We have a roommate

Life has become even more pleasant the last week with the addition of a young American to our little family.

Shadi Khadivi is a Fulbright scholar, an architect working in New York who was born in New Mexico and grew up in Texas (daughter of an Iranian family). Her Canadian partner Jason discovered my Flickr photos and got in touch a couple of months ago. We emailed back and forth and soon felt comfortable inviting Shadi to stay with us while she found a place to stay here. Then it became clear that this was the right place for her.

Shadi's work here is to document the old houses of the Basmane district, and the people who live in them, through photos and art. It's an "interesting" part of town, not the sort of place tourists feel comfortable in, the home of some of the people who have come here from eastern Turkey to find work. There are still a few pre-1922 houses standing (using the term loosely) there, and there's lots of life in and around them. Shadi discovered the area during an earlier trip and want to get to know it well.

It's good having her around. She's quiet and doesn't get in the way at all. She's also intelligent and interesting. I'm looking forward to learning lots from her.

This last week we've had a couple of chances to explore some of the Izmir we know with her, but she's quickly making friends of her own and going places with them, too. She's also taking Turkish classes every morning, and rapidly catching up with us on the language front.

Another adventure this week was getting my new cell phone working. The ones we borrowed from Begüm's family were showing their age a bit, so we picked up a new one for Ron at the Rome airport, and I found one for me on eBay that Shadi brought with her. It was properly unlocked and equipped to function here outside the U.S., but I couldn't find any way of getting it to work with my Turkcell SIM card. So I went to a phone shop, who sent me to a Turkcell office. The woman at the desk there spoke very fast and responded to my "Slowly please, I don't know much Turkish" by talking louder and faster. Finally she said "Do you have a Turkish friend?" "Yes." "Well come back with him, then. Goodbye."

So the next day my friend Emmanuel gave me a whole morning. We went to another Turkcell place and learned that they couldn't help us - go to Alsancak. Emmanuel checked at another Turkcell place, and they said Alsancak was wrong - go to Çankaya. Then he asked at a phone shop and they told us not to let Turkcell touch the phone - they'd break it for sure. The guy at the phone shop put a SIM card from another company, AVEA, into my phone and it worked properly. So we got an AVEA card and I have a new phone. I could never have done it without my friend Emmanuel. (He spent the afternoon helping Shadi get a bank account and a work permit. What a guy!)

In a few minutes we're leaving for Athens. We need to get out of the country to renew our visas again, so we thought we'd do some sightseeing in mainland Greece for a change.