A Day in the Life

Today was my first day back at school. I spent Christmas and New Year’s in Norway, staying with friends of my host family in Oslo. I’m not going to try to explain everything that happened on this trip; I’m just going to write for a little while and see what happens.

I think today was a pretty typical day in my life as an exchange student. It started pretty badly. Because Bulatcan missed so much school, he is very behind and he has exams this week. He spent the night studying at his history teacher’s house (his history teacher is also a family friend). Thus, without Bulatcan making a ruckus at 6:30 in the morning, I slept through my alarm. I was finally woken up at 7:14, when my school bus driver called me. “Max? Max? Are you coming?” I couldn’t really manage the Turkish that early in the morning, so I think my reply was something like: “Never mind, never mind. I – not come today. Don’t wait. With my mom… drive me… to school. Okay?” He got the message. My dad drove me to school, but because my mom slept in I didn’t get breakfast.

The no-breakfast part was actually okay. I bought some simit at school. Simit is a round-shaped bread, covered with sesame seeds and cooked to a crisp. It is possibly the greatest food item ever invented. In a country where snack food isn’t really the norm, simit is a godsend. They’re about 40 cents apiece in my school’s canteen.

I was also pleased to note that it seemed like everyone had missed me while I was gone. “Where were you?” some asked, while the more well informed asked “How cold was Norway?”, or “How were the Norwegian girls?” or something similar. It was nice be the center of attention for about 10 minutes, before everyone got bored and returned to their inscrutable conversations in rapid-fire Turkish.

During my first lesson, I realized that I hadn’t had any caffeine yet. This was bad. I was very, very depressed because of this. I wanted to sleep. I tried to read, then the Soduku. I started writing in my journal, which is generally a bad idea when I’m sad. When I’m happy, the last thing I want to do is write in my journal. When I’m sad, it seems a nice idea, but usually it just creates more problems for me, I think. I write a bit, and then I think to myself, “well, what haven’t I complained about?” Inevitably, I write about things that aren’t really problems and make them that much worse for myself. I’m trying to stop, but I’m glad that I’ve finally started keeping a journal.

After my first lesson, I tried to find somewhere to hand in my doctor’s report. Turkish students are allowed to miss 20 days of school. If they miss 20, no problem. But if they miss 21, they have to repeat the year. No exceptions. If I miss more than 20, I get sent back to America, I guess. I’m not actually sure what would happen, and I don’t want to find out. AFS Camps and school trips, though, are not considered school absences.

There’s another loophole in the system as well. In addition to the 20 days of absences, students also get, I believe, an additional 20 sick-days. All you have to do is find a doctor willing to write you are report, and you’re golden. I got a 10-day report saying I had bronchitis. Everyone at school knows I was in Norway, but as long as the forms are all filled out, I’m in the clear.

When I went to pass in my report, I wasn’t really sure who to give it to. I loitered in one of the administration offices, where the assistant principal was handing out 100-lira bills to students. I’m not really sure why she was doing this, and I tried to understand for a few minutes while I waited for someone to ask me what I was doing. The students would go up to her, give the assistant principal their school number, and then they would be given 200 liras from a wall safe. I’ve stopped wondering about weird occurrences like this.

Anyways, when I went to pass in my form to the attendance secretary, it turns out I had to fill out another form. In Turkish. I didn’t understand it, and when I tried to get him to explain, he just spoke louder, not slower. I felt like an idiot, and basically wanted to cry. Finally, he told me to write my father’s name. This is a problem for me. Everything in Turkey depends on your father’s name. When I got my doctor’s report, it said “Please excuse Daniel’s son Max from school for 10 days because of bronchitis.” Now, the thing is, if they want to know who my father is, I write Daniel. But if they need to contact someone, I put my host father’s name. The bell was ringing, so I scrawled Daniel Kagan, incorrectly dated the form, signed it, and scampered off to class. I still felt like I wanted to cry.

No one cared about me, I thought. The form was probably going to get lost, and then I would have too many absences, and I would get sent home. I continued writing in my journal. Reading it over now, it’s pretty depressing. The good news is that the rest of my day went a lot better. We have two exams a day right now, which is actually kind of nice. I’m not really expected to do anything other than write my name, student number, and class number on the form, and then wait 45 minutes for the period to end. I get to read or do the crossword or basically do whatever I want, unless it’s an English exam.

I got a 92 on my latest English exam. I still don’t really understand why my answers were wrong, and I’m beyond caring. The very fact that I’m writing this blog clearly demonstrates that I can speak and communicate in English, even if I don’t know what “V2” means or what a modal verb does.

So the rest of my day was pretty uneventful. It was much happier than my morning. Yet I can’t really write about the happy times as much as the sad times. They were just… kind of there, and now I’m here. They say that times flies when you’re having fun, and I think they’re right. I try to remember that when I’m in a low spot and it seems like forever until I see the light.

What else? Tomorrow night I’m going to leave for a school trip to visit universities in Istanbul. It’s going to be… interesting. We’re going to be rooming, apparently, 8 people to a room. I knew that there was something fishy when it only cost 200 lira ($150, approximately) to spend 4 days in Istanbul. We’ll see how it goes. At least I’ll get to see Istanbul, and hopefully make some friends during the 12-hour bus ride.

So once again, it’ll be a while before I write again. Sorry.

I appreciate comments greatly, you know. It doesn’t have to be much, but it really brightens my day. Amazingly so. (Not just mom and dad, either… it takes a minute and I’ll love you forever if you do.)