WHY HAVE I NEVER HEARD OF HALVA BEFORE?!

Things have been steadily improving over here in central Anatolia. It finally rained for the first time since I've been here, first of all - always a promising sign in a drought. I figured out how to activate my Turkish bank account & found my first paycheck waiting for me - another good sign - as well as how to buy a train ticket from Ankara to Izmir (to be used this Tuesday night) online for cheap, although I might've stuck myself in a male-sleeping-car accidentally; we'll see about that! My poison ivy is gone, my first post office excursion was successful, I have an ID card, my graduate class times are arranged, I've been going to the gym, and all lingering symptoms of my water-related sickness have been eradicated. I've got my bearings at Bilkent and my position as a "speaking skills instructor" looks more promising/challenging/exciting the more training we get. The moon/sunsets are beautiful.

But most importantly, I've started exploring Ankara and have found it (somewhat surprisingly) charming. Bilkent is a good 20 minutes outside the city-center, but the university runs 2 free bus lines to Tunus (the hip, modern, upscale shopping/dining area) and Sıhhiye (closer to the older, more traditional part of the city.) A few of us Bilkent teachers met up with some funny, generous middle-aged Australian/Canadian/Dutch expat journalists/embassy workers and got both a feel of what "relocating" to Ankara might involve and advice on taking the foreign-correspondent route (not to mention some free drinks) in a swanky area south of Tunus. Yesterday, however, was Victory Day (no work) so Laura and I went for the Sıhhiye section and stumbled upon streets and streets of tucked-away markets offering olives, nuts, shoes, copper pots, antiques, flowers, baklava, fabric, vegetables, bread, wooden spoons, and HALVA (my new favorite thing) among piles of everything else.

Laura and I stopped in a courtyard cafe for some gözleme, ayran, and çay before shopping for some pizza ingredients: (and a few other things.)



Laura, my kitchen mate Marion, and I take turns cooking dinner for each other; last night I sort of cheated and made a simple pizza on flat-bread, but all the toppings were so fresh it was worth it. When I tried to buy the tomatoes from a merchant he insisted that I just take them (!!!) and several minutes after giving a cute little boy 3 lira (about $2.25) for the box of pistachio baklava that was 2.5 lira (meant as a tip) I found his tugging on my arm, breathless, with the change. Ankara doesn't get as many tourists as, say, Istanbul or the west coast, so although our presence in the market wasn't exactly unusual it did rustle up some commotion and undeserved special service/attention. The whole experience really reminded me just how isolated and elite Bilkent's campus is - my first experience with a college "campus" at all, really, other than Marlboro this past summer.

accomplishing small tasks is what my life revolves around at the moment. being able to explore a market in a new part of town, practice my turkish, come home with a pile of cheap ingredients, and make some good pizza with friends is good. but when every bus is caught on-time, no one gets lost or tired or frustrated, the only mishap involves buying BUTTER instead of CHEESE, and a kindly man helps me more than he can ever imagine by offering six free tomatoes (when i asked for 5) with absolutely no gain on his part - that's basically heaven.