Day 1st

The first morning, Kate told me that she heard something like an Islamic prayer that is sung in a characteristic way. Of course in the morning only my terrifying alarm clock is able to wake me up so I couldn’t hear that, however because it happens five times a day even I had chance to hear that strange “singing”. Later Mehmet explained us that it is the muezzin, who calls everyone to pray.
We were waiting all morning for Mehmet, who was writing an exam. It doesn’t matter that he said that he will be back at 1pm, so we can go to our apartment. He arrived around 4pm, because Turks are never in a rush. He had exciting news for us ‐ well the owner of our apartment suddenly raised the rent to 300 € instead of the previously agreed 200 €. Mehmet spoke with the owner, but he finally didn’t find out why there was suddenly such a change. I was just annoying! Mehmet was very angry at him. I do not understand how anyone can behave so irresponsibly? When Mehmet heard about the increase said that the apartment is not worth that much money, and he started looking for something else for us. His friend from college had for us a room for 250 €. The problem was that she lived there with her parents. We did not want to live in such conditions. We wouldn’t feel freely. He apologized us, but prepared for us a Turkish dinner ‐ chicken sauté, however you spell it, so we forgave him and started looking for a new apartment. I wrote a lot of advertisements on Erasmus’s groups on Facebook. Many people responded, most of them only wished us good luck. According to specific offered the apartments were either too expensive, or in a terrible
location, so it ended that Kate wrote an email to Mariana, our Erasmus supervisor, describing our current situation. She responded that we have to go to the university as soon as possible and she will help us in this hopeless situation.
For supper we ate some small roll which looked like pizza, wrapped in a mixture of onions, tomatoes and "something" very spicy. We drank, as they said, terribly expensive beer. I wanted to eat just one roll, but when Mehmet offered me second helping I couldn’t refuse according to the principle “if they giving – take it”. It was delicious!
Mehmet suddenly came to our room with the "good news"! It turned out that the owner previously arranged flat didn’t change his mind and he still wants to raise the rent, and that actually tomorrow evening we can easily move there. I was desperate. So I told Mehmet bluntly what I think about this guy. I said ok, it’s fine, we will take this flat, if tomorrow we don’t find anything else. So suddenly we saw a light in the tunnel. Everything seemed so claustrophobic. We sat in our room all day. We were still checking e‐mails and messages, in case someone had offered us a flat. This is not how we imagined first few days.
The next day we had a party called "We Love Erasmus Istanbul Meeting".I have to admit that I wanted to go there not only to have fun, but to ask people and find a nice, cheap, little room with some Erasmus students. It's great to go out on the terrace in your pajamas without worrying that you will freeze. We had 10 degrees on 7th February; Kate’s favorite Turkish. word is "belki" which means "maybe".

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