The most useless phrase in the phrasebook

[The following is based on my journal entry from 12-30-2008, while I was in Turkey. That day, Matthew, Paul, and I went to Haya Sofya and the Blue Mosque, and the Istanbul antiquities museums. We then went to two toy stores, trying to find Silly Putty. It is likely that I had, in my pocket, the only egg of Silly Putty in the country. We then went to the spice bazaar and had supper near there at a pide and kebap shop.]

Tonight at supper, I used eight Turkish words. First, I asked the waiter, "Ingilizce konuşuyor musunuz?"--"Do you speak English?" He looked confused, like I'd mispronounced something to the point of incoherance. Onur suggests that the waiter thought that if I knew enough Turkish to ask that question, I ought to know how to order in Turkish.

Then, I said "Ben vejetaryanım"--"I am a vegetarian." The waiter pointed at the three items on the menu without meat: soup, salad, and plain cheese pide. I ordered the pide.

Pide is flatbread with melted cheese on it, typically kaşar. Some people call it Turkish pizza, but some Turks, I hear, resent this--they see pide as being in a category of its own. It does not have tomato sauce.

In restaurants in Turkey, sometimes the bill is left on your table during the whole meal--that is, the waiter will take your order, leave the bill on the table, and append it as you order more things, say drinks or desserts. This seems to me to be a sensible system that prevents bills from getting mixed up. In other restaurants, though, you'll actually have to request the bill, they won't just drop it on the table when they want you to leave. We would have been trapped in limbo if I didn't say, "Hesabı, lütfen"--"Bill, please."

As we left the restaurant, I called out, "Hoşçakal," and the waiter replied, "Güle güle." (You say goodbye differently if you are leaving or if the other party is leaving.)

I felt so ashamed when the waiter looked blankly at me when I asked him if he speaks English. It was awkward, and I have five days of awkward built up.

If I move here, awkward will be my life for months, and I won't ever be normal. That will be hard.

The day after Josh's wedding proper, the party continued. We had a barbecue, then went inside for dessert. There were four languages being thrown around. I got out my yo-yo and did tricks. Claudia tried it, and her dad teased her because she couldn't get the yo-yo to return. Claudia's dad is Chilean, so he mostly teased her in Spanish. My Spanish wasn't good enough for me to translate what he said, but it was easy to get the gist from context. (It was a fun teasing, not a mean teasing.) She would hold her mouth open--her sister, Pamela, told me that she does this when she's concentrating--her dad teased her about that, too. I said, "En boca cerrada, no entran moscas"--"Flies don't fly into closed mouths" and everyone who spoke Spanish laughed. Even the people who didn't know Spanish laughed. That was the first time that I told a joke in a language besides English. That party is probably my favorite picture of heaven.

Today was the first time I used another language when I really needed it, and that experience was more purgatorial.

What Turks will tell you despite language barriers

Turks are very friendly people, especially to foreigners.

Whenever would pass a Turkish boy on the street, he would say, "Hello, hello, money, money." I don't think that Turkish boys are particularly greedy, but it's funny that hello and money seem to be the first English words they learn.

One time, Paul and I were in the Turkish air museum, and the person working there came up and told us that photography is either allowed or prohibited (I still don't know which). He then showed us the gift shop and a few of the exhibits. He could tell that we didn't speak Turkish, but he kept speaking to us in Turkish. He then kept saying something about Obama, and looked happy, and then said Bush, and grimaced.

There were many times that Turks who don't speak English would tell us about how they like Obama but not Bush. The other big thing that Turks who don't speak English will try to communicate is their pride in Mehmet Okur, the Turkish basketball player with the Utah Jazz.

On my last day in Turkey, I was trying to figure out where I should wait for the bus to take me to the Sivis Otel, where I could catch a shuttle to the airport. I asked, in Turkish, a person who works for the bus system if he spoke English. He immediately walked out of his booth and called out to the crowd, I presume asking for an English-speaker. One came up and translated directions to me. Then, I heard the worker say something about Israel and Palestine, so I had time to be overcome by dread before the translator asked me my opinion of the current situation in Gaza.

Disorientation

On the way to Istanbul, Matthew and I had a seven-hour layover in London, so we left the airport and took the tube to Westminster. The train robot said at each stop, "mind the gap," this phrase is, evidently, a cultural icon in London. English humor is such that I don't know if we're so frequently told to "mind the gap" ironically or seriously.
Also, I don't know why there is a gap--the floors of the train cars are often half a foot above the platform.

So, we got off the Tube at Westminster. There were security cameras everywhere. As we walked out of the station, I asked Matthew, "Where's Westminster Abbey?" "You're looking at it," said Matthew of the old building right in front of us. I felt a little silly, until we rounded the corner to enter, only to discover that the building is actually the Parliament building--the Abbey was next door. We went to enter it, but it's £9 to get in for students, and I didn't feel like paying that much to see a church, even such an important one.
Driving to church on Christmas Eve, I mentioned to my family the forthcoming long London layover. Eddie asked me if I could get something for him while I'm there. What? A necklace. The entire family laughed at him, poor chap. Secilee asked for a picture of Big Ben.

I saw a clock tower, but it was pretty small. I said, "Let me take a picture of this; I'll tell Secilee it's Big Ben." Matthew said, "Um, yeah, that is Big Ben."
(Later, on the phone, Secilee told me that she thought Big Ben was a double-decker bus.)

We went to the British museum, but it was closed. Instead, we got pasties and postcards, then popped in at the Museum Tavern, which is a couple of hundred years old. We each had a pint of Old Peculiar, which I would recommend.

After landing in Istanbul, late that night, we tried to find a pay phone in the airport. Everyone here is very friendly--one person told us to look outside. After going outside, and seeing no pay phone, we tried to get back in, but a police officer blew his whistle at us. We crossed the street to the parking garage and back again. We asked for directions from another police officer, and he told us to enter the airport through another door. We did, but we would have had to have our luggage x-rayed to proceed. We tried to go back, but the door was one-way. We slipped around the next slew of people entering and we escaped. We found the stairs leading down to the metro station; we figured a pay phone might be there.

We did, indeed, find a pay phone, but it only took credit cards or calling cards. I picked up the phone, Matthew handed me his card, and I slid it into the slot, and dialed our host, Elizabeth. I could only type two digits before the machine reset. I tried again.
The payphone didn't look like the payphones in the US. Those, you just drop coins through a slot and dial the number. The phones here in Turkey have a little LCD screen with two buttons on either side of it. We tried pushing buttons that we recognized, or, rather, avoided buttons that we knew wouldn't be helpful, like the one of the police or the one for pre-paid phonecards. Matthew suggested that we ask for help, but I told him that we'd probably have an easier time getting the machine to work than we would finding someone who spoke enough English well enough to help us. Repeatedly, I would push a different button, slide the card, and start dialing. Each time, I could only type two digits before the phone reset. There were other buttons, off to the left, one that I didn't recognize, one with a picture of a telephone, one with the letter L and one with the letter R. I tried those, too.

A half an hour later, I tapped the L button, but this time, the text on the screen turned to English. I swiped the card. The screen said that the card should be swiped with the magnetic stripe up.

Peculiarities and Irritations

I am irritated when people try to schedule phone calls with me, or tell me "leave your phone open". If I can take the call, I will, if I can't, I won't, and it's as simple as that. I can't stand it when someone calls me five times trying to get through to me, without leaving a voicemail.

I like it when postal workers wear pith helmets while walking their routes because it makes them look like they're on a mail safari.

I do not have the mental capacity to understand why people fill the kitchen sink with dirty dishes to "clean up." The worst case of this that I've seen is a pile of dishes that goes above the faucet. This means that the dirty dishes get wet and fester. To actually clean them, the dishes have to get pulled back out of the sink, so that there's room to use the faucet, and now the counter has fetid dirty dishwater on it.

When I am driving somewhere that I have never been before, and I have a navigator (riding shotgun) reading directions to me, I request that the navigator read two steps ahead, at least, so that I know if I have to watch for any quick turns. Some navigators are obstinate, and only give the next immediate step, and refuse to provide any further information. If I have a navigator like this in the future, I will pull over and have them swap seats with someone in the backseat as punishment.

In the house I grew up in, we had an oak tree that was four hundred years old. There was a deer stand in it, or what had been a deer stand--all that was left was four rotting planks. We couldn't get them down easily, and this bothered me a lot.

Dad wouldn't let us build a tree fort. Instead, Dad made a little fort for me. It was barely a fort, it was three pieces of plywood, maybe a yard wide, total, held together with bungee cord. It wasn't as good as a tree house, but it was okay for watergun fights.

One time, I was at the gym, and someone hopped onto the elliptical machine next to mine, and exercised vigorously; ten minutes later, she got off, wheezing. Now, this person was reasonably fit. What was peculiar was the machine was off the whole time, so it provided no resistance. Is it proper to say, "Excuse me, Miss, but are you aware that you frittered away your last ten minutes on a non-functional piece of equipment?"

I started lifting weights this summer. I still haven't figured out the etiquette for that, either. Everyone's listening to their iPod. Someone will walk up to me as I'm doing lat presses, and ask me a question, but I can't hear them, and so an awkward, "What did you say?" and pointing and gesturing.

Also, we only have one rope thing in the gym. I don't know what its proper name is, but it's the only suitable handle for the ab press. People are always snatching it from the ab press, though, and taking it to another machine to do T-Rexes. Well, Mike, Tim, and I call them "T-Rexes", because when doing them, you only move your forearms. T-Rexes can be done with other handles just as well, so I think that it ought to be considered proper to request the rope thing back from someone doing T-Rexes if I want to work my abs, but I'm afraid to ask.

I was walking across the quad last Thursday, when I saw a man with a perfectly uniform halo of hair and beard, making him look like a lion.

When I go to a pub, it's typically because I want to drink beer and talk with my friends. Why do pubs often have the music so loud that conversation is impossible? Also, why do pubs often have muted TV's without captions?

I don't get toothpicks in sandwiches at restaurants. I know that the theory is that the toothpick holds the sandwich layers together, but I've not seen this play out so well in practice. I've had oodles of problems with sandwiches falling apart as I eat them, but this is after I've taken the toothpick out to avoid splinters in my nose. I've never had a sandwich fall apart from the kitchen to the table as a result of not having a toothpick.

Some churches are not satisfied with merely having a name, they have to have a tagline, too. Two come to mind:
Where the nations gather to worship
The Amazing Grace Church

The Amazing Grace Church tagline bothers me, because I hope that it's not the only Church in which Grace is Amazingly present. My big problem here is the definite article.

Another definite article problem I have is the Old Bay-flavored Utz potato chips, with the tagline, "The Crab Chip." I'm always disappointed, because when I open the bag, I hope for only one crab potato chip that just fits the bag. Also, although crabs are often seasoned with Old Bay here in Maryland, they do not naturally taste anything like Old Bay. They should change the packaging to read, "A Passel of Chips Evoking Memories of Eating Crabs."

Proper Names For Things

I don't like it when people refer to anything that isn't knit as a sweater. I don't think of hoodies, fleece, jackets, or sweatshirts as sweaters.

I also don't like it when people refer to anything other than email as email; for example, Facebook messages aren't email. Email is better than Facebook messages by a whoop and a holler, and the two should not be confused.

Juice comes from plant parts that you'd eat ordinarily. Tea is not juice, no one eats tea leaves. Kool-Aid is not juice, it is sugar water and dye. (It is acceptable to call Kool-Aid bug juice.) While real ades, like lemonade or limeade, contain juice, they are not, themselves, juice, because they are diluted. Soda is certainly not juice.

Action figures are not dolls. They might look like dolls, but action figures blow things up. Dolls are precious. Stuffed animals are not dolls, either, because stuffed animals are snoogly, while dolls are crunchy.