Hello, with delays.

Here's what happened/is happening (It's good we think). First to back up a bit from the last post. Most neighborhoods have a weekly bazaar (pazar in Turkish) with really good fruits and vegetables, plus other things, like olive oils, amazing nuts, clothing, eggs and cheese, tea sets and tea, on and on... on Tuesdays our neighborhood has theirs, and we were there when our phone rang. I'm really surprised I heard it because the bazaar is very loud.

All the vendors have their sales routine..something like... Buyurun Buyurun Buyurun Bayan! Elma Besh yuz bin - over and over. Times 500. (sound not spelling here) - basically: Step right up ladies! Apples are 500 million per kilo! (money less than one lira is usually described as part of a million - from the old money - 500 thousand equals 50 Karush (spelling again - letter not available), or half a lira.

Back to the story, amazingly, I heard the phone, answered it, and sort-of heard some guy saying he got my name from someone... I made it onto a sidestreet, where it was quieter, and found out that the only real interview we did, with this Karen at English Time, had resulted in a referral. She had given this Alex our name, and now we had an interview. The nice thing about this (besides that it came out of nowhere) is; this same morning we said to each other we need to just not stress and it will work out.

We went to the interview, way out in Bakirkoy, and Alex was really nice, talked for a couple of hours, but didn't really have work until the fall. His school is part of a school system, and we took home the standard form they hand out, to fill out and return. It's meant to assess some sense of cultural awareness but mostly your English grammar knowledge. We don't have much (grammar knowledge) but that didn't stop us from coming here right? We cheated and still did just okay. Okay we didn't cheat, we used books and the internet, which he didn't say you couldn't, and we made some "minor mistakes". This we learned in his follow up e-mail. He suggested we come in to go over it if we care to.

We got back to him, and he called Sunday and set up a time for Monday - yesterday. Our friend had told us Yesilkoy was a good place to swim - it's on the Marmaris, and just two stops past Bakirkoy (koy - with umlat o - means village) on the old train, so we brought a towel in our laptop (business) backpack and I had my swimtrunks on under my pants, Lillian had her swimsuit in the bag and we were looking forward to it because it is hot here. August is beginning to look like a good time to leave Istanbul for a month, as schools are slow and it picks up on Sept., and so we would meet with Alex in hope of something when we get back.

We walk into his office and he says I have some good news. Two of the central schools need teachers immediately and you need to head over there today because David is going on vacation tomorrow. (the switch to present tense in the last sentence was a trick!) We got on a bus back to Taksim, (the main area of Istanbul) where we would want to work, and met with David, the director of three of the schools. Could we have jobs? Turns out we do. He hired us. And we never did get to go swimming. We spent the evening at his house talking and drinking tea. On the way there we even ran into Karen, the women who started this for us, who of course knew David, but wasn't sure what had happened to us. And there we were walking along together, minutes after being hired.

We went in for orientations today. Plural because we are at two locations. We may have to push to have compatible schedules, a lot isn't sorted out yet, but I know this much, I start tomorrow - yipe! Luckily it's a special one on-one-class at a business, not a class, not yet anyway. Lillian most likely starts on Saturday. She is back up there right now sitting in on a class (it's Tuesday evening now).

So, this is definitely a trade-off, because now we can't travel in the Summer, but now we are making money. It sounds like consecutive days off are difficult to get, and we may not have compatible schedules for periods of time as classes start and stop within the system. Like I said, we just don't know a lot yet. But once again, as soon as we stopped worrying about it, it fell into place. So we'll push for decent schedules, and then refrain from worrying too hard about it all. I'm nervous, but what's the worst case scenario? We're back where we were two days ago. We will write more when we know more.