This morning I noticed the faucet wouldn’t turn off, and after a brief, helpless stare at the ceiling, I remembered that one clause in my rental contract said the landlord is responsible for any potential damages. I called him, he came, fixed the faucet, left, and I breathed a sigh of relief.

Twenty days after moving and the closure of the “Hussein Abi” tea house for Ramadan, I ordered a tea maker and achieved independence in brewing tea and herbal infusions.

What you see next to it isn’t a gramophone either. It’s an electric stove, promising a reunion with fried eggs, omelets, and other single-person, non-restaurant meals.

Yesterday I finally managed to pronounce my manager’s last name correctly and received praise for it. I also realized that one of my Arab colleagues isn’t named Mohammad but “Muhannad,” which means sword.

The girl who works at the “One Million” shop laughs constantly and thinks my Turkish is very funny.

“One Million” was equivalent to 10 lira in the old Turkish currency before the zeros were removed, and refers to stores that sell simple household items, cups, and the like (kind of like a Plasco?).

I buy drinking water in large 10-liter bottles, and with the amount of tea I consume, it looks like I have to restock every three days.

With the free time I now have in the evenings from not going to the tea house, I can watch movies, but the TV at home doesn’t support right-to-left languages, making learning English a compulsory endeavor.