Thursday, December 4

As if it was our usual routine, Aeden and I set out for our school bus after sending Lacey and Maren off on their bus. I will admit that it feels good to have a routine where I am accountable to someone other than myself. The school driver (and all-day handyman and general gopher) listens to American music on the way to school, which is a great way to start the day. Yesterday we heard Miley Cyrus and Aeden started dancing on my lap (he's heard her just a little bit at home!)...and I had "...she's just being Miley" stuck in my head all day. Today it was Death Cab for Cutie, and I asked our driver if he liked the band. He said yes, very much, and I had to make sure to communicate to him that they were from Washington and I liked them very much too. I guess I am a little proud after all :-) The helper on the bus asked a few minutes later what the name of the band was, and I told her, and that certainly produced an interesting look of, "Huh?" on her face. Neither of them speak very much English. They get all the "yuck" jobs at the school...like squeezing in a stop to pick up Aeden and me every morning, changing Aeden's diaper and wiping his snotty nose, running out for photocopying and listening to teacher A-V equipment complaints, all the fun stuff. I would like them to know that I don't intend to just speak in English and ignore them, so Death Cab For Cutie is a good first step, right?

I have learned enough of the students' names in the kindergarten class that it is not impossible to get someone's attention across the room or playground, it just takes me a minute to remember how to say them! Zeynep (zay-nep), Bugra (Boo-ra), Bora (Boo-ra, but not the same as Bugra), Junsei (joon-say), Thea (tay-a), Ayhan, Parla (more like Paula), and more. But Roberta is easy enough to remember! She reminds me so much of Kris Skubinna's friend's daughter Talula, and she's from England so I feel like I'm on a Charlie and Lola episode with her.

A triumph today: I took a cab from the preschool to Armada to get yet another birthday present for one of Lacey's classmates and a plain T-shirt for Lacey for a school project. And I knew just where to go, finally. Rimzi Kitabevi for the book and stickers for Talita, and the big Carrefour for an undershirt. Mr. Big Stuff Aeden walked almost the whole way, and even dragged one of the shopping bags behind him for a while. I wish I had had my camera...

From Armada we took a cab to Oasis to drop off the present with Lacey before the party and to pick up Maren since I had forgotten to talk to her about riding the bus home alone. It worked out so that Aeden and I just rode the bus home with her instead, which was pretty fun. We came home and took naps, and then headed out in another cab to pick up Lacey at Oasis after the party. We met her there, grabbed yet another cab from the Cigdem taxi stop to come back down the hill, and I had it drop us off at Carrefour so we could buy some water. But as we were grabbing some, I noticed no backpack on Lacey's back and we realized she had left it in our last cab. We rushed outside, but it was already gone of course. She started crying immediately, and I couldn't quite believe that just when I thought the day was finally almost over, we had a whole new fiasco to deal with. The backpack probably was more sentimental to me than her. It is the backpack we bought her for preschool, and I sewed her name onto it with little letter beads for kindergarten, this summer we sent it back to Jansport for a new zipper, anyway, we've been through a lot with this backpack.

We went up to the taxi stop near Carrefour/ODC Center and I did my pantomime performance to try to communicate that Lacey's bag was in a Cigdem taxi, could they radio about it. Well, this was a 100 Yil. taxi stop and they don't communicate with each other. We finally got the stories straight enough that a driver suggested he take us back to Cigdem to have them radio the driver of the cab we had had. I was a bit skeptical that it wouldn't just end up as another fare for him, but thought we'd give at least give it a try. We climbed back into another cab and went back up the hill and pulled into the taxi stop. I pointed to another taxi there that looked like the one we had ridden in (it was an older taxi compared to all the others), but our driver wasn't listening or didn't understand. So I unloaded the kids onto the sidewalk (couldn't leave them in a taxi alone, right?), and ran across the street to the other taxi. As I put my hand on the back door to open it and see if the backpack was there, another driver started to yell at me. See, you MUST take the first taxi in the queue. I took the liberty to just keep going, and I reached across the backseat to find the backpack still there. As soon as the driver saw it, it all became clear, and I told him thank you a few times and headed back across the street to the kids and our waiting taxi. We went back down to Carrefour, unloaded all of our bags this time, bought our water, and finally walked home. I both knew we'd get the backpack back and also felt how ridiculous of a search it could become. But I knew we'd get it. I'm glad I was right. Another triumph for today.