For instance. I never wrote about the hotel fire I experienced in Adana last week! How do I let a big thing like a fire float away from my memory bank?
Well, okay, so it wasn't a big fire. Not even sure it was a fire. Went to dinner with my neighbor Ms. Barbara (a seventy-something school teacher on Base who is as fiery as they come) and two other friends: Stebbs and Beth C.
As dinner was ending, the fire alarms began going off. Then a verbal warning over a speaker. I don't know as much Turkish as I would like but I do know that Dikkat! means Warning!
Once outside, I learned something else. When in a stressful situation, or a situation outside of the "norm", communication goes down the drain. The Turks who know how to speak English, didn't know how to tell me about a fire in the building. An an English gal like me who knows some Turkish doesn't have the words for fire either in their language.
The final translation from one kind gentlemen was: "Small problem. No fire. Just poof." Either way, we left without completely finishing our dinner, and when Ms. Barbara (a regular at the Hilton) returned the next evening to pay, they comped her meal!
Just another thing to add to my list Turkey experience list!
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