I'm now in Istanbul. I'm having a great time. Turkish lessons are going well - my tutor and I are meeting Tuesdays - Thursdays for 4 hours each day. My head was stuffed full of Turkish words and sort of hurt after the first week of this. Then I did some homework and my head really hurt!
I'm also really busy with friends and new friends. I've spent some great time with Nuran (a friend through Kelly and Stephanie). I met her boyfriend Boran and his brother Tufan. I went to the Asian side of Istanbul to meet her. She basically said, "Meet me in Kadiköy. When you get off the boat, cross the bus terminal, go up the street, take a left at some point, and then you will find KargaArt Bar." That wasn't too specific.....but I asked some people, one guy took me to KargaArt and there you go! A little adventure. The ferry ride over is very nice. I will do that again in the day and take some pictures of Topkapı palace and the Aya Sofya (Haghia Sophia) from the Marmara sea.
Later we walked in the rain to an outdoor tea cafe that looked back at the European side. We talked about technology (the superiority of Macs over PCs), global warming, role of women in today's world, football (soccer, that is) and a bunch of other things. It was really amazingly fun. Fortunately for me everyone I'm meeting speaks English; one of the reasons I want to learn Turkish is that I feel like I should be able to have at least some small conversations in Turkish since I am here now and all my friends are doing me the favor of always speaking in English. We'll see if I get very far beyond "My name is...." (Benim Adim Mark), "The weather is nice" (Hava çok güzel), "how are you? (Nasilsiniz?), etc. It's all cool.
I also met one of Nuran's friends, Levent. He is a war correspondent. He's been to Afghanistan quite a few times. He's also been help captive by the Kurdish rebel group PKK. He's obviously very interesting. We'll hang out one of these days soon, I think.
My friend Suphi is also back from working abroad just yesterday, so we will spend some time together just hanging out.
My tutor, Alper, is also a very cool guy. We've hung out a bit after lessons with a friend of his, Murat. We went to a great street called Cezayir Street (like Algiers, more or less). Its nickname is French Street. It's a steep street (all stairs) with cafes on all sides - most of them with French names (I don't know if the food is French.) Lots of live music everywhere. Very very fun. The only bad thing about sitting at a cafe is that so many people smoke here - it's impossible to avoid the drifting smoke some times. But I guess you just have to blow it away from you.....or wear a mask or something! :-)
In the meantime, as you can tell, I've taken a little break from pictures and posting. I think I will continue this break for just a bit. I'll do some traveling soon, and I should have a few photos to share. But this part of the trip is not as much about traveling as living, so I'm not taking my camera everywhere. But I'm enjoying living in Istanbul for right now.
Ciao for now..........Mark
