There is clearly too much to say about the past two weeks. I'll spare you. In this moment, I am munching on hazelnuts (findik), trying to hold onto precious memories of Turkey. I might write about this in installments, kind of. I think I will begin at the end, that being, this morning, back to work.
It is an incredibly beautiful day. As much as I dreaded going back to work, I had to admit to myself that the fact that it is no longer dark and freezing out when I leave my house at 7:45am truly improved my general attitude. The deep of winter is over, it seems. I haven't put my winter coat in the armoire yet, but it's tempting.
When I arrived at work this morning, my intention was to make some photocopies before going up to my classroom. I do this pretty much every Monday morning. This morning, however, when I went to use one of the machines, there is a rather large woman standing in front of it looking at me like I have something weird on my face or that I just really shouldn't be there. It seemed to me that she was protecting the machine from me, an intruder. I was kind of afraid of her.
"Um, can I....?"
"No." she responds.
"Well, I just wanted to make some copies..."
"That's my job. That is why I'm standing here. I am the one who controls the machine. Mondays and Thursdays." she is having a bad morning, I guess. I hand her my thing and tell her I want five more of them. I suppose the reason she was so short with me is because she knows that her job is completely useless. Surely she must know this. Why would a job as useless as hers even exist? Only in France would such a useless job exist. I've been making my own copies for five months and have somehow missed out on the inconvenience of having to ask someone else to make them for me, even though the machine is right there and simply pushing a button myself would suffice. La honte.
That being said, I suppose I will tell you some things about Istanbul.
First I will tell you that Turkish Airlines is the only way to fly. Turkish food (yes please) and free wine. And hazelnuts instead of peanuts. The free wine was a super plus for me because I was kind of nervous. The thing I was nervous about was figuring out Istanbul public transportation to get from the airport (on the European side) all the way to Üsküdar (in Asia). Really it was fine, and I had it all planned out. The only thing was, once I found the right ferry to take from Europe to Asia, I had to buy a token from this machine, and I couldn't figure out how to work it, and this man was trying to help me, and then it wouldn't take my bill, and finally this guy standing next to me just hands me a token and walks away. "Thank you!!" I yelled after him in English, for at this point I didn't even know how to say that much in Turkish.
Speaking of learning Turkish, that is what Brent and Ryan and I attempted to do with much of our down time. I'd forgotten how exciting/frustrating it is to begin a new language from scratch. I hope the neighbors could hear us repeating, "do you know English?" "I am American" "You are Turkish" "My Turkish is very bad" "Excuse me" "Excuse me" "Excuse me" "how are YOU?" dozens of times in the living room of Hannah and Stephie's apartment.
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| ryan, my very tallest travel bud |
I liked staying in Üsküdar because not very many people on the Asian side speak English. Considering I don't speak Turkish, this being something I enjoyed is probably funny to you. But it forced us to use the little Turkish that we did know, a lot of hand gestures, and a lot of apologetic smiles. And as a result, we got to know our neighbors a little. The man at the bakery down the street knows us (I at least know how to ask for five simit, please), the guys at the kebab stand by the port know us, especially Brent and Ryan (they once ate kebab from there three times in the same day...I can't really blame them, since it cost 2.50 lira, or less than one euro. Brent paid for it later though) and the guys at the juice stand next to it started to recognize me, fumbling to ask them to make me my (nearly) daily pomegranate juice. After these three rituals we would hop on a ferry back to Europe, and see what we could see.
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| teşekkür ederim, juice man. |
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| spice bazaar |
In Turkey they are always drinking tea. We are severely lacking in rituals like this in the States...if we paused like 5 times a day for a glass of tea, we would probably be a lot less stressed out in general. (additionally if we paused to pray 5 times a day as in Islam...) One day when Ryan and Brent and I were exploring Taksim area by ourselves, we stopped in this little underground bookstore (again, always looking for a good bouquinerie) and the guy who owned the place started chatting with us, and eventually invited us to sit and have tea with him in his shop. This happened to us a couple of times...typically Turkish, I suppose.
Sometimes I feel like, aesthetically speaking, perhaps I was born on the wrong side of the world. My personal aesthetic is so much closer to that of eastern cultures than that of western ones. I practically melted at the Hagia Sofia (ayasofya) staring up at the ceiling, the walls...yellows, blues....even Arabic, inside all the mosques, a beautiful script almost like some kind of circular dance...
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| ayasofya |
Something very funny about Istanbul is that everyone is always trying to guess where you are from. It's their favorite game to play with foreigners. As long as you don't open your mouth, they can never know. And they nearly never guessed American for us. The would often guess German, especially for Ryan and Brent. But everyone always assumed I was Turkish. And then they wouldn't believe me when I assured them that I am not. Brent got some hilarious comments about his beard, now quite long and bushy (he somehow thought this would make him fit in more in Istanbul), my favorite one being, at the Grand Bazaar, a man yelling at him "YOU LOOK LIKE A GRANDFATHER." Another good one, though not beard-related, was walking under the Galata Bridge where there are all these guys standing outside seafood restaurants trying to get you to come in, and one guy says something to Brent in English, and his colleague says to him, in English, "That is not even an American!"
I should mention that I stopped in Paris for a few days on my way back to Albi to visit my friend Martin. And also it had been like 2 years since I'd been to Paris, so I was itching to go. Those days were spent wandering (a lot), eating really good falafel, and being thankful that I am not Parisian. No one could deny, however, that Paris is full of charm. And my last day was the loveliest...Paris could not have given me a more beautiful ending to my vacation.
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