Sunday, wake up/Give me a...

...Cigarette/ Last night's love affair is looking vulnerable in my bed...
 Marina and the Diamonds, people.  Look 'em up.  I spent far too much time listening to Guster last night, actually, and missing the guy who gave me the tracks and who now isn't replying to any of my emails.  But on to merrier things, if only slightly:


My God, what an awful week that was.  Everyone here was so unhappy at the end of Friday, and we went a little nuts with our free time.  I'm sort of curious to see how they'll all behave today - Sunday is homework day, of course.  I had an evil essay which I'm sure I did badly on, a chemistry test on which I got a 75 percent (though my chem grade is somehow up to an A- now) and there's another enormous project looming for English.  It's the same way for everyone else.  Worse.  But I shook it off pretty well.

Friday afternoon I... oh, dear, I can't even remember what I did right after classes ended.  This is worrisome.  Anyway, Friday night I did some stargazing with some friends.  We talked about black holes and comets and The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy like proper nerds, and the sky is so clear up here, we had the milky way all to ourselves.  There were shooting stars, the grass was dry for some reason, and so we stayed out there until it was too cold for any more. 
Oh, wait, before that I'd been watching Kill Bill: Vol. 2 with another friend, but he had to go and get his foot X-rayed half way through for reasons to do with the perils of organized sports, so we finished that last night.  He made dinner, I did dessert (if you want people to love you, make them profiteroles with ice cream and chocolate ganache - half the dorm was ready to climb into my newly amazing double bed) and we need to finish another film today.
I also have to start writing an essay, do some chemistry coursework and a little maths today, but that'll happen - I'll fit it around a cappella, instrumental ensemble and callback auditions.  Yeah, I made it into - oh, God, I haven't even told you people about that yet, have I?  Well, there's a boy here who's directing The Importance Of Being Ernest (which you can read here if you haven't already)  and auditions were yesterday.  I picked a monologue of Eve's by Mark Twain - it was very drily funny, and it must have gone well because by evening he'd posted the callback list and I was on it.  Being the only person in the school with a real British accent helps just a bit.

Another Week, Another Package

...Except the package had a dozen eggs in it.  And, carefully bubble-wrapped as they were  by my dear and loving parents, only six made it.  It was a bit of a mess.  But worth it, because there were also apples, bread, goats' cheese, a little jar of homemade chocolate sauce, nuts and carrots.  I am a very happy girl today, and not just because of that.

Here we have these things called 1/3 reports.  As in, every one-third of a semester.  The first of these reports is coming out this week, and I can't belive that a sixth of the year has already gone by.  I know approximately how I'm doing - I think I have Bs in chemistry and tech, and my average in maths is hovering in the mid-seventies.  I got back that big English essay, which turned out to be an A of some kind, and so I'm hoping that that will reflect my average in the class.  I feel like my grades are slowly getting better - there were just a couple of rough first tests.  İnşallah.

I also have a double bed now!  In that the bunk beds that I formerly occupied are now side-by-side on the floor.  I'm going to get a big pad to keep the mattresses together, but I slept on it like this last night and it wasn't even much of a problem.  This photo of my room shows you just what a distracted cleaner I am, but there you go.  Now that that big swath of wall under the turkish scarf is free, I'm going to fill it up with some posters - I've got a nice black-and-white world map, and a Banksy print in the mail.




And last night, I dyed my neighbor's hair for him.  Bright red.  He looks absolutely amazing, and it was loads of fun.  Oh, and I've started reading The Kite Runner, which is an abfab book, people (I'm aware that I'm probably the last person on earth to figure that out).  I'd read Khaled Hosseini's second novel, A Thousand Splendid Suns, and enjoyed it immensely, but I think this one is even better.

 

I can't write more because I need to get to the local shop for flour, milk and sugar before dinner, and have a massive amount of studying to do, but wish me luck with those reports.
Hoş çakal!

The Grindstone: Modern Education

Oh, well.  All extended weekends must pass.  My bus was the first home, at about half past five, and there was no seven-to-nine structured study as people were trickling in all evening.  I hung around in the lower lounge with people and, among other things, read someone's anti-feminism post-modernist short story and was offered $20 by one of the guys.  To feel my breasts.  People, take pity on me in the asylum I live in, and … oh, I don't know… go watch Gentlemen Prefer Blondes this weekend.  That'll make me happy.  It's what I plan to do, after a whole lot of nonvolunteer work that the school organizes for us to do. 

But, really, it's nice to be back.  It was great to see my friends at home, to visit my old school (It feels so weird to write that), where I sat in on a French class and realized that I still have all the vocabulary, but can't conjugate in anything but Turkish, and to sleep in my own bed, and be woken up by my little brother at ungodly hours – before one p.m.! – but I'm glad to be back on a routine.  The weather's really cooling off here, but I was able to watch a bit of the football soccer game (I confused a lot of people this evening when I told them about it in british terms) that the local school was playing tonight.  Boys' team.  A couple friends are on their team (that's what we have to do if we want to play sports), and 'we' were actually winning when I left to eat some of the glorious bread and cheese and vegetables I dragged back with me.  There were many jokes made on the bus about gardens being shifted, and they developed into a (rather speculative) discussion about when plants stop photosynthesizing.  We are geeks and we are happy.  (I am all about the brackets tonight, aren't I?)

There are a few other people here who are into photography, which is nice.  I can't lie around in plain view without somebody instigating an impromptu shoot, and I'm running out of space on my hard drive!  (Who cares?)

Oh, and, if nothing goes amiss, I'm going to the Common Ground Fair this weekend!  It's been said that if a bomb were dropped on the Common Ground Fair, Maine's surviving hippie population would be countable on one hand.  This is completely undesirable, as they happen to make it a thoroughly enjoyable and entertaining place to be – from their no-refined-sugar-within-the-gates policy to the totally delicious deep fried shiitake mushrooms, falafel and gyro (who'd have thought?), to these ridiculous displays of hundreds upon hundreds of varieties of dried beans, barrels-full through which you are allowed to run your dusty hands for as long as you should please… I get very excited about the beans.  There's no disgusting typical fair food or people, and there are all sorts of lovely animals and – my god – activists.  I'll admit, my primary motive in signing up for the trip this weekend is so that I can go to all the political booths, from the Amnestly International people to the Trade With Cuba people to the My Body Is Not Public Property You Freaking Right-Wing Conservative Bastard And I'll Have Abortions Whenever The Hell I Want To people and sign their petitions and buy about forty pins and badges to stick all over my backpack… oh, wait, I don't use one of those any more.  I shall have to find something else to stick pins into…

So, there's really not much more to report.  Oh, wait, sweatshirts: L. gave me his, you know about that.  Well, his girlfriend, my lovely down-the-hall neighbor, had another lovely hoodie that belonged to her maybe not-so-lovely ex back home, and, though I'm not quite sure how, it's become… well, mine.  And I love it!  It's blue and warm and soft and utterly delicious.  That I'm coveting sweaters surely means that summer must be over in my mind, and I'm loath to bid such an eventful season farewell, but I am looking forward to the rest of school.  This time last year, I couldn't imagine myself doing that with much of anything other than resignation – to wasted time and unfriendly people, alleviated, admittedly, by my wonderful darlings at home and a couple good classes.  But to actually be excited about this year is, well, exciting.   I'm enjoying myself here.  I know, right?  Maths homework, which I'm taking a break from right now, is actually quite fun in a therapeutic/numbing sort of way, and I have to ring up my dad in a bit to get him to scan and email a baby picture of me – some secret project the English teacher has lined up, and I forgot to get one while I was home.  But there's always a buzz of sorts in the dorm and the academic building, as they so grandly call it, and I do love that. 

Okay, I have to look what I've said in the face now and go enjoy my maths homework.  Hoş çakal!

'Home?'

School doesn't feel like summer camp any more.  I'm home for the weekend, but I keep catching myself saying 'when I get home...' and 'I need to take such-and-such home.'  I haven't really lived here in this house since pre-Turkey, and I suppose it can only be taken as a good sign.  But it makes me a tiny bit sad.  I have to think about where things are in the kitchen, and what colour the floors are, and things like that now.

Of course I'm eating myself into a stupor - in preparation for another month in a town whose only shop doesn't have butter -  and it's great.  Greens, eggs, yogurt, meat, bread... stuff that's just better here, as well as special, coastal things.  I think we're having mussels at some point tomorrow, and my dad's melons have gotten so ripe and juicy and beautiful that I died this morning... okay, afternoon... when I got out of bed and came downstairs to find something to eat.

I am also finally over being sick, which is wonderful.  I took Friday off as well as Wednesday, which is a shame because I have to make up for that huge chemistry test next Wednesday morning.  All my friends here have school tomorrow, so I shall study insanely.  By Friday evening I felt better and did some hanging, and a few of us decided to watch Some Like It Hot.  We made cookies and locked ourselves in one of the rooms on my wing, and, ah... bras were put on stuffed panda bears, for a start.  And when Marilyn Monroe is all over Tony Curtis on a 23-inch screen and there are blankets all over the place and you're as tired as we were, strange things happen.  We also burned pieces of broken furniture and, for some reason, used-up Korean math papers, on the camp fire they sometimes set up on Friday nights.  Midnight lights-out annoyed the hell out of me, but I was glad later because we all got up at 6:30-ish to get on one of three 7:15-ish buses to go home... four hours for me, and then another in the car.  However: I acquired a really, really nice sweatshirt on the bus (thank you, L!)

(I took this before stealing his sweater.  He's now said I can keep it (I hope it looks as good on me (wow, parentheses withing parentheses inside more parentheses... I'm treating this sentence like algebra)), because he's cool, and yeah, I know he's reading this).

 (I figured out that my camera has two different black-and-white settings - genius amateur that I am, the manual is still on my to-read list) and then a few more clothes with my currently-extremely-popular-with-me mama before going home.  I tore the Gap men's section up looking for just the right cardigan, and also (my host mother in Turkey will be pleased to know) found, finally, some brown mascara that didn't cost a year of college (My god, they give you a lot of free crap when you buy makeup.  I now have all these removing things and sticks of black eyeliner and colourful powders I get the feeling are intended for eyelids and lord knows what else that I'll never, ever use.  Okay, I lie, I will use them, for photo shoots, I'm just amazed what these companies will do to sell you a tiny tube of sticky supposed-sexiness.  So actually, that's kind of cool).  That made me happy. 


Oh, and then there were these.  How many articles of clothing do you see in this picture?  This kind of thing - clothes so loud they keep me up at night - sets me squealing.

Saturday evening, I was back with the kids and it felt good.  There are apparently some really fun new international students at my old school.  I'm going to try getting permission to visit on Tuesday, just so I can hang out more and be berated by all my old teachers for not deciding to go to art school or something and heading up north.  I'm going to bake some cakes to bring back with me, and also need to restock on essentials such as chocolate, chocolate covered almonds, chocolate dipped pretzels, hot chocolate, chocolate caramels and toothpaste.

Well, on Tuesday it's back home to school, and I have miles of essay to wrestle before I sleep, so, iyi geceler, take care of yourself, world, and I will talk to you whenever the hell I next get around to it.  Not that you're not the center of my universe, dear reader.  It's just that my math teacher doesn't love you as much as I do.

Cake and Other Nice Things

All right.  Remember the package?  The one with the Nutella?  Or just scroll down.  One day later - yesterday - my parents sent another one.  Smaller.  Heavier.  Two slabs of brownie, one on top of the other.  Goddamn, I am getting popular here. 

That wasn't even the best thing about yesterday.  Actually, yesterday was horrible, but some cool stuff happened.  The horrible was that I was 'home' sick.  Didn't go to any classes, not even chemistry.  And there was a chem test scheduled for today.  I took my blankets and books down to the lower lounge again and dozed on the sofas because they are more comfortable than my bed, and people came and went and chatted and I got far too little done.  But the cool thing was that we had Student Senate elections - there were five spots open and the eleven-or-so of us running given speeches the night before (mine was about the diplomatic importance of Turkish in student government), and I'm in!  The others elected were all boys.  I'm rather excited.

So, today my benevolent chemistry teacher let me off and said I can take that exam tomorrow.  I came home with the honest intention of studying for it... and saw this.  And, come on, why did my mama send me poppy seeds if not to have me bake beautiful cakes with them?  I'll study... um, after I'm done blogging!  But I feel obliged to share this recipe with you, wonderful as it is.  I'll tell you that it's well worth a few points off a chem grade.  And about twenty other people agree with me.  So make it if you get a chance, okay?

1 cup poppy seeds
1 cup of milk
1 cup (8 oz., 2 sticks or 16 tablespoons) soft unsalted butter
2 cups of plain flour
2 cups of sugar
3 eggs, separated
2 teaspoons of vanilla (I used a little less because I'm a low-budget student.  Ha.)
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

Preheat your oven to 350°F and grease a cake pan.  The recipe said to use a tube pan, but mine was an 8" X 11" Pyrex baking dish, and that fit beautifully.

Put your poppy seeds and milk in a small saucepan, bring them to the boil and then take them off the heat to cool (they should be more or less room-temperature, because you don't want them to melt the butter later).
Cream the butter and sugar together with an electric beater (handheld in my case...I miss my KitchenAid!) until light and fluffy and transcendently deliciously fatteningly good.
Mix in the egg yolks and vanilla, followed by the poppy seed mixture, and beat the hell out of them until everything but the seeds is pretty homogeneous.

Slowly add the flour, salt and baking powder, folding them in gently.
Clean your beaters and get a nice, clean bowl to whisk your egg whites in (if anything greasy touches egg whites, they won't whip.  In case you didn't know.  I really hope one of the delinquents I live with is reading this and figuring out some chemical reason for this).  Aaaaanywaay... whip the egg whites until stiff, but not dry.  They should hold peaks.

Trying not to deflate them too much, gently fold the whites into the rest of the batter.  Then scrape the batter into the pan and bake for about 1 hour (I'm not actually sure how long mine went for, because I had to run to English and had a friend take it out for me.  But about an hour.  And it was perfect).
Share it with your friends and remark upon how incredibly jewish this cake tastes.  It's one of those smells that makes me think of German bakeries and Fiddler on the Roof and good things like that.

Yeah, on the topic of jewishishness.  The astronomy teacher here is pretty religious, and he's been trying, through emails, to get me to go to a lot of services at what has to be the most northerly synagogue in New England.  Anyway, he asked me to come round to his classroom yesterday and introduce myself, which I did, and God.  I didn't feel like I was in The County at all.  I've never felt so liked for the necklace I was wearing... But it's kind of cool to know that there's one more person here to throw a little Yiddish around with.

And I'm still trying to get over how great people are here.  A load of us got locked out of study hall today and I had way too many books sliding around in my arms, and a guy on crutches took my laptop for me.  Insisted!  My god...

Oh, and last night, due to sickness and such, I went to the Residential office (it's just in the dorm lobby) to ask the cool Brit Lit guy who also makes sure that nobody kills anyone around here for some painkillers.  The exchange went something like this:

Me: Hey, please could I have a couple of ibuprofen?
Him: What's the complaint?
Me: Aaaaaaahhh... (I was thinking, okay?  I happened to have a lot of complaints)
Him: Okay, I've lived here long enough to know what that means (reaches for medication box as other staffmembers go crazy laughing).

I'm not easily embarrassed.  It was cool.


 Still very tired from being thusly hasta, so I'll go be responsible now.  Ish. 

Illness and a Surprise

Nice to meet you, Tuesday.  Leave me alone.

I've been sick... running a low fever on and off since Sunday night.  There's something going around and hitting a lot of people badly enough to make them miserable but too gently to keep them in bed.  That and the rain are turning the dorms into something of an energy sink.  It's really not nice out, and I am not looking forward to biking tomorrow.  I went walking around campus today after classes, and twenty minutes wiped me, I'm just so tired.  Yesterday evening I slept on one of the lounge sofas for almost an hour.  I actually got myself a blanket - shameless.  I overslept this morning despite that, though it didn't matter because I get up at least two hours before I need to be anywhere.  Hung out in the kitchen, made turkish çay tea, ate the last of the gorgeous (I feel justified in saying this, yes) quiches I made on Sunday and chatted with one of the guys who gets to clean our kitchen instead of the cafeteria's.  A lot of the Beatles and Gilbert and Sullivan on the laptop.  And that extremely tame kick has sort of been today's highlight, so far.  The weekend was quiet but very nice, and I still didn't get all my homework finished.  I did, however, get to watch Casablanca and V for Vendetta.  Both were excellent and the latter was new for me.  Almost the best film I've seen. 

I'm failing maths.  Have I mentioned that before?  I'm one grade-point from being moved down, and I'm not sure if that's a good thing or not.  The teacher for the non-accelerated course is meant to be fantastic, but if I can I want to stay on the faster course.  It's not particularly difficult material - I understand what's taught in class - but the one test we've taken so far was just evil.  I couldn't finish because there was so much of it, and it was horribly difficult, somehow.  I think a lot of people had trouble with it, though, and that's normal.

I'm not sure what to attach to this one in terms of pictures -- I'm sort of writing to put off editing an essay.  I hate what I've got so far, and I've got to fix it when all I really want to do is hide it in some folder and forget about it and never read it again. 

Some books I'd ordered came over the weekend, too.  My list, as soon as I'm done with Emma and Catch 22, goes:
The Restaurant At The End Of The Universe
Thunder From The East: Portrait of a Rising Asia
Three Cups of Tea

I can't wait to get to them.  I'm actually finding a lot more time for reading here than I used to.  I just hang around the lounge and throw myself over furniture and alternate homework, chatting and reading.  I love it and I'm off to do some of it now before structured study.

Okay, actually, I went out in the middle of writing this, and I've got a package!  I haven't excavated in full yet, but the day just got a lot better.  Spelt bread, butter, gouda and manchego cheese, some really delicious apples, dried tomatoes, mushrooms and beef, Nutella, crackers, cocoa powder and a note from my parents.  I am so glad I did not eat dinner.

With that I leave you to toil before the books of wisdom -- feeling just a little bit better.

Back to the MSSM

Sorry, but the Beatles are the best.

I am back.  And not projecting from the future.  No, Turkish-speaking-Bacon-eating bloggirl is back online, and how*.  Let me work backwards for a bit here.

I came home this weekend because I of that eye appointment/fair, and I missed school yesterday.  Thank god I didn't have math class, because that would set me too far back for words.  No, but it'll be tough enough catching up with Chemistry.  Chemistry!  I have a science class that I like.  Someone is messing with cosmic cogs and levers at the moment, and I am liking, you know, math and science.  Earth-shaking.  Oh, actually, I saw my math teacher Anyway, I get home late Thursday night and on Friday I hung out with a couple friends, made blueberry peach cake, watched The West Wing and totally failed to take enough pictures of the beautiful town I live in and never really appreciated before.  Stayed up until about 2 a.m. making pie crust and talking to someone back at school - it sounds like I'm missing a wild weekend.  This morning I baked that pie (blueberry) and took it over to the fairground to enter.  My old school's jazzband plays for the harness races every year, but considering the torrential nature of this morning, the horses were kept home and the band played their set uninterrupted.  The bad director, whom I'd been a little scared to face after leaving him so suddenly - if temporarily - second trombone-less to come to this school, saw me and went and dedicated a song to me, with a cheery 'wishing her good luck at school up north'.  The man's either trying to guilt me into tears or okay with my leaving.  Either way, it was great to see my friends play, and after helping them break down we spent a couple hours doing Fair Things.  This means we spent a couple hours alternately cooing at cows and piglets and llamas, and eating.  How we ate.  I again forgot my camera, but I'm kind of glad because I do not want to remember what I've eaten today.  It was wonderful.  Smoked ribs, sticky buns, incredibly high-qual sausages, lobster roll, lime fizz.  Then I brought home my pie (came third this year - very happy) and ate some of that.  It was a little runny, which will be why it didn't take first, but all parties pronounced it yummy and that was fun.  This evening I didn't eat dinner, understandably, except for some cake my parent brought home from a neighbor's wedding.  I still have to do battle with chem, though.  And if you're thinking 'my god, this girl's a food slut,' you're only kind of right.  Because the food at school is frankly Not Good.  There's a kitchen in the dorm, and I cook myself stuff every day, but it's hard to find time to eat as much...it took my performance today to convince my mother that I'm not developing anorexia.  This state of affairs, combined with biking class (we got through the most gorgeous rolling fields and toxic clouds of ozone) and maybe, maybe, my new tendency to NOT eat ten pieces of baklava every day, makes this weekend a total non-problem.  I'm actually feeling rather svelte.

I've tried LARPing (Live Action Role Playing, for those of you who, like me, don't know *censored* about that particular facet of 'geek culture').  It's a huge deal, played with swords and spears and various other weaponry composed of plastic piping, foam and duct tape.  I hate sig figs because they made me fail a quiz, but I feel like I did all right on a chemistry test on Wednesday.  I love my AP composition class to death, and the teacher is starting a photography club!  I'm starting to save for a new lens...one that, um, zooms?  And I've taken hundreds of photos already... god knows my classmates' antics are worthy of being recorded.  I also just heard that I got into the a cappella group, which practices for four hours every weekend.  I auditioned Wednesday and didn't think it went very well, but I'm really excited to have gotten in.

Oh, god, what else.... have I made it completely clear that I love it there?  The classes are extremely demanding and I'm doing three to four hours of homework every evening, but the other students are fantastic, the teachers actually care and there's not this feeling of just going through the motions.  Last weekend there was a dance where people actually danced, and this week it was horribly hot.  This hurricane was preceded by the most awful, stagnant heat, and inland Maine is like the midwest anyway - there's no medium, it's either stifling or bitterly cold.  I feel a little boxed in there without being able to smell the sea, and I'm sure winter will be hard... but I'll worry about that when it happens.


And now that I'm back to dull old Maine again, lots of my friends are flinging themselves across the planet.  AFS is heart-wrenching for those left behind.


Well, I have to go be excited to go back to school.  Or, rather, do maths homework.  Both.  I actually can't wait.  I missed my friends here like mad, and it's been fantastic to see them this weekend, but I'm ready to go home now, for another two weeks.


And there are other ukulele people!  One girl has an electric one...and I'm playing ukulele in the band!  Marilyn, move over.
And I do apologise for this post: haphazard even by my standards.  But there is no way I'm reading it over.  Just don't care that much about sentence structure tonight.
Herkesi sizi seviyorum!


*blame Lorna Lilly for that particularly contagious bit of the '50s

Son Gün Evde (Last Day At Home)

Ahh... my last day at home was lovely.  I spent it with a very good friend, and we finished packing, went to the beach, watched A Bit Of Fry And Laurie on YouTube (sweet, unblocked YouTube) and loaded up the car.  After she left, I and my parents made a lovely dinner: grilled salmon, chard with bacon and a gorgeous mushroom risotto, stirred to perfection by yours truly.  Carrot cake left over from the Celebrity Spelling Bee fundraiser the night before - remind me to tell y'all* about that later - was dessert, along with a big bowl of grapes, and followed by a lovely deep bath.  

Yes, those are my darling pink converse, pictured here on the shore of Turkey's Salt Lake.  They get around, and now I am wearing them up on the Canadian border.

Guys, look up a certain individual named Dan Savage.  Just do it.

That's about all.  Enjoy September.

On and on

Say that you remember

On and on

Dancing in September

On and on

Never was a cloudy day...

*I am missing my friend from Georgia.

İstanbul, The Drug (Alternatively, Give Me A Bag Of Hot Chestnuts And I'm Yours Forever)

It was not a weekend you'd want to get in a fight with.  Thankfully, we got on quite well, and the only blow it dealt was to whatever energy reserves I had left after four weeks here.  And, don't mısunderstand me, that was a blow I'm stıll recovering from now, on Thursday, but, god, ıt was worth it.  İstanbul... imagine whatever you've heard about that heady, glorious, ancient, modern, ridiculous, exquisite city, and then think of your most recent sauna experience.  İstanbul never sleeps.  hiç.



It's late, so this is going to be a really disorganized post.  In no particular order, here is what we (my host mother, sister, various friends and an aunt, and me) did.

We ate kokoreç, a sandwich of grilled sheep intestines.  They sell it on the street as a sort of snack food, 24 hours a day, due to the insomniacal (word?) nature of İstanbul.  It's actually really tasty, and my only problem was that it was very spicy.  There were also mussel shells stuffed with lovely rice all around the mussel, and deep-fried mussels on sticks.  I must bring these techniques back home to Maine, where we have, in my completely objective and unbiased opinion, the best mussels in the world.  Türkiye comes in a close second.

Went to both the Aya Sofiya and Sultan Ahmet mosques.  Aside from being impossibly beautiful, my favourite thing about them is the way one resulted in the other.  Aya Sofiya was originally a cathedral, and when the Ottomans came in they built the Sultan Ahmet mosque directşly opposite it to show the Christians what was what.  The two make this gorgeous mirror of one another, and there are fountains and corn and chestnut (oh, the chestnuts... I'd only seen them sold by the Paris metro before, and how I love them.  Chestnuts were the last thing I ate in 2009,  The first thing I ate this year was sea urchin roe) vendors and rose gardens in between.  The Aya Sofiya is a museum now, and the inside is not only gorgeous but going through a centuries-long religious identity crisis.  It's got arabic written all over it, and the tiling and wall art is typicaşlly İslamic, but there are still paintings of Mary and Jesus and the angel Gabriel on the ceilings. 

The Sultan Ahmet mosque is still very much functioning as such.  When my host mother and I went in, we were given plastic bags for our shoes and big squares of light blue cloth for our heads.  The inside is carpeted and just as enormously impressive as the Aya Sofiya, but differently decorated.  There were tourists all over, it beıng a very famous spot with good reason, but also some people praying, etc. etc.  The women have to pray in this tiny enclosed area with high wicker walls, and I think it's just awful.  But it was incredible to see the two buildings one after another.  I really wished my Dad (the, um, biological one, in Maine) had been there to see it.  He's an architect and would have loved the whole thing and driven me nuts with all the history of the building techniques and all.

In İstanbul, there are burqas everywhere.  Here in Ankara you see plenty of headscarves, but I've only seen about two full-length anythıngs in the five weeks I've been here (I know.  5 weeks...one week left and I don't know how I'll leave).  But in İstanbul, so many women go about with just their eyes showing through a slit, walking a step behind their husbands.  They're mostly tourists from İran, Pakistan and other nearby İslamic countries, but gosh.  Everywhere.  I almost died from the heat and humidity in my shorts and tank top, and I just can't imagine what it's like to go around day after day wearing long, heavy black - or, in one instance last weekend, purple - robes.  As if it weren't enough, you couldn't tell if most of these womens' husbands were secular or fanatically observant from the way they dress.  Insult to injury, or just plain cultural misogyny? 

The Grand Bazaar and Taksim (this incredibly long shoppıng street, probably the busıest in Turkey) are amazing, too.  I bought some spices, a(nother) cushion, too much Turkish delight (which turns out to be a) actually from Turkey and b) delicious c) screw C. S. Lewis, those books were preachy and boring) and a couple other presents for my family, and there are these men sellıng ıce cream that ıs somehow stretchy.  They throw ıt around on sticks to atract customers. 

Let's see, what else... The U2 poster is just somethıng I saw around İstanbul...I went to their 360 concert in London last August, and it wsa great, so it was cool to see they're coming here. 

There are a lot of stray cats everywhere ın Turkey.  Oh, and I figured out the colour settings on my camera!  I feel so stupid for not finding them for a whole month and a half...got to read that manual one of these days.  Anyway, my life is a bit of a black-and-white fest at the moment.  I got henna-ed, apparently ın the Pakistani/İndian style (turkish henna is oranger, I'm told) yesterday, which was lots of fun for 5 Lira. 

Oh, and my host-aunt, the one who lives in the Black Sea region, is pregnant!  We might go back up there this weekend to see her. 

It's too late to arrange all these photos, I'll come back and edit this post later.  For now you'll just have to figure it out.  You can do it.

İyi geceler.

Frustrated, Homesick and Generally Happy

Merhaba, everyone, and happy July fourth ıf that's what you go for.  I love fireworks, but who doesn't?  I missed school this weekend, if you can believe it, because it's turned out to be the time I can unwind a little with people who speak fluent english.  Living wıth my host famıly ıs great, fantastic really, but it's also nıce to be in a constant settıng for a bıt.  Yesterday after goıng to the haırdresser's wıth my mother and sıster:

(he didn't speak englısh, so I only found out afterwards that thıs ıs permanent) I went bowlıng wıth Alkım and her frıends, and we had dınner wıth some old frıends of my parents.  The same frıends, plus the guy's brother and hıs famıly, came over thıs evenıng.  I ımprovısed a couple pıes - one apple and one made wıth tınned blueberrıes I brought ın my suıtcase - and they were very well receıved, whıch made me happy.  I felt a tiny bıt homesıck for the fırst tıme when I tasted the blueberry (I am the dısqualıfıed champıon of the Maıne State Blueberry Pıe Contest 2010), and the US embassy ın Ankara set off fantastıc fıreworks, whıch we could see from our balcony here. 

Earlıer today, my anne and sıster took me t Atatürk's mausoleum, whıch was very ınterestıng.  There are soldıers there who don't move at all, sımılar to the ones around Buckıngham Palace, and the structures and museum there are very dramatıc.  Turkısh people really, really love Mustafa Kemal, as Atatürk ıs also called, to the poınt, ıt seems to an outsıder, or worshıp or deıfıcatıon.  From what lıttle I know, he was a great guy wıth revolutıonary ıdeas way ahead of hıs tıme, and I can't thınk of a sımılar hıstorıcal leader who gets such posthumous adoratıon.

After the mausoleum we vısıted Ankara castle, whıch ıs a gorgeous stop, though I haven't fıgured out the hıstory yet.  Let me mentıon here that today ıt was 40 degrees celcıus, before the thunderstorm set ın, and almost unbearably brıght outsıde.  We ate lunch ın thıs ıncredıbly cool restaurant wıth crumblıng tıle rooves and two women ın headscarves who sat and prepared our food over a sort of ındoor grıll.  Then the castle ıtself - one of the hıghest poınts ın Ankara (thıs ıs a serıously underrated cıty, people, you should come here) and very old and beautıful.  So, yes, I am more than exhausted.  Oh, and we got up at noon thıs mornıng.  TUrkısh breakfasts on the weekends are the best thıngs imaginable.  Helva ıs my new favourite food, and we had omelette, olıves, pancakes (okay, that part's not so Turkısh), cheese, simit....Mmmm! 

So...I'm actually too tıred to wrıte anythıng more,  so I'm just goıng to show you some of the pıctures I've taken...apologıes for thıs completely ınexcusable excuse for bloggıng....ıt's just too hard to stay awake when you've been toastıng pıe all evenıng and readıng Paradıse Lost all nıght for a week.

Grr.  Okay, blogger beıng dıffıcult.  More tomorrow, I promıse and I do apologıze.  Bye.

A Post With A Ridiculous Number Of Pictures

Selam, everyone.  It's the end of a beautiful hot day, and I'm packing right now.

AFS has very strict rules about what you can bring, and I have to keep my luggage under 44 pounds.  I'm culling my clothing selections to make room for the America and Maine-themed things I'm bringing my family.

On Saturday night, I went with my family to dinner with some friends who used to live in Turkey.  They put on a wonderful evening, and we watched a slideshow of photographs projected on a sail outside.  It kept billowing back and forth in the wind, and we made a lot of jokes about all the earthquakes in Turkey.  We ate the most delicious turkish food - grilled meat, aubergine, and feta cheese wrapped in phyllo and deep fried.  I made baklava for the first time, and was very pleased with the way it came out.

I spent yesterday with two lovely friends from the AFS orientation.  One of them, Silvia, is from Indonesia and going home next weekend after a whole year in Augusta.  The other, Danielle, lives here in Maine and is going to Turkey on NSLI-Y as well, for a semester.

We cooked Indonesian fried rice, which was absolutely delicious, and a lovely syrupy middle-eastern dessert.  Silvia stayed the night, and only just left.  I went to work babysitting for a couple hours while she hung out with my mum and some other mothers and kids at my house, and when I got back we went to the beach.  We waded, caught hermit crabs, and drew maps in the sand of the US, Indonesia and Turkey.

We also wrote our names in the sand.  She did hers in Arabic, and I wrote my hebrew name, לאה (Leah).  I think Arabic is far more güzel than Hebrew.

Some guys from my school showed up at the beach, and I introduced her, and when we left we put flowers on their various cars (identifiable by the college bumper stickers they sport.  Notable is the Harvard convertible) for them to find.  Then we went kayaking, which Silvia had never tried before.  She got quite good at it, and we were very happy and tired by the end.

I am SO excited about going to Turkey.  I fly to New York the day after tomorrow for the orientation, and on Friday to İstanbul!  I've found my host mother and sister, Didem and Alkım, on facebook and we've added each another as family.  They seem so nice, I just can't wait to meet them.  My host father is a chemical engineer, my anne studied psychology and works as a sales manager, and Alkım loves rock and plays the piano.  They've been to London, too, which is really great since I lived there for the first nine years of my life.

These rocks are just some pictures I took at the beach, but I am so enamored of the sharpness achieved by the Lumix that I couldn't help it - even if I kind of am echoing Ian's posts.  Whatever, he does it better.  In any case, I implore you to click on these to enlarge them and marvel.

And with that, my dears (sevgilim in Türkçe), I must away to my suitcase and figure out how to make it all weigh something that I am capable of lugging around Türkiye on my own (I'll have you know that I lugged some pretty damn heavy kayaks today, through the stickiest mud thusfar traversed by womankind).  I'll try to fit in another post before I leave, and then I'll be writing from Ankara!  I imagine that I'll be quite a mess when I first get there, so you must bear with me.  And just because this is a post with a ridiculous number of pictures, I'll throw in just one more:

İyi geceler.