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/