An open letter to the town of Plovdiv

Dear Plovdiv,

You had such potential. Lonely Planet argued that you were perhaps the most enjoyable town in Bulgaria. Your old quarter seemed full of churches, museums, a mosque, and ruins--perfect for the first stop of our trip. Granted, we did arrive at your doorstep at 6am, but that was due to ridiculously fast lines at the border, not our own planning. Thank you for the train station, where we killed time for 2 hours before striking out to see your sights, that was much appreciated.
However, I must say I'm disappointed in you. I can understand the churches being closed during Mass, but locked up immediately after Mass? There are tourist shop windows inside all three churches we attempted to visit, so clearly you accept that tourists visit these places and are used to them coming to the extent that you have various religious tchotchkes available for purchase inside the churches. To lock them up so we can't actually see them is a bit cruel. Same with the mosque--I know once we crossed the border, we switched out major religions, and Muslims are no longer the majority, but you have the oldest mosque in the Balkans right in your downtown, and you keep that locked as well? We were 0-4 for religious building viewings in your town.
And then there are the museums. Not a single one open? The Old Town is pretty much entirely museums, we couldn't even get into the ones that weren't on our itinerary. I know there are fewer visitors in the winter, but most of them had winter hours posted, and were clearly not open during those hours. And you'd think if they're closed for the New Years holiday someone would have the decency to put up a sign, even in Bulgarian. Apparently not. Even the wine museum was closed. It was like negative 10 degrees out, we were really looking forward to that museum and its wine tasting. But no, we had to trudge back to the train station, to board a train to Sofia before noon, when we'd planned on spending the entire day seeing the charms of Plovdiv, freezing and wholly disenfranchised by this allegedly-endearing town.
Your one saving grace, Plovdiv, was your Roman ruins: they were outside and open-air, and thus could not be closed. It was, however, cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey, so even that, and wandering through your array of modern statues downtown, was not so pleasant and really rather hurried.
Now, I can see the potential, Plovdiv. Had all the museums been open, and the churches and mosques been unlocked, and more of your fine retail and dining establishments been open before we left (I'm as big a fan of a lie-in as anybody, but shops and cafes are normally open before noon, no?), and especially had it been about 30C warmer, you may have been an adorable little town. But it's painfully apparent that winter is just not your forte. At all.
Hugs,
R and Kel



We did make it to Sofia, and are figuring out where our hostel is before heading out for some fantastic-sounding Bulgarian food. We may never take a train again though, after this 4-year-old across the aisle screamed for the entire 2.5 hour ride from Plovdiv to Sofia. We also may never have children. Jury's still out.

Frustrations with individual cities aside, Bulgaria is a great country so far. The Cyrillic alphabet is taking a little getting used to, but we're getting it down slowly but surely, and can say 'yes,' 'no,' 'where is,' and '2 student tickets please' so far, so pretty much we're set. We had breakfast at a great cafe in Plovdiv that had a featured beverage that was half Coca Cola, half coffee. Clearly these are my people, I've been drinking Diet Coke and coffee mixes since high school. The border crossing was decently straightforward, as we were the only non-Turks, non-Bulgarians on the bus. Last night in Istanbul, we got in with enough time to hie to my favorite restaurant, Bodrum Manti, for dinner before heading to buy tickets and get to the bus station. At the bus station in Istanbul, we had some time to kill, so we followed some signs Kel saw to what may be the world's sketchiest Internet cafe. It was in this sub-basement level of the bus station, in this maze of shops and commerce businesses that clearly had been abandoned for quite some time. It looked like the set of a horror movie, and it smelled like one too. When we got back to the main level, we saw a huge, clean, non-sketchy internet cafe literally right in front of our noses, that we somehow had missed entirely in our singleminded determination to choose the least legit business in the entire Istanbul bus station (a difficult task, as those who've spent time there are well aware). So much for an auspicious start to the trip...

Hope you all are doing great!
Happy New Year,
-R

Holidays

Well it's quieted down somewhat here in Ankara--I gained 3 houseguests, lost two, and now am gearing up to take off for a jam-packed tour of Eastern Europe with my sister. This week has been mostly settling things up and packing/buying wool socks and other warm things in preparation for the snowy wilds of the Balkans; Lonely Planet casually mentioned that the part of Romania we're passing through gets to -35 Celsius in the winter. Oh boy.
Last week I picked up Kel and her 2 friends in Istanbul, after some miscommunication on meeting points and rain. We headed straight out to Arnavutkoy, to drop my stuff off at my hostel and then to have manti at my favorite Istanbul restaurant, Bodrum manti. They all got different kinds of manti, and we stayed for coffee and got free dessert, so it was a good time. We then headed over to ARIT, where I was staying, because there was a lecture there that night by a professor from Princeton. I'd been told it was going to be about Ataturk, which I was excited about, but when we got there, the guy started talking about 14th century Ottoman expansion into the Balkans, so we were a little bewildered. It was a really interesting lecture though, and we met up with friends and fellow Fulbrighters of mine at the reception afterward. ARIT, incidentally, is the American Research Institute in Turkey, a very awesome organization with offices, libraries, and hostels in Istanbul and Ankara. I stayed at the Ankara hostel when I moved in August.
We took the bus back to Ankara Tuesday, after Kel and her friend Katelyn toured Dolmabahce Palace and the 3 of us headed over to Kadikoy for the Tuesday Bazaar only to be told that the Tuesday Bazaar was "finished". We were a little confused, and later saw a news report of policemen violently suppressing something at the Tuesday Bazaar earlier that day, so I'm not sure what was going on in Asian Istanbul that morning. Our bus back to Ankara was a little interesting: the ticket man called it a 'bistro bus,' because it was 2 levels, and the bottom level had a 20-seat cafe, serving hot snacks. It was pretty darn cool. It also had wireless internet, but I sadly neglected to bring my computer, so couldn't enjoy that.
Wednesday, I sent the three travellers off to Ulus to see the citadel and Museum while I made stew and danced around my apartment to Christmas music. Once they got back, we all headed to the Vatican Embassy for midnight Mass, which was at 7:30. We arrived early enough to snag a pew, but over half of the people who showed up ended up standing in the back, in the aisles, and even behind the altar. It was packed. There also was beefed-up security, as there was at least one Ambassador and his family there (I think it was the French Ambassador). The Papal Nuncio celebrated Mass, which was very cool as I'd never seen him before; the Papal Nuncio is the Vatican's Ambassador, an archbishop in his own right, and usually assigned to a posting for life. They are awesome. Mass was beautiful: all the songs were sung in English, Latin, French, and Turkish, and there were songs in Tagalog and an African language as well. The readings were in Spanish and Portuguese, and the Gospel was in Arabic (and then in English by little kids). After Communion, some of the members of the African community here in Ankara sang 2 songs and danced through the center of the church, which was really lovely. A friend of mine tried her hand at matchmaking and found a Marine to sit next to me for Mass; he was nice but a little confused by all the Latin as he wasn't Catholic. Anyway, he seemed nice and is also here for a year, but I never end up running into the Marines in the city (maybe they go to all the student bars that I never get to). After Mass, there were homemade Christmas cookies and spice cakes and wassail in the church library, and I introduced my posse of houseguests to an Arabic-speaking acquaintance of mine, who proceeded to chat with them for a good while. As we left, he told me Kel's Arabic was "super", so that was nice.
Back at chez moi, we had an enjoyable Christmas Eve of chicken stew, hummus, and Love Actually. Kel and I got to talk with the extended family via Skype, and opened our gifts over video; we both got lefse boards, and were inordinately excited about that. The next day was a bit of a lazy day: my posse went off in search of Anitkabir while I got some work done, and we watched Christmas movies all day. I didn't really want to cook, so we went to my neighborhood traditional Turkish restaurant for guvec and gozleme, which they'd not had before. The next day, Katelyn and Tommy both skipped town, one for the airport and a flight home, the other for Istanbul and a flight to Serbia, so it was a little discombobulated around the old apartment. I had my last Turkish lesson, which was bittersweet, as I really enjoyed those lessons and learned quite a bit.
Friday night Kel and I met up with several of the Ankarali Fulbrighters for dinner at Sedir and dancing at the Turkish American Association's 'Send in the New Year' party. The party was a lot of fun, and we all danced dorkily, as is our wont. It helped that I think we were the only yabancis in the room. Kel wowed the crowd with her snazzy Ecuadorian-night-club dancing, and Joan and George I think were polka-ing it up at one point, so we were an eclecticly fun group of dancers.
The weekend was pretty much given over to working on this round of grad apps, planning out our trip, and watching way too many movies (I have to get my fill of internet before going computerless for the entire length of the Balkans, you know). I stopped by ASTI to see when we could get a bus to Plovdiv, which is our destination in Bulgaria, and was slightly disheartened when, after asking the Varan representative "Bulgaristan'a gidiyor musunuz?", he responded with "I'm sorry, I don't speak English." Fantastic. At least the Metro rep was appreciative of my Turkish and had 6 busses to Bulgaria, to boot.
The whole neighborhood loves Kel; every single checkout girl stopped to ask if we were sisters, and how long she's in town, and such, as well as the corner shop guy next door and the restauranteurs down the street. Today I stopped by one of the grocery stores without Kel, and the checkout girl asked if my sister had left already, in a slightly worried tone; I explained that she'd be in town for a few more days still.
It snowed here for Christmas, which was wonderful, and again on Sunday, which really brought winter to the city. I'd forgotten how much I love taking a walk while the snow falls. We should see plenty of that up north; I'll probably be ready for another trip to Gaziantep or Antakya by the time we get back.
I'm heading out tomorrow for Istanbul, and then on to the shiny metropolis of Plovdiv, and then beyond to the great cold wonders of Eastern Europe. I'll try to keep this updated on the road, and inshallah will be able to upload pictures from larger cities along the way.
Hope your holidays were/are relaxing and wonderful,
kendine iyi bak,
-R

A Few Pics from Bursa

Ceylan and me in our headscarves outside the Yesil Cami, so named because of its green-tiled interior.


Minarets at Yesil Cami; I really love minarets, they're so beautiful, and generally pretty well-designed and unique.


Part of the tomb complex at Muradiye Cami; there are about a dozen buildings, each with several-to-quite-a-few people buried inside, mostly royal. Apparently, every single imperial son buried there was murdered by a member of their immediate family for succession reasons.


Kebabci Iskender's crack doner-shaving team; serving up portions of the original Iskender Kebap. Also note how ridiculously bundled-up I am--I think I'm wearing 4 layers in this photo because like an idiot I went on vacation in December in the mountains with sweaters but not a coat. Also notice how fast that guy's hands are moving, he is a meat-shaving master.

It's been a quiet few days here in Ankara; pretty much I've just been cooking, shopping, and catching up with folks here there and everywhere. Kelly landed this morning in Istanbul, where she's doing the tourist thing in Sultanahmet for the weekend, and where I'll pick her up on Monday as long as she doesn't get horribly lost in Besiktas.
I also have apparently become one of the identifying characters of my neighborhood, the old men at the kuruyemis/corner store next to my building notice when I'm gone for a few days, and love telling me how great my Turkish is (unfortunately, it's entirely hyperbole, but I appreciate it), and the checkout people at the grocery store half a block down the street compete to get me in their line. I'm hoping it's because I'm an endearingly odd yabanci, but who knows...
On that note,
kendine iyi bak,
and hope all you-all are having a great holiday season!
-R

This Ankarali Life

Lots has happened since my last blog update (I know, I've been remiss): I finished my language grant, went on vacation, and had the usual motley adventures that seem to spring up when one lives in this city. I sadly can't go into too much detail without taking up way too many paragraphs, so I'll give the Cliffs Notes version:
Met up with my friend Jim for Thanksgiving, which was really fun; it was good to see someone I've known longer than 4 months, and adventures ensued. Came back to a crazy few days of grad school applications and last-minute Turkish lessons before the language part of my grant officially ended and Kurban Bayram began. Kurban Bayram (or Eid, if you're an Arabic speaker, or Tabasky if you're from Niger) is the sacrifice holiday, and every family slaughtered a sheep. I did not; what would I do with a sheep? I did venture out that evening to go grocery shopping, only to find every single shop on my street other than the bakery closed. So I had pogaca and chocolate-chip cookies for dinner. So traditional, and so healthy. I was really relieved to see the stores reopen slowly over the rest of the week, so I could buy some pomegranates and vegetables. At the end of the week, I hopped a bus to Bursa, which is a bit south and east of Istanbul, to meet up with 2 Istanbullu Fulbrighters for a whirlwind vacation. Bursa is famous for its silk market, its textile industry, being the birthplace of Iskender kebap, and the Yesil Cami, or Green Mosque. To gloss over a lot of history, the Ottomans kind of hung tight there for a bit before conquering Constantinople. Ceylan, Emily and I had Iskender kebap at the restaurant that invented the dish: there is a line out the front of the restaurant all day long, and when you enter they ask you how much Iskender kebap you'd like. There's nothing else on the menu. Once you're seated with your kebap, they have waiters walking around with pitchers of hot melted butter to pour over the kebap.
A side note: Iskender kebap is kebap meat (so, usually beef, lamb, or a combination of the 2), shaved doner-style onto a plate with chucks of bread lining the bottom. The meat is then smothered in yogurt and usually something tomatoey as well. It's wildly unhealthy, but delicious, and is named after Alexander the Great. It's said to have been his favorite dish, but then again the Turks say a lot of things.
Anyway, in Bursa we also went through the silk han (marketplace), spent a lot of quality time in the bazaar, had some pretty excellent salep (it was pretty darn cold out). We also spent a lot of quality time in mosques: Bursa has 3 decent-sized and historic mosques, and Emily and Ceylan both are studying Islamic art. Our first mosque was the Yesil Cami, which was gorgeous. The caretaker turned on the lights just for us (after we spent a lot of time trying to see green tile patterns in the semidarkness), and even let us go up and explore the Sultan's Loge, where the Sultan's family prayed. It's on the second level, so the royal family didn't have to brush up with the ordinary people, and was pretty cool. The other two mosques had some interesting parts, but had both been extensively damaged and restored on the interior, and really not very well. The Ulu Cami in particular was this huge gorgeous old building pretty much whitewashed on the inside and decorated with Arabic script, which I think normally looks beautiful but which was really overdone there.
I got back to Ankara late, and spent the rest of the weekend unpacking, before my next houseguest showed up: Kirk, another Fulbrighter from Istanbul in town for a few days to meet with professors and such in Ankara. I spent some quality time shopping for warm clothes for my sister when she shows up fresh from Cairo's warm climate, had a fantastic lasagna with some Fulbright friends, and have been working on the odds and ends that invariably clutter life for most of this week. Next week, I'm heading to Istanbul to catch a lecture on Ataturk, which promises to be interesting, and to pick up Kelly and her 2 friends from Cairo and shepherd them back to Ankara just in time for Christmas (with a stop at the best restaurant in Istanbul and one of the 3 best in Turkey en route. Gotta get my manti fix).
I'm looking forward to Christmas, although it'll be a little weird being the only ones celebrating. There are decorations up all over the city, particularly in the shopping malls, but they're for New Years. They have New Years trees, decorated in red and green, with New Years presents underneath. New Years lights are everywhere. And there are even New Years Santas. It's a little bizarre, but definitely appreciated.
That's about it for the time being; I'm slowly uploading more photos to Flickr, and have part of my Bursa trip up so far. I'll try to post some highlights here later.
Kendine iyi bak,
-R

Weekend activities in this neck of the woods

So I'm finally relaxing after a whirlwind of a weekend, only to pick right back up for another busy week. Life in Ankara is surprisingly full.
Thursday my friend Cat arrived in town, for Fulbright Thanksgiving later in the weekend, so I headed over to where she was staying and had a little Seker Bayram adventurers' reunion with her and Corey to start off the weekend. Friday, I got up in time for my Turkish lesson before heading to the 5M Migros to stock up on Thanksgiving ingredients, attempt to find vanilla extract (fruitless, there is apparently no vanilla extract in Turkey), and buy an immersion blender for Cat. I got back in time to get all gussied up for the St. Andrews Ball, put on by the British Embassy.
The St. Andrews Ball was an interesting experience. It was much smaller than the Marine Corps Ball, but was held at the same location, the Swisshotel. I got there Friday night to find media and television crews everywhere. Apparently, I walked in right behind the Fenerbahce football team. They were still in the lobby when I came in. For my American readers, this is roughly equivalent to going to a hotel in New England that the Patriots just checked into (or, if you're a Doffing, the Twins, in Boston ;) ). I got a few photos, but really don't know which player is which. It was exciting though. I met up with Cat, Corey, and Corey's boyfriend in the lobby, and we headed down to the ballroom and chatted for a bit with the rest of our tablemates. I knew just over half of the folks at our table, but everyrone was really nice, and I ended up sitting next to a New Zealander that I'd had dinner with before and a Japanese diplomat who spoke fluent Turkish and not-so-fluent English, and who I ended up spending most of the meal chatting with in Turkish. I was able to hold my own in discussing why Turkey shouldn't join the EU, and Turkish cinema, and my research, but my brain hurt afterward.
The ball was a celebration of Scotland, so everything was Scottish. Every table had a bottle of Scottish whiskey on it. The meal started out with a ceremonial cutting of the haggis. The owner of my favorite Ankaran Indian restaurant got up and gave a speech in a fantastic Scottish brogue (I understood one word, "knife") before flourishing a huge knife and spearing the haggis. It was pretty fun. We were then served haggis, which was interesting and actually not half bad. Dinner was not so Scottish: prime rib and other normal and delicious food. The menu was entirely in Scottish though, so I'm not sure exactly what all else we had.
The after-dinner entertainment was entirely Scottish dancing: highland social dances, reels and the like. It started out kind of interesting, and I did dance with my Japanese diplomat friend, but after awhile it got to be a little much: every song had a new dance that had to be taught to everyone, and we kept waiting for a DJ to come in, or for some more contemporary dancing. In the end, we left I think just before midnight and headed over to a French friend of Corey's' place. I got in pretty late, and was pretty exhausted the next morning when I had to get up to let in my houseguests.
Saturday morning, bright and early at 9:30, Tracey, Deirdre, and Alissa arrived at my place from the otogar. These 3 are Fulbright English teaching assistants out towards the coast in the West, and had taken an overnight bus from Izmir to be in Ankara for Fulbright Thanksgiving, which was later that day. Luckily for me, they were also exhausted, so we all went back to sleep until a much more decent hour. I finally had to get up to get started making my dishes for Fulbright Thanksgiving: I was bringing mashed potatoes, hummus, and wild rice (so, an absurd amount of starch). My houseguests brought an apple pie with them from Izmir and make a chocolate pie at my place, before we all headed over to Corey's. There was a really great mix of people at Corey's: all but two of the Ankara Fulbrighters, and my 3 houseguests and Cat; I think we were 15 altogether. One of the Ankarali Fulbrighters brought her 4-year-old daughter, who was absolutely adorable and precocious. Given the age range of the Fulbrighters (we go up to at least the mid-60s), it felt like we had a whole family spread there.
Fulbright Thanksgiving was delicious. We were able to get a turkey from the US Embassy (they fly them in for the Embassy community, so it was a Butterball and everything), and figured out how to make it, even though I think only one of us had ever made one before. Everyone brought a dish or several, so we ended up with broccoli-cheddar-bacon salad (Joan hoarded bacon bits from the States just for it), carrot-lentil salad, cacik, hummus, vegetable spreads, stuffing, gravy, homemade breads, 3 kinds of potatoes, wild rice, and I think more that I can't remember. It was oh so very American. After the dinner, we sat around in food comas and caught up on everyone's life and projects, and played a little Turkish Scrabble (the rules are a little different: you have to play with verb stems instead of the whole verb, and plurals aren't allowed, nor are any suffixes). Once we'd recovered from dinner a bit, we had dessert, with the pies, several kinds of cookies, and a wonderful, wonderful fruit salad (pomegranates are a good good thing) before settling down for more chatting and a nice game of UNO (it's so much easier to play when the 4-year-old will tell the whole table what cards she can see in peoples' hands...). It was just such a great day, and so nice to have that familiar Thanksgiving experience. I hadn't seen some of the Fulbrighters since orientation, so it was great to catch up, and we all got to do a little bragging and venting about living in Turkey.
After those few crazy days, I've taken it easy so far today. My houseguests left this morning, and now I've got to make and get through my to-do list before heading out for Thanksgiving part II, ex-Bay State Road edition.

Before I go, I thought I'd leave you all with this: http://www.hurriyet.com.tr/english/domestic/10419495.asp?scr=1
which I find really amusing. It's even more amusing when you realize that a second court order has been enacted to ban YouTube, which does absolutely nothing more than the first one and thus is entirely superfluous. I love this crazy country...

kib,
-R

Some Nemrut Pics

These are the statues on the West face of Nemrut Dagi, before sunset



Sunset from Nemrut Dagi. I don't remember the last time I was so cold. It was gorgeous, though.



Me and one of the statues on the East side

Real life, Ankara-style

My last few posts have been primarily about my Seker Bayram trip, but now that I've finally got all my photos of that online, I figured at this point I'll just post more detailed captions on Flickr and move on here to more recent events. Finally.
Life just gets busier and busier here. I'm currently taking one class at ODTU, and have two different Turkish tutors. Last week, I started volunteering as a substitute English teacher for refugees through the Ankara Refugee Support Group and Meryem Ana, the church at the Vatican Embassy; those classes are twice a week. My first day there was quite a fun challenge; the refugees speak pretty much no Turkish, and I speak neither Arabic nor Farsi, so I got to put my acting skills, such as they are, to good practice. I'm not sure how often I'll actually have the opportunity to teach, but I hope to be able to return relatively often.
Last weekend was pretty darn busy for me as well. On Friday, I had my Turkish lesson (luckily, the closer one, not the 1.5-hours-away one), and then skedaddled over to Ulus to go to a hamam with 3 of my fellow Fulbrighters. It was fantastic; we went to Tarihi Merkez Hamami, which is an 18th century hamam and still very much a neighborhood institution. It was also, compared to Istanbul hamams, wonderfully cheap: 20 lira for the works, compared to up to 60 in Istanbul's main hamams. We got scrubbed within an inch of our lives and then wandered back to Cankaya, where we met up with a few more Fulbrighters for dinner. On Saturday, I met up with my friend Jen for lunch before we got mani/pedis, which we'd won at the ARIT open house. When we got to the salon for our 1pm appointment, we were told that the person who did the mani/pedis on our certificates wasn't in til 4. So we left, and I ran a few errands, before meeting back up at 4. We didn't get out of the salon until after 6, which was kind of an issue, as we were both going to the Marine Corps Ball that night, which started at 6:30. After a mad scramble back home, into my dress, into makeup/accessories, and up to the Swisshotel, I arrived fashionably late just after 7, just in time for the presentation of colors and the speeches. The ball was really fun; a wide section of the diplomatic community was there, as well as 4 or 5 of us Fulbrighters, and a sizeable contingent from the USO (including the Ying Yang Twins, which was kind of cool), who were on their way through Ankara on a whirlwind tour. After the speeches, they served dinner, which was followed by a live band and later a DJ. It was a great chance to catch up with folks I don't see as often as I should (for all we live in the same city...), and I kept running into people I knew (for a city of 5 million people, Ankara is really a small town, where everybody knows everybody). After dancing with friends and other folks, I cut out just after midnight, a la Cinderella. This weekend, I've got another ball to go to, this one hosted by the Brits, which should also be a lot of fun, as Fulbrighters from out of town are in Ankara for the weekend and coming along.
Speaking of this coming weekend, it looks to be fun and a half: we're celebrating Fulbright Thanksgiving this Saturday, with most of the out-of-town Fulbrighters coming in for the weekend. We have a real turkey (surprisingly less than easy to find in a country with the same name), cranberry sauce, and are potlucking everything else. Most of the outlying Fulbrighters I've not seen since orientation, so it'll be great to catch up on everything.
Other than that, life continues to be steadily busy, and I continue to learn more and more Turkish, and more about Turkish foreign policy every day. Next week, I'll be taking off for Thanksgiving for a little ex-RA expat reunion, Madrid-style. Stay tuned for pics.
kib,
-R

The Rest of Bayram: Sanliurfa

In my quest to finally get up-to-date on this so I can write more on current happenings in my Ankaran life, I'm going to try and get the rest of my Bayram trip posted all at once here...
We got into Sanliurfa (also known as just plain Urfa) after dark on Tuesday night of the Seker Bayram holiday. We grabbed a taxi to take from the bus station to our hotel (we'd called ahead and reserved a room from Diyarbakir; one of the perks of knowing decent amounts of Turkish).
When we got in the cab, we immediately noticed that it had no meter. The driver was attempting to leave the parking lot of the bus station when we asked him how much it was going to be to take us to our hotel; it’s a good thing we asked, because he quoted us 10 lira, for a trip that we knew had to be much cheaper. When we told him that there was absolutely no way we ere going to pay that, he tried to argue that we were getting a really cheap rate, and tried to drive off with us in the cab, at which point I opened my door to keep us at the bus station til our money situation was resolved. We finally all agreed on 5 lira, which was still too much but at least not exorbitant. The cab was sketchy as heck, too; one of my travel companions was more than a little freaked out by the whole situation, but we got to our hotel with no additional fuss. When we got there and checked in, it was clear we were getting out of The East: the front desk had a wireless router, had we schlepped our laptops along we could’ve had wireless internet. Next time...
Our hotel was pretty nice; our room had an enclosed balcony and breakfast was included in the price. In the morning, we had bread, olives, tomatoes, and cheese in the ambitiously air-conditioned breakfast room before setting out to the tourist center of Urfa. Urfa is really handy for tourists in that pretty much everything one would want to see in the city abuts one central park/public space. It’s brilliant, as you can see everything, and you know where absolutely everything is. It also works well for Urfa’s guide program: the city has a program set up where high school students interested in careers in the tourism industry guide visitors around for free, to practice their English (or other foreign language of choice) and their tourist demeanor. Longtime readers of this blog might remember Le Xuan and my adventures with our incredibly overeager tour guide, Cebrail, last time I was in Urfa. Luckily, we must have looked like we knew what we were doing this time, as we attracted no would-be guides (or perhaps they were all at home for Bayram, but either way it worked out great for us). We got to the complex of mosques that mostly mark major events in the life of Abraham (he was born/lived in the city), and explored/took pictures for a bit. After a half hour or so, Corey and I left Cat to meticulously photograph everything interesting and headed downtown to find a travel agency for our Nemrut plans. We’d both been through Urfa before, so this ended up working out great. We set off through the (largely closed) bazaar, and ended up taking an unexpected scenic route through a really old neighborhood on our way back to the city center. Once we got to the main business street, we found that the tour company we’d hoped to use was closed for the holiday. We stopped by another agency, which catered predominantly to Turks, and were a bit discouraged to hear that they only had a tour planned that Friday or Saturday for Nemrut (in order to get over to Antep, and then back to Ankara on time, we pretty much had to go up Nemrut that day, Wednesday, or the next). With the promise of a phone call to see what our options would be for getting a tour organized for the next day, we headed out and decided to stop by our hotel to see if they could help us find an open tour operator. They luckily had the cell phone number of the company we’d originally tried to stop by, and the owner of the company headed straight over to our hotel to meet us. We had a good long chat over the logistics and options of doing a tour to Nemrut, debating back and forth over whether to see both the sunrise and the sunset, or one or the other, whether we could squeeze into a car, or whether he thought he could find more people and make a minibus a better idea (2 of our friends from Gaziantep were joining us in Urfa for the Nemrut part of our trip, making us 5, which would have been a squeeze in a car with a driver). We ended up bargaining down the price and deciding on the two-day trip option, leaving the next morning, seeing both sunset and sunrise on the mountain, and the being dropped off in Adiyaman the next day to catch a bus to Gaziantep.
After settling all the details of our Nemrut tour, Corey and I met up with Alexandra and Erin, the English Teaching Assistant and English Language Fellow living in Gaziantep. We all met up with Cat for lunch at Halil Ibrahim Sofrasi. We’d been at a restaurant of the same name in Van and it was amazing, so we were hoping for the same experience in Sanliurfa. It wasn’t quite as fabulous, but it did have great patlican kebap and overlooked the main tourist park area. After lunch, we strolled through one of the mosques and around the sacred carp stream before heading up to the fortress (I’ve explained what the various parts of Sanliurfa’s mosques and such are in my posts about Sanliurfa 3 years ago, if you’re interested, check out my April entries from 2006). We spent the afternoon on the fortress, strolling, chatting, and taking some really fun photos. While we were on the fortress, we met a teacher who had been a Fulbright Teacher Exchange participant last year; she taught science in the Bronx, but is back in Istanbul this year teaching. She and two of her friends were also on vacation in Sanliurfa, and thinking of going up Nemrut the next day. After chatting with the 3 of them for a bit, we climbed down from the citadel and struck off to find dinner. Sanliurfa is known for its “Turkish Night” dinners, in restaurants in old Ottoman mansions. We headed to one, only to find it completely booked for the night. Luckily, with our mad Turkish skillz we were able to talk to the host, and he called around to other restaurants, found one with open places, and had them send a guy over to bring us to the right place. Bizarrely, we bumped into Juliya (the former Fulbright teacher) and her friends, and had dinner with them. Dinner was really good; they had a set menu, with 2 different soups, mezes, and a communal kebap platter with chicken, kofte, eggplant, tomatoes, and peppers. The real fun part, though, was the music: they had a traditional Ottoman/Turkish band, which played folk songs for literally hours. There was a Turkish package tour group there, and they all got up and danced around the dinner tables, more enthusiastically than skillfully. I got some video shots of the music and dancing, which are mostly up on Flickr. After a bit more dancing, we headed back to our hotel, because we had to be up eeeearly for our trip up Nemrut.
And, as this is already ridiculously long, I think I’ll leave Nemrut to another post. Photos of Sanliurfa are finally up on my Flickr account though!
-R

Bayram: Diyarbakir

So I left off after Van in my previous post, which was really just the beginning of our epic journey. After we felt we'd given Van a good go-through, we hopped a bus to Diyarbakir, by way of Tatvan and Batman, which took most of the day. Aside from the hideous yellow bus decor, the ride wasn't anything to complain about; the first part was along the shore of Lake Van, which was beautiful. We got in to Diyarbakir just in time for the breaking of the fast for the last day of Ramazan--the streets were full of hungry people in a celebratory mood.
We checked in to our hotel (it was bright orange and silver outside, with flamingo-pink rooms, pretty darn fun), where they gave us the top floor room with city views from 2 sides. They were pretty excited to have us stay there, the front desk staff also brought us tea to our room and called to ask if we needed anything else. I think at least some of it had to do with the fact that they were like 20-year-old guys who clearly did not spend much time around girls of a similar age...
Anyway, we set out to find dinner, which is surprisingly difficult in places that really celebrate Ramazan if you're trying to eat after Iftar: restaurants open for the Iftar meal, everyone eats exactly at sundown, and if you get there later, there is no food. We ran into this problem in Diyarbakir, but finally found this back-alley 3-storey restaurant with an open table on their roof, and had a great meal of kebaps and roasted vegetables while watching cats fight in the ruined house below our rooftop seats. On our way back from dinner, we stopped at a han (old caravansary) and spent some time looking at/learning about carpets and chatting with a very nice shop owner. Protip: the cheapest carpets (and they were beautiful) I've seen in Turkey are in Diyarbakir.


The next day we got up bright and early to explore the city. Diyarbakir, like Van, has breakfast salons, which are a fantastic idea: they have full breakfast menus, but will generally just bring you a full Turkish breakfast: boiled egg, honey, thick cream, several kinds of cheeses, olives, cucumbers, tomatoes, and lots of bread to eat everything with. It's a good start to the day, especially if (like me) one is not a morning person.
From breakfast, we checked out bus prices to Urfa and climbed the city walls for a bit, getting increasingly perturbed by the Incredibly Loud Explosions we kept hearing. The packs of small children running around with guns also were a little disconcerting. We finally figured it out: the kids had all been given toy (...mostly toy) guns for Seker Bayram, and were out in the streets having epic gun battles with their friends, shooting up the town with pop-cap guns, BB guns, and fireworks for added effect. They also were smoking up a storm, but that's more normal for the area than gun-toting child gangs.

This is, on a micro level, what we found in Diyarbakir; I took this in the old Armenian Church, where these kids live with their families. These kids are pretty young--the older ones were out in the streets having more intense mock battles.


So we explored the walls, which are really fun to clamber over, and have stunning views of the Tigris River Valley (...and the poor section of Old Diyarbakir on the other side).


After that, we headed over to the Chaldean Church, which I'd not seen the last time I'd been in town. It was beautiful, and still in use, albeit by like 4 families (not a lot of religious minorities in Diyarbakir, really). We got a tour by the very nice caretaker, who also gave us Bayram candy (Seker Bayram is a little like Halloween in that kids go around to all their neighbors and relatives to get candy and money). We then headed to the old Armenian Catholic Church, which is not functioning as it has no roof or interior contents. It is beautiful though. From there, we dodged the rain on our way over to the Syrian Orthodox Church, which is designed a bit more like Byzantine churches, and still in use. At each church, families lived in the courtyards; I can't imagine what it must be like to grow up living in a church, they all seemed pretty proud of where they lived though. And the courtyards were pretty cute.

The Chaldean Catholic Church


The Armenian Catholic Church


The Syrian Orthodox Church

After seeing the churches, we wound our way through several back alleys to find Taranci'nin Evi, or the poet Cahit Sitki Taranci's house, which is now a museum. It was pretty simple, with models of late Ottoman daily life and samples of Taranci's work and correspondence. I really enjoyed it, because Taranci is one of my favorite Turkish poets, and I spent a lot of time translating him for my directed study a few years ago. While at Taranci'nin Evi, we ran into some teenage girls in Diyarbakir with family for Bayram. They were really nice, and we chatted for a while about school, what we were doing in the region, and such. After we left the poet's house, we ran into them in another part of the city; they were so bubbly and eager to talk with us, and we were more than happy to speak more Turkish.

Taranci'nin Evi

By this time it was getting to be about time for our bus to Sanliurfa, so we looked around for a restaurant, decided we weren't that hungry, and then found...an egg sandwich stand! Those of you who were in Niger with me might remember that I'm quite a big fan of the humble egg sandwich; it's pretty much the perfect meal, and not too big. This one sadly had no onions or Maggi, and had Turkish ketchup instead, but was really good. We enjoyed our sandwiches and then ambled over to find the bus to the otogar, where we headed out of town to Sanliurfa, arriving late that night.
I find it odd that I've been to Diyarbakir twice now and both times seen guns in the streets and heard explosions in the air, but both times were not normal days for Diyarbakirlis. There's something about that city though, I really love it, and I think it might be my favorite city in Turkey. I certainly will be back.

Alright, that's more than enough for now; as the pics above suggest, I've loads of new photos up on Flickr; the ones of Diyarbakir's Armenian Church are particularly good, for my usual photography standards (if I do say so myself). Hopefully I can get the rest of Bayram up here soon and then move on to more recent things, finally...

And I'm back (at least for now)!

Hey folks!

Apparently the Turkish judicial system figured that banning all of Blogger and Blogspot in reaction to one or two blogs it found offensive was not a good deal. At least for the moment, Blogger is back up and running.
The latest news on what caused the banning is that a television channel pushed for the ban because there were a few blogs, hosted by blogger, that detailed how a sports-loving Turk could watch their soccer/football matches of choice online for free, instead of paying for this channel's premium sports service. Yeah. A bit of an overreaction, no? A pretty detailed (and in English!) article can be found here.
One thing that was news to me is that Turkey has blocked over 1100 websites; I've come across a few, but definitely nowhere near 1100. I would love to see a list.
As a short update on life-at-the-moment before I return to the rest of my Bayram trip, my days have been getting more and more full here, as I've started up Turkish lessons again with a vengeance. One of my tutors is based out at Bilkent University, which takes me over an hour and a half to get to, so for every 3-hour lesson, I'm gone for over 6 hours. Not so easy to get things done.
This weekend, a friend of mine stopped in Ankara on his trip round the world; I hadn't seen him since he graduated BU 3 years ago, so it was great to catch up and do a little gossiping about our mutual acquaintances (that'd be you, Boyd House residents...). I took his to Anitkabir for some good old Turkish nationalism and personality cult fun, and we explored my neighborhood. I made the discovery that the bakery across the street from my building is gourmet and goooood; also spendy, but not ridiculous, so this may be a bad discovery for me in the long run. After Kevin left for the bus station and Goreme Sunday morning, I went running with my running club and headed to the expat-ish meet-up at Minna's in the evening. Apparently, I have become a regular at Minna's, which is a bit odd, because I'm not normally a regular at anything.
Monday I went to the Ambassador's residence, as one of my friends and fellow Fulbrighters was giving a speech there. It was on Ataturk in the Turkish War of Independence, so all the military guys with the Embassy were there, as well as pretty much the entire Turkish military leadership (I don't know exactly who they all were, they stuck to themselves a bit). That was a bit overwhelming, I don't normally hobnob with military brass, but the speech was really interesting, the food was great, I met up with a lot of friends there, and I met a military attache from the Embassy and am now going to the Marine Ball in November. Now I've got to find a dress...somehow I neglected to bring a formal to Turkey...
The rest of the week is far less highbrow for me: I had class today, where we discussed how Turkey was totally in the right to take Alexandretta, no doubt about it, what there are no Arabs there. We did get to more neutral ground, but it is fun to study Turkish foreign policy inside Turkey itself, that's for sure. I have more Turkish tutoring sessions throughout the week, and am starting with a new tutor on Friday who's supposed to be excellent, so I'm excited about that.
Today was damp and rainy, perfect soup weather, so I made a large pot of chicken vegetable stew. I still have yet to try out my oven, as it's under the sink and a little scary looking, but I hopefully will soon, as I've not made chocolate-chip cookies since arriving in Turkey, which is a bit of a travesty.
Ok, this is more than long enough, so on that note I'll leave off,
-R

Access to the site denied

Hey folks,

I'm more than due for a much longer update, but just wanted to get this post up quickly. As of this morning, Blogger has been blocked in Turkey. When I attempt to access any Blogger site/blogspot address, all I get is large red letters notifying me that "Bu siteye erişim mahkeme kararıyla engellenmiştir."
I'm still working out what I can do for posting; I'm currently using a proxy but inshallah can find a better solution. Stay tuned.
I feel like such a rebel now, posting on my banned blog ...
Kendine iyi bak,
-R

In the SouthEast, photo by the fabulous Cat

Starting Point: Van

For Seker Bayram, I headed to the Southeast with two good friends, Cat and Corey. We flew to Van, and made our way over to Gaziantep, by way of Nemrut and a few more places.
This is our second day, on top of Van's castle, which is right on the shore of Lake Van. The area is ringed with mountains, and it's just beautiful. It's also pretty large as old fortifications go, so we spent a good long while clambering the length and breadth of it. Van (pronounced "von", like the von Trapp family) is not so south, but very east; it's near the Iranian border. We were there for the last few days of Ramazan, so we were able to have the Iftar (sunset fast-breaking meal) with what seemed like half the town's population; it was quite an experience, and delicious food as well. We took a day trip out to Hosap to see a medieval Kurdish castle, only to be told by helpful primary school children that the castle was locked for the day. Whoops. No minibusses would stop and pick us up for the 60 km ride back to Van, so we ended up driving back with a very nice Kurdish businessman from Van and his 10-ish-year-old son. We were stopped by 3 checkpoints, and while the driver's credentials were scrupulously checked, and the vehicle pored over, the soldiers really didn't seem to give two hoots about us. It was really interesting to see though. When we got back to town, we got a little lost on our way to Van Kale, got directions to the dolmus stop by this really nice woman who invited us to her family's Iftar (we sadly already had reservations, but it's very representative of Vanlis, that she'd invite the 3 of us home less than 5 minutes after meeting us). We made it to Van Kale just before sunset, and got some great exploring and sightseeing in before the storm on the neighboring mountains got uncomfortably close and started lightening. At that point, we skedaddled down the citadel and grabbed a cab back downtown and to our Iftar. At least during Ramazan, there is really just one place that you should eat at in Van: Halil Ibrahim Sofrasi.
Oh, except for breakfast: Van has a Breakfast Street, literally a street filled with breakfast salons. I'm not a breakfast person, but I can get behind the idea of Breakfast Street. It was gooood stuff.
Alright, more stories later, I'm going to bed. Most of my Van photos are up on Flickr already, check them out! Quality-wise, they're much better than my Antakya pics...

In Van, Southeast Turkey

Last Sunday, atop Van Kale overlooking Lake Van at sunset. First stop on our whirlwind Southeast highlights tour.

Orientation, Ankara-style

So I figured before I started regaling you all with my adventures in the East, I should back up and get around to writing about Fulbright Orientation, which was a week and a half ago, right before we left for vacation. It was held in Ankara, literally 3 blocks from my apartment, which was pretty darn handy for me, at the Turkish American Association.
The Istanbullus all came to Ankara together the day before orientation, so I met up with them when they got in for lunch. Afterwards, they wanted to see a bit of the city, so I took them up to the citadel and we watched the sun set as the call to prayer echoed around us from mosques surrounding the hill. It was really beautiful, and I think the call to prayer from citadels is one of my favorite experiences here in Turkey. We got a lot of chatting in on the way to and from the citadel, so I got to know more of the Istanbullus (as well as an ETA from Balikesir, who we bumped into at the hotel). On the way back, we stopped at this great fish restaurant in Kizilay before strolling back to their hotel; I felt like quite the tour guide showing the whole group around my city, and hopefully dispelled some of Ankara's reputation as depressing and dull (it really isn't, folks; I like my city!).
The actual orientation lasted 2 days, and consisted mainly of various academics, Embassy personnel, and Fulbright folks giving informative sessions. While the sessions varied in their informativeness, I couldn't help but note that a lot of the information they presented would've been useful for me 3 months ago when I arrived, but was pretty much useless now that I'd moved in and took care of bureaucracy myself. Oh well, this seems to be the way Fulbright works. It was a great chance to meet the whole Fulbright staff though, as well as the other Fulbrighters. I'd known about most of the other Student Researchers and English Teaching Assistants, as we'd been exchanging introductory emails over the summer, but it was a surprise to meet several Lecturers, Senior Researchers, and Teacher Exchange Fulbrighters. They all were really nice, and quite a bit older than most of the student researchers and ETAs. As a bonus, almost all of them are based in Ankara, and at least 2 (and their significant others) are in my neighborhood. So that was good to find out. I also got in touch with my professor from 2 years ago at our welcome reception at the Ambassador's residence; she's the wife of the head of the Turkish Fulbright Commission, and I took Communications in IR from her when I studied abroad here before, small world (the class turned out to be primarily an English class, but it was awesome, and I learned quite a bit). On the second day, we toured the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations, which is a really nice museum, but it was my 4th time there, and my 3rd time had been just about a month ago, so I wasn't quite as thrilled as I could have been.
The Museum does have a great collection, and does have material written in English, but, as with most Turkish museums, really has a dearth of explication, which could've added so much to the experience. Maybe in my next life I'll design museum exhibits...
After the museum, the plan was to let us explore Ulus, and wander back towards Cankaya, but the weather was not exactly conducive for such things. It started pouring, so after a bit I grabbed a cab back to Cankaya along with George and Joan, a couple who were staying at the same research hostel I'd stayed at when I first arrived in Ankara. On our way home it started hailing, so I'm thinking it was a good idea to abandon the Ulus plan.
We ended orientation with an informal get-together at Corey's; it was really nice, as at first it was only the Ankaralis, so we had a good chance to bond before the other folks showed up. It's really interesting to see what other people are doing, and what their connection to Turkey is--some of the older folks have been coming here for over 30 years, while many of the ETAs have not had any Turkish experience, and are going to be located in disparate cities with less of an English-speaking infrastructure. I'm really so impressed at how well they've managed, living on cities with very little English when they speak no Turkish. Lord knows I've had days when I've wanted to throw in the towel, and I'm surrounded by expats and speak Turkish.
It looks as though it's going to be a good year, Fulbright-people-wise, and I think I'll be doing quite a bit of travelling to visit the non-Ankaralis (actually, I already have, but that's a story for my next post, on my vacation).
On that note,
-R
(P.S. I'm uploading new photos as I type, check them out :) )

In which Cat's Turkish family saves the day

I am just back in Ankara after my whirlwind tour of the Southeast with my intrepid travelling companions Corey and Cat. Stories, photos, videos, and details will of course be forthcoming later, but I just had to tell you-all about our incredible trip home last night.
We'd arrived in Gaziantep on Friday, and before leaving the otogar went to buy tickets home on a Saturday overnight bus. We started at the better companies, feeling that a splurge at the end of our trip would be pretty nice, but quickly found out that it might be a problem getting home. The first 4 or 5 companies we talked to only had tickets available for Tuesday night, a full 3 days after we wanted/needed to return. So we went round every single company, asking even the sketchiest of places whether they had 3 tickets on Saturday evening to Ankara. It looked like we'd have to send 2 people home Sunday midday and one person home immediately Friday afternoon for a bit, until finally, at the last place, the ticket sellers said that yes, they had 3 tickets, and could even seat 2 of us together. We were obviously happy and relieved, paid for the tickets, and left to see Gaziantep and visit our friends there.
All this was well and good until last night. We got to the otogar in plenty of time, double-checked with the guys that sold us our tickets that we were in the right place and at the right gate, and pretty much chilled until our bus arrived. When it did, it looked a little sketchy: it had no company name on the side of it, and didn't even enter the otogar, we had to walk out to the street to get on. So we get on, and there's someone in one of our seats. And their ticket says they have that seat. At this point, we start to freak out a little that the company double-sold our seats, and immediately grab our other seats right before another group of people gets on and tries to take them. The bus attendant comes up, is very confused, looks at everyone's tickets, and gets on his cell phone and starts yelling at someone on the other end about how they sold seats twice. This went on for quite awhile before another guy came out from the ticket office, looked at everyone's tickets, and then told us that our tickets were for Sunday night. At that point, we got kicked off the bus, and off it went to Ankara.
So there we were, at 10:30 pm, in the Antep otogar with no transportation for another 23 hours, tired and really wanting to be on our way home. We were also really frustrated, as we'd asked for Cumartesi (Saturday) tickets, been told we were getting Saturday tickets, and been given Sunday tickets. And, of course, this being the end of Bayram, all the busses were full that night, as were all the flights the next morning. To say we were disheartened would probably be a bit of an understatement.
This is where Cat's Turkish family came to the rescue. For a tiny amount of backstory, Cat's boyfriend is Turkish, and his family kind of looks after her in Istanbul; they're very cute and very maternal. They also are the kind of people who can get things done. So, Cat called them, explained the situation, and put them on the phone with the bus company officials. It was very interesting listening to the bus official's side of that conversation; he started out with a lot of "the yabancis are lying, they're wrong, they asked for Sunday tickets" and ended suitably chastened. Cat's Turkish mom then spoke via phone with a second bus company, and got them to find us spots on an 11:30 bus later Saturday night. This was after every single bus company had told us there was absolutely no room. So we switched our tickets to the real Saturday night bus with the second company and waited. The bus finally got in at about 12:30, 1am, and we had to wait for everyone to get on, because although we had tickets, we had no seat assignments: we were told there would be 2 empty seats, and that the 3rd one of us could take the bus attendant's jumpseat next to the driver. It wasn't ideal, but it got us home.
So we wait, and the attendant finally gestured us on the bus, and there are no seats. None. Not only that, there are 3 other guys also standing in the aisle, also seatless. Fantastic. At this point, we're thinking we'll have to stand in the aisle for the entire 10 hour bus ride.
Luckily, even though being 3 young female yabancis couldn't entice anyone to give up their seats for us, it did apparently entitle us to the front stair area, whereas the other seatless guys were relegated to the back stairwell, all together. Corey and I shared the jumpseat, while Cat sat on the stair leading to the aisle, next to the driver. The jumpseat was definitely not made for 2 people, and neither Corey nor I slept for more than about 10 minutes. I also was on the side closer to the bus driver, which was enjoyable at first when we chatted about what we were doing in Turkey, but less enjoyable when he kept trying to pick me up and get my phone number. Internally, I was cringing of the thought of 10 whole hours of politely deflecting repeated requests for "senin cep numarasin" in Turkish while trying not to fall off my half-chair in my exhaustion. That's when I noticed the stairwell underneath the jumpseat looked low enough to sit in. So, at the first rest stop, I crawled under to the stairwell and slept there. Glamorous it was not. I did at least luck out and get a real seat for the last hour or so when a guy got off the bus early; that was pretty blissful. The other 2 were able to grab some sleep as well, but we rolled in to town pretty darn exhausted. I think the rest of my day will be pretty much napping and showering, and maybe uploading some photos; thank goodness we were able to get in today instead of tomorrow morning, or I'd've been a zombie for my classes.
I think the moral of the story is that if one ever, ever travels during Bayram, one should get one's tickets back to civilization well, well in advance. Or, at the very least, not try to get back to Ankara/Istanbul on the weekend. Well, I suppose I'll know next time...

The rest of my trip was really great; I have lots of experiences to relate. We climbed 5 castles or castle-type constructions, got shot with bb guns by little kids in Diyarbakir (something about that city is just crazy, but I really do like it for some reason), and had baklava in the Baklava Capitol of the World, Gaziantep. They'll have to wait until I have a little more sleep in me though :P
-R

The last week-ish has been full of excitement, adventure, and what-have-you. Not really, but it makes for a better opening than "It's been really busy," no? I started out my first week of school by trying to register for the only class Fulbright will fund, Turkish, only to be told that there was no set time, no set place, and there may not even be a class if the professor couldn't find enough people to fill 8 spaces in the class. Fabulous. I made it to one of my classes last Thursday, Turkish Foreign Policy, only to find that I'd already read the textbook last year for my thesis (probably a good sign for my thesis, but not so good for the class). Luckily, that was an undergrad class, and the grad class on the same subject looks to be very interesting, so it works out well. It also appears as though there are enough students for the Turkish class, although classes are on Thursday and Friday for that, so there goes my formerly free Friday.
The weekend was occupied first by internet issues (always exciting to troubleshoot in Turkish, let me tell you), then by a full day of expat activity. Sunday I met up with a friend to walk up to the Vatican Embassy for Mass, which I did not get lost for this time, or get in a bus crash. Considering my track record, this is excellent. Before Mass, I met a Princeton Ph.D student here for a year to learn both Turkish and Ottoman from scratch. We talked for a bit about Turkish, living as expat students in Ankara, and such, and he seems like an affable guy. After Mass, we stayed around for coffee (again, they serve real coffee after Mass; in Ankara, this is a wondrous thing) before I had to hightail it home to drop off church apparel, grab running apparel, and get to the hash house harriers meeting point. The run Sunday was in this rocky valley-ish place, and most of it was up, up, up, then straight down before climbing up again. I most certainly got my workout for the day :P Afterwards, they had a barbeque, which was really nice and a good chance to chat and to practice my conversational Turkish with some of the folks. We got back to Cankaya just in time for me to rush back, change again, hit up an internet cafe for 10 minutes, and get to Arjantin Cad to watch a friend performing at a cafe with a whole group of folks from the Refugee Support Group, plus my friends from Mass that morning. It was a really great relaxing time; Erin has a beautiful voice and the ARSG folks are really interesting people.
This week, I've attended a few more classes and run round all over the place trying to get documents in order for Fulbright and my apartment. Inshallah that's all done for the time being... Later this week I have Fulbright orientation finally, which should be a fun time; I'm looking forward to finally meeting the other Fulbrighters not in the city. Everyone's research sounds fascinating, so I can't wait to pick a few brains about their subjects.
Next week is Seker Bayram ("Sugar Holiday"), the end of Ramazan, where Turks visit family and celebrate for a few days with feasting and fellowship. ODTU's shut down for the week. Not to be left out, I'm also heading out on vacation, with a few friends, to the SouthEast. I think it'll be much calmer than my last trip to the region (see my early April 2006 blog entries for those stories), and the fact that all 3 of us speak semidecent Turkish will be an enormous help/ The region is absolutely gorgeous, and we're hoping to end up at Nemrut Dagi, which is a mountain with giant stone heads a la Easter Island on top. Expect copious amounts of pics when I get back (and inshallah I'll even catalogue the ones up on Flickr at the moment...).
On that note,
hope you're well!
-R

Just a few quick thoughts

1. I have internet! Harika! It only took 3 flatmates, the boyfriend of one, on the phone from Germany, and a TTNet service rep, but it's here and it's working!

2. My new blender makes hummus better than anything I've ever seen. This is awesome.

3. I have a new roommate; there are now 3 of us, my second roommate is a German Turk in the same program as the first. She seems very nice and I think she'll be here for a few months; don't worry, though, future visitors, I still have guest room abilities!

4. First day of school tomorrow; it's also my registration day, so I don't know what I'm taking when yet. I do think I have Fridays off though :)

On transitions and bus accidents

Tomorrow, my full research grant starts, and I'll officially be a Fulbright researcher here. I've been here on a supplementary Critical Language grant up til now, tasked with learning as much Turkish as I can sram into my brain. I'm still on the language portion, which will run concurrently with my regular grant until December, but now my main focus of being here will switch to Turkish foreign policy. It's a bit of a transition.
Of course, this month so far has been all about that transition: I now have a flat and a roommate, and on Friday I picked up my residence permit, so I am now a legal resident of Turkey for the next year. This week, I'll be getting Internet, registering for classes, starting my classes, and figuring out my Turkish lessons. So I feel like I'm at long last fully settled. It's kind of nice.
My week was full of errand running and such, although this weekend my intestinal system finally surrendered to the sketchy Ankara water and I came down with a pretty fun bug; luckily after living in Niger I am well-versed in intestines and anti-biotics. Still, I took the weekend pretty easy to recuperate. Today, I figured I'd get up and about and go to Mass, since I was confident I could find it this week easily. However, things happened, as they do here in Turkey: I took a bus, because it went within a few blocks of the Vatican Embassy, and while trying to make an illegal left turn, it got in an accident. Fun times. Everyone was just fine, both in the car we hit and on the bus, but the bus was in no condition to finish its route, so I set off walking, got lost, and somehow ended up on Ataturk Bulvari, 4 blocks from my apartment, half an hour after Mass was supposed to start. So I didn't make it this week. It was a little strange of a morning. Next week I'll try again, and inshallah the bus won't hit anything or make illegal turns and such.
On that note,
ttyl,
-R

Today I went back to ODTU, for the exchange student orientation. It was a little weird, both because I'm not technically an exchange student and because I'd already sat through the exact same orientation two and a half years ago.
The morning session was decent; they had a coffee break, which was awesome as they served real coffee, which I've already mentioned is thin on the ground here. I also got to meet some of the exchange students--there are a loooooot of them! Last time I was here, there were maybe 60, and now there are 125, from all over Europe, the Middle East, and North America. I met students from Sweden, the UK, Ukraine, and Hungary, as well as quite a few from the US and Canada. Most are just here for the semester, but I did meet a few who are here for the year, so hopefully they'll be turn out to be decent folks. It was interesting talking to the exchange students, and realizing how limiting living on campus is: some of them had spent time in Istanbul, and some knew the campus decently well, but none of them had really got outside of campus and seen the city. It really seems a bit isolating, looking at it from the other side. Of course, they can visit each others rooms and dorms any time, and meet up on campus much easier, so I shouldn't gloat too much.
After the coffee break, I headed over to the Emniyet to try and get my residence permit. I was hoping to get there before they closed for lunch, but alas that was not to be, so I spent 45 minutes waiting for the security personnel to get back from lunch so I could even enter the building. Once inside, I spent a good two hours in line, getting my documents looked at, being told to go elsewhere, getting my documents looked at there, going back to the first office, etc. etc. until finally I was all paid up, had all my letters and documents stamped, and got everything turned in. I can pick it all up on Friday, at which point I can finally apply for an internet connection. I cannot wait. It was really interesting waiting in line at the Emniyet: the other students in my student permit line were pretty much all Central Asians. There were Kazakhs, Kyrgyzs, an Azeri, an Afghani, and I think a Russian. My friend who got her permit in Istanbul mentioned that they were pretty much all Eastern European at the Emniyet there. It's curious as to why each group seems to have congregated in their particular city; I would guess it's for geographical reasons, but if you're coming from Kazakhstan, I'd hardly think an extra 5 hours on a bus would be at all daunting. Curious.

I also while unpacking found my journal from the last time I was here. I found it humorous and quite prescient that one of my first entries observes "The Turks seem to view the world through Turk-colored glasses..." It's just as true today.

-R

Benim Dairem, falan filan

Sadly, I still don't have internet in my flat, but should by the end of this week. So there's some decent news. I also yesterday went to get my residence permit renewed at the Ankara Emniyet (..."security office", roughly, I think): I headed down to Kizilay, found a dolmus that said "Emniyet" on the side, and hopped on...
Only to have a nice hourlong ride through the completely wrong part of the city. The Emniyet that the dolmus passed wasn't the Emniyet I needed to go to. On the way back to Kizilay, this guy on the dolmus who spoke a little English asked me where I was trying to get to, so I showed him my residence permit and told him I needed to go to the correct Emniyet. By this time I'd figured out which dolmus I needed to go on, but he insisted that I could get there via subway, and was pretty persistent, so off I went on the subway line to Ankamall. Thankfully, when we got there it was indeed the right place. Ankara did yabancis a great favor by putting their Emniyet right next to pretty much the largest grocery store in Turkey: Ankamall is a shopping mall, anchored by a 5M Migros (Migros is a chain of grocery stores; the size of the store is proportionate to the number of Ms starting the name: MMigros is neighborhood supermarket sized, MMMigros is typical large suburban grocery store sized. MMMMMigros is massive). It's very recognizable.
I headed to the Emniyet's yabanci ofisi, and handed in all my paperwork, only to be told that my paperwork was Istanbul paperwork, and that I needed to fill out the exact same information on a form that was identical to mine except for the font. Bureaucracy, I love it so. The guy behind the yabanci desk then told me that the person who processed residence permits had left at 3:30, so I'd have to return this next week to get the renewal. Then he looked at my passport and saw that I'd been in the country for 2.5 months already. Apparently, even though the Fulbright office assured me I'd be fine, and getting my residence permit up to 3 months after entry would not be a problem, it was indeed a problem. The guy disappeared to go talk to someone about it. I started panicking and trying to guess whether they'd deport me, and if I'd be allowed back in the country. Luckily, the guy came back and told me I just had to pay a fine. But it was a tense few minutes for me. :P
After getting information but no residence permit, I headed over to the magical MMMMMigros for some shopping. It was wonderful. It even had an organic section, and prices were cheaper than at all the grocery stores by me. They even had premade salads/greenery other than iceberg lettuce, which I haven't seen in any other grocery store. It was fabulous. I bought a blender, magic-bullet-style, which promised recipes inside for 10-second mousse, and chicken salad, and smoothies. Sadly, the recipe booklet was not inside, so I'll have to experiment on the mousse (I don't know about the chicken salad...). It came with a juicer attachment, so I think I'll have fun experimenting in the kitchen with it. It was a good impulse buy, and it means I can satiate my hummus fix.
This weekend's been pretty quiet so far: today I spent the morning figuring out how to use my washing machine, whose cycles are helpfully labelled only as "A", "B", "D", "M", and "X". I tried M, and it seemed to work decently, except for the part where it took 2 hours for a single wash cycle. Maybe next time I'll try "A"... Tomorrow, I'm getting up early to try and find the Vatican Embassy for Mass, which should be fun and potentially an adventure as it's a ways away from my apartment. After that, I think I'm running with the HHH again and then getting my place ready for my potential roommate, who gets in to town Monday. So that'll be fun.
Hope you-all are doing great,
-R

My New Apartment (You can come visit!)

So I finally have a bit more time to write about my time so far in Ankara. I've been here for about 2 weeks; I spent the first week and a half at the American Research Institute in Turkey's Ankara researcher guesthouse. It was gorgeous, and I highly recommend it if your research ever takes you to Turkey. I would have stayed there for my entire grant, except they have a 3 month limit on stays...
So I moved, to a great apartment literally 4 blocks downhill from the guesthouse and the Fulbright offices (this is absolutely the easiest move I've ever done). I now live in Cankaya/Kavaklidere, just off of Ataturk Bulvari near a large park and many embassies. The building next door to mine has both a supermarket and a nice restaurant, and there's an upscale bakery across the street. The neighborhood will take a little getting used to I think, but I really like it so far.
My apartment itself is pretty darn nice. It's a 3-bedroom, as Turks don't really do 1-bedrooms or studios (they stay home til they're at the 2-bedroom stage of their lives, even in/after college). I'm inshallah getting a roommate next week, so that'll leave me with a guest bedroom/laundry-drying and ironing room. It came furnished, as I did not want to have to run around Turkey trying to find decent and cheap furniture immediately upon arriving. I'm already doing more than enough running around. I think I'll have to start having dinner parties, as I have a massive heavy dark wood dining table; otherwise, I'll have a very impressive computer desk... The kitchen will take some getting used to: most Turks don't have ovens like you'd think of ovens--instead they use toaster ovens. I originally thought that my apartment came with no oven at all til I found mine hiding beneath the sink.
The apartment is I think a mix of really nice and kind of strange: it has new appliances, it even has a washing machine, but it has a spot of water-damaged floor in the living room. And the bathroom is newly tiled and the bedrooms all have new hardwood floors, but the half-bath is a terrifying pit of despair that I am pretty sure I will just seal off and never ever enter again. So it's got character. And little by little, I'm moving my stuff out of suitcases and making the place my home instead of simply a home.
And of course you are all incited to come visit! After all, I have a guest room now.
-R

just a quick update...

Hey folks,
So lots is new since my last post, I've moved for one, but that'll have to wait til I either get Internet in my apartment or find a free wireless spot with a plug, as I'm on limited battery power. I figured I would, though, update with a wholly exasperating observation: Turks almost never tell you they don't know something, at least in the customer service/business front-counter world.
Last Thursday, I closed on my apartment, and to get the cash for my deposit (USD, they're pretty fond of the $ still for some reason) I needed to cash in some of my travellers cheques. No big deal, I thought, I'll just go to a bank and take care of that early. Oh, but boy was I wrong. The first bank sent me to a second, which sent me to a different branch, which suggested two different banks, and by the end of the day I had visited 10 banks, walked over 4 miles, and had not cashed any of my travellers cheques. Every single teller I talked to told me that a different bank "absolutely," "guaranteedly" would accept/exchange travellers cheques. It was moer than a little frustrating. I started crying in the second HSBC I visited, the eighth bank I'd been to that day, after they almost exchanged my travellers cheques, only to say "oh wait, these are American Express travellers cheques, we don't accept these." And of course all these transactions were in Turkish, so about half the tellers would, noting that Turkish wasn't my native language, ask the lobby at large if anyone spoke English, at which point I would try to explain that I did, really, understand what they'd told me in Turkish, but would have to sit through the same explanation, this time in questionable English. And of course at each bank I had to take a number and wait in line for 10-40 minutes. I was in various banks for hours on Thursday. Incidentally, if you're planning on going to Turkey with travellers cheques, the PTT will cash them, I've found. IsBank will as well, but they want to charge 30 YTL per check. For reference, a $50 travellers cheque is currently worth about 55 YTL. If one was particularly desperate, I suppose that might be an option.
And this week, I get to go through the whole thing again, luckily at a slower pace. I tried to get internet set up for my apartment (sadly, all my neighbors saw fit to secure their networks) this morning, and after having checked with the TurkTelecomNet website that post offices here were licensed resale points for their internet services, headed off to my post office, and asked for internet. They handed me an internet sign-up form, so I figured I was golden, filled it out, and handed it back in. At that point, they told me (twice, in Turkish and English....) that I needed to go to the more central post office in Kucukesat. So, after a wifi cafe stop to check the address, I headed out to Kucukesat, and waited in line at that PTT, only to get to the front and be told that they couldn't sell me internet, and that I'd have to go to the Turk Telekom office for that. They gave me directions, and off I went again, only to find the TurkTelekom offices definitively boarded up and locked. Fantastic. At least this time, I think I've wised up and will not spend time walking to 10 places on the advice of people at each preceding place. Instead I just asked my waitress, and I'm pretty sure that tomorrow I'll be able to get my internet at least ordered, if not set up. This lack of internet at home is really not fun.
On that note, I'd better save my battery. Stories from my first legit week in Ankara (I went running with the Hash House Harriers; it was quite an experience), along with pics of my new apartment, will be forthcoming pending internet, of course,
Hope everyone's doing splendidly,
-R

Rest of my Tatil and settling in

So I left off my last post with my adventuresome ride to Antakya. We were pretty glad to get in to Antakya's shiny new otogar, even though we were immediately set upon by would-be drivers offering to take us to Aleppo. Sadly, that will have to wait for a different trip, as my visa doesn't yet allow me to reenter the country. We hopped a dolmus into town, nodding politely to the dolmus attendant's rant on the evils of America and war en route. Once in the center, we found our hostel (we were staying at the Catholic Church in town, which has a hostel for pilgrims), and waited around/grabbed lunch/waited some more to check in. We were pretty grimy and exhausted, so the rest of the day we just rested, shopped a bit in the bazaar, and grabbed an amazing, amazing dinner.
Antakya is really a unique place in Turkey. It's in the Hatay province, which used to be a French protectorate, then part of Syria before Ataturk annexed it in 1938 for WWII strategic purposes. It's a very interesting meld of Turkish and Arabic culture, and is the only part of Turkey that eats hummus (clearly, I was ecstatic about that part). Our first lunch in Antakya was at this tiny, tiny restaurant that served only hummus and bakla (not baklava-- bakla is a hot dish also based on chickpeas, and also very, very good after an Istanbul kebap summer. Prices in Antakya were also Arab-inspired, and I bought a pair of pants that I'd seen in Istanbul for a standard price of 20 ytl for 5 ytl. I also bought a shirt for 2,5 ytl, which proudly proclaims that "life is beatifull." Oh yes, beatifull.
Antakya is most well known not for it's intriguing Turkish-Arab culture but for it's ancient history: you may know it by it's Roman-times name, Antioch (and to get there, you pass through the Cilician Gates). It's the site of the very first Catholic Church in the world (by many accounts), founded in a cave above the current city by St. Peter himself. I visited, but it was closed for August vacation, so I only got to see the outside, sadly. It was awesome from the outside though. Later in history, the city was captured by Crusader kings. Even today, there's (for Turkey) a sizeable Christian community in Hatay; Rough Guides says there are 4000.
Our second day, we met up with a friend of Alyssa's who was coming in from Syria; she'd spent the summer in Damascus and spoke Syrian Arabic, which would be not so helpful in Turkey, except that most people we ran into in Hatay also spoke Arabic. Before she got in (she tried to come up on Friday, but in Syria they take religion seriously and that's mosque day--no busses to the border), Alyssa and I checked out the Antakya Museum. It's gorgeous: the region has lots of archaeological sites with Roman mosaics, and so many of them were still in really good condition. I have dozens of photos, many with stories, so I'll post the link to that part of my Flickr account once I upload them. They had statues and a very nicely preserved excavated tomb as well, but the mosaics were really the centerpiece of the museum.
The Catholic Church hostel was really great, run by a woman (Zeynep Hanim) who lives on the property, and really cheap: just 20ytl per night each. We got a room, private bath, and a kitchen. The guidebooks had all said that guests were expected to attend Mass, which we didn't mind, especially once we found out Mass was at 7pm, not 7am. The weekday masses we went to were pretty small, just the token folks who hung around the church and us, and was in Turkish, which was pretty awesome. The church had booklets printed with the prayers and Mass protocol in Turkish, so we could follow along and know what we were saying/singing, instead of half mumbling til we got to the "Amen." They're clearly used to non-Turkish visitors. While we stayed there, 2 big groups of Italian pilgrims came through; they just walked through the church, prayed, and left, but they tended to arrive right before Mass, delaying Mass. Sunday Mass was really great; I was the only one of the three of us who went, as the other 2 were exhausted from our big day (more on that in a bit) and also weren't Catholic. The tiny church was filled, with people standing out the back door. Most of the Mass was in Turkish, but the Gospel was read in both Turkish and Italian. I suspect this is because there was a large expat contingent, and I believe they were mostly Italian, but I'm not positive. Anyway, it was really a great experience, and they closed with "When the Saints go Marching In" in Turkish.

But my big experience Sunday was a different service, in a small village an hour-and-a-half outside of Antakya. Sunday morning, Alyssa, Jen (her friend from Syria), Lee(a friend of ours from our summer program, he came to Antakya a day after us) and I headed to Vakifli, the last remaining Armenian village in Turkey. The title is a bit of a misnomer: many Turks live there, and people in the village spoke Turkish to our hearing more than Armenian, but it still has Armenian roots and a strong Armenian connection. We were there for the Armenian Catholic Church's (they're in with the Holy See! the more you know)Feast of the Assumption of Mary, which is apparently their biggest feast day celebration. We were told it started at 10, so we got there right before then, but the Mass didn't begin until 10:10 or so, when the priest and the choir (and 2 priest-helper guys? kind of between choir members and deacons, they seemed) entered the front part of the church and started up. Even though there were probably at least 200 people milling about in the church courtyard, only maybe a dozen or so old ladies were actually sitting in the church, attending the service. We grabbed a pew and sat to take it all in. It was a beautiful service: it was entirely in Armenian, so we understood pretty much nothing, but it reminded me of Orthodox services. For starters, it was looong: about 2 and a half hours, I believe. There was a little fence/gate separating the parishioners from the choir and priest; it was split spacewise maybe 40-60, with 40% of the church area being occupied by the altar and various related things. The choir members kept wandering in and out throughout the whole thing; at one point, they all were gone, and it was just the priest and his helpers up in front. The choir was made up of people looking to be ages 7-maybe 65, but the leader was this girl (she can't've been over 20) with a beautiful, carrying voice; I heard that during choir practices and such, everything is very strictly age-hierarchical, while during Mass, the hierarchy is instead in order of singing talent.
The parishioner/Mass attendees also wandered in and out during the service, and while the numbers actually in church grew larger and larger, I don't think there were more than 50 people inside at any one time, and that was for Communion. Communion was fascinating, because the women all veiled for it: they grabbed scarves from in their handbags or around their necks to cover their hair, but only for Communion. Anyway, it was perhaps a little fortuitous that everyone in the church courtyard didn't crows in to the church, because it was stiflingly hot in the church, maybe hotter than I'd been all summer.
After the in-church portion of Mass, the priest and choir processed out the back of the church and to the courtyard, where they proceeded to bless a tablefull of grapes. Apparently, in the Armenian Catholic tradition, the Feast of the Assumption of Mary also is used to celebrate the grape harvest. After the grapes were blessed, everyone pressed forward and got a vineful. From there, the priest and choir went to 4 carpets laid out in the middle of the courtyard and did some sort of prayer/blessing there as well; I got video of this part and will upload it to Flickr inshallah soon. It was pretty interesting. After that, it looked like the Mass part of the day was done, so we chilled in the courtyard for awhile, looked at sour cherry products for sale in a small booth, and headed down to the main road to figure out how to get back (we'd taken a taxi from another town in the morning, but Vakifli is like, Byron-small or smaller, so there were no taxis there). We stopped at a tea garden for tea and water, and after chatting for a bit and finding a dolmus, we ran into an Armenian-Canadian woman, who told us more about the feast day, and also said that it was an annual pilgrimage for Diasporan Armenians, hence why so many people were there. She also told us that we'd missed the very end part of the ceremony at the church, where they hand out stewed mutton and wheat: apparently, in the times of the massacres, the Armenian communities of Musa Dag ('Mount Moses', where Vakifli is located) only had sheep and wheat, which they put into big pots, one for every village (there were 6 Armenian villages on the mountain then) and survived off of for 53 days under siege until the French rescued and evacuated them. It sounded like an odd recipe, but I tried some, and it was quite good on bread.
Our Armenian-Canadian friend also told us that we were ridiculously close to the sea, so after hearing that, and after having sat in the oven of the church for 2.5 hours, we decided to stop at the shore on the way back to Antakya. We took a dolmus to Samandag and walked to the waterfront. Samandag is a Turkish resort town, and it was pretty cool, as we were the only yabancis there. The water was so warm it was almost hot, and translucently blue. The Mediterranean hadn't been on our agenda when we left Antakya, so we swam in our clothes, which worked well til we had to get back on a dolmus to get back to Antakya. When we did finally make it back, we were pretty exhausted, and pretty much just napped and packed (and churched, for me) until grabbing a quick dinner and seeing Alyssa and Jen off to the otogar (they were headed to Cappadochia overnight).
Monday morning, I finished my packing, headed out for a brief bit, and then headed to the otogar, where I headed to Adana. Adana is about 3 hours northeast of Antakya, and is the 4th largest city in Turkey. You may have heard of it because Incirlik air base (US military) is located there. I planned to do a bit of sightseeing there before catching an overnight bus to Istanbul. On my bus from Antakya to Adana, I sat next to this adorable red-headed two-year-old and his mother, who were on their way to a beach holiday in Mersin. They were great travelling companions, until the poor kid got a little bus-sick and threw up. He kind of looked like Dan when he was 2, if Dan had been close-cropped instead of having that adorably curly mop. In Adana, I did some bargaining with various companies (after my Ankara-Adana bus ride, I was not about to risk a repeat experience), and ended up getting a ticket with Metro, who is towards the high end of the middle level of bus companies. I then headed into the city to see what I could find. I visited the Sabanci Mosque, which is the third largest mosque in the world; it's really new (like, last-decade-new), so there wasn't much historical intrigue, but it was huge, and nice. I then stopped by one of Adana's 2 museums where I found out that both museums were closed on Mondays. Bummer. I wandered a bit more, and ended up at this swanky restaurant for dinner, where I had an amaretto iced mocha. It pretty much made my whole body smile, it was so good. As Adana was also closer to 40 C than 30 C, it was very much appreciated. After my dinner, I skedaddled to the otogar and headed out for Istanbul. My seatmate was this very nice old lady, and it was I think her first bus trip. We chatted for a bit about Adana and Istanbul and what I was doing in Turkey before tuning in to the bus movies and then sleeping. In the morning, she got off at the first Istanbul stop (Istanbul is so big, there are multiple otogars and usually tertiary drop-off locations as well; it takes over an hour and a half from the first Istanbul stop to the Otogar), and I got a new seatmate, Ayse, who was travelling to Istanbul with her husband and 2 kids for a visit before school started. We had a great talk, and when she heard that I wanted to return to Adana, she gave me her cell number so that I could get to see "the real Adana" when I go back there.
Once I got into Istanbul, I had a lot of time to kill; I had pretty ungainly luggage, so I didn't really want to trek all over the city or go all out and be touristy. I ended up on Istiklal by about 9am, where I snagged a table at a cafe and chilled all morning, updating my blog and such. In the afternoon, I took the ferry to Asia to buy my train ticket for that night (heading to Ankara; the train is conveniently about 8 hours, or enough to actually sleep, versus the 5-6 hour bus), found that the only seats left were in 4-person couchettes, got a 20% student discount (I will really miss being a student someday), and took the ferry back. Once back in Taksim, I called Fulbright to make sure I could still pick up my luggage that afternoon, and handled the entire phone conversation in Turkish. I was pretty proud. As I had to pick up my luggage by 5, and would then be encumbered by 5 bags of various sizes, I decided to grab an early dinner, at Istanbul's best Chinese restaurant (it happened to be on the way the the Fulbright offices). My meal was great, and my waiter was very curious as to what I was doing all by myself and how I knew Turkish; we chatted for a bit, and then at the end of my meal he gave me 10% off. It was just a really great Turkish-speaking day for me.
I picked up my baggage and headed right to Haydarpasa (the train station), getting there about 5 hours before my train departed. Luckily, I had a 400-page journal of an early West African explorer to read, so I chilled in the waiting room. On the train, I had 3 Turkish women seatmates, all of whom were very nice and 2 of whom had also never ridden on a train before. Before we left, I had an awesome Turkish experience, when one of my compartment-mates, walking down the corridor, found a group of Italian tourists trying to communicate with the ticket man in English and went "wait, my friend speaks English and Turkish!" So I got to translate for this group of 10 Italian tourists who wanted to trade seats with other passengers so that their party could sit together; it was pretty exhilarating being able to explain back and forth. They finally got things settled, and I went back to my compartment, and woke up bright and early in Ankara, where I headed to my hostel.

Many apologies for this novel of a post; I was going to post some about my activities in Ankara, but I think this is quite enough for one update and will try to update some more fun things, like pics or videos, in a much more timely fashion.
Hope you all are doing well!
-R