Follow Me As I Discover Land, Language and Self...
“It was considered one of the most disagreeable places we could have been sent to,” the French woman said. “People told us there was only one worse place on the entire continent.” We were standing with our husbands waiting to check out of a little hotel in Safranbolu, not far from Turkey’s Black Sea coast. Her well-behaved dog, an Irish terrier, had broken the ice between us. To my surprise,…
The weather turned here this week, dropping into the seventies, and I have to admit, I was beginning to think that it would never happen. Every day since I’ve been here has been hot and humid, with no change. Minnesota weather can be tedious, but no two-month period goes by with each day exactly the same. The Bosphorus water appears a deeper blue now, and the houses on the Asian…
Our children, Angela and Gregory, are here and we’ve been sightseeing. We visited Istanbul’s Grand Bazaar, Topkapi Palace and the Hagia Sophia, and drove up the Bosphorus to the Black Sea. On Sunday the 22nd we left town for a five-day trip to Turkey’s west coast, the most progressive and prosperous region of the country. We were headed toward the ancient Roman city of Ephesus. The Turks call it Efes,…
While slowly adjusting to Turkish culture, I continue to email friends and follow the news back home, and this sometimes means that my thoughts are in the U.S. while the rest of me resides in Istanbul. But one topic has brought here and there together for me recently, and that is the controversy about the Mosque “at” Ground Zero and the subsequent protests about it and other mosque construction in…
Last Friday morning Angela called with the news that my sister-in-law’s sister, Janelle, had died in her sleep. Reason unknown, but an undiagnosed heart problem, perhaps related to sleep apnea, is suspected. She was 54 years old, an unusually generous, gregarious person. A death in the family forces you to reflect, and six weeks into building a new life is a good time to stop and assess. Here in Istanbul…
It became apparent to me the first time I lived overseas that things would go smoother if I took myself less seriously. Thinking of my daily objectives as immutable, acting as a focused, determined American, was simply not working. In the Yemen Arab Republic, and to a lesser extent in Costa Rica, it did not matter if I mailed a letter today or tomorrow, finished a report this week…
Yes, you read right. The term “breakfast tomatoes” is as common here as our “breakfast cereal.” Turks typically eat tomatoes for breakfast and we did just that for three days on trip to the coast with some new Turkish friends. The fruit that we consider a vegetable was peeled and cut into wedges, served alongside cucumber slices, white cheese, black olives, and fresh bread with a multitude of jams, including…
At first Sankar and I thought the dog was walking with someone. The narrow sidewalk in Bebek had many people on it, walking to and from restaurants, chatting with friends, licking ice cream cones — and quite a number were walking dogs. But then we saw that it had no collar, no leash. It did have a tag through its ear, however. This seems to be Istanbul’s method of keeping…
My nephew, Jonathan, arrived on Wednesday afternoon and stayed until early Monday morning. It was fun showing him around. We made some new discoveries, including a lovely little church from the 1300s located right by the Istanbul city walls that were built in the 3rd century AD by the Emperor Theodosius. The church glitters with highly expressive mosaic panels. We visited the Hagia Sophia, perhaps Istanbul’s most famous tourist site,…
June 22, 2010 Day Three here. Arrived on Sunday, and within an hour and a half, Sankar and I were at the downstairs neighbors’ apartment for tea. Seme and Pinar are a couple about our age, and had run into Sankar and extended the invitation earlier in the week. Meeting them so soon answers my question about friendliness and helps me feel optimistic about life here. My first day was…
