iyi şeker bayramlar

so. my first turkish bayram (literally "holiday") was şeker ("sugar") bayram, meaning the end of ramazan when everyone basically visits family + friends and eats a ton of CANDY (especially baklava & similar honey-drenched desserts) at the various stops. kids also go door-to-door trick-or-treat style, kissing the hands and foreheads of elders in exchange for sweets. while most of my foreign co-workers headed for istanbul's hostels and sights, i totally lucked out with an invitation from my 26-year-old co-worker to go to her mother's house in istanbul to see what a traditional bayram involves. translation: 4 days of eating really good homemade food, peering around turkish apartments, and memorizing turkish commercials as i drifted in and out of mental consciousness between the perpetual presence of television and the intense level of turkish around me. although i still haven't seen the blue mosque or a single hamam, such an intimate, homestay-like experience was great. here's bedra and her super-fashionable mom (anne in turkish):



and bedra's anne showing off the beautiful traditional turkish breakfast awaiting me each morning in her pretty amazing apartment (on the asian side of istanbul):



over the course of the trip i developed a mysterious bond with one of bedra's anneannes (grandmothers.) bedra translated for us for a while, but eventually her anneanne was content to simply sit on the couch and hold my hand, occasionally waving her mug around for me to refill with su (water) or çay (tea.) not only did she give me two of her old rings but (!!) she also complained (loudly) that her grandson should have married me instead of his new wife. here she is reading bedra's future in her coffee grinds:



we did head over to the european side twice to meet up with bedra's friend and thensome of my american co-workers; in just a few hours i fell in love with istanbul's beautiful architecture (especially mosques) even from afar.



both times we stuck around taxim, (one of) the city's centers.



from a rooftop teahouse we saw a drizzly, overcast, Pamuk-esque view of the city:



& here we are waiting in line with bedra's friend for the year's final iftar (breaking of the daily fast.) during ramazan restaurants offer deals on giant plates of food and, just before sunset, hand out dates to the lines of fasters winding up and down the streets so they can eat immediately as they wait. iftar dinners are fun; apparently it's common to gain weight during ramazan thanks to the giant helpings of pide and the like.


the juxtaposition of secular, non-fasting turks (i.e. bedra) against those that do fast and are religious to varying degrees (i.e. her friend pictured above) is subtle. the bus ride from ankara to istanbul was interesting - turkish bus-rides, by the way, are incomparable with the typical american greyhound experience; most companies serve complimentary drinks, food, and moist towelettes, show movies, and stop at privately-owned rest-stops. on the ride, food and drinks were served twice - once for non-fasters and then again just at sunset, accompanied by a call to prayer played over the bus' speaker system. when i was in zanzibar over ramadan in 2004, the entire archipelago (save travelers, the ill, menstruating women, and others exempt in the koran) was fasting to the point where it was impossible to find food before sunset. not so in turkey. my extremely rough estimate (based on informal surveys of my students) is that less than half the urban population fasts, and eating in front of fasters is not an issue.

in other news, my fellow foreign speaking skills instructors and i (finally & somewhat amazingly!) moved into our new 5-story building overlooking ankara. my 2nd-floor apartment is small but fancy and probably the nicest place i'll live for a while:



totally brand-new kitchen:



bathroom (insane storage on the right wall - described as an "entertainment center for personal hygiene"):



mandolin-playing-couch overlooking the city:



laura is next door & constantly cooking me things like curry-apple-eggplant-bulgurwheat stir fry. here she is posing next to a starry-painting she gave me and my ridiculous new knee-high BOOTS bedra talked me into buying. i love them.



You can see more pictures from the trip (mostly tipsy karaoke-related action-shots) here.

according to bedra's anneanne, my coffee grinds say i'm emotional, moody, and take things as problems when there's really nothing to worry about - i should get happy news from my family, "hug a male friend," "talk with a female friend," and in general have a çok ferah (very open/bright) future. i hope she's right. i'm trying to keep in mind a quote my former next-door neighbor mille recently sent me in a letter: be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a harder battle (supposedly by plato.) she's an amazing, spunky, elderly woman who just suffered major injuries after being hit by a car - and, in her bed-ridden state, she's thinking about quotes like that. sometimes, when i'm walking home from work alone through the cold mud of a deserted field feeling especially lonely, incompetent, and lost, i remember i'm in turkey and hopefully growing somehow - and incredibly lucky to be here. i know there's a reason why i'm here, but i still have to figure it out.