Istanbul with John

Last Sunday my boyfriend John came to visit! We started our trip in Istanbul. It was a very short trip, and we didn't want to rush around during our first couple of days together, so we hit only a few of the highlights. We started out with a cruise up the Bosphorous Strait. Along the Bosphorous, you can see fishing villages, upscale neighborhoods, and Ottoman palaces. We even stopped at a quaint little neighborhood famous for its yogurt and tasted some. (I love good yogurt!) Our final stop was at a nice little neighborhood where we ate fish at a restaurant overlooking the water and people-watched the plaza below.

The next day we hit the highlights of the central tourist district of Istanbul. We hoped to visit the Topkapi Palace, but it turns out that it's closed on Tuesdays. We walked past the Hagia Sophia and the Blue Mosque. Then we went inside the Basilica Cistern, an enourmous underground reservoir built by the Romans utilizing old columns to hold up the ceiling, and upside-down Medusa heads to scare off intruders. We passed by one of the original Roman mile-markers before we reached the Grand Bazaar. In the picture below you can find John among the crowds at the entrance to the Bazaar (Kapalicarsi).

Check back soon! There's more stories to come!

Baklava!

My latest cooking adventure was in making baklava. If you can buy all the handy-dandy made-for-baklava ingredients, it's actually not that hard. I bought the special baklava filo dough, and the special crushed baklava pistachios. After that, you just layer the filo dough (carefully, they're fragile), and lots of melted butter, and stop halfway to spread crushed pistachios. Of course, we did use 50 sheets of filo dough, so that's the hard part. At the end, you bake until golden and pour sugar syrup over the top. Serve with crushed pistachios on top. Mmm, healthy. All in all, for our small pan, we used 4 sticks of butter and 5 cups of sugar. No wonder it's so good. Bring on the calories!

Tribute to my roommate

My roommate moved away last weekend. She was here from day 1 of my experience living in this place. It's hard to imagine living here without her, except now I'm doing it. Our friendship will continue, but for now her departure feels sort of like a death. I'm in mourning. And so to help me in this transition, I felt it would be therapeutic to write a tribute to my dearly departed roommate. It doesn't encompass all of who she is or why so many people love her, but for now it expresses what I miss.

She helped me to understand the culture around me because she understood it so well. She seemed to naturally mesh with the heartbeat of our friends here. I remember the first moment I realized while watching her interact with one of her closest Turkish friends, "They're not speaking English, but this Turk understands her better than I do." She was fun and outgoing in ways I only wish I could be. She knew how to throw a party, and she knew how to relax. She was always helping me to get out of the house to spend time with our local friends or see a movie. But don't get me wrong, she also worked hard. She prepared great English lessons and studied and cooked and cleaned with fervor. She loved with fervor, and the proof of that is in how many people loved her in return. She was brave and willing to take risks. She was full of ideas and willing to try them while I was still wondering if they would work. We washed dishes together and learned to cook together and traveled together. We cared for two cats together and cared for friends together. But most of the time I was just trying to keep up with her and help her out as I knew best. She taught me many things, practical and personal. She was there as I went through culture shock and the shock of not understanding or being understood. She was there every day for a year and a half, except for a few vacations she or I took with other friends or family. She was my family. And I will never forget her.

Inconceivable!

If you've been following my blog, you might remember what I wrote in March about my challenges and frustrations at the lab due to the language barrier. (http://meloverseas.blogspot.com/2008/03/connecting-with-home.html) The summary: "I sound dumb in the hort lab here because I don't know what the people around me are talking about unless they speak to me like they would a 4-year-old." Well, seven months later I've gotten used to not understanding most of the time, and I've adjusted to my role of studying language and staying out of the way until I'm needed, with occasional breaks to chat. But I still have the sneaking suspicion that they doubt my competency.

Well, this week I had the exciting opportunity to start participating in 2 graduate-level horticulture classes for the fall semester. Fortunately for me, the textbooks are in English, so the professor asked me to present the first chapter (the role of genes in cells) in English next week, a doable assignment (all the students will take turns presenting chapters, except they'll translate and present in Turkish). Today after class I was reading my first chapter and one of the students at the lab came up to talk to me. Here's how the conversation went:
Student: "What are you doing?"
Me: "I'm doing my homework. I'm presenting this chapter next week for Recombinant DNA class." (I show him the first page of the chapter.)
Student: "Do you understand it?"
Me: "Yes, it's in English."
Student: "Yes, but do you understand it?"

Now, I know that Recombinant DNA isn't considered the easiest topic, but for a graduate student whose had a biology class before it should be comprehensible. Actually, the first few chapters of the book really are easy because they are review from biology class. My friend, however, seemed to doubt that I was capable of doing something that he could do (especially if it were in his original language). In other words, they really do think I'm as incompetent as I thought they did. Amazingly, though, the professor (who generally intimidates me) must not completely doubt my competency because she chose to assign me to present first. She's been overseas, though, so maybe she understands me better than I thought.