It's been a some time since I last updated things. I'm just barely keeping up with all of the things that I have going here it's hard to make time to keep my blog up. blahblah excuses. I at least try to keep a journal but I wouldn't subject anyone to reading those ramblings. So highlights/lowlights include: The end of first semester which was just me in my room for about two weeks writing papers on Turkey's odd relationship with Iran (they get 60% of their oil from Iran!), transit migration through Turkey and Janissaries. All of the subjects were  extremely interesting but three 20-page papers was time consuming. However, a month-long winter break followed! I went to Ankara with Dilsad, my host sister from Adana, to visit one of our high school friends, Zeray. It was lovely to hang out with them and Ankara is a bit quieter than Istanbul so it was sort of a nice few day break. The rest of it was mainly spent at cafes working on Turkish, hanging out with the boys (from the post below) and playing a lot, really a lot, of backgammon. I've actually gotten pretty good at it, I love the combination of luck, skill and risk-taking. My foreign friends Kate, George and Chris are also pretty obsessed. Chris and I have intense matches that often come down to the last roll. My most stressful opponent is Emrah because he is just too good. I'm not clear on how he always wins but he seems to have a pretty good understanding of dice odds and more importantly an ability to get in your head.

I also moved to Tarlabasi, an interesting neighborhood very close to Taksim square. It's been so wonderful to live closer to the center. Most of my friends live in nearby, the English classes I teach are a ten-minute walk away and bars, restaurants, cafes, shopping etc. is just down the road. The neighborhood has a reputation for two things, being sketchy and for expats looking to live on the edge. So in that manner I feel like a bit of a cliche, but, rent is cheep, my roommate Ilgin is awesome, the the Sunday market is outrageous. I'm not just close but actually in the market. When I step out of my door on Sundays I could be selling potatoes. It's fun because I've gotten to know the vendors a bit and the chaos of it feels similar to selling produce at the San Juan Farmer's Market. Produce is so so cheap and because agriculture is one of the largest sectors of employment here almost everything you buy, even in markets, come from nearby. The great part of living so close to the center is I spend so much less time in transit, the bad is that I get also get much less sleep. It's so easy to meet up with a friend for tea or a beer. There's constant noise and cars and bustling crowds. Next week I'm going to the south with my mom, Steve (Steve!) and my friends, Chris, Lizzy, George and Kate, so I'm looking forward to a bit of quiet. George and I are going a couple days earlier to go hiking then everyone will meet us for a four day boat trip along the south-western Mediterranean coast. It's going to be so great! I also can't wait to show my family around Istanbul annnd to show off my Turkish skills, obviously.

Karamürsel

 Seda, Serhat, Volkan, me, Chris

The 14th to 19th of October was Kurban Bayrami, which translates to the sacrificial holiday. It's been explained to me as a way to honor Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son to Allah before He intervened with a sheep to sacrifice instead. When I first witnessed the holiday in 2009 I had been in Turkey for only a month, I could barely use present tense and, as would be a theme throughout my time in Turkey, had no idea what was going on. In Adana, parking lots are converted to sheep holding pens and then to slaughter yards. According to tradition, a third of the meat is kept by the family, a third goes to neighbors and friends and a third is donated to the poor. I have absolutely no idea how the logistics of meat division and preservation work, but the idea of a holiday based in giving away two-thirds of your food strikes me as a nice one. I think now a lot of people just donate money.

I was planning on going back to Adana to celebrate the holiday there but because everyone is traveling at this time tickets are insanely expensive and my host sister was going to be staying with her father in Antalya. So rather than going to the south I made a much shorter trip about two hours south of Istanbul on the Sea of Marmara. My friend Chris lives with two Turks, Volkan and Emrah, but nearly always there is a group of guys around the apartment. Though all together the group is large and most of them have known each other for years from their hometown they are extremely inclusive and invited Chris, Lizzy (the newest tenant of their apartment) and I to their hometown for the holiday.

Vokan's friend Seda,  was kind enough to give us a ride so we set out on Wednesday afternoon. Seda is not from Karamürsel either, and since I was sitting shotgun I was in charge of helping us get to town. Let me just say I am the worst person to be sitting in that seat, not only do I have absolutely no idea where we're going and I can't remember a string of directions in Turkish past turn left and then right. Also, due to Turkish construction mishearing one letter at the end of a word can have drastically different results. Upon arrival we were immediately shuffled from one of their hometown spots to the next. First a  cafe, then Emrah's house-the place Chris and I had been most looking forward to because we've heard many times about was an incredible cook Emrah's mom is--and the experience didn't disappoint. Minutes after greetings had been exchanged the coffee table had been converted to a a full dining room table and was filled with lamb, borek, cakes and cookies, and my favorite sarma--rice with all sorts of herbs and spices and then rolled into grape leaves. Emrah's mom is exactly what you would expect from a generous Turkish mother who kept popping into the room to encourage us to eat more! eat everything!

Ever the tour guide Volkan pointed out his high school, old apartments and places they used to hang out before bringing us to one of their main spots, a sort of boardwalk cafe that was completely deserted for the fall. The water was completely glassy, and as perfection requires, we set up backgammon and bought Efes-the most popular beer in Turkey. The whole group of us, in total fluctuating between 12-15 people stayed at Serhat's "village home", an unassuming white box from the outside but a big, open living room with cushion-lined walls, an couches. I often refer to Serhat as Silent Serhat, responding just a smile. Ulu is another main character in the cast at Chris' house, and while he's always the first to make fun of my Turkish errors he's also the first to cover up the person dozing on the couch with a blanket, or to force me to sit front of the fire as my hair drys.

For the most part the weather was awful and due to the absence of cars and noise it was a sleepy weekend; a welcome change. We spent most of our time drinking tea, playing backgammon and chatting. A large group of my peers speaking quickly in Turkish is a challenging environment to participate in, but I know them well enough now that I'm able to follow along and jump in. Plus because we were basically limited to the indoors there was a lot of time to talk, I even got some words out of Serhat!

No weekend away in Turkey would be complete without eating vast amounts more than you should.
 Here, Lizzy is trying to decide what to do with her portion. 

Tavla was a main source of entertainment.
Ulu (right) is defending himself against Emrah, who regularly beats me 5-0.

Friends and Routines

Two of my best friends from CLS Izmir last summer returned to Istanbul. Kate was living here last year teaching SAT prep but got the Fulbright to come back here and do research on Turkish soap operas. Chris is finishing up his phd research for his degree in anthropology at the University of Chicago. They are both fantastic people and I can't believe it worked out for us all to be in Istanbul at the same time.

After the trip and a whirlwind of friends and activities, my life started to normalize. At least for the summer. I took 6 weeks total of a language course. 4 weeks of daily group lessons that keep my life at a bit more regular pace, and brought me back to doing some work. Due to FLAS funding I could afford to do two weeks of private lessons with the same teacher and in those two weeks I probably learned more Turkish than in all my other Turkish classes combined. Four hours a day, five days a week I had one-on-one classes with Meltem, a Turkish women in her mid-twenties. My grasp of Turkish is unusual to most people that learned in classes because I learned to speak from the basic necessity of making myself understood. For that reason, Turks usually believe that I speak fairly fluently, until they see me attempt to write. I am comfortable conversing and speak an ok pace but am pretty awful at the basic grammar. So this class was the perfect forum to basically start at level one and quickly fill in some of the minor and major gaps. I was also lucky that Meltem was my teacher, four hours a day is a huge amount of time to spend in one on one classes, but she made them enjoyable, flexible and incredibly useful.

I've met Chris' roommates, Volkan, Emrah and the rotating cast of Turkish boys that practically live at the apartment before, but since his return I've been spending a lot of time at his house or going out with their group. It's really pretty amazing how openly they've included me in their group and how patiently they accept my speaking only in Turkish with them (Volkan speaks nearly perfect English). I usually meet up with them Friday or Saturday evenings and then we all go out as a big group to a few of our favorite bars.

 Actually, it's 7:00 on a Saturday now and I'm just about to get ready and head over there. I'm having a hard time prying myself away from the warmth of my bed. Eren just made a delicious leek soup and I'm wearing leggings under my pajamas, two sweaters an a scarf. Istanbul is COLD! And it was so sudden! a week ago my friend Josef was visiting and he due to his crazy wealth of random Turkish history he took me on a walking tour around the Golden Horn and it was so hot, we were both dying, especially since we were wearing long pants and sleeves. Then it just shifted suddenly to a bitter wind and freezing rain. I'm already ready to see this city in the snow!

Long Overdue

I got an email from my brother with no body just the subject reading "Looks like your blog is starting to lag..." Apparently Micheal reads my blog! Starting to lag may be a bit of an understatement though since my last post was from events that took place over a month ago. So here it is, my high light reel for the last moth.

Mediterranean Paradise
I met up with Rebecca and her friend Colleen again, but this time in the south of Turkey, along the Mediterranean coast for a four-day boat cruise.I did pretty much the exact same trip with my mom, brother and sister ten years ago. Lizzy and I actually turned 13 on one of those boats! It as just as beautiful as I remember. On our first night in Olympos we met a group of Turks who helped us convince the Turkish military police to let us go into the park, through Lycian ruins leading to a stunning beach. The beach was a bit windy, so we jumped into the warm, extremely salty and buoyant sea. We could see the phosphorescence and the stars so completely clearly that it felt like you were in one big tent of shimmery darkness. It was the perfect start to our week on the Mediterranean.

The next four days were spent swimming, eating, reading and then repeating those activities. The three of us realized quickly that of the 17 people on this beautiful wooden sailboat, we were probably the youngest and definitely the most giddy. Every morning we woke up on the outdoor sleeping deck, more from temperature than light, and immediately changed into suits and jumped in the water to cool down. The trip was set up to be of the most perfect mixture of exploring, lounging and eating. One day we climbed to a castle on top of a hill, another was spent at Butterfly Valley (this is the second time I've been here and not seen a single butterfly, apparently there is a pretty short window) where we used a slightly sketchy rope to pull ourselves up the slippery cliffs to the top of the waterfall. Each and every meal of the trip was fabulous thanks to our wonderful cook Hakan, a guy in his mid-twenties who spends his summers feeding tourists on the sail boat and his winters fishing in the Sea of Marmara.
Here are a few of my pictures:

These are ruins of what they think was a Hamam (baths). 

Butterfly Valley!

This is the traveling Gozlme boat selling crepe-like wonders. My favorite was chocolate banana. Also, the man on the boat kept trying to convince me to run away with him (and I suppose his mother who does all the cooking). 

This is our Captain and his daughter who we picked up on the last day.  

Colleen also wrote a blog post about this trip and she's a pretty incredible writer and photographer so if you'd like to read more about our Mediterranean excursions here's the place to do it:  http://prekrasno.wordpress.com/2013/09/02/mavi-tur-blue-cruise/

Week 3: Yemek

On Sunday evening (8/11) I met up with some friends that were doing the Boğaziçi University summer language program (the group of Americans studying Turkish tends to see a lot of overlap) and we decided to find a spot to sit on campus. Boğaziçi Universtiy is 150 years old and the campus sits on top of a very steep hill. Seriously, walking up this hill kills and inevitably every time I do it I run into some friend, and we do the two-cheek-kiss thing while I am river status sweating and she miraculously looks perfect.  However, as bad as it is, because of that hill you can see from the campus across the Bosphorus to the Asian side and watch little boats travel to and from or freighters navigate the narrow waterway bringing goods to countries on the Black Sea. Many people include the half hour ferry boat ride in their daily commute from Asia to Europe or the other way around. The spot we sat in is called the "petek", or honeycomb in English, because the benches are in the shape of a hexagon facing the Bosphorus. It's summer so most students are still away, but there are always people hanging out, drinking Efes and playing music. It's a really lovely place to sit and chat.   

One of the new people I met that night and I stumbled across the subject of Uighurs, an ethnic group that lives in China but speaks a Turkic language and was connected to this region through the Silk Road (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uyghur_people) but whose origins are somewhat unknown. What is known, though, is that their food is incredible. My friend Brendan had already been to a Uyghur restaurant about four times in the past two months and took me on Monday. I can’t stress enough how good this food is, I actually think it may be better than Turkish food, and that is saying something.  They are heavy meals because due to the rigors of living and working on the steps of Eastern China your meals have to sustain you for extended periods of time. The most famous things include what is listed as “spaghetti” in Turkish, English and Arabic but is actually hand pulled dough noodles with stir-fried vegetables and meat. They also make dumplings the size of a child’s fist. There is no way to eat those things and be composted because all the juice that is cooked inside comes out upon the first bite. But it’s worth it, oh so worth it. If you’re in Istanbul you should go there. Now. If not, come visit me in Istanbul! 

Week 2: Reunited

The ferry landing on the big island of the Princes' Island

Rebecca, one of my friends from NSLI-y in Adana, was just finishing up a  CLS stint in Ankara  and came to stay with me in Istanbul for a few days before continuing her travels. From Istanbul it's a quick hour ferry ride to the furthest, but largest of the Princes' Islands off the coast of Istanbul. Since neither of us have had a chance to do that we grabbed a bus to Kabatas and hopped on the walk-on ferryboats for only $1.50. During the Byzantine time, princes and other royalty were exiled to the islands, later Ottoman sultans shared the same fate, hence the name. Until about 1950 the islands also have a history of being a haven for minorities but that is more of cultural than demographic importance now as most the tourists and residents are Turkish. However, my Armenian friend still goes to church on the smallest island during the summer months. I was really just excited that motorized vehicles aren't allowed on the island because I am sick of honking. Horns are ridiculously overused here. There is no reason to honk in bumper to bumper traffic, or at people crossing the street, or at animals, or at red lights, or just for kicks. In other places pedestrians have some power, but I am well aware that it is completely on me to avoid being hit by a car. I also think learning to avoid this traffic is a skill just like learning a language; you may be able learn later in life but it will never be as fluent or comfortable as the locals. Seriously, they seem to have some extra sense that I awkwardly and flailing-ly attempt to follow. It's like playing frogger. So anyway, I was excited about this car-less island, but much to my dismay, in lieu of cars there are horse carriages,  lots of horse carriages and THEY HAVE HORNS TOO. Fortunately, we rented bikes to get out of the main town and everything got much, much better. Our map didn't show topography so when we decided to go up to the church we didn't know we were in for a 45 minute, steep, cobblestone climb with our heavy bikes.  It was so worth it though, and the ride down was pretty fun. 

Ata-gar
("Otogar" means bus station and "at" means horse. It's a Turkish pun! Get it?) 

The view from the top

 Rebecca is larger than life

I love ferryboats

After returning from the island, Rebecca's friend Colleen arrived in Turkey via Azerbaijan and instead of sticking to their original travel plans of Kyrgyzstan they decided on Greece. So as they headed off to Athens, I went to join my Adana host family in the village. This was my third time in the village to celebrate Ramazan Byramı, the holiday at the end of Ramadan. The first time was about a week after I had arrived in Turkey in 2009 and I knew barely a word of Turkish, then I went back last summer after my stay in Izmir and had a much easier time communicating. However, my host family is Circassian (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circassians) so even as I feel almost competent in Turkish they often switch into Circassian and I am lost again. My village visits are defined by the following: going house to house where we are offered Turkish coffee, tea, chocolates, baklava or some combination thereof, kissing hands and pressing them to your forehead as a sign of respect, the smell of cologne  and awkward silences as people try to figure out who I am and how I speak Turkish.  At the end of the day I usually wind up on a sugar/caffeine high but the dinners and breakfasts more than make up for it. As a college exchange student, the thing that's often missing is the link a host family provides in connecting a student to the country and developing language skills. Though I also LOVE living in an apartment with young people I feel fortune to still be really close with my host family. This year my wonderful host sister Dilşad is going to school in Istanbul so I will get to see her and my host mom often! I feel very close to my community in the San Juan Islands, and it is always a challenge to pull myself away from my little island paradise. However, at some point in the past four years there was a shift, and while Turkey is not my first home and my roots are not here, it is undoubtedly a second home. And my host family in Adana is a big part of that connection.

Back to the food! Circassian food is heavily dough based so making it requires a lot of kneading,  rolling and then boiling or frying. Do not underestimate the power of boiled dough soaked in an oily meat broth. It is fantastic. For breakfast, squares of dough are fried so they pocket up and become the perfect vehicle for jam, yogurt or kaymak (the process of making it has been explained to me as scraping the cream off the top of boiled cream) and honey. Kaymak and honey is a thing of legend. I’m a savory-breakfast person, I mean, I always pass up the waffle bar at Portage Bay, but homemade Kaymak and honey with the comb still in it on top of fried dough or fresh bread is incredible. *Just wait till I get started on next week's meals* I returned to Istanbul Sunday extremely full and happy.  

Week One: Hoş Bulduk

This mosque is one of the most beautiful I've ever seen,
and the first in Turkey to be designed by a female.

I arrived in Turkey the 26^th of June after traveling for hours? Days? Weeks? At some point in between Seattle and Istanbul time just became arbitrary. My roommates, Şenay and Eren, gave me about two hours to nap and shower before taking me out to Taksim, which besides being the location for the protests is also the most common place to go out. My roommates are fantastic. I owe Josef Burton a thousand Efes for getting me in touch with his old friends who happened to have an open room. Both went to Boğaziçi University but have since graduated. Şenay  is an English teacher at a middle school and Eren is getting his masters at another university while working as a TA. Our apartment has four bedrooms (we're still waiting on a German girl that is moving in 9/1) with a balcony overlooking other apartments and a freeway. While it is very close to campus and will be fantastic when school starts it is a bit of a jaunt to get to the center of town, especially since after the protests a lot of public transportation is still off. I get along well with both of them but Şenay has been on vacation and spends a lot of time with her boyfriend so I see her much less than Eren. He is such a good sport about bringing me along to meet his friends or coming to hang out with mine. On weekend days we'll often just find a cafe to sit and study or he'll take me to some part of Istanbul I haven't seen.  At the apartment we all speak Turkish together; however, Eren has already started keeping a list of all funny mistakes I make. Language learning is probably the greatest way to decease your capacity for embarrassment.

Black Sea beach

One of my favorite days was the first Sunday after I arrived and a friend invited me and Eren to a beach on the Black Sea. The beach was jam packed, but for good reason, the water is the perfect temperature and because the Black Sea is basically a big lake it's less buoyant but doesn't sting your eyes. Also, the sand is the finest and softest of all the land so I brought a bottle home with me. I'm sure my family is already looking forward to transporting my accumulation of stuff back to the states when they visit.   

The first week was pretty much a blur of getting back into speaking Turkish, dancing and starting to explore Istanbul—an activity that can never be exhausted. According to the Wikipedia page, Istanbul is the “country's economic, cultural, and historical heart” and with the population of Istanbul proper at a mere 13.9 million, it is the second largest city in the world. The historical/geographical/economical/political climate of this place will be something for future posts, but the more I look into it the more fascinated I am.  And I get to live here! For a year!

Let’s see, I also started Turkish classes thanks to FLAS funding and they have been very useful. I still have a ways to go but there are few things better than learning something in the morning and then applying it to your conversation later in the day.