Baffling

Today all the foreign exchange students took an hour and a half bus ride to the police station as the residents permit applications submitted by the International Office here on campus where incorrect. That’s right 50 applications, all wrong. Our applications, which consisted of several papers, where sent back from the Police station to the international office in a completely disorganized mess. Everyone’s info was mixed together and many papers dealing with our proof of registration at Yeditepe where lost. However, after spending three hours at the police station there where five of us that found out we would not be able to file anything today and our trip was done in vein, but had to wait for the rest of the group even though the Yeditepe bus would not be taking us back to campus. So we sent an additional two hours until five o’clock when they closed for the group. On the following day we would have to get back to the same location on our own accord as Yeditepe would not be furnishing a bus for us and complete the process on our own w/o any assistance from the International Office. Let me just add that this trip was much like taking a trip to the D.M.V but w/o air conditioning, few speak English and much more of a pain in the ass.

The American student’s found out that they would have to set up a Turkish bank account containing 1,200 YTL in order to receive a permit. Here is the dilemma, in order to set up an account one needs a residence permit and in order to receive a residence permit one needs a bank account. However, on a large sign posted outside the office are requirements for U.S. students filing for a residence permit. It states that individuals need a copy of a U.S. bank statement containing at least 1,200 dollars. Dan, one of the Americans, had a print out from his banks website containing all the necessary information but it was not accepted as it needed to be notarized. They informed us that a receipt of a 1,200 dollar transaction into YTL would, in some way, be more official however this a percentage taken off of transactions and in this case we would be losing 400 dollars to obtain a receipt!

We are going to contact the U.S. consulate tomorrow in hopes of some definitive answers. I’ve taken the orginazional/efficiency of the U.S. for granted; this has been such a stressful ordeal. I look forward to the days of actually using technology to make processes like this so much easier. I’ve realized how advanced America has truly become in information processing. We are the hardest working country and it truly shows. It’s a hard transition from such efficiency to literally none.