Snow Diary

Here's how we've spent the last week. It started snowing at lunchtime on Friday and by 3pm the garden it was starting to accumulate.
By Saturday morning there were drifts of dry snow in the garden.On Sunday the snow and wind had stopped but the temperature was two below freezing.On Monday the temperatures were even lower, six below freezing and Canakkale was draped in white.On Wednesday the snow made one last attempt to fall, wet and heavy.And today it's all melting away....

Falling in the Cracks

Living outside town brings many advantages; peace and quiet, a view of an olive grove, a garden of our own. There are some disadvantages though, none more confusing then the bureaucratic web surrounding us.

Our electoral register is held in one village, our post office is in another, and the public health centre in a third village.

Now there’s a fourth village to add to the mix. The Ministry of Education has linked us to this fourth village and thus we should send our children to a school in Kepez town. Their address-linked system links us to this school and if we want to send them elsewhere we have to work around this system.

The confusion arises after a chat with our next-door neighbour. For two years her eldest boy went to this same school in Kepez. Yet when she tried to register her youngest boy there in September she was told she couldn’t. The address-linked system linked her to the school in the village that holds our electoral register. As the school there doesn’t operate the children are bussed to a school in Canakkale town itself. She ended up taking her eldest boy out of the school that we are now supposed to send our children to.

Somewhere in the twenty metres separating our houses there’s a bureaucratic boundary we never knew existed.

Being Quiet...

It's very easy to be silent here. To sit behind a computer screen and watch the world go by. But it's not very satisfying in the long run.

So there's going to be a few changes in the next few months. The ideas are ripe at the moment, the plan is being prepared and will soon be put into action.

In the meantime thanks to Anastasia Ashman for the highlight on her blog Furthering the Worldwide Conversation. Anastasia was named one of the Expat Bloggers to watch in 2010 by Cindy King. She recently announced the expat+HAREM Istanbul 2010 blog carnival which will be running through the year.

2010 the year of action!