Caught my eye

In the spirit of my previous post:

Every person seated on the bus was wearing a soldier’s uniform, except for the one woman – blonde, in civilian garb – sitting in the front seat.

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Just beyond the string of balloons hanging above the water, a tiny fishing boat – probably meant only to hold one or two people on board – bobbed its way across the water. Ten men shared the tiny space, some sitting with their feet overboard and others crouched on the roof. Their smiles seemed to show that they were enjoying the moment, taking in the sun.

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There was a small lighthouse, blue and white, next to a traffic light. While waiting for the green light, I watched a man circle the lighthouse several times and shout down to the water. Was he shouting to a friend? Someone in need of a help? A person the man had pushed into the water? I looked away for a moment, and when my eyes came back to the lighthouse, the man was gone. Not a second later, the man was running at full speed and lept into the water to join whomever was below.

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Three brides (each with different expectations for modesty, judging by their gowns) waited their turn at the best photo spot in Emirgan Park. The swans, some black and some white, didn’t seem to realize how coveted their place to swim was for wedding photographs.

Small scenes from Istanbul

A little overwhelmed with jetlag and the hustle and bustle of Istanbul, so while I work on processing everything I’m seeing/hearing/smelling, here are some brief images of this amazing city:

A young girl, who can’t be more than thirteen judging by her size (but it’s hard to say without seeing her face), tugs at her chador. It is hotter than 90 degrees, and she waves the black fabric around her legs to create wind. Nearby, a woman’s bleach blonde hair peeks out from her neon pink headscarf.

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Walking down Istiklal Caddesi, I saw several tiny girls – perhaps five or six years old – sitting on the ground, playing instruments or banging cardboard boxes against the ground. Later that night, in the Fındıkzade neighborhood, I see two Muslim women bend over to give money to a tiny girl selling Kleenex next to a bus station. Are these children refugees from Syria? Are the people who linger next to these girls her family, or people with more pernicious intentions? Will she be safe at night?

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Sipping Efes at a table outside, fidgeting with the coasters. Two tom cats fight loudly in the Rasputin-themed bar across the street and pick on a smaller kitty who runs away.

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On the way to the metro at Emniyet, a poster that must be five or six stories tall bears President Erdoğan’s face and an inspirational slogan. In anticipation of Victory Day on August 30, streamers with hundreds of tiny Turkish flags hang in the street.

City of Angels

I was spoiled by Los Angeles. I probably should say Heather spoiled me while I was in Los Angles, though – she and her family were such wonderful guides to the city.

We spent our afternoons in museums, surrounded by beauty and surging with inspiration. Scandalous Belgian art and convergences in contemporary and historical photographs hung on the walls. At the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Heather and I split in different directions – I made a b-line for the impressionists and Heather strolled through the hall of Pacific art. We met in the courtyard for an appointment to stand in a room of breathing light.

People watching, in museums and on the streets, also proved a lovely way to pass the time. We watched a man, who held a bouquet of flowers, wait impatiently as his soon-to-be fiancé came to the Getty. He stood in a crowd of his friends in the museum’s beautiful gardens, with everyone talking about how beautiful the moment would be – at that moment, the man’s friend received a call and rushed off to usher the woman to the garden instead of an exhibit hall.

I ate well in Los Angeles, too. The night Heather flew in from DC, we visited an In ‘N’ Out, according to family tradition. Normally I’d be fine with a simple burger (maybe some hot sauce), but Heather and her mom whispered options for upgrading my culinary experience into my ear – the Secret Menu. While I couldn’t move for a few hours, the experience was glorious.

There was also Mexican food on Mexican food on Mexican food – I tried all kinds of dishes and ate my weight in mole, a thick, slow-cooked sauce that’s sweet and savory and perfect all at once. Mole, sweet mole, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways. Seven? We made two trips to one restaurant, which had a cave room in the back – the darkness aids in the digestion process, I think. No good meal can end without dessert, though. Boba tea and twenty-cent cookies were great, but – hands down – cream puffs from Beard Daddy’s were my favorite sweet. Huge doughy pastries filled with a variety of creamy goodness – they were messy, but so so good.

On the night of the Super Moon, we took a picnic at the Griffith Observatory. Everyone else in the city apparently shared this idea, but despite the crowds, the night was magical. Heather’s brother showed us Mars and Saturn with a laser pointer that, I kid you not, reached all the way to the planets (or at least it appeared so). I shoved down my thoughts about light pollution and the irony of stargazing in Los Angeles rather than in rural Minnesota and appreciated the beauty of the city at night. From the overlook of the planetarium, the city sparkled – a bedazzled circuit board, of sorts.

San Francisco/San Fran/SF

San Francisco had a great vibe.

Heather and I squealed driving up and down the hills, horrified at the prospect of the car’s breaks going out and falling to our doom. Rubber burned only once, fortunately. The city’s colors were gorgeous, especially against the grey of the sky and bay. It was much chillier than I expected – when people said it was cold, I assumed as a Midwesterner that I would be immune. I was very, very wrong – the sourdough breadbowl of chowder warmed us up, enough at least to run back to the car.

Another day, we came into the city in the early afternoon to explore and wander before seeing Beyoncé (and Jay Z was there too, I guess) in concert. Anticipating harsh cold, we brought blankets to the stadium – but the body heat of thousands of other Beyoncé fans and the thrill of dancing in unison with Bey kept the cold away. We sat next to a sister who had dragged her brother to the concert and a group of girls showing a lot of sideboob and dancing like maniacs in the aisle. When one girl fell into the row in front of us, they had to leave – which meant more room to dance and sing for me. No complaints here. The show was incredible and completely justified a nine-hour drive from LA.

No real crazy stories from this city, unless you count watching forty sea lions lounge in the sun.

West Coast (Best Coast?)

Following with this summer’s motif of roommate roadtrips, I flew to California last week to visit friends from university and take a drive up the California coast.

We drove the Pacific Coast Highway, PCH if we’re using local vernacular, which made for a gorgeous trip from Los Angeles to San Francisco. After two hours of weaving our way out of the largest urban region in the world – the Los Angeles megalopolis – we coasted through canyons and along the ocean on the one-lane highway.

Heather asked me to give her my “running commentary” of my impressions of California. Our conversations in the nine-hour car ride centered a lot around cultural differences between California and the rest of the country, especially on teaching state history in primary education. In Minnesota, state history centered on Les Voyageurs, Native Americans (though it skipped over the more violent parts), the frontier life, and farming. In California, young students learn about Spain and Jesuit missionaries. Heather told me the story of how the California flag came to be. Californians wanted to declare independence, similar to Texas, and needed a flag for their new republic. A man asked his wife to sew something together quickly, requesting a pear (to represent the bountiful fruit crops) to be the main feature on the flag. The woman misheard, and instead sewed on a bear (a more forceful symbol, anyway).

We talked about the vanity of cars in LA – because everyone spends so much time in transit, people are willing to invest loads of cash into their cars. Fancy cars I’d never seen (or admittedly heard of) sped by us on the highway. Many of these cars were white, which I took to be a clever way of avoiding overheating, since white absorbs less heat than darker colors. Heather told me that was a good theory, but that white cars are preferable because they need to be washed less often. It’s illegal to wash your own car in the city, due to drought concerns. Black cars show dust and dirt more clearly than lighter cars (a premise I didn’t entirely agree with), and so people prefer the cars they don’t have to take to the carwash as often.

During my trip earlier this summer that spanned a huge chunk of the country – from DC, through the Carolinas, down the Florida peninsula, along the Gulf, and back up the Mississippi to Memphis – I enjoyed watching changes in the landscape. Virginia forests look a lot different than the bayou, and it stunned me that so much physical variation could be contained in just one country. The California coast left me similarly surprised. From desert and sand dunes to forests with soil that feeds massive redwood trees, I saw so many different landscapes in the trip to San Francisco and back. There was no unattractive view from my passenger seat window.

Tekrar Alanya’ya döneceğim….I’m going to Alanya again!

It’s crazy to believe that I’m heading back to Turkey in less than two weeks! I’ll be returning to the McGhee Center in Alanya to work as the Residence Assistant at the villa. I expect it will be very different from my time there as a student, but I’m hoping to take full advantage of this chance to return to this place (and its beautiful beaches…).

Family and friends who have followed my travels for a few years now, you have probably heard my basic spiel on Turkey. If you want to step up their game and really get into the details of Turkish politics and culture, here are a few things to read:

• A timeline of major events in the history of the Turkish Republic.
• In a move similar to Vladimir Putin’s in Russia, former-PM Recep Tayyıp Erdgoğan (Reh-jep Ta-yip Air-doe-an, not Air-doe-gan) was very recently elected president. Last time I lived in Alanya, I didn’t know much about Turkish politics. I’ve followed national politics pretty closely for the past year, so it will be interesting to see how they play out at the city level.
• After my time in Alanya, I continued studying Turkish language at Georgetown. I’m hoping to keep up the language, which will probably involve listening to a lot of Turkish pop and watching soap operas.
• Turkish cuisine is to die for, and I can’t wait to eat heaps and heaps of içli köfte and mantı.
• An easy way to make friends (or frenemies) is to talk Turkish football teams. Everyone roots for one of three İstanbul teams (Galatasaray, all the way), but I also admire Trabzonspor for the color of its jerseys. I’m hoping to watch a few games and get to know more about players and support for local clubs.
• I’m often asked about what it’s like to be a foreign woman traveling and living in Turkey. Elif Şafak, a famous Turkish author, captures both sides of deep cultural differences in Turkey when it comes to gender and secularization.

I’ve got a few personal projects in mind, that I’ll pursue while not working in the day. One is related to geography and tourism: Alanya is hub for Scandinavian and Russian tourists. Walking down the street, you’re more likely to hear shouts in German or Norwegian than English or Turkish. If you check out Alanya’s city website, it’s almost entirely focused on tourism. I want to explore the way the tourism industry has (or hasn’t) shaped locals’ conceptions of their city.

The second is really random – I want to go to the local cinema once every week or two to watch movies, something I did only once while abroad the first time. I think it’ll be good for my Turkish, but I also want to experience the bizarre phenomenon of intermissions during movies (and I’m not talking at a conveniently timed transition-point in the plot, but breaks that come in at the height of a big fight or dramatic confession of love).

But most of all, I can’t wait for this to be my view again for four months: