A Tale of Two Airports.... and Several Continents

I'm an irritated state of mind right now. I'm trying to finish a project. The project has a goal to be reached. It should be reached soon. Sadly the goal is difficult to define. The steps leading to the goal are difficult to define. Nobody else seems to be able to define them for me. I can't define them for me. So I am lost in a sea of rabbit trails, loose ends, computer issues and circular thought patterns. I hate this.

So now I am sitting on the floor with the sun on my back listening to Valentina Igoshina play Chopin and I shall tell you a funny story to help me forget my troubles.

Once upon a time I flew to Turkey. I didn't really want to fly to Turkey, but hey, whatever. The day before I left the travel agent called to ask me if I minded taking by an earlier flight. I didn't....

wait a sec, Valentina is buffering and I must go pause her.

Okay, as I was saying, I didn't have a problem with that. Mark and Liz were going to pick me up at the other end and I was pretty sure 3 pm was better than 8 for them.



"Same airport, right?" I asked the travel agent person.



I put that question on its own line with extra spaces to make it stick out. It is the crux of the whole matter. Don't forget that I asked it.

The travel agent allowed as how it was the same airport. Or, maybe she really meant that my leaving and returning flights both left from the same airport.

Anyway, I flew to Turkey to see the king, or at least the Stamps.

I landed in Istanbul at 3 pm. If you have a moment, look up a map of Istanbul. You will notice that the city has two sides separated by water. That water is called the Bosphorus. The two sides are on two continents! Isn't that cool?

So Istanbul has an Asian side and a European side. What does that have to do with my story? Well, there is a tiny airport on the Asian side, a bigger airport on the European side, and Mark and Liz live sort of mid-way between them, but on the Asian side.

Ahhh, we begin to see why it might be important to know which airport we are going into!

Anyway, I landed in Istanbul and scanned the crowd for a familiar face. I was really looking for a guy who looked like Matt without a military haircut, because I hadn't really seen Mark since he was a small lad. And I had no idea what Liz looked like.

I saw no Matt-esque men. Suddenly I knew what had happened. I wasn't in the tiny airport on the Asian side. I was really in the larger airport on the European side.
But Mark and Liz were on the Asian side. Holding down the tiny airport and looking for me.

But I wasn't there.

Funny, I had worried about lots of things involved in this trip to Turkey, but arriving at a totally different airport wasn't one of them. Guess I'm bad a worrying.

Anyway I didn't have time for worry now. I went to the nearest information desk to double-check my location. Is there any non-stupid way of asking, "Excuse me, but can you tell me where I am?"

Then I changed money into.... ummm liras? Somebody (that would be me) did absolutely NO research about Turkey before they arrived. But I learned a lot, fast.

I found a phone.

I found a post office.

I bought a phone card.

I called Mark and Liz's home phone. I'm not sure why, since I knew they were at the airport. Not MY airport of course, but AN airport, which isn't where they live.

Then I took the next logical step and called my Daddy. He called Rachel in NH to get Roy and Lee's number in California. Daddy called California to get Liz's cell number. It was an old one. So Daddy called Mike who was on a business trip in China. Couldn't reach him.


While Daddy was continent hopping via phone, I was looking at ways of continent hopping myself. Take a taxi? I nixed that without a second thought. I don't trust a taxi unless I can speak the taxi driver's native language.
Shuttle bus? Some helpful Turkish guy told me all about it and showed me a map and was so polite. But I wasn't sure of the exchange rate and it seemed an awful lot of money. I called Daddy and had him run it through a exchange rate calculator. $115????!!!? Ummm, I don't even have that much cash on me! Maybe I should just walk. In a foreign country, after dark, in a city. Ha.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, or the airport on the Asian side, Mark and Liz (being smarter than the average bears) decided there was problem. Their airport was so small that there were only three planes in the whole place. None of them were from my part of the world. So Mark decided to stay at the airport and Liz when home. Whooo hoo! Good has been done here!

Lisa meanwhile sent them a message on Facebook on my account. In essence it said:

"Katie's in the other place!"

To make a long story end soon:
Liz saw the message, called the accompanying phone number (Daddy), and got all the gory details.

Then she took a ferry, a tram and a light rail to pick me up. This was simpler and cheaper for all involved. Really. Its was just more time-intensive. Poor Liz.

I sat at the airport taking boring pictures and wondered what Liz looked like.

Thankfully she looked at my picture on Facebook, so she knew what I looked like. She found me and we went home via light rail, tram and ferry. Arrival time: 9 pm.

Bless his heart, Mark had bought pizza. Pizza, pizza, love of my heart, joy of life.... when was the last time I had real pizza?

Moving on...

I have been involved in fiascos before. I have done many stupid and clumsy things and have had to be dragged out of multiple scrapes by sundry people. But this is the first time that I have involved all the following in my ineptness all at once: family, friends, China, Turkey, California , New Hampshire, Israel, long-suffering relative strangers,Turks, Israelis, trams, ferries, light rails and large bodies of water.

This, my friends, takes the cake.

the moral of this story is: Never travel.
ha.

"That MUST have hurt!"

Today in my English class we studied the various uses of must, may, might, and be able to. It was thrilling. Positively chilling!

Did you know that may and might mean exactly the same thing, but that may is slightly more formal? Does it mean that I am more formal because I frequently use the word may? How may times do you use may versus might?


On other fronts: I nearly met my death on the stairs this morning. Remember them? Those marble slabs descending in parallel order from the second to the first floor? Weren't they particularly cold and unforgiving? I came down them with my computer in arm, careless and unafraid. I even had socks with little sticky things on the bottoms to keep me upright. Was it enough? Oh no. It must have been a classically gorgeous fall- my feet flew out from under me just like Jon of Garfield fame, I came down hard on one hand and my posterior and slithered, bumped, fell down three or four stairs. All without dropping my computer, I might add. Good for me. But Oy Vay did I holler!

Okay, happy Sabbath to you all. I am off to an evening of laziness. :-)

Last night I was standing behind the counter of the restaurant watching the incoming customers. Suddenly there was a crowd of fifteen or twenty policemen all in uniform standing in line. "What is this?" I thought, "County police vacation? Huge police meeting at Panera? How much food do twenty policemen eat anyway? It would have been nice if they had called first. Its going to take us forever to get them all fed."

But this is no time for idle speculation! I leaped into action just as the lights in the restaurant all went out...

and landed with a clatter on the plate and fork I had left on the floor beside my bed. The clock informed me it was only 12:30 am.

Serves me right for eating chicken pot pie for dinner RIGHT before going to sleep.

Books

With birthday money burning a hole in my pocket and a book wish-list of decent length, I made my way to to the Amazon a week or so ago.

Then I spent the next several days checking the front desk every day- hey, you never know!

Today they were on Grandma's kitchen table and I was so excited I nearly cried!


I am now the happy owner of:

The Complete English poems of John Donne (beautiful hardcover edition- I have wanted this for so long!)

Christianity for Modern Pagans Pascal's Pensees(I am going to leave this around at the restaurant- Just Kidding!)


I am so happy about them I am going to leave right now for softball and take them with me. That way I can show them to Gretchen who will be suitably excited for me.


TTFN

Death, be not proud

Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;
For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow
Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which yet thy pictures be,
Much pleasure, then from thee much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery.
Thou'rt slave to Fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war and sickness dwell,
And poppy, or charms can make us sleep as well,
And better than thy stroke; why swell'st thou then?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
And Death shall be no more;
Death thou shalt die.

John Donne, Holy Sonnets X

Right back where I started from- a short journey up the East Coast

Hey Guys,
I am moving again. Really, actually I didn't "move" away from NH, I was just paying my parents an extended visit. :-) But however I word it, the fact is that I am returning to the North. Immediately. Without further delay. Okay, in the next couple of days anyway. :-)

I have been re-hired at my previous place of employment, so come visit me there!

I am looking forward to days that are less than 100 degrees, and less humidity. More than that I am looking forward to seeing those of my friends who live up there!!! Yay!

See you soon.