Never have I ever lived in a place with a real winter. And by real winter I mean needing to wear 5 different layers to work, having your toes go numb for hours, seeing never ending days of beautiful white snow flurries, and of course, having snow days. Duzce, apparently, has had its coldest winter in nearly twenty years. Lows of about 10-15 degrees Fahrenheit were normal.
For a good week, we must've gotten at least 3-4 feet of snow.(that's about 1-1.5 meters ya'll) This week was a beautiful time for me to revel in the newness of winter. While most people think of spring as a time of renewal, winter has become a symbol of purity and renewal for me. When the snow falls, everything is covered in white mounds of beauty. All the mud, the ugly is covered by a sheet of perfect whiteness. And between the time of perfect whiteness and sloppy mush was, for me, a symbol of rediscovery. Letting the problems temporarily simmer and vanish beneath the snow, providing ample time to let an honest analysis take place, until you are ready to emerge back to reality and face the world in your own way.
While all of this symbolism was grand and thought-provoking, I had a little real time troubles of my own. Never having experienced a full fledged winter before, I am quite ignorant in the ways of snow and all that goes with it. So imagine my surprise when I brew my coffee on Tuesday morning, same as usual, and then turn on the water to rinse my good ole' coffee mug and there is no water. Convinced it was a city-wide water outage (which happens about once ever two weeks for about 6 hours) we dealt with it and went to school. There we learned this was not a universal problem. Still, we thought, maybe it is only our building. We checked with our landlord and told him (in our marvelously broken Turkish) that we had no water. His face dropped. Defeat was visible in his eyes. Confused, I turned to Tas. And then we knew. The pipes had frozen. How could this have happened?!? We've had the hot water on, Tas took a hot shower this morning, I boiled coffee, how are we the only ones with frozen pipes? Our landlord explained that our pipes are the only ones on the outside of the building because our building is newest. Oh dandy. It gets better.
We asked Metin our landlord, "has this happened before." His answer, "no," explained it all, or so said the expression on his face. The winters are rarely this cold, and the possibility of broken pipes slowly seeped into his brain. We asked him what to do, how to fix it, what action to take. (typically American, I suppose) His answer was "it is very difficult." We pressed him for actions we could take, with each suggestion meeting a "it is very difficult." In the end, he told us we must wait. After that we had a knock on our door and her brought us 3 big jars of water so we could, you know, flush toilets and wash our hands and brush our teeth. We were without water for a good 2.5 days, not long in the grand scheme of life. But darn long enough to make you appreciate water. And systematic organization of utilities. And knowledge of things like water being frozen in pipes. Life lesson learned.
For a good week, we must've gotten at least 3-4 feet of snow.(that's about 1-1.5 meters ya'll) This week was a beautiful time for me to revel in the newness of winter. While most people think of spring as a time of renewal, winter has become a symbol of purity and renewal for me. When the snow falls, everything is covered in white mounds of beauty. All the mud, the ugly is covered by a sheet of perfect whiteness. And between the time of perfect whiteness and sloppy mush was, for me, a symbol of rediscovery. Letting the problems temporarily simmer and vanish beneath the snow, providing ample time to let an honest analysis take place, until you are ready to emerge back to reality and face the world in your own way.
While all of this symbolism was grand and thought-provoking, I had a little real time troubles of my own. Never having experienced a full fledged winter before, I am quite ignorant in the ways of snow and all that goes with it. So imagine my surprise when I brew my coffee on Tuesday morning, same as usual, and then turn on the water to rinse my good ole' coffee mug and there is no water. Convinced it was a city-wide water outage (which happens about once ever two weeks for about 6 hours) we dealt with it and went to school. There we learned this was not a universal problem. Still, we thought, maybe it is only our building. We checked with our landlord and told him (in our marvelously broken Turkish) that we had no water. His face dropped. Defeat was visible in his eyes. Confused, I turned to Tas. And then we knew. The pipes had frozen. How could this have happened?!? We've had the hot water on, Tas took a hot shower this morning, I boiled coffee, how are we the only ones with frozen pipes? Our landlord explained that our pipes are the only ones on the outside of the building because our building is newest. Oh dandy. It gets better.
We asked Metin our landlord, "has this happened before." His answer, "no," explained it all, or so said the expression on his face. The winters are rarely this cold, and the possibility of broken pipes slowly seeped into his brain. We asked him what to do, how to fix it, what action to take. (typically American, I suppose) His answer was "it is very difficult." We pressed him for actions we could take, with each suggestion meeting a "it is very difficult." In the end, he told us we must wait. After that we had a knock on our door and her brought us 3 big jars of water so we could, you know, flush toilets and wash our hands and brush our teeth. We were without water for a good 2.5 days, not long in the grand scheme of life. But darn long enough to make you appreciate water. And systematic organization of utilities. And knowledge of things like water being frozen in pipes. Life lesson learned.
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