It's been awhile

The length of time since my last entry attests to the fact that I've been incredibly busy.  Some has been lots of fun:  many vistors, a trip to Capadoccia, Spring's arrival getting us out and about (ususlly with visitors) But the job has been, if anything, more demanding. 

Finals are over, and the intense grading  as well.  Now I've got a complicated job of packing up boxes as per Ministry of Education directives.  As I've struggled these last few weeks, I keep telling myself (as do my great colleagues and friends)  next year will be better.  The rose-colored glasses and blinders are off.  I'll say more about that in the "For Teachers" section.



Sim flew home yesterday. Before he left we did some celebratory things: had dinner at a new Italian restaurant in our neighborhood. It was terrific and so nice to have a place that we can walk to. It's owned by a Turkish woman and her Italian husband who is the chef. The service, ambiance and food were all wonderful. Sunday night my friend Karla hosted a barbecue on the lawn of her building overlooking the Bosphorus. She's leaving after 3 years here and heading to Moscow. We played wiffle ball and some of danced to a great music mix DJed by Jamison, an English department colleague. Monday night we had a dinner party with Maura and Sibby, Andy and Felicia, and Cecille. Sim cooked what's become a specialty of his: fried fish with a Thai tamarind-chili sauce. Last month when Rob and Judy came from Boston, he had them bring tamarind paste, and he used it all to make the dish for them. Then he discovered a box of tamrinds in the supermarket and made the paste from scratch. This is only a small part of why I'm really going to miss Sim.


Before I recap more of the fun part of the last 2 months, here's what's ahead:  On Saturday, I'll be heading to Rome, chaperoning 15 kids for  a week in Roma and Firenze.  The kids, I'm told, are great.  They're rising seniors who took an English elective called Art, Science and Literature.  My friend and colleague Michael taught them and he needed a female chaperone for this trip to look at medieval and Renaissance art and architecture.  I'll have to brush up, so as not to appear an idiot.  My always-watching-out-for-me buddy  Maura wrangled me the gig. 

We return on Saturday, June 25. My brother-in-law Brad will be here, staying out on Buyukada with friends Ron and Fusun.  Monday the 27th is graduation, and Tuesday a host of guests begins to arrive.  It'  sister and sister-in-law Monica and Charlotte on the afternoon of the 28th, daughter Cait on the 30th, friend Barb on Jul.  I fly home with Char and Barb on the 13th of July. (At least the Istanbul-Frankfort leg.)  The other good news in the calendar change is that we will have Christmas week off, so I'm looking at coming home.  It will be a bit risky and definitely expensive.  I'll have to fly on Christmas and New Year's eves, so the risk is getting stuck somewhere I don't want to be on Christmas Eve. 

Over the summer I have these activities planned:  Grassroots Festival of Music and Art, my 40th high school reunion in Port Washington, a week at the Jersey shore with mom, aunts, sibs, nieces, nephews, cousins, Sim and the other 51ers 60th birthday bash.  And I have to figure out how to do it without a car.  Or I have to get one for the summer.  But there's time for that.

So back to early April when our high season for visitors began.  Friends Ginny and Greg came for her spring break from teaching in Elmira.  They stayed in a lovely hotel in Sultanamet and we met them there and had dinner near the Galata Tower.  We went up to check out the view at sunset, then walked up Istiklal Caddesi.  A couple of days later we took the Bosphorus cruise with them and had lunch in the village at the top by the Black Sea.

As you can see, the weather was quite changeable that day.

The following week, my friend Jean arrived for her Spring break and then a couple days later, Sim's sister Debbie and her son Alex came after four days in Athens and 2 days in Selcuk and Ephesus.

The view from the rooftop restaurant at the Pierre Loti Hotel, which Sim and I discovered as a great place for drinks, especially at sunset.

Sim did the usual tourist sites with them and I joined them in the evenings. April is the tulip festival.  The variety and number is very impressive.  Tulips were first propagated in Turkey and they're a very prominent motif on the tiles and ceramics you see everywhere.  Alex and Jean really bonded.  Debbie, Jean and I went to the hamam, got exfoliated, bubble bathed, and massaged.  While we were doing that, Sim and Alex hung around the Grand Bazaar and drank apple tea, which Alex drank gallons of while here.

We went to a performance of the Whirling Dervishes.  It was in the Press Museum in Sultanahmet.  Kind of ironic that there is a press museum, since there is significant press censorship in this country, a fact that many of my students mention quite freqently, especially when we studied Fahrenheit 451 and The Crucible, which involved discussions of McCarthyism. 

In May we had the next group of visitors.  John Tilitz and Tom Stein arrive and the whirlwind began.  They arrived on Friday and brought good weather with them.  On Sunday, a perfect Spring day, we took the ferry out to Buyukada.  We had lunch at a restaurant along the waterfront.  As I mentioned in an earlier post, when we were on the island with Ron and Fusun in March we saw the beginnings of a project there.  They had torn down all the glass enclosures of the resturant terraces and the drawings showed the planned tent-like replacements.  In two months there seemed to be no progress.  It was fine on that fine day to have just an umbrella but when there's wind, rain or lazing sun it won't be so fine.

We walked up to Ron and Fusun's house, so that they could see the outside.  Mustafa the caretaker was there, so we could show the guys the terracing and gardens all around.  As builders there were very interested in how a shell of a house and a pile of rock and dirt on a hill could be transformed into the beauty it is now, especially on an island with horse drawn carriages a the means of transportation. Mustafa gave us a bag of gorgeous lettuce from the vegetable garden. 

We took the hike up to Aya Yorgi.  Perfect weather for it, not too hot. 

This was an orphanage on Buyukada and is reputedly the largest wooden structure in Europe.

Again, Sim did the tour guide thing on Monday and Tuesday.  Tom was looking for ceramics and ended up with 2 large bowls and one large rug, which is really lovely.  We laid it out in our dining room and it was perfect.  I promptly spilled a glass of wine on it.  (White, luckily.)  
Rob and Judy arrived from Boston the following Wednesday.  I had rented an apartment about a half hour walk from our place.  John and Sim met R and J at the airport and Tom and I went grocery shopping and made dinner at the apartment wihich was lovely and had a great view of the Bosphorus.  We all stayed overnight there.  We had no school on Thursday and Friday, so we all went downtown in the afternoon.  We lost John in the Spice Bazaar. (We thought it would be Tom, who kept stopping to take pictures or to look at things) John  found us about a half hour later at Rustempasa Mosque.  He had bought a rug.

That evening we had dinner in one of the fish restaurants off Istiklal. (After dealing with the most aggressive come-ons from the guys that I've experienced.  It really was too much. )  Our friends' band had a gig nearby, and Rob and John insisted on going and made Sim go with them.  Judy, Tom and I took a cab home, since we were getting up at 5 to head to the airport to fly to Capadoccia. 

I'll end this post now and do a new one for the trip.