Everyday Treasures

Saturday, January 26, 2013

Saturday, January 26, 2013 -

The Accidental Beauty of Poverty

“To savour Istanbul’s backstreets, to appreciate the vines and trees that endow its ruins with accidental grace, you must, first and foremost, be a stranger to them. A crumbling wall, a wooden tekke - condemned, abandoned, and now fallen into neglect - a fountain from whose faucets no water pours, a workshop in which nothing has been produced for eighty years, a collapsing building, a row of homes abandoned by Greeks, Armenians, and Jews as a nationalist state bore down on minorities, a house leaning to one side in a way that defies perspective, two houses leaning against each other in the way cartoonists so love to depict, a cascade of domes and rooftops, a row of houses with crooked window casings - these things don’t look beautiful to the people who live among them; they speak instead of squalor, helpless, hopeless neglect. Those who take pleasure in the accidental beauty of poverty and historical decay, those of us who see the picturesque in ruins - invariably we’re people who come from the outside.”

- Orhan Pamuk in “Istanbul: Memories and the City”

I’ve always been one to find beauty in what others might consider ordinary or even unsightly, so this quote from Mr. Pamuk resonates with me. In Istanbul, the poorer neighbourhoods - the ones that have yet to be taken over by shiny office towers and identical cement apartment buildings - are the ones with the most colour and life in them. The districts of Fener, Balat and Ayvansaray along the Golden Horn, huddled in the shadow of the ancient, crumbling Byzantine walls, have long been my favourite places to explore with my camera. Formerly the home to Istanbul’s Christian and Jewish minorities, they are now populated mostly by Gypsies and Kurds who have emigrated from the east in hopes of building better lives.

Walls and doors are painted in every hue of the rainbow, with graffiti adding to the decor; huge beyaz peynir (white cheese) and olive oil canisters are creatively arranged as flower pots on window sills; laundry strung back and forth between third story apartments flaps and flutters like bunting; the smoke from thousands of woodstoves fills the air with the homey smell of winter; the narrow, crooked streets ring with the sound of footballs bouncing off of car tires, the laughter and teaspoon-tinkling of women gossiping on front stoops and the call of the simitçi as he makes his way down a steep hill, balancing a pile of sesame rings on his head.

My status as one of Orhan Pamuk’s “outsiders” allows me the luxury of admiring the way the people in these neighbourhoods have “made the most of their humble circumstances.” I can roam their streets with my camera and enjoy patterns and peeling paint and tipsy headstones as they catch my eye. I can pretend those old wooden houses aren’t infested with cockroaches and unbearably drafty at night. I can have my fancy tickled and my lens amused, and then I can hop on a ferry, sip a steaming cup of sahlep while I watch the seagulls dance over the Bosphorus, and head home to my family’s comfortable apartment with insulated windows and natural gas.

On my trip to Istanbul last week, though, I detected a bit of a shift in my heart. In contrast to the way Orhan Pamuk, a native Istanbullu, was able to distance himself from his own culture enough to be able to see it from the outside, I, an outsider, have become more of an insider with every passing year. And as such, I’m starting to find more and more that things that once seemed “charming” and “quaint” to me are finding their way under my skin and unsettling my heart.

I feel like lately my eyes have been open in a way they haven’t been before. For example, I’ve been noticing feet a lot lately. My gaze has been drawn to the feet of the Gypsy kids when they get on the bus - barefoot, wearing tattered plastic sandals in the middle of winter. And the women at the pazar, wearing knit slippers inside high-heeled “house shoes” two sizes too small. If they can afford the bags of tomatoes and cucumbers in their hands, surely they can afford some 10 lira shoes that fit, right? But then again, maybe shoes that fit their growing kids are more important than ones that don’t leave their own heels hanging off the end.

Last week, instead of seeing the people who “give Istanbul its colour” as a part of the grander whole, I saw individuals struggling to put food on the table, save up enough for expensive medicine or avoid a beating from a demanding handler.

There was the elderly man who got on and off the idling buses at the Kadıköy depot hawking his gum and nane şekeri (mint candies - “good for upset stomachs”); the dirty-faced, messy-haired boy sitting with his chin in his hand as he waited for someone to come weigh themselves on his scale; and the old auntie with her black veil and her crinkled hands, holding out packets of kleenex and asking passersby in a pitiful voice to buy a pack “for the sake of God” (why was she out there and who isn’t looking after her that should be?)

The Gypsy ladies who set up their flower stand behind the Music Conservatory and yell at passersby to purchase a rose for their beloved are part of what gives the Kadıköy docks their flavour....but wouldn’t those women rather be at home where it’s warm instead of out there shivering by the sea? And the man in the blue suit coat who sits on a crate on the other side of the building with his saz and his tiny amp....sure his music lifts the spirits of those who rush past him to the ferry, but is that really the life he dreamed of when he first learned to pluck those strings as a boy?

The one that broke my heart the most was the man with one leg, successfully making his way onto the ferry with his crutches only to slip and fall as he tried to make it over the ledge into the boat’s warm salon. Several men rushed to help him and he thanked them as he sat down to rest a minute....only to jump up as soon as we set sail and begin to hobble up and down the aisles heralding the virtues of the hand cream and hot water bottles he was selling. Even though I already have one, it was enough to make me want to buy another hot water bottle just for the sake of giving him some business. In hindsight, I wish I had.

It’s so hard to know what to do with all these people. My heart wants to show mercy to every single one, but really, how many packs of wet wipes and lemon juicers can a girl use? And is buying from them just perpetuating the system? How do I know which kid on the train is telling the truth: the one holding the sign that says, “I’m deaf, please give me money for school” or the one passing out little cards asking for donations towards her little sister’s cancer treatment?

So often, I end up just averting my eyes to avoid having to look at them and feel guilty, and then I hate myself for not at least giving them the dignity offered in a smile. Then again, I’ve handed out plenty of smiles and loaves of bread in the past only to be told that all they’ll accept is money. What I want more than anything is to give them the reason for the hope that I have, but so often in a ten second encounter, I’m at a loss as to how.

I have long loved Istanbul for both its seaside tea gardens and its dingy back alleys. But I think I’ve crossed that line into no longer being able to see what I want to see and pretend the rest doesn’t exist. The more Istanbul becomes mine, the more it gets inside of me, the more layers it peels back, the less shiny it looks. And the more I really look at the people who give it its colour, the more I see that they are not so much characters dancing for my entertainment on the stage of a majestic city as they are souls living lives of ordinary, daily desperation.

Saturday, January 26, 2013 -

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Two Homelands, No Home

“See that island over there?” I looked across the moonlit waves to where tiny pinpricks of light shimmered in the late July humidity. “That’s Greece.”

The smoke stack at the olive oil factory

My friend’s mother and I were sitting on chaise lounges on a beach in Bademli on the Aegean coast of Turkey. The sizzle of the grill could be heard from a hundred yards away where her sons were cooking us up a feast of freshly caught fish and fried octopus. The aroma of our dinner mingled with the salty sea air and whiffs of honeysuckle as it danced in the evening breeze.

“They say there was a Greek man who owned the olive oil factory here in town. When the order came for all the Greeks to leave, he rowed his boat to that island over there. And every morning, he would look out over the sea to Bademli. And he would hear the bell clang from the tower of his factory and he would cry.”

This conversation took place two years ago. I had read books about the population exchange between Greece and Turkey, but this was the first time I’d had a human face to put to it. Arife Teyze herself was the daughter of a man who had come over from Greece during the exchange. A Turkish Muslim, he and his family suddenly found themselves living on the wrong side of a newly drawn border and were forced to “return” to a homeland that wasn’t their homeland at all.

An abandoned Greek
building in Bademli

Following the First World War, when the fallen Ottoman Empire was being carved up by the Allied countries, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk rose up for the cause of “Turkey for the Turks.” He led his troops in a bloody war against the Greek army for the rights to the Aegean coast, then mostly populated by Greeks. By 1923, hundreds of thousands of Greeks had been violently driven out, and that year, the Treaty of Lausanne made official what had already been taking place: a mandatory population exchange based on religion, rather than ethnicity or mother tongue.

In accordance with the newly drawn national boundaries, the Muslims of Greece and the Christians of Turkey were forced to trade places, uprooting them from their communities and sending them with little more than the clothes on their back (and no small amount of trauma, loss and disease acquired along the way) to begin new lives in countries where, despite being among people of their own religion, they were seen as strangers. There are still pockets of transplanted Greeks who, to this day, speak Turkish as their first language, and even a generation later, the Turkish descendants of this tragedy were often still referred to as "infidels" because of where they had come from.

The house Arife Teyze grew up in, and raised her children in, was the house of a Greek family who had been forced to leave Bademli. The family had taken most of their valuables - whatever they could carry - but their furniture and animals had to stay behind. Many people left their possessions in the care of their Turkish neighbours in hope that “the whole thing would blow over” and they would be able to return to their homes. That day never came.

There were plenty of empty Greek homes to house all the newly arrived Turkish immigrants from Greece, though many refused to live in “infidel houses,” thus leaving many to be looted and fall into decay. For the Greeks that crossed over to Greece, housing options weren’t as plentiful. For the 500,000 Turks who had left, there were nearly three times as many Greeks, and thousands died of typhoid and cholera while waiting on ships or in refugee camps in overcrowded port cities to be assigned a new home.

That morning, Arife Teyze’s grandson had shown me that old Greek house where his father had lived as a child. It was made of solid stone with wooden shutters, now all boarded up. “My dad says they heard there was treasure buried under the house from when the real owners left,” he told me with the wide-eyed wonder of a seven-year-old. “I wish we could go in there and dig it up!”

Living in Turkey is like living in a museum of inhabited exhibits, and the past is never more than a layer of paint or a renamed village away. One can visit mosques that used to be churches, Kurdish slums that used to be centres of Jewish commerce, and streets lined with houses crafted by Armenian architects, none of whose descendants are anywhere to be found. 1923 is not so long ago at all, and the violence and deportations through which the republic of “Turkey for the Turks” was formed has left stains on today’s population that won’t soon fade from common memory. Said stains may not be discussed out loud, but they don’t have to be. The wounds that caused them are on display in plain sight.

Last month, I had to opportunity to visit one such “exhibit” - the ghost town of Kayaköy near Fethiye in the province of Muğla. The town, which dated back to the 1400s, had been called “Levissi.” It was bustling and prosperous, with Greek craftsmen and artisans living in the town on the hillside while their Turkish neighbours, with whom they lived in peace, farmed the land in the valley below. But despite the degree of closeness experienced between the inhabitants of this town, their lives were being lived out against the greater backdrop of a war in which their two nations were enemies.

The Turkish village of Kayaköy today,
as seen from the Greek town above

It is said that when the news came that all the Greeks were to be deported, the Turks sent a plea to the government in Ankara to let their neighbours stay. The Greeks packed up their belongings, locked their doors and headed towards the harbour to await the news of their fate. When word came from Ankara that the request for exemption had been denied, they made their way weeping down to the sea and, boarding whatever vessels could be found, they set sail for Greece.

The Greeks from Levissi (Kayaköy) landed first at Crete and continued to make their way through Greece until finally settling just north of Athens in an area that reminded them of home, which they name Nea Levissi (New Levissi). Muslims transplanted from Thessoloniki in Greece were assigned to settle in Kayaköy, but most chose to continue on to other parts of Anatolia more suited to the rural lives they were accustomed to. Rumour has it that superstitions about “the Christian houses” played a part in this decision as well.

Thus, those once-loved houses remained empty. In 1957, an earthquake destroyed many of the buildings, and the government gave the Turks in the village below permission to use the wood from the roofs and floors of the Greek homes to repair their own. Wind and weather aided in the process of their decline, and now all that remains are the stone skeletons of their formerly beautiful selves.

Books like “Twice a Stranger” and “Birds Without Wings” and conversations like the one I had with Arife Teyze in Bademli had torn at my heart and brought the stark historical facts about the population exchange to life for me. But nothing prepared me for the weight of what I experienced in Kayaköy. Seeing an entire town of gutted houses utterly devoid of life brought home the sheer magnitude of the loss and grief that had been played out there when all those thousands of people were uprooted and then just....gone.

Kayaköy is now an “open air museum” run by the Turkish Ministry of Tourism, and it costs 5 TL to wander the town-turned-graveyard. From the parking lot, houses were piled one on top of another on steep hills stretching to the left and the right. As we began our ascent towards the Upper Church, it became clear that the houses were in fact not as haphazardly jumbled as I’d first assumed; instead, they were arranged so that each home had a view of the valley below, with no one roof blocking another’s window.

The expansive town was empty, and we only saw four or five other tourists during the two hours we were there. I wondered if this was because it was the off-season, or if it was simply because a tragically abandoned town is a depressing thing to see on one’s vacation.

Built of solid stone that has withstood natural disasters and time, most houses had two floors - the upper storey for living and the lower one for keeping animals. Some still had conical fireplaces and staircases intact, and faded paint in blues and oranges still clung to the interior walls. There were overgrown wells and rainwater cisterns, now choked with weeds and litter, and many houses had outside nooks that we assumed had been used as iceboxes. But the floors, roofs and window panes had long ago been removed, and there was not a rug or a curtain in sight.

As I stood at the top of the hill, I noticed a two-storey house inside which a fig tree had taken up residence. Its branches poked out through the empty windows and its top had long since pushed up through where the roof should have been.

In the town below, I heard the faint voice of a hurdacı with his wooden cart, calling out for people to bring out their “old things.” I laughed a sad laugh at the irony of his request. It would seem that anything of value here had long since been carried away.

The Upper Church, 17th Century

The Upper Church, built in the 17th Century, was a shell of what must have been a beautiful building. Portions of mosaics made of tiny stones still remained on the floor and peeked out from the grass in the courtyard. Traces of painted frescoes still clung to the high arches of the nave’s ceiling, but nearly all the others had long since been scratched off. The Lower Church has undergone restoration as part of the UNESCO “World Friendship Village” project, and was much better preserved. Signs written in Greek were set in new stone over the entrances. Images of Jesus and the apostles adorned the front of the apse, framed by Turkish children’s names scratched into the sacred stone. In the churchyard, a small cell housed the bones of Greek ancestors who had been evicted from their graves when space was needed for more recent arrivals.

Interior of the Lower Church

I hiked up to what looked like a small chapel atop a hill above the village and was rewarded with a hazy view of the sea below. I assumed the small stone structure had been the tomb of a saint but there was no signage, so I asked a couple of Turkish tourists if they knew what the building had been.

“An old Ottoman lookout,” came the reply.

“Oh. Not a Greek chapel?”

“No. Ottoman.” Of course.

On another hill, the Turkish flag waved over the expanse of the ghost town below me. The sight of that crescent and star, emblem of my beloved second home, left a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach as it proudly staked its claim over what was formerly someone else’s home.

It was easy to imagine what the town must have looked like when it was filled with lives and hearts and voices. I kept expecting to see a lady leaning out her window and calling a neighbour in for tea, or a child running up the hill to his house carrying a loaf of fresh bread from the bakery. But no shadows graced the windows, no footsteps rung out on the cobblestones. There was only silence. And not the peaceful silence of a sunny day-trip - no, this was the mournful silence of loss and grief and absence. Where once had been potted flowers gracing windowsills and mothers in doorways calling children in for dinner, there were only gaping holes, each house staring back at us like a wide-eyed, open-mouthed skull - a specter of the life it once housed.

Just after noon, the silence was broken by the call to prayer, carried on the wind from the mosque in the Turkish village below, echoing off the hillsides and filling the valley. The ezan was followed by an announcement for a funeral to be held after Friday prayers. “Mehmet So-and-So, son of so-and-so, born on such and such a date, Allah rahmet eylesin....” (“May he rest in peace.”)

I winced. Was there an announcement like this for those who were forced to depart from Kayaköy in 1923? Were their lives honoured when they were torn from their homeland? Did anyone list off the names of the ones whose lives had suddenly ceased to exist?

What was it like for those left behind - for those Turkish neighbours who had pleaded with Ankara not to send their friends away? Did they weep for the ones with whom they’d once drank tea and played backgammon with in the town square? Did they feel guilty when they finally ate the cows that had been entrusted to them when it became obvious the Greeks weren’t coming back? Did they say a prayer for their old friends as they warmed themselves beside fires fed by the wood from the roofs and floors of the abandoned houses? How long did it take until they claimed the dishes and picture frames and dowry chests for their own?

And at what point had enough time passed to where their children’s children weren’t ashamed to charge 5 TL to let tourists come see the town their grandparents’ friends used to call home?

Kayaköy today

P.S. For further reading, check out this heartbreakingly informative article: Abandoned Kayaköy a Symbol of War's Painful Consequences (Hürriyet Daily News)

Saturday, January 12, 2013

Saturday, January 12, 2013 -

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The Dolmuş Detectives

We’ve been having very un-Mediterranean weather this week, with temperatures consistently dipping below freezing at night. It’s the sort of cold that’s been forcing me to wear long-johns just to survive in our un-insulated house and prompted us to pick all the lemons from our tree to prevent them from dying sad deaths as lemonade slushies.

On Monday, there was a particularly vicious wind blowing, so I bundled up in a hat, scarf, and extra layers before heading out to do a few errands. After I finished my grocery shopping, I sat a minute at a cafe for a cup of hot tea to fortify myself before braving the elements again. (I know, that sounds wimpy for a Canadian, but I’m telling you, my blood has turned Mediterranean and I am not built for this!) I fought the icy gusts all the way to the bus stop and was relieved when I only had to wait a minute for my dolmuş.

Swiping my card, I squeezed my way back to the middle of the crowded minibus, secured my bags between my feet, grabbed a handhold and settled in for the half-hour balancing act that was sure to do my abs a lot of good.

This particular bus was full of respectable looking older folks and thus rather quiet. But just after we’d pulled away from the curb, one gentleman’s voice rose above the polite hum of conversation with great urgency.

“I want to report a robbery. I just saw some kids steal a motorcycle!”

All heads swiveled in his direction, and I turned to look, too. He had his cell phone up to his ear and his nose pressed to the glass. From where I stood, I could just make out two dark heads of hair outside the window, keeping pace with the bus.

“They didn’t have a key.....They rubbed those contact thingies together and - whoop - off they went......Yes, I can see them - they’re right beside me!” he continued.

A pause, then an exasperated laugh.

“No, I can’t stop them. I’m on a dolmuş, for the love of God!”

By this point, several passengers had crammed themselves onto the right side of the bus and all heads were craned towards the window, straining to see the action.

““The brand is a....uh....I don’t know. It’s white! And old, really old. One of those little ones. We’re on the 30A heading away from Real towards the Mevlana intersection. They’re going the same way as us. There’s lots of traffic, so we can’t keep up with them.”

“Tell them what they’re wearing!” shouted an older lady with bleached blonde hair sitting in the front of the bus.

“Officer, there are two of them.” He spoke with authority, clearly taking his role as “witness” very seriously. “The one driving is wearing a black coat, the one in back is wearing a white coat. Teenagers.”

“I can see the license plate!” exclaimed the pink-lipsticked grandma beside Bleached Blonde. “It’s 07 HR....I can’t read the numbers underneath. They’re rubbed off.”

Mr. Witness repeated these details breathlessly into the phone.

We slowed to a halt as the light ahead turned red. The motorcycle, along with a laughing Black Coat and White coat, veered in front of us and snaked its way through the stopped vehicles. The driver cursed.

“They’re getting away,” lamented Bleached Blonde.

“Okay, they’re turning left!” the driver, his head out the window, called over his shoulder. “Tell him they’re turning left onto Kızılarık.....and they ran a red light! Tell him they ran a red light!”

“That’s two crimes now,” said Pink Lips to Bleached Blond amidst much tongue clucking from the rest of the passengers.

The light turned green, allowing a mere five cars through the light. Our driver laid on his horn.

“Well, they’re gone now,” Mr. Witness said. “Down Kızılarık, away from town.....You’re welcome.” He hung up the phone.

“Eh, let ‘em go. It’s cold out,” said Bleached Blond with a chuckle. “Serves them right. They’ll freeze before they get too far!”

We all laughed.

“If I were going to steal a motorcycle,” piped up a man in the back, “I’d do it in the summer. Only an idiot steals a bike in the winter!”

Friday, January 11, 2013

Friday, January 11, 2013 -

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Five Interesting Things I Saw From the Bus Window This Week

Three full-grown guys riding (or rather, weaving) down the road on one bicycle. Not a motorcycle, just a regular bike. Very crowded.
Two little boys, not more than three or four years old, waiting on the median of a busy street to push their little two-person toy jeep the rest of the way across the road. Hands on the bumper, little butts up in the air, looking both ways. Scared me to death.
A guy riding a bicycle down the road with a newspaper opened up inside his V-neck sweater to block the wind and keep his chest warm. I thought that was pretty creative.
There’s a place not too far from my house that sells toilets and it has a life sized camel on the roof. Looks like a statue, but could very well be the work of some skilled Middle Eastern taxidermist. I don’t get the connection between toilets and camels, but it catches one’s eye if nothing else.
At the BP gas station closest to home, there’s a big semi parked in the parking lot, and....it’s a Burger King! It’s got the words “Ateş seni cağrıyooooo” on the side (translation ‘The fire is caaaaaaalling you’ - the slogan from their ad) There are tables outside and steps going up to an opening in the side where you can order a burger and fries while you wait for your gas to be pumped. It’s kinda like a taco stand or a food truck except....it’s Burger King. What makes it funny is that it’s out in the sticks, where there aren’t even traffic lights, let alone American fast food joints. Weird.

There’s a #6, too, but it’s a story all its own. Stay tuned to hear how I witnessed a motorcycle robbery on Monday......

Saturday, January 5, 2013

Saturday, January 05, 2013 -

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Shoot for the Moon...

“Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you will land among the stars.” - Les Brown

I can remember writing out this quote with fat Crayola felts in high school and taping it to my bedroom wall for inspiration. At that age, with my whole life stretching before me, I set my dreams as high as I could. My goals were things like “End abortion” and “see all of Russia saved.”

Fast forward a few years to a time when I had my small group girls write out their dreams. I wrote out a stack of my own on little slips of coloured paper, and I still have them, all fastened together with a clothespin and sitting in my night table junk drawer. My aspirations were a little more focused by that point and included things like “start a greeting card company” (check), be fluent in Turkish (75% check), have eight kids (that’s looking a bit unlikely at this point), be a Mandarin-English translator at the Beijing Olympics (hard to do when all I can do is count to ten and ask where I can buy chocolate.....), eat Swiss chocolate on a picnic in the Alps (didn’t make it to the mountains, but I did down some incredible truffles on a layover in Zurich this summer), and ride a canal boat in Venice (still waiting for someone tall, dark and handsome to share that one with.)

Now, It’s New Years Resolution time again, and I’m laughing at myself because most of my 2013 “dreams, goals and anticipations” are the ones I set last year but have yet to accomplish. Turns out I aimed way past the moon and only managed to hit a couple of nearby stars. I am only inches closer to finishing my writing course this year than I was last year. I did manage to sit a few cafe tables away from my favourite Turkish photographer, Ara Güler, but didn’t meet him, let alone go shooting with him as per my goal. I only finished two of the ten books I’d put on my reading list. (Granted, several others are nearly done and I did read a whole pile that weren’t on the list). Didn’t take a photography course in Turkish. Didn’t get any articles published. (Or even submit them in the first place....) Didn’t get married. (Though I can’t take full blame for that one.)

It’s would be easy to look back on my list of unachieved goals and feel disappointed in myself. But instead I am choosing to celebrate all the things I did accomplish (many of which weren’t even on my list), as well as the things that were simply given to me as gifts of grace. I finished the 20th Century Turkish History Chart I’d been researching towards and working on for almost two years. I made a photo book about Istanbul. I won honourable mention in a photography contest. My writing increased in frequency and quality. I cleaned out my crazily disorganized office cupboard, washed the windows a few more times than the previous year, stuck with my exercise plan all the way til September when things kinda dwindled, stayed more on top of my tax receipts, and was much more disciplined with my time and my entertainment intake.

Beyond that, I look back on 2012 as a season where I grew in leaps and bounds spiritually, greatly improved in language, became more solid in who I am (and who I’m not) and threw myself wholeheartedy into all those “distractions” (a.k.a. people and relationships) that may have “stolen time” from my carefully crafted schedule but ultimately matter more to me than “getting my writing hours in” and bring me far more joy than “checking items off my to-do list.”

So much of what makes a year great can’t be measured or marked as completed. And as such, I am declaring 2012 a success.

In the spirit of shooting for the moon, I have made my list of goals for 2013, and I am comforting myself with the fact that the ones that have been forwarded from last year’s list are there simply because they are still important to me. His mercies are new every morning, and January is a fresh chance to refocus and realign my life with my priorities. Not every item on the list is blog-postable, but here are the internet-friendly ones:

Get married. (Okay, perhaps this is less “goal” and more “anticipation.” Believing for divine help in accomplishing it!)
Write something every day, totaling at least 2000 words a week. (To be upped as soon as I get into a good rhythm.)
Post at least one blog entry a week.
Submit writing samples to Alaturka and Skylife magazines and get at least two articles published.
Finish my Matador U writing course by December.
Exercise five days a week.
Record interviews with my language helper and make a good start on writing a book about her life and how Turkey has changed over her lifetime.
Read a novel in Turkish.
Successfully make macarons at home.
Have a long layover in a European city I’ve never been to before.
Spot a Turkish celebrity. (No German tourists posing as Turkish movie stars allowed!)
Master the art of really foamy Turkish coffee. (I can make the coffee fine, but the foam is hit and miss.)

I am happy to report that this makes two blog entries this week, I have exceeded my 2000 word writing goal by 1091 words, and my abs are really sore from a good pilates workout yesterday.

Here’s to making it to the moon this year!

Wednesday, January 2, 2013

Wednesday, January 02, 2013 -

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Assorted Holiday Happinesses

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

The holidays passed in a delightful blur of holiday-ness, and I didn't really have time to catch my breath, let alone blog about anything. Now that the last truffle has been eaten and, as of tonight, the last guest has flown away, I am collapsing in an introverted heap in my room, never to come out again. Or at least until tomorrow when I am helping friends move. :)

December held plenty of shareable moments and document-worthy creative projects, so I thought I'd just make a collage of all of them for posterity and your viewing pleasure.

(Click the image to see it a bit bigger.)

1. Christmas truly begins with the decorating of the tree, and in our house, that always meant watching It's a Wonderful Life while we hung ornaments. As a kid, I thought it was soooo long and boring, but now it's one of my very favourite movies. One of the joys of 21st century technology is being able to watch the movie and decorate my little tree in Turkey whilst messaging Mom back and forth as we quote our favourite lines.

"I wish I had a million dollars! Hot dog!"

2. I baked dozens upon dozens of cookies - stars, trees, gingerbread men, angels and snowmen. Then the kiddos came over and we busted out the frosting and sprinkles and had a decorating extravaganza!

3. The kids are definitely at the perfect ages for getting creative with their cookie decorating. We're way past "How many sprinkles can I possibly fit on this thing?" and have moved onto "What do you think of the pockets on my gingerbread man's overalls?"

4. It was unanimous - our favourite cookie of the year was definitely the melting snowman.

5. One day, my roommate came home with a surprise for me: she'd discovered a store selling macarons! The glory has come to my city!

6. A bummer of a day was turned upside-down when the postman knocked on my door holding a parcel from thoughtful friends in Nashville, complete with Christmassy Andes Mints!

7. Bath and Body Works candles have kept my room smelling festive all season. I like the Spiced Apple Toddy one in particular.

8. These scrappy Christmas tree cards were so much fun to make, look adorable, and literally take like five minutes each.

9. My Christmas present to myself: a pair of cozy new brown and blue slippers.

10. Having found out about the macaron source in town, I got a box and cut them all in half so the kiddos could sample them, since they'd heard me talk about them so much. My favourite reaction: "You're right, they DO taste like clouds!"

11. My mom has kept me well-stocked with caffeinated Christmas decorations over the years, so now my tree looks like a Starbucks commercial!

12. Perhaps my favourite decorations: my nationalistic crescent and star baubles.

13. The only thing more fun than opening your own present is getting to open someone else's!

14. These Santa boxers made an appearance in the White Elephant gift exchange (a.k.a. The Steal Game - a time-honoured tradition) three years ago and were won by our 70+ year old home-school teacher. She took them home with her to Florida, and when she came back this year to teach, she brought them all the way back just so she could "regift" them at the exchange this year. (Thankfully she didn't end up with them twice!)

15. I scored big in the White Elephant game and got one of the only gifts that wasn't a joke: smoked salmon all the way from Canada!

16. These smiles are one of the best parts of every Christmas.

17. For about three days, it looked like Charlie's chocolate factory had exploded in our kitchen, but the truffles turned out great! My favourites were definitely the espresso ones.

18. It was the second time we'd spent Christmas with our Swedish friends who live in another city, and some of their traditions are starting to feel traditional to me, too. My favourite? Disney cartoons at promptly 3:00 on Christmas Eve. It's the same set every year - Goofy driving a trailer, the mice making Cinderella's dress, the spaghetti scene from Lady and the Tramp....and apparently the whole country sits down and watches them! They were dubbed in Swedish, so I had fun making up my own dialogue and picked up a few vocab words, too. :)

19. Another bonus to spending Christmas with Swedes: smoked reindeer on crackers! Yum!

20. We have a terrible time finding wrapping paper here, but were finally able to find some on the 23rd at a big store. I stocked up for next year!

21. I had fun making my own gift tags this year.

22. You mean your Christmas Eve party didn't include a little Gangnam Style? (Sing along with the translated English lyrics - it's way more entertaining that way!)

23. A friend of the friends we visited for Christmas had "connections" on the US military base nearby and was able to score eggnog! Now THAT made it taste like Christmas! (photo: stuffjewishyoungadultslike.wordpress.com)

24. My roomie got me this AMAZING serving set. It matches my crescent and star baubles and all my Ataturk coffee mugs. :)

25. Spend Christmas with a Swede and you, too, could end up with one of these cool reindeer cookie cutters! Next year, we'll be adding Rudolph to our cookie repertoire....

26. The same friend who bought me the cookie cutters also knows of my love for macarons and found me some at Caribou Coffee. I was so touched! :) Looks like they're becoming more widely available in Turkey. I feel some Macaron Crawling coming on....

27. Christmas morning is for PJs. Especially when the electricity and water are off and you can't shower anyways! (Note the baby bump in the middle - two months til she shows her little face! If you can't see her, it's due to the fact that the guy at the pazar claimed that those crazy fuzzy PJs were one size fits all....)

28. After stockings and presents....Settlers!

29. I have this thing about keeping my presents under the tree long after Christmas. Maybe it has something to do with not knowing where their new homes will be and dreading the cupboard rearranging that will have to take place. But, really, I think it's just a way to savour the afterglow.

30. A friend made these amazing Christmas cupcakes for our New Years party. Dark chocolate, espresso and allspice with cream cheese frosting. Yum.

31. Found these fun napkins at the same place as the wrapping paper. Turkey has come a long way in festive paper products!

32. This recipe is a keeper: Caramel Macchiato Cheesecake. I wish I'd made two! I think I'm going to need a pair of those one size fits all PJs soon.....

33. The opening of a Bath and Body Works here this fall was huge cause for celebration, but I was bummed when I learned they wouldn't be getting any of the Christmas scents this year. But my kind roommate knows that it's tradition for me to wear Vanilla Bean Noel lotion every winter, and she had a friend trek across Istanbul and buy a bottle and bring it down when she came for New Years. I'd been stretching the last few drips from last year's bottle to make it last - now I can really slather on Christmas!

34. We went downtown on New Years Eve to watch the fireworks, and they were amazing! I didn't take my big camera down with me, so all I got were some lame iPod photos, but they were glittery and shimmery and beautiful - some of the best I've ever seen. And right over our heads, too, so that every boom shook my sternum. Loved it.

35. "Mutlu Yillar" - "Happy New Year" painted on a door in the old city.

36. When I took the last of the trash out after our New Years Day gathering, I stopped by the neighbourhood mailbox and, lo and behold, there was my first Christmas card! It was mailed on American Thanksgiving and just got here now. That thing spanned from one end of the holiday season to the other!

And with that, I bid the holidays farewell and embrace 2013 with great gusto. (But the tree may stay up another week or two.....) :)