Osman Chapter 11: The Ship's Heart

Chapter 11 has arrived! This week I will be invited to check out the engine room of the ship. If you haven’t read the other chapters and wish to start at the beginning of the story then, click here.

One of the PSVs (Public supply vessels) that would frequently visit Osman.

One of the biggest challenges on the ship wasn’t getting shipments on time, keeping the correct amount of sludge in the pipes or even keeping the ship afloat but it was something much simpler. Something that most people would never be able to imagine: trash segregation. There was a lot of trash on the ship, and there were many systems that had to be paid attention to. The cans had labels in Osman and in English and they even had a different color based on which kind of trash they were. Yet, there was still a huge problem when it came to getting people to put things in the right can.

Here are some examples of segregated trash. We had a lot more bins though.

There was general waste, plastic waste, paper waste, and metal waste; there were also special bins for razor blades, and aerosol cans. The kitchen could throw disposable food off the ship, but the rest was kept in these bins. Sometimes the trash didn’t even make it to the bins though. One day after a weekly safety meeting, about 10 steps from a general waste bin there was a banana peel sitting on an arm chair. Of course, in the next safety meeting a picture of the infamous peel was shown and trash segregation was mentioned once again.

The ship sits still, but the gossip travels fast. This is the top deck of Osman. We had a barbecue up there.

Sometimes the trash in the cans wasn’t the only trash on the ship though. That would be the words and gossip that came out of peoples’ mouths. There was good gossip and there was bad gossip, but no matter what kind of gossip it was, it made it around the ship faster than a speeding bullet. One morning I told a student about minimum wage in Alaska and by the last evening class at seven PM, another student was asking me about it. When I went to the break room after my final class that day, a food worker there also commented about the minimum wage salary in Alaska. The gossip wasn’t always good though. The gossip could be at its worst during the mealtimes in the mess hall.

A photo of race segregation in high school. The ship also had cultural/national segregation.

There were segregated groups that grouped together. They didn’t get together intentionally, but it happened naturally based on race or nationality. I tried to bounce around and when I did, I ran into more and more gossip. One day I sat at a table with Scottish, Canadian, American, Australian and south African workers. “Did ya hear about that damn safety man Steffen”, one asked the other. “No, what’s it?” responded the other. “He used to be a welder before he got into safety. Guess he couldn’t hack it.” There was a bit of a “macho” mentality on the ship, nobody wanted to show any weakness. Hard men, with stone mouths with as many tattoos as possible but they gossiped like little girls on a school yard. I tried my best to sit with them but there wasn’t much to talk about.

The attitude of many on the ship.

They were set into their routine of trying to act manly, so the only times they opened their mouths were to talk about women, sex or gossip. Eventually I returned to the Osman and Uzbek table. It was better to not know what they were saying, then to hear all the vile talk that I could understand. Sometimes I could still hear the gossip from afar though. When they were bored of gossiping about their fellow workers, they would scan the room and analyze different eating habits. “Look at that fuck, he only eats three portions every day and always cleans his plate,” said one. “He eats like my 15 year old daughter.” Said another. “Look how he slurps his soup, he looks like a camel. Just put it in your mouth sissy fuck it’s not that hot.”

A few of my students.

One day at the Osman table a man came up to me. “I heard you’re writing a book,” was his opening. The word got around the ship fast. I didn’t see myself as the Shakespeare of writing books or even close to being well known, yet they were still excited. “A lot of people think of the drilling and things on top deck as the most important, but the engine room is where everything else happens,” he continued. “Without the engines, the ship would die.” He was very serious about the engine room. He talked to me for the entire lunch about the engine room and even invited me to visit him. He wanted to show me all the engines and machines that were there.

PPE = gear a doctor might wear during Covid19.

It was going to be my first time going out of the accommodation area, so I needed special equipment just to go. I had to get boots, gloves, coveralls, a hat and goggles. The ship was split into two sections: the accommodation area and the working area. The accommodation area was where the mess hall, gym, living quarters, cinema room and English training room were located. The working area was the rest of the ship and took up about sixty to seventy percent of the total length of it. After a week of planning with him and getting the equipment from the ship’s store man I was finally ready. I entered the side locker on the way to the work area and the floor where the mess hall was. I didn’t see him. Every floor had different areas like this where there were changing rooms in between the two sections of the ship. These side pockets also had showers and lockers for the three hundred workers on board. I kept seeing people coming and going, they said hello and disappeared as fast as they came. I waited for ten minutes and then asked the next person who came into the locker “Where’s Ferhat”? He looked Osman, so I thought he would know.

Directions: they are everywhere.

The man knew English and told me how to get to the engine room: “Go outside, walk sixty meters, take a right, walk up the stairs and go inside”. They weren’t the best directions I had ever been given. I walked outside and there was the sea waiting for me. The walkway was about 2 meters wide. I walked along it but wasn’t sure how far sixty meters was. Soon I ran into another worker and asked him about the engine room, so he was kind enough to lead me there. Inside there was still no sign of the missing Osman. There was a bald man sitting looking at a screen, an Osman guy wandering about about and two old Croatians sitting at a table. I asked them where Ferhat was and they said he would be there shortly, and I could make myself some coffee. “I’m going to need half an Osman lira for it though,” one of them joked. I sat down at the table with the Croats and made small talk for a bit. Then another Osman student Murat came and sat down. He was a rough looking guy from Adana and had a huge Mustache the size of Texas. He joked and chatted with us as well. Finally, after about half an hour, Ferhat arrived. He also sat down, and we continued to drink tea and coffee for almost an hour before we got started. We put on our helmets and began our aquatic safari.

An engine room on a ship. The one on Osman, looked pretty similar.

There were doors with handles and doors that slide open with a button; like a door in a Sci-fi movie, or maybe a US prison. In the first room there were dozens of machines and engines. The sound was loud even with ear plugs in and ear muffs on. We went from room to room and he checked engine after engine. He told me the whole tour would take forty-five minutes and he had to do this route each shift. He wrote things down and checked more engines. Different engines did different things, and some of them had backups, just in case the main ones stopped working. I can’t remember what all the machines did but some of them included supplying the ship with hot water, storing all the shit and urine and mixing it into sludge that could be released into the sea.

What an engine workers life was probably like.

There were also engines that powered propellers, kept the ship cool or warm, distilled water and many other things. I asked questions about the engines and Ferhat knew all the answers. I couldn’t imagine a job like this, twelve hours a day, checking the engines three to four times each shift and then making sure nothing was wrong. Yet, without it being done, perhaps the ship would be in trouble. He joked that he didn’t need to go to the gym, because of the number of stairs he had to go up and down each day and the heavy pipes and other materials he might need to lift. He was in better shape than me, and I went to the gym every day while I was living on the ship.

Freedom!

After almost an hour of walking through room after room and yelling to be heard above the engines and make it past the earplugs we called it a day. I went back through a side door and came out on the bottom level of the ship. At first, I had no idea where I was, but then I saw the laundry room as well as the stairs and the elevator, so I was on the lowest level of the ship. I was excited to see all the engines but also relieved that it was over. I had gotten to see the heart of the ship and Ferhat had been right, without the engine room the ship would die, or be a very miserable place.

Osman Chapter 10: Trials before Blessings

Here we are in chapter 10! This week many bad things will happen and then a good thing will happen at the end! If you want to start at the beginning then click here.

Nothing but blue to see, and the smell of sea.

The next morning there were no students at the level two six A.M. class per usual. With the free time I took the opportunity to go to the top deck. As I gazed out at the horizon the French warship was no where to be seen. The Ottoman warship was missing as well. I went back down to the bridge to do the daily printing and to learn about the most recent gossip about the warships.

Nothing but smiles.

Uzgur was smiling as I entered the bridge, he was talkative and in a jocular mood. The warships had agreed that both of them would leave and for now no military action would be made against Osman. I finished my printing and showed him the list of students who hadn’t come yet. He promised to take the list to the captain who would talk to the students individually.

The following day the captain came back with news that some of the students were too far behind and they didn’t feel comfortable being in the class. With the new crew, I had noticed that there were a couple of students that were so far behind that the class was almost impossible for them, so I wasn’t surprised. They would end up getting laughed at and teased by their friends and one of them had told the radio man that he couldn’t understand anything, so he didn’t want to come anymore as well. I decided that I would make an extra class on Saturday since there were no classes then. I called it “Beginner catch up class” or in Ottoman: “Super cok beginner ders”. I put up posters along with the normal crew list with their class times. I came up with a creative idea, but I made one mistake. I added two confused looking people and then speech bubbles where I wrote common English mistakes that Ottoman students make. I.E.: “How old are you?” “Fine thanks and you?” “I am very money” etc. The only problem was that this enticed some people aboard the ship to add their own bubbles.

The daddies of the coop right?

One person added “I love cock” and put it right above the confused girl’s head. I decided to report it to the radioman and asked him if I should write a focus card. These were cards where anyone on the ship could report a safety hazard or complain about something. He laughed and said “No, let’s tell the captain.” The captain also laughed and said there was nothing we could do because there was no way to figure out who had done it. He said to write back “Come to the OIM’s office (the captain’s office) and you’ll find the biggest one”. Then the radioman started to talk about how one of the helicopter pilots from Cameron had a large cock too and the captain asked him how he knew.

I decided to do nothing, I thought that writing a response might get me more responses and they might write on future posters for more entertainment. Half a day later the message was still up and the talk of the ship. One of the head guys on the ship asked me to scratch it out, but I had a better idea. You know if you turn the second “C” in “cock” to an “O” it changes the word to cook? So that’s what I did. Then I added “ing” on the end. “I Love cooking” it said, which was a little bit sexist since it was above the girl’s head, but it was better than cock.

The mess hall was like a frat hall, even though most of the workers were 40 to 50 years old.

I assumed people on the ship might write on the posters at some point, as whenever I heard the foreigner’s conversations, they usually talked about three things: “Women, cocks and masturbating”. These of course were the western foreigners on the ship. I sat with them a few times and it was silent when I sat down, that was until someone brought up one of the three topics. Then they could talk for hours. I still figured if cocks and raunchy conversations were the worst thing about the ship, then everything would be ok.

In theatre the broken leg is a great thing, on an oil ship: not so much.

However, there were soon injuries in successive weeks. First a guy broke his leg on the stairs. There were constant reminders in safety meetings about holding onto the rail, and in those same meetings half the focus cards focused on people walking up and down the stairs, with a coffee in one hand and a cell phone in the other. Perhaps they were holding the handrail with their foot and hopping down. This man was apparently carrying laundry down the stops and missed the last two or three steps and crashed down, and cracked his ankle, with a minor fracture. He claimed he was holding the handrail when he fell but nobody believed him.

These fleshy sticks weren’t meant to go in a grinder

I thought that would be the end of it, that maybe everyone would be on edge and extra careful about safety, but I was wrong. The very next safety meeting there were two more injuries. One man twisted his wrist and had to be taken to Antalya for X-rays. He returned in under forty-eight hours and was working again though. Then there was a man who got his finger stuck somewhere it didn’t belong. He also went to Antalya, but he wasn’t so lucky. Part of his finger was amputated after his glove got stuck in some part of a machine and tugged his finger in after it. It made me glad that I was an English teacher.

Cranky tears, know no age.

That was until the new crew arrived. The classes went well and were pretty typical lessons, but one class came in and they were overly pushy. Immediately complaining about reviewing old content that half of them couldn’t do anyways. Demanding that the class be ended early because they were tired and more. I was happy to let them leave about five minutes early. I wondered if the last few weeks were just subsequent hell weeks. Then there was an announcement. “Do not use the elevator, maintenance is being done on it.” Well, I didn’t think anyone would be using it anyway since it hadn’t been working for almost two months.

Pretty close to how our elevator worked.

What I imagine the Scotsman on the radio looked like.

It wasn’t but a day later where the message “The elevator is working, I repeat the elevator is working” came across the PA system. A second PA announcement followed “WOOHOOOOOO”. Perhaps it was even more “O’s” than that. Something good had finally happened, and in relation to this week I had to say “it was about time.”

Osman Chapter 3: Siem Sasha

Siem Sasha is one of the Port Supply Vessels (PSVs) that bring supplies to the oil ship Osman.

One of the most exciting parts of a flight, when the plane lands.

The plane’s wheels rolled along the tar-mac and soon I was exiting the airport. There was a man waiting with a “UNG” petroleum” sign as had been promised. UNG was the oil company that my English teaching company had a contract with. “UNG” stood for Uzbekneftegaz and it was an up and coming oil company. At the time I started work on the oil vessel, they had around one hundred thousand workers and 102 of them were working on Osman.

A look at Konya-Alta, which is near the port in Antalya.

The location of the port on a map. The port is in Liman.

The man drove me towards the port and as I talked to him, he had several questions; questions very similar to those from the taxi cab driver. Since he seemed friendly, I thought I would use that to my advantage. I told him about moving to Antalya and looking for places there. He pointed out the different districts as we drove across the city. First there was Lara, then Kepez, then Konya-alta, then Sarisu and finally Liman. The main thing that caught my eye during the drive was the mountain range and some of the peaks and mini peaks were quite close to the houses. I immediately thought about climbing some of them and my imagination started running wild.

An aerial view of the Antalya port terminal.

We arrived at the port’s gate and the security guard asked for documents and then asked me to step out of the vehicle. After some conversation between the driver and the guard, the driver got my bag out of the van and sped off. The security guard scanned my passport a few times, my Turkish resident card, he phoned someone and then finally let me through. There was a long sidewalk that led to a shipping area and then there was a terminal a little farther down the road. I was directed towards the working area that had a cafeteria, bathroom and a small lounging area. Beyond these rooms there were many cubicles. At this time, it was a little past nine thirty in the morning and I would end up sitting on the couch for several hours before lunchtime.

This lobby is a bit more luxurious than the one I was waiting most of the day in.

People came and went often, and a few people sat on the couches and conversed in Ottoman and took frequent smoking breaks. I spent the time snoozing and using up the last of my phone’s Internet minutes in between the ten to fifteen-minute snooze sessions. Close to four P.M. a man came and showed me and two other Ottoman guys a safety video on how to use a loading machine that would transport us from the Port Supply Vessel (PSV) to Osman. Then he asked us to sign a document and I asked him where to sign.

Oh. Hi.

Shortly after signing the document, one of the two Ottoman men started talking to me. He said he thought I was Ottoman this whole time, at this point around five hours, and that is why he hadn’t spoken to me. We talked for ten minutes and then went back to the cafeteria for dinner. It was a typical Ottoman dinner; a bowl of soup, bread, and an option of stuffed peppers or stuffed eggplant. A few hours after dinner we were told that the vessel might leave in the early morning or the next day at noon. We could go to a hotel and return at noon and risk missing the boat, or we could sleep on the boat.

The Ottoman guys were upset for some reason and conversing, but I agreed to go. Shortly thereafter they also agreed to go. We waited in the security area for some time before a guy came to check our passports and let us on the ship.

The gang-plank to Siem Sasha.

The look of the dock in the daylight.

The first thing I saw as we exited the terminal onto the dock was the moon and stars sparkling on the water; and a white and red colored ship gently rocking back and forth in the water. There were a few men with hard hats walking along the dock and in the distance was a metal ramp with ropes and metal forging the walk way. It was a gangplank.

As I looked around the ship I found a plaque and other things on the walls.

A health poster which included advice on how not to get Ebola.

I walked up the gangplank behind the others and we entered the small hole to get onto the ship. Inside there was a ship worker waiting with a sign in list. The Ottoman guys shared one cabin and I got another cabin to myself. We were given a tour by a Ukrainian man who turned out to be the second mate of the ship. He showed us the mess hall, which was a small open room with four or five tables, a counter with leftovers and empty steel pockets for the fresh meals. He told us the mealtimes and then showed us the lounge and smoking lounge. It was around ten P.M. so we all headed to our cabins and went to sleep for the night.

My first breakfast on the PSV.

There were lots of stairs leading up and down; the walls in the hallways gave barely enough space for two people to walk past each other. I finally found my cabin again; it was next to some kind of cleaning trough. Inside it was pitch black with the lights out so I kept one of the reading lights on while I slept. I could feel the water below rocking my bed slightly but due to the super long day, I didn’t have much trouble sleeping. I woke up again around four A.M., then six A.M., then 8. I wondered if the others had woken up yet, and so around nine thirty I finally got up out of my bed. After rummaging through the kitchen area for a few minutes I found a few things to eat. There was bread, sausage, cheese and a few onion rings. To my surprise the two Ottoman guys came up the stairs, they had just woken up too. We all ate together and then spent the rest of the day waiting.

I took a stroll around and took a look at what was in the loading area of the PSV

One of the Ottoman guys

A sign that could use some help

The ship never left the dock and we were still waiting by the evening. We spent our whole time in the smoking room, and I discovered their names were Barak and Talan. Barak was from Hatay originally and Talan was from the eastern part of The Ottoman Empire near Georgia. Barak spent the time playing Fifa on the PS4 and Talan spent his time watching videos on Instagram. There were frequent breaks for both them to have another cigarette.

The look from the back of the PSV as it left the dock.

What the PSV probably looked like from afar, as it bobbed up and down among the waves.

We spent another night on the ship and this time I had a harder time falling asleep, as I wasn’t that tired. The next morning, I got up again around nine thirty, but Barak and Talan didn’t come this time. I spoke with the chef who was Ukrainian and several other of the crew members. There was one from Russia, one from India and the rest were from Ukraine. Around ten or eleven the Ottomans came up for breakfast and then smoked. I spent most of the time learning the Russian alphabet on my phone, Barak played fifa on the PlayStation they had in the smoking room and Talan watched videos on his cell phone. By evening time, the ship was finally moving. We all ran outside and watched as the port, the mountains and all the buildings got smaller and smaller. I could feel the ship rocking side to side and had to learn how to walk properly. On this night, I could really feel the water rocking below the ship as I slept. It was as if the waves were touching my back.

Confident on the outside, screaming on the inside. Getting tucked into the frog machine.

By morning, I kept waking up every hour or so after six, because I was sure someone would come knock on my door, telling us we were going to be transported to Osman, but no such knock came. I had another breakfast, another lunch and was preparing to have another supper when we were told to get our bags and head to the main deck. They were loading cargo and the crew told us that we would have to wait until all the cargo was loaded. Then about ten minutes later, they changed their minds.

Unfortunately I don’t have a picture of the frog machine being brought onboard, but it is done the same way as this piece of cargo.

All three of us put on life vests and climbed inside the “frog” machine. The frog machine was a device about seven feet tall and shaped like a bullet. It had four seats and bars that you had to hold onto while being buckled in. The frog machine lifted us high in the sky and the boat looked tiny from above. I wondered to myself what I would do if the line snapped. If I unbuckled quickly and treaded water for three days, I might survive.

One of many new staring eyes, as I made my way to the correct place on the ship.

The line didn’t snap, and the machine lowered us down to the top deck of the ship called “Osman”. We were finally there after three days of waiting. This ship was huge in comparison to the small PSV boat. It reminded me of the titanic, with so many decks, stairs and rooms. I made sure to keep within a few steps of the Ottoman guys as we went to check in. We left our luggage in the radio room and were told to come back for a safety briefing in thirty minutes. I was supposed to find “C deck” and room number five hundred and thirty-eight. It took some time, but I finally found it.

Osman: Chapter 2: A hotel in Adana

Chapter 2: The adventure in the glorious hotel

Dude, looking busy.

Behind the counter of the reception desk sat a medium height and heavyset teenager. He sat hunched over so all I could see was the top of his head. He was busy staring at his screen and hoping to God that nobody asked him anything in English.

A stock photo, he’s a bit more confident then the receptionist I came across.

“Merhaba” I said. His head popped up. “Merhaba” means “hello” in modern Ottoman. Then the dreaded words came: “Ingilizce konusyor musun?” – “Do you speak English?” His bottom lip quivered, and his hands pointed at a shaking document. “I have a room booked for 7 days” I said. His eyes blinked, he looked down at his desk. I held up seven fingers. “Yedi gun, Yedi gun” I repeated. “Yedi gun” means “Seven day”, which wasn’t grammatically correct, but it was the best I had to offer at that moment. His frantic hands grabbed a telephone and shortly thereafter another man came down.

That beautiful “Nakit”

He slurred English and Turkish words together. “You pay nakit!” he said. His voice raised a bit as I pulled a bankcard out. “Nakit!” he yelled again. He motioned with his hands. He held one hand flat with the top part facing the ground and slid his other hand across its palm as if he were flinging money at me. “Nakit” means cash. “ATM var mi? ATM yakin?” I asked. “Do you have an ATM? Is there an ATM nearby?” He walked with me and there was a bank just around the corner. I withdrew nine hundred Ottoman Liras and moments later he handed me four liras and a key to room 402.

The elevator wasn’t this crowded, but it felt like it.

I got in the elevator with the nervous teenager, into an elevator that fit one or two people but now had a chubby boy and a skinny man and two large bags both weighing around twenty kilograms each.

A photo from the actual hotel.

This place looked a bit skeptical from the outside. There were dirty and old buildings as well as skeptical looking warehouses with Conos and Kros waddling on the streets like penguins. The hall was dark and shady looking, but the doors were new. I turned the handle and entered, everything inside was new and clean too. There were four different Internet connections to choose from, hot water in the shower and a nice comfortable bed. I slide the curtains to check out the view. There was a grand view of the warehouse’s yard, which was covered with beautiful packages resting on slabs that looked like they had been there for quite some time. Beyond the yard there lie a crumbling street. Across from that makeshift road there was a school and down it there were car lots and other stores.

“Shock” with “shocking” prices.

After settling in a little bit, I decided this neighborhood was not one where you would want to go out after dark. It was about four P.M. so I pulled out my phone’s map application to look for a shop. “Sok” showed up which is a small shop similar to wal-mart or Tesko in appliances yet there is less variety and the entire shop is the size of a large room that has a “U shape” that goes around like the IKEA stores. There are several different chain franchises like Sok around The Ottoman Empire: “A101” “BIM” and “Migros”.

Some dude opening or closing a door

I checked the route several times. I needed to exit the hotel, take a right, then walk for four to five minutes cross a set of railroad tracks and then I would arrive at the “Sok” store. I checked it a few more times, then grabbed my wallet, keys and phone and headed out the door.

Looking at this photo you can smell the air, but what do you smell?

I had been right about this neighborhood. I stood out and their eyes flocked to me like moths to light. As I crossed a road on the side closest to my hotel of the railroad tracks I had to sprint a little bit to avoid being hit by some kind of truck that looked like it was from the 1960s or 1970s. I crossed the railroad tracks and there still weren’t any signs of a “Sok” or any food shop. I pulled out my phone to check where I was on the route and then put the cell phone back into my pocket as quickly as possible.

shhhhhhhhh

There are a few rules you may want to remember if you ever end up in a neighborhood like this in The Ottoman Empire (or any foreign country). “Don’t ever pull a cellphone out of your pocket that isn’t a flip phone or a cheap smart phone”, and “don’t ever speak English or any foreign language that isn’t native to that country”.  As long as I didn’t have to open my mouth, I would be fine. Hopefully they would just think I was a Syrian Refugee from Aleppo or an Ottoman Laz from the Black Sea region.

Looks almost like the one I entered in Adana.

There were a few people waiting at the station and I passed a few shops on the opposite side of the railroad tracks and could see the “Sok” sign in the distance. However, as I got closer, I saw that there was also an “A101” store, so I went inside. Once again, I tried my best not to say too much. I grabbed a few things to make sandwiches, got a few mini tubs of yogurt, a bag of doritos and went to the check out. The workers in this shop didn’t seem to care that people were waiting in line and they either went about the shop continuing to work or just talked on their cell phones. Finally one waddled up and started scanning items. I paid in cash and went back out to the road. Carrying two bags of groceries more eyes were attracted to me and whispers of gossip were flowing already.

I wish I had bought this much pastirma.

After eating a pastirma cheese sandwich with cream cheese base it was almost time for bed. Pastirma is an Ottoman attempt at bacon, but it isn’t made from pigs. The cream cheese is actually a little bit different too, a very wet cream similar to cheese whiz with a rich coat of white that works perfect for a cheese/ham sandwich or a wrap. I lay on the bed and it felt great. The hotel was perfect inside, everything was working well, and it was also amazing to have a hot shower and working Internet again. There was no worry of the “Kro” landlord or the English school I had been working at anymore. I would just need to be careful to go out and shop before dark and keep my eyes peeled for anything dangerous on the outside of the hotel when I was out there.

A photo from Turkmenistan, but it represents what I saw in that neighborhood well.

Evli misin?

The days passed quickly and every two days I did a new shopping trip. The eyes never ceased to stare each time. On my way back one morning I noticed that there was a long line waiting for bread. Perhaps this wasn’t a dangerous neighborhood but a poor one. There were several times where I had been forced to speak in the shop and now there were whispers of “yabanci” when I walked by. “Yabanci” means foreigner. Yet, at this time I was no longer worried, in the daylight and on the main road I was sure nothing would happen now.

A sign that sinks most hearts

The flight was delayed a bit and I began to converse with the teacher who was currently on the ship “Osman” where I would soon be going. As I texted him and other people from the company, it hadn’t registered yet that I would be leaving soon, as I got used to the hotel and the road and the shop.

I’m sure this food tastes great, but I hate the time itself

However, that day did come; I had the flight time ready. I would need to leave the hotel at five A.M. and catch a flight at six fifty-five A.M. I hated waking up that early and was tempted to just stay up all night, but I knew even two or three hours of sleep would feel better than zero. I went down to the reception and told them of the details, they responded saying that they would be ready with a taxi at five fifteen.

A dark road road, so beautiful. It’s too bad you have to wake up early to see it.

I rolled out of bed around four thirty and had a quick breakfast. I ate the rest of the strawberry yogurt and put the rest of my things in my bags. I checked everything in the hotel to make sure I hadn’t forgotten anything and then grabbed my bag and the key and headed to the reception area. There was a man waiting for me as promised and we headed to the airport. I hated being up this early but there was a gratifying feeling about it. Driving through the dark cool air, when most people were sleeping. We arrived and I went through the multiple security check areas and before I knew it, I was in the sky again. Flying to a new city.