Base station

I’m really disappointed. Last week in my community education cooking class (Turkish food, of course), we found out that the building owner was allowing a cell phone company to put up a tower on the balcony of the building, which is only feet from our kitchen. Granted, it is his decision to make, and with 20,000 Turkish lira ($14k) per year on the table, I’m not surprised he made that decision.

(As a side note: The Turkish phrase for cell phone tower is “baz istasyonu”, which if you say it to yourself right now, it is pretty easy to figure out that they were talking about a “base station” of some kind. For a few minutes, I thought an army base was coming to the community and people were worried about their safety. But before too long, I realized that was not what they were talking about. Had the phrase been “cep telefonu kulesi”, a direct translation of “cell phone tower”, I would have understood immediately. We run into this aspect of language all the time.)

If the cell phone tower goes up, my teacher is quitting. And most of the students aren’t coming back, even if they do find a teacher willing to work 5 days a week next to a cell phone tower. And we’re not really allowed to join another class. And I’m really disappointed because I am learning to make really tasty food like baklava, lentil soup, simit (a soft pretzel-like yummyness), and Turkish salads.

Is it really so dangerous to be cooking food next to a cell phone tower? Don’t answer that!