Day 2

I woke up this morning to meet my driver and be taken to the University, a big brand new building which is largely empty although there is furniture which waits to be unpacked and used... but there is a lot of confusion as to what to do and when. Many of the staff have great experience, but not necessarily the experience to do the job they were hired to do. So as you may guess, there is not a lot getting done. Seems the primary job of English teachers at work is finding ways to keep occupied and/or dying of boredom. This wasn't a problem for me as it was my first day. I planned my strategy for revising and making suggestions.

At about 4:00 pm, we left and came home for naps in our separate garish bungalows. Sleeping is apparently is the most popular pastime of instructors here. Woke up to the call to prayer and got up to go shopping in the small stalls lining the streets (yogurt, feta cheese, bread, figs and bananas - food is simple) . The sidewalks are broken, there are no streetlights or crosswalks, and the cars travel pretty quickly, so the 10 minutes to the main street where the shops are is a scary walk. On the way we pass a huge shiny partially glass building with two beams sweeping the sky from its rooftop! It seems so out of place, but is a sign of things to come. Through the glass we can see a kind of western looking supermarket on the ground floor, clothes and housewares on the second and a Turkish restaurant on the top. Staff sit outside wearing black and yellow uniforms, yet the complex isn't open yet. And we come to the second most popular pastime of U of K staffers - speculation. They have been told that this complex will open in 2 days. They were told this 2 days ago, and 2 days before that, and 5 days before that... It is much the same way answers at the university are given.