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Ok, so clearly I haven't been updating my blog. I will not be updating my blog like I have been before. I will update every now and then, but it will not be a daily thing like before. It really is just too much work. So look forward to small, quick updates from now on.

What could have happened in the last two months?

I love free stuff…

December 27, 2009

Last time I hung out with Tracy, she borrowed my gloves and forgot to return them. So I was headed back to the Sheraton to see her again before she left and claim my gloves. I met her in the lobby and she escorted me to the VIP lounge on one of the top levels. The lounge was awesome! It had a bar with different alcohols and mixers free for one to pour their own drink. Then we walked into the other part and they had a buffet style setup. They had about six or seven different appetizer type foods, with fresh food coming every 20 minutes or so. We just sat and talked for a few hours. It is crazy to think that we hadn’t seen each other in four years, but picked up like we had been talking this whole time.

After we were done eating, really after I ate everything in sight, she gave me a tour of the hotel. She also said she and Zach had some stuff that they wouldn’t finish before they left. She asked if I was interested. Of course, when have I ever turned down anything free? So up to her room. She had magazines galore, all with recipes inside. I put those in my back pack, then she had a whole box of food that they wouldn’t be able to eat before they left. She asked if I wanted any of it. Of course, there was peanut butter inside! And it was JIF! She ended up giving me the whole box, for which I was, and still am, very grateful.

What are the chances that two girls who went to high school together in Anchorage, AK would meet up across the world in Turkey after not talking for four years?

Riding the pine in the stands…

December 26, 2009

Today was our first game! Yay! Thrilling! What else could be more exciting? Well maybe if we were playing, haha. We arrived at the rink two hours before the game. We watched the girls warm up, hung out while they got ready, and cheered them on as they entered the ice. We also received our jerseys so we could wear them in the stands! The girls were so pumped for the game. They cheered so loud and they all had so much energy. It made me realize, I really miss being on a team. J

It was a terrible game, terribly good for our team. The other team was absolutely horrible. Our team scored nine goals in the first period, eight in the second, and seven in the third. Bringing the grad total to 24 for us and the other team had a whopping, 0.

24-0…do they even need Brittany and me?

All’s well that ends well…

December 25, 200

So today was the day to get all my and Brittany’s paperwork done for the game tomorrow. Yes, our club waited until the day before to get everything done, not just for Britt and me, but a few other players also. The clubs present to us, and really themselves; really because, who wants to invest money into something/one and not be able to use it.

As usual, we were told to be ready in the morning. So we woke up somewhat early to be ready, because they could show up at any moment without warning. Tyler woke up and left in a hurry. I didn’t have anything to do, so I just hung out reading/writing or whatever I do when I’m bored. He came back without me noticing. Then while we are in the living room, he asked if we were ready for our presents. I was floored, I had no idea. He gave us each a present with a homemade card. Inside the packages was chocolate! In his family, they give/receive chocolate every year. And on top of that, they have mimosas! Earlier, he ran out of the house to buy chocolate and champagne. The champagne turned out to be corked, so was the next bottle for which he traded the first one, and so he finally decided on a bottle of wine. We would enjoy it later with dinner. For the moment, we just enjoyed all the chocolate!

We received a call saying meet at the X-House at 1:15pm. Gokturk and Gokçe were going to take us to the federation, police station, and wherever else we needed to go. We moseyed on over to the X-House to be swept away to the federation.

Ok so back story: In order to play in a different country, or for a different national organization/federation, the country you want to play in (in this case Turkey) has to request permission (transfer card) from your home country, or most recent country in which you played (for me, USA). The TBHF had to request my transfer card from USA Hockey. Keep in mind that today is Christmas, and most people like to take their vacation time during the holidays. But that didn’t cross our GM’s mind when getting my paperwork together. He waited over a week to take me to the federation to sign my transfer card, which took a total of five minutes. We did this on Monday, the 21^st. So after I signed and we faxed my transfer card on Monday, I e-mailed USA Hockey to politely ask if they could please quickly sign and return my transfer card, because I have a game on the 26^th. In response, Kim (lady at USA Hockey) wrote that if TBHF can scan and e-mail it to her she can get it processed, because she will not be back in the office until the 29th. (Oh yeah, because in the US they celebrate Christmas but no one here thought of that, except us and even by then it was too late.) I told Gokturk as soon as I found out and he relayed the message to the federation. My transfer card was e-mailed, received by USA Hockey. USA Hockey e-mailed back a confirmation that they received the transfer card and issued a temporary OK to play through e-mail and all codes/numbers needed, and also said on the 29^th they will fax the original. So yesterday, we got the OK for my transfer card! Now all we need to do today is go to the police station and submit my player card, right? Well this is where the story picks back up…

At the X-House, Gokturk is sitting gathering all the girls’ paperwork to get their player cards. Then out of nowhere, he said I’ll be right back. He returned with a type writer, haha. He ran out to his car where he keeps a type writer handy in case of times like there. He then typed up the needed information for my player card right in front of my eyes, while making humorous remarks about typewriters not being obsolete. He then told us that I will not be able to play tomorrow because the federation is refusing to accept the e-mail as confirmation of the transfer. So Brittany and I went off on him. Something to the effect of, “It’s not the federation’s fault, it’s yours Gokturk. Kate/I was here for a week and a half before you took her/me to the federation. This all could have been avoided if you would have taken her/me to the federation the Monday after Kate/I arrived.” Of course like a typical Turk, Gokturk blamed it on someone else or a third party to avoid taking responsibility and save face. He then got really upset and said, well I guess nothing will get done now. We asked why, and he responded because “you make fight.” Haha, because we told him how this whole situation could have been avoided, he was ready to give up on the day. Nothing could get done now because “we make fight.” Then I just asked, “Ok Gokturk, what can we do now to get everything done so we can play?” He said go to federation, police station, and the sports authority.

So we (Gokturk, Gokçe, Brittany, and I) jumped in his car and off to the federation. There Gokturk went inside to ask the federation again if they would accept the e-mail as a go ahead to play and process the rest of my paperwork. After he talked to them, then called me in, they still refused. So that was a waste of time. It’s official, I will not be playing the first game L

Now, we just had to get Brittany and the rest of the girls’ player cards submitted so they could play. But now we had a slight detour. We had to get a doctor’s signature saying we are cleared to play, a physical. We were unaware of this until we arrived at the hospital. All three of us girls went into the doctor’s office to get our physical. Never have I had anyone else in the room during a physical. Brittany went first. The doctor placed a stethoscope on her left ribs, close to her armpit, to listen to her heart. She then asked is terrible English if Brittany has had surgery. Haha, what? Surgery on her heart? She responded no. The doctor signed off on her medical sheet. I was next. She placed the stethoscope on my ribs, then asked if I had a problem. Of course this would happen to me. The one thing they check is your heart and naturally I have something wrong with my heart, a heart murmur. Not just that, my murmur is in the lower left ventricle, exactly the one and only place the doctor checked my heart. Awesome, I failed the simplest physical ever. I then told her I’ve been to a heart doctor, I’ve had and EKG and echocardiogram, and my heart is fine. I can get my doctor at home to send the results tomorrow. She still said no, you need to go to a doctor here in Turkey. Even better, now I have to go to a doctor here because they don’t trust my multiple test results from home. And as if the federation not accepting my transfer card wasn’t enough, I wouldn’t have been able to play even if they approved it because of my heart.

Next, off to the sports authority place to submit all the player cards. Gokçe handed over all the player cards for approval. Things were going smoothly, until they came to Brittany’s. Then there was a whole kafuffle. Brittany handed over her passport and residence permit. Gokçe asked what was wrong, and they explained but no one really understood. Then Gokturk came in to talk to them. He got into it with one the guys. Then Gokturk called someone, handed over the phone to the guy, and then he proceeded to yell into the phone. There was a lot of commotion and we had no idea what was going on, haha. Gokçe didn’t understand either and she speaks Turkish.

After about fifteen minutes of utter confusion, this guy came and ushered us upstairs. We led us through an office, then through a sound proof door to a large, spacious office. We walked into a room of about ten or eleven men all dressed in suits. It was one of the nicest offices I have ever seen; there were couches and coffee tables, a beautiful view of the city. It was just a nice set up. On the couches were about ten or eleven men, and then one man at an enormous, beautifully crafted office desk. Gokturk, adorning his usual sweat suit and baseball hat, approached the man at the desk with what was going on. He turned out to be the president of the sports authority for Ankara. In other words, he oversees all sports in the capital city of almost five million people. And like downstairs the president was on a phone yelling into it. Then he was on two phones, landline phones, with the wires crossed screaming into both. Apparently, the two different people on the phone were asking and talking about exactly the same thing. It was like we were watching a movie, except we were in it. We walked in on a meeting of the Ankara sports authority, then the president, and everyone else, dropped what they were doing to listen to four people dressed less than presentable.

Aside from that, I felt like we walked into the essence of our interpretation of how Turkey does business. A group of men, all in suits were sitting around drinking çay talking. This is how we have observed our board “doing work.” There were no women present, and once we interrupted for at least twenty minutes, no one had pressing matters in their own office. They were all perfectly content sitting while a group of nobodies disrupted their meeting and then listening to a one sided conversation. Here business is conducted for hours and hours over games of cards, dominoes, or backgammon. I really wish I could have taken a picture of the room to show how efficient business is here. Again I say that with a grain of salt, because this has only been my experience here. For all I know, everyone else in Ankara and Turkey could be the most efficient and time aware business people in the world.

So after we left the office, we learned that now Brittany also couldn’t play. So not only was I missing the first game, Brittany was too. Awesome, so happy I rushed across the world to not play hockey. And Brittany has been here since the first week of November…why did Gokturk wait until the day before the game to find out that neither of us could play. Don’t you think this could have been taken care of earlier in case there were any bumps in the road? Nope, never. That is a thought that would never cross his mind.

Keep in mind today is Friday, which means we have practice at 5:10. And if you were like me today, I repeatedly forgot it was Christmas, Brittany had to keep reminding me. Haha. Back to practice. Because everything didn’t go as smoothly as planned, and Gokturk waited until 2pm to start the process that ultimately failed, we missed practice. Gokturk dropped us off and said meet at the rink in twenty minutes. So we sat down for a minute, then grabbed our computers and headed to the rink.

When we got there, Gokturk was nowhere to be found. Usual Gokturk move, tell us you’ll do something then forget about it, or change the plans without notifying us. So we just went to Shoppe to get on the internet to talk to our families. Of course it was around 6pm Turkey time, so it was 7am Alaska Time. No one would be awake, so I just surfed the net like usual. Then Gokturk called Tyler and said, “We have meeting now.” Just as they were settling in to talk to their families, he ripped them away. So Tyler and I went over to X-House for the meeting. When Gokturk dropped Britt and me off after we failed to do everything, he said we will have a meeting but Tyler doesn’t have to come, because you are the same person. So we all thought it would work in reverse, if Tyler showed up, then Britt didn’t have to come. But when we walked in the door, they asked where Britt was, and said they had cleared all the smoke from the room so she would be more comfortable. The board would not have the meeting without Brittany, so Tyler had to go back to Shoppe to get her.

When we all were there, we could start the meeting. The meeting was with all the board members who would be taking over on January 1^st. Why they change their board in the middle of the season is beyond me. So they asked us what we wanted. We had a list of things, such as: a new clean home, to be paid on time, and other “very” demanding things. Really we just wanted to live like normal people, and not have to fight for everything. Why should we have to remind Gokturk five times that we need food money on Mondays? But in reality, if we don’t then we don’t get food money. Why have we been living in a moldy house for two weeks when we brought it to your attention two weeks ago? Why haven’t we been paid for our sticks that were promised to us? Why don’t I have a phone yet? To my knowledge, the board didn’t know many of our problems. Gokturk is a black hole and doesn’t relay any information given to him from either side. The vice president was the one talking most of the time. He seemed to have business sense; after all, he does own X-House. He wanted to make sure we would uphold our end of the deal, and they weren’t going to dive in head first without some reassurance from us. They understood everything we said and promised that they would work with us to make our season as successful as possible. We all felt much better after the meeting. It sounded like 2010 would start off right and the rest of the season wouldn’t be such a struggle.

So finally after at least an hour and a half of talking, we went home. We still hadn’t eaten dinner. Off to the store for food. We had asked coach to join us for a Christmas dinner, but he didn’t seem too enthused to hang out with the players. Britt made the soup while I prepared a salad. And just as we were sitting down to eat, coach showed up. His meeting had just finished, and it was now about 10pm. We had the most enjoyable dinner, with the wine that Tyler had returned the two rotten bottles of champagne for. I stuffed my face. I don’t remember last time I was that full. Tyler and I killed all the food.

After we had some beers, then around 1am coach said ok it’s time to go out! We walked over to Last Stop, a bar that is open until 3am. We had two towers of beer. All of us were pretty woozy, having a good time. At three they kicked us out, and we wandered home. As I said, all’s well that ends well. The day might not have gone as I would want on Christmas, but at the end of the day, we had a wonderful meal and a few beers to go with it.

Could I have had a more of a roller coaster Christmas anywhere else in the world?

Hahaha…

December 24, 2009

Walked to US and Canadian Embassies, they were closed. Of course the one day we go, they are closed. Although, I don’t think it being Christmas Eve helped, haha.

So after our walk back down from the mountain on which houses the Canadian Embassy, we decided to walk around Kavaklidere. It is a part of town with nice shops and restaurants, and right next to the Sheraton where I met up with Tracy. In the area is a bookstore with a whole floor of books written in English. We looked around the books store for an hour or so, until we were really hungry. We headed to the mall where Tracy and I had lunch. As we were approaching the mall, an older man started talking to us in Turkish. We said sorry, we don’t speak Turkish. He then started speaking English, eerily like the guy I met at Shoppe last week. We continued walking toward the mall, and he asked if we were native English speakers. Of course. As we were turning to go into the mall, he said hold on, and opened his briefcase. He then proceeded to hand us each a piece of paper, it was his homework, hahahaha.

He asked us to look over the answers to see if they were correct. The best part was they were worksheets on prepositions, and we didn’t even know the answers to some of them, haha. As we looked over his work, he told us a little about himself. He is a computer science professor at a university. He is studying English and French. His wife and he are competing with one another to see who can learn the most languages. He informed us it was a lost cause for him, because his wife already knows four languages. We asked him his name, and he said Bob. His wife gave him the nickname, and he said I hear it is also a real American name, haha. So Bob then thanked us, and asked us if he could call if he needed help with his homework. We obliged and Tyler gave him his number. He said he would call us when he needed help with his homework and we’ll go for lunch.

The whole interaction was hilarious. From him rambling in Turkish to us, to pulling out his homework, then telling us his name is Bob. Oh Bob, what a great guy to stop us on the sidewalk to correct his English homework.

What other randoms will we meet to correct their English homework?

Team Spirit…

December 23, 2009

Finally, I feel like I’m on a team! The whole team went out to eat after practice and workout. We went out for Turkish kebaps. Before this, I didn’t know there were multiple types and forms kebap in which could come. Seda and Lola sat next to Brittany and me. Lola speaks great English and Seda probably speaks the least on the team. It was quite the contrast between the two. Although she speaks very little English, Seda speaks to Brittany and me the most out of anyone on the team. She speaks in Turkish, and doesn’t care that we don’t understand her, she just keeps repeating herself. Dinner was a different story though. Dinner turned into a Turkish lesson. We learned fork, knife, spoon, plate, and the names of all the food we ate.

The team spared no cost for dinner. They gave us the whole works. We had four or five appetizers. I don’t know all their names, but one of them was like a meatball covered in a cornbread like breading. It was by far my favorite. Followed by the many appetizers, we had a huge meal. I had meat wrapped in something like a tortilla, covered with tomato sauce, and yogurt and rice on the side. Brittany had thinly sliced meat on top of bread that was soaked/baked in butter and of course a side of yogurt and rice. They were both to die for delicious. I will definitely be eating a lot of both of them while I am here. To drink we had ayran, a Turkish yogurt drink and water, su.

After we had stuffed our faces with delicious food, they ordered us a delicious dessert. The dessert was cheese fried with some sort of coating, and topped with sprinkles of pistachio dust. It was also scrumptious and although I was beyond full, I ate it all up. If dessert wasn’t enough, we topped it all off Turkish coffee. Turkish coffee is served in tiny, tiny cups. It is comparable to as shot of espresso. You sip the coffee and at the bottom are the grinds. The bottom of your miniature cup looks like and has the texture of silt. I didn’t know the grinds were still in the cup, so I thought you drank until the cup was empty. I got a nice taste of Turkish silt, followed by my tongue snapping against the top of my mouth.

What a remarkable evening! The girls went above and beyond to welcome us to the team and Turkey. After last night, I didn’t think it was possible to have a better welcome.

Can life get any better?

Şerefe…

December 22, 2009

As if a fantastic day of shopping and meeting up with an old friend wasn’t enough, today I also tried Raki for the first time. Raki is the traditional Turkish liquor. Brittany and Tyler have told me about it multiple times since I arrived. I was really excited to finally taste it. Anıl, the super league’s former president, picked us up around seven. We went to the Shoppe on the Ankara University campus. It was a really nice restaurant!

The three of us couldn’t read the menu, so Anıl ordered for us. We had a few delicious appetizers, and we all split two main dishes, chicken and hamsi (fish from the Black Sea). And of course we had Raki. Raki is the only liquor that is made locally in Turkey and the Turks love it. It is a clear liquid, and its taste is reminiscent of Sambuka. But you don’t drink it like Sambuka. You fill a Raki glass, like a POM glass but thinner and shorter, half with Raki, half with water, and then, if you like, a cube of ice. There is also a specific manner in which you drink Raki. You have a bite of food, drink of Raki, then a drink of water. Raki is always served with a glass of water, to drink after each sip. Although I thought it was disgusting, it was a nice formal welcome to Turkey.

Cheers, or as they say here şerefe!

Could I have asked for a better welcome to Turkey?