Induction Week, part 2

This past week at work included more professional development activities, of course, and the suspense kept building--what will we be teaching and when do classes actually start? On Thursday, a subset of students took the exit exam (to measure if they were ready to begin as fully enrolled Koç students). The teaching assignments would be announced on Friday, so I had to be patient.
On Thursday evening, Koç University had its Welcome to the New Academic Year party, which was quite the experience. The invitation email claimed that it was for faculty and staff only with no mention of significant others, but my colleagues said that Alex should come anyway. As usual, there was nothing to worry about because no one checked IDs when we got on the bus to the party. It wasn't held on campus because they were serving (copious amounts of ) alcohol. It was impressive how much money the university threw at this party--the location, the food and drink, the live music, the door prizes, and the transportation to and from the event. (One colleague said she wished they would have put that money towards people's salaries...) Until the music started, Alex and I were able to chat with my new colleagues, but later it was just too loud--especially for attempting to converse in any Turkish! The singer, Candan Erçetin, had the Turkish crowd enthralled, singing along to songs of heartbreak in the first set, and in the second set, got everyone dancing to much more upbeat tunes from the Turkish songbook. (Costume change included). The party lasted until 23:45 when the service buses took everyone to their usual bus stops. The university also planned for the workday to start at 11:00 on Friday--very thoughtful, don't you think?
Finally it's Friday and I learn which level I'm assigned to (upper intermediate), but we have one more professional development session before we know our schedule. And then, here it is... my classes: academic writing/reading and academic lecture/discussion, my schedule: 10:30-12:30 (break) 2:30-4:30. To me, that's an awesome schedule, and I am working with very organized, friendly people. You know, it's almost too good to be true...
I'm just about to walk out of the office and go home when one of my colleagues stops by to ask for a favor. It turns out it's not just a favor. He needs to switch levels with me because his schedule starts at 8:30, but his service bus to campus rarely gets to work on time. Now I'm in that ridiculous position of "if I say yes, I'm giving up something that made me very happy, but if I say no, I'm a selfish jerk." Then the person responsible for the overall schedule comes over, and she wants me to switch (so, it's not really a choice). After much hemming and hawing on both sides, I do switch with him. I'm still feeling frustrated by this, but I have to remind myself that I only knew my assignment for an hour, and if I had gotten the other schedule to begin with I would have thought it was normal.
In my current level, I'm working with another group of friendly, organized people--and the level leader had this image in her presentation to welcome the team members:

Yeah, that helped...

On Monday, I'll find out what classes I'm really teaching; Tuesday we have one more day to prepare, and Wednesday classes begin!