could move in. Not knowing what to do, I went to the Exchange Programs Office and told the woman there about my living situation and that I needed someone to help me move. She said she couldn’t help me because she only deals with undergraduate students and that I would need to talk to the business school since they are the ones in charge of my situation. So I went immediately to the business school to talk to the secretary about finding someone to help me move and she told me I should go talk to the Exchange Program Office because they handle that. I told her that’s where I had just come from and that they told me the business school handles my situation and so she gave me a confused look and told me she couldn’t help me. I went back to the exchange office and told them this and finally the lady was able to find a student mentor with a car who helped me move me stuff to my off-campus apartment.

 My three other Turkish roommates had not arrived yet so I was the first one to move in. The apartment was practically brand new (Koc had bought it from a Turkish family) but in complete dissary. It was like someone had come into the apartment and purposely trashed it. There was garbage everywhere and it was unlivable. So I had to find out how to take the bus back to campus and explain to the dormitories (who again don’t speak English) that they needed to hire cleaners to clean the apartment because it was unlivable. They cleaners actually came the next day (amazingly) and cleaned the entire apartment. The next day I gathered the following list of maintenance issues: no hot water (I took cold showered for a week), no working wifi, no working phone, no shower curtain rod installed, broken front door, broken balcony door knob and broken outlet in my bedroom. Because I did not have a cell phone by then and the apartment phone was not working I had to go back to campus with my list of maintenance issues and tell the dormitories (because they also handle maintenance issues for the off-campus apartments). Over the last two weeks one by one the maintenance issues have gotten resolved only due to the fact that my Turkish roommates finally moved in and were able to communicate the problems in Turkish. The phone is still broken and I still shower without a shower curtain which doesn’t seem to bother my roommates at all. People have told me its likely I will be showering without a shower curtain until the day I move out so I should just give up and accept the fact that the maintenance people are in no rush to come install one. I am the only one in the apartment who seems to care that the shower drain is clogged and water sprays everywhere when we shower. But I’m starting not to care myself because I’m just happy I have hot water to shower with.

 The Thursday before school had started and before my roommates had moved in the dormitories told me they were sending someone to set up the wireless network. I was gone all day and was not there when they came. When I got home that night I opened my computer to see if the wireless network worked and saw that someone had broken my computer. It was completely frozen and none of the applications worked. I called the dormitories and told them that someone had broken my computer but it was a completely lost cause because they had no idea what I was saying. So imagine how I felt when I had no idea who the dormitories sent to my apartment and I had no idea what had happened to my computer and there was no one who spoke English that I could explain the problem to that actually was familiar with a Mac computer or operating system. Long story short there was no one from the IT department at school that spoke English nor was there anyone from IT that was familiar with a Mac. So I managed to find the only Mac store in all of Istanbul and take the bus to downtown to explain my problem to the technical service people there who also did not speak English. Right as I was on the verge of tears, a very nice older man who spoke fluent English translated for me to the technical service. I finally got my fixed computer back (the operating system had to be reloaded) this last Friday and paid approx $50. I still do not know who came to my apartment and do not know what happened to my computer. The technical service at the Apple store cannot explain to me the problem because they do not speak English. The password that the dormitories provided me to access my wireless network in my apartment does not work so I am still not able to access the internet. I had my roommates call and demand that someone come to the apartment this weekend to help me get connected to the Internet. No one has come and my roommates don’t really care because their laptops connect just fine.

 So I’m sure you can see some of the problems I deal with on a daily basis and how the language barrier is one of the biggest problems of all. I am completely dependent upon other people to communicate for me and try and accomplish tasks on my behalf. No one cares if you have a broken computer. No one cares if the door is broken. No one cares that the phone doesn’t work. No one cares about anything so you can imagine how difficult it is for me to be the only one who cares. 

Matt and I in New York

Matt came to visit me in NY over Labor Day Weekend and we had so much fun together! It was so good to see him and spend quality time with him since we hadn’t seen each other in almost three months. Matt has been to NY before and so we didn’t want to make it a whirlwind weekend with tons of sightseeing. We stayed in a cute little hotel in Chelsea which is a fairly central location in Manhattan.

 We went to Ellis Island and looked up our relative’s names. As I mentioned in a previous post I found out that my last name is Augoustinos, not Augustinos like I’ve thought for pretty much my whole life. 

The best activity we did the whole weekend was rent a tandem bike and bike around Central Park. I discovered that biking is a great way to get around such a crowded city. It’s just too bad that Manhattan is not a bike friendly city at all. The tandem bike was fun because Matt sat in front and did most of the work while I just went through the mo

tions of peddling and enjoyed the views. We also had a picnic in Central Park. On Monday we walked around the Williamsburg area of Brooklyn and had lunch with my friend Emily (who is from Seattle but lives in NY) and her boyfriend James. I like Williamsburg because it has a funkier feel with lots of outdoor seating coffee shops perfect for people watching.

Matt is a great boyfriend and makes a great partner for me.

I was sad that we were not able to celebrate our one-year anniversary together this last July. We get along very well and always have so much fun together. Life is very easy and enjoyable with him. His laid back personality and calm demeanor really balance out my sometimes uber A type personality. I very much look forward to spending the future with him and sharing other travel experiences together. I’m pretty sure he feels the sameJ

 After spending the summer in NY I came to the same conclusion that Matt already had about living in NY. We both agree that visiting and living in NY are two very different experiences. I would much rather enjoy all that NY has to offer visitors than deal with the rat race that l

iving there requires. And while NY offers lots of excitement and other professional opportunities, we have both individually decided that Seattle still remains the best place for us to live. While Matt has always been very supportive of me and my opportunity to intern in NY, he understands when I say that the quality of life I have in Seattle

 is worth the trade-off of less career opportunities in finance in the Seattle area. Then again the financial services job market in NY is not great either. Given the fact that Matt has an MBA and many years of work experience in finance, he’s been a great mentor to me in terms of emotional support and insightful advice making personal and career decisions. I highly value his support and advice and am happy I’ve finally met a man who is self-confident and secure enough to be comfortable with a strong, ambitious woman.