Little Dramas

Sometimes I wonder what I can write about in this blog as my days seem so repetitive. Well, perhaps the banality of this report will tell you how far I have to stretch to find something to write about – or maybe you’ll find it interesting. It’s hard for me to judge – it’s just my life

As I think I’ve mentioned, all Zirve students and staff – teachers, administrators, support staff, etc. – have to be ferried out to campus in the morning. There are buses back into town at 12:30 PM for the students who have only morning classes. Then another fleet leaves shortly after 5:00 PM. There are two, smaller busses for the teacher staff; some administrators also ride those busses.

Thursday morning we got on our bus at the usual pick-up point just outside the main entrance to Gaziantep University. The bus hadn’t really pulled completely into traffic before a policeman motioned our driver to pull over. There was some conversation through the window and then the driver got out and stood behind the police car. They were obviously looking at his papers. At one point one of the policemen got out a very thick pad of pink papers (I thought, tickets), but I don’t think he ever gave anything to the driver. Eventually, the driver got back in the bus and drove us to work. He was explaining something in Turkish to one of the administrators on the bus – who didn’t volunteer an explanation to us.

Later in the morning we learned that ours wasn’t the only bus to have been stopped. Many of the student buses had been pulled over as well, and there was concern that some of the students might not have made it to campus. The buzz in the faculty/staff lunchroom was that the company with the contract to transport the students wasn’t properly licensed to do so. Part of their fine is that they cannot provide any kind of bus transport for 26 months. Somebody obviously “squealed”; I just hope it’s the company and not the individual drivers who’ll be out of driving for 26 months. This city is a magnet for people escaping hard-scrabble farms to look for work. What they don’t need is more unemployment.

Fortunately, there were no noon busses scheduled for Thursday as all the students had to stay around for language lab training and to be visible to the folks from Apple who were visiting campus. The administration wanted to be certain the Apple folks saw lots of students hunched over their new MacBook Pros. They needn’t have worried. Everywhere you looked students were busy with their computers. But if one percent of them were using their laptops for anything remotely academic, I’d be astonished.

Somehow Zirve rounded up busses to get the students home that night. The two buses and drivers who always transport us have remained the same. And classes went on as scheduled today. Just a little blip and something to gossip about in the hall.

I'll save the other drama for another slow day. This posting has gotten too long.