Görüşürüz

görüşürüz: see you later, bye-bye

Can you understand why Turkish was so impossibly difficult to learn? I got about fifteen words down, but without the ability to talk in numbers, you can't even bargain for more cheap glass Turkish eye beads. I may have learned a little, but "Thank You" was just a huge toughie, so I probably seemed like the rudest person ever, or a mute in every single stop we made.

This morning, we walked 30 minutes uphill to drop my mom at the airport bus. I constantly feel like Miley Cyrus' 'The Climb' is background music for the vertical battle that is Istanbul. My aunt and I spent the rest of the morning walking back home, stopping for some delicious pomegranate orange juice here. Unlike America, when fresh-squeezed will cost you an entire hour of babysitting for three gulps, Turkey gives the people what they want, at just 1 TL (55 cents. Nobody even likes nickels - great justification for spending 11 of them this way).

The afternoon consisted of much more olive-smothered toast with cheese, getting in the last few earfuls of call-to-prayers competing for the warm wind. Last activities involved dodging a little drizzle as we flipped through countless thrift shops tucked into grafittied walls. When I crossed into Cihangir, the world of Istanbul transformed. The streets widened, the trash was picked up, and the women were not wearing scarves. There were gourmet cheese shops, lingerie shops, wine shops - specialities you don't see in the Eastern Islamic-influenced parts of the city. The cafe and tree-lined neighborhood probably would have felt Parisian, almost, except as per usual, all the buildings seemed to be tilted on each other, six stories high, about to come crashing down on me. My aunt took me to a hidden mosque for one final amazing view of the sweeping Bosphorus with hilled peninsulas, sunlit minarets jutting out and I thought about how cool it was that I got to come and play here.

Then, I took at 2.5 hour nap. Totally a good choice, except I was a little restless because I thought I might get robbed because that happened to my aunt's friend when he was showering a few months ago here and a neighbor (she thinks) smashed in the front window and stole all his goods (passports, laptop, diamonds - okay, probably not diamonds, but definitely the first two.). (Who doesn't love a good run-on sentence when you're running on minimal energy...)

My aunt's film editor's girlfriend Busla invited me out with  her friends to some cafe described as a hipster hangout in Asmalimescit (pronounce that - ha!). Social success!

And with the morning, another flight, another city, another set of unexpected adventures due to a total lack of planning this upcoming leg out...

görüşürüz: see you later, bye-bye