Ami:
We've been having some trouble getting Vox to upload our blog entries, so they've been fewer and farther between than usual. But I'm here with just a few brief updates and mostly photos!
Josh's birthday was this last week and we celebrated with a few friends, a couple cakes, and some flashy pool gloves. It was a pretty fun time if I do say so myself. The next day we were treated to a proper English breakfast by Jonathan and Tabby (with bacon and everything!) It was really lovely.
We've been reading a lot, playing out new Turkish monopoly set, and watching The Wire
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We've been lighting the candles of our make-shift manora every night and making plans for our Kurban Bayram holiday (it's the 19th-23rd). We're planning to head down to Ephesus with a couple friends. Hopefully we'll rent a car and be able to drive all over the place. The Kurban Bayram, by the way, is basically a sacrifice holiday where (we've been told) everyone slaughters (or has someone else slaughter) an animal and gives the meat/money to the less fortunate. I'm not sure what we'll be missing by leaving Istanbul, but undoubtedly the village we're heading towards (near Ephesus) will have some festivities to witness/avoid at all costs.
Overall things have been going well and it's hard to believe we've been in Istanbul for four months already! While we both like the city and our neighborhood, it's going to be really nice to get out of the dense urban sprawl and see some open land.
Josh doing some lesson planning:
And me making some stew for dinner:
Ami:
In the last month we've had a barrage of visitors (ok, maybe only 2, but that's more than I expected!) and have been settling into a the recently arrived cold weather.
Gia came to visit with her parents during a luckily, slow week at work and we were able to go do some interesting sightseeing with them. We went to the archeology museum and got to hear the perspective of an art historian (Gia and their guide), and visit with the many cats that live in the museum's courtyard.
I also went to the Cemberlitas Hamam with them, one of the oldest bath houses in Istanbul. The bathing room has a huge, round heated marble slab for lounging in the steam and looking up at the stone ceiling pierced by dozens of small, star like aperatures to let in some natural light. The women there soap you up with large pillow case type cloths that can trap air inside and push out soap bubbles when you squeeze. You get scrubbed with coarse mitts that take look black with dead skin cells and dirt once you're finished. We also ate tons and tons of wonderful food (in true Pisto style) and it was really wonderful to see Gia.
Last week our friend Mitch came to visit in the midst of his cross-Asia-and-Europe travels. Unlike during Gia's visit, Mitch was here over a particularly hectic weekend, but we did get to hang out and do some relaxing around Bakirkoy and Istanbul. During one of the walks we took to go find this big outlet mall, we passed blocks and blocks of fur shops. Apparently the whole fur district. There were coats and pelts of so many animals, some recognizable, others less so, some dyed hideous unnatural colors (an apple green fur coat!), and some racks with only tails hung in long heavy rows. There were even some raccoons. One the streets outside the shops were little bits of fur and I really think I saw a tiny little flattened nose next to a pile of trash from the sewing rooms. Then Mitch headed off for the rest of his adventures, which I've got to say I'm a little jealous of!
Recently I've been preparing a package to send home for Christmas. Shopping for gifts, trying to imagine what to avoid that will get the package caught in customs, and fumbling through finding a place to get a plain, brown shipping box – but I'm almost done and it'll be on it's way very soon! It's funny to realize it's almost Thanksgiving and there's not been a hint of turkeys or pilgrims let alone the oppressive launch of Christmas season shopping in the malls. I doubt we'll do anything for Thanksgiving, but I'm lobbying for a Christmas / Hannukah / Holiday event. I will say that I've already seen a Christmas tree in someone's flat here in Bakirkoy! That was a surprise!
(NOTE! At the moment it is impossible to get photos posted here, I'm not sure why but it's got something to do with Vox running really erratically on our end. There are lots of beautiful and interesting new photos on our flickr though - go look!)
Josh:
This month-long Muslim holiday of Ramazan (Turkish spelling) ended October 11, and I would be lying if I didn’t say I’m not relieved. It’s not that we were fasting. Rather it was a tension that seemed to get heavier as the day progressed, until finally everyone got to break the fast with the evening call to prayer. Class attendance predictably waned as the month progressed, and energy levels were quite low. We were constantly changing class schedules as sundown got earlier in order to allow students to eat. Some teachers claim to have witnessed more fights and car accidents than usual. And although restaurants and donner kebap stands were open during the day, it was easy to project a sense of resentment on the fasting workers preparing our meals.
But the moment the iftar (break-fast) call to prayer was sounded, the bustling city would go quiet as millions of mouths were stuffed with food. In Bakirkoy, many shopkeepers would drag tables out in front of their stores to share their iftar meal with the other workers, brining business to a virtual standstill. Every evening dozens of people would wait in line at the bakery to bring a loaf of the traditional sweet Ramazan bread home in time for iftar. But three minutes before iftar, the bakery and street would suddenly go empty.
At the steps of the Blue Mosque in Sultanahmet, thousands of people gather to share the iftar meal together. Fellow teacher Gill joined us one evening to see what all the excitement was about. Roughly sixty semi-permanent tents were erected to feed everyone simultaneously, turning the historic Hippodrome area into a sort of Muslim carnival. After eating you could get your picture taken dressed as a sultan at one booth, or have your name written in Persian calligraphy on a plate at another. My Istanbul students tell me it’s quite a tourist trap these days, though for Turkish tourists rather than foreigners like us. You could see the excitement of Muslim women in full hijabs seeing the Blue Mosque for the first time, appreciating it in a way a non-Muslim like me simply couldn’t.
Ramazan is followed by a three-day Bayram holiday celebrating the end of Ramazan. Traditionally everyone visits their older relatives, who in turn cook (or buy) candies or desserts. Ami and I incorrectly thought the holiday was more like Halloween where everyone goes door to door demanding candy, so we stocked up on a bunch of chocolates. But the only person who came to our door was our landlady asking us to pay our utility bill, so we are still eating the candy to this day.
But after two days of family visiting, most people spend the third vacation day going out with friends. We joined a Turkish teacher and her two friends in downtown Taksim for a night out. We were soaked by the heavy rain, which in turn caused the bar’s electricity to go out. But unfazed we had a great time drinking beer by candlelight, swapping jokes, and teaching each other curse words with our new Turkish friends. And to finish the night we all had the (in)famous Turkish hangover cure Kokorech, which is spicy lamb intestine in a sandwich (pretty good, actually, though we are told that Kokorech will not survive EU health regulations if Turkey is ever admitted).
Josh:
We finally had our first break from Istanbul's intense urban environment. The Princes' Islands are a chain of nine small islands situated in the Marmara sea about 10km south of Istanbul that have been a relaxing respite from noise and pollution for centuries. The best part: no cars! Istanbul is typically a huge snarl of traffic, with cars and vespas competing with pedestrians in streets that were never designed for motor traffic. Vehicles drive extremely fast and continuously honk to make you get out of their way. If you don't, they slam on their brakes and you hope the ground isn't too wet. It was really unnerving at first, but now it is simply annoying.
But I digress. Point is, they don't allow cars on the islands, which makes the islands seem really neat and old fashioned: For example: Like the rest of Istanbul, water is not drinkable and "sucus" deliver 5 gallon water jugs to your door. But on the islands, sucus use horse and cart. There are also a lot of older pre-Republic "yalis" (large wooden houses) that have been turned into apartments with a lot more character than the cube apartment blocks than make up nearly all of Istanbul.
So Amelia and I met up with out teacher friends Jonathan, Tabby, and Gill and we spend the day walking around the island of Hebeliada, having tea and ice cream at cafes, and enjoying the relaxing one hour-long ferry rides to and from the islands.
The weather in Istanbul has started getting cooler, and is actually starting to resemble Portland's fall weather more closely than we had expected!
Yesterday we had planned to go to the Prince's Islands with some friends, but the sunny weather suddenly became overcast and our friends all came down with colds. We decided instead to put off our trip to the islands until a sunnier day and to go to the Spice Bazaar instead. The Spice Bazaar is also known as the Egyptian Bazaar and as the Mısır Çarşısı.
Like the Grand Bazaar, it is covered (thus our choice for the rainy day), lined with shops jammed to the rafters with things to buy, and inevitably contains a misrepresentatively large portion of the English speaking population in Istanbul. "Hello can I help you?" "Hello where are you from?" and "Hello I love you" are some of the more popular phrases.
Unlike the Grand Bazaar, the Spice Bazaar is not insanely large, the salesmen aren't as pushy, the crowds are much smaller, and there's more stuff that you actually would want to buy. I set off with a list of spices in English and Turkish and was taken by surprise when the sales people immediately spoke to me in English, which I automatically replied in. Only after a few interactions did I start using Turkish more, and nearly every shop keeper was happy to see that the group of yabancıs (foreigners) were able to speak (some) Turkish.
We sampled Turkish Delight and honey dipped off the comb with tiny spoons, smelled innumerable scoops of spices, and had a long, enjoyable conversation with a young man who had just returned from his obligatory military service in the East. After asking him where we could buy a practical caydanlık (a Turkish teapot), he walked with us outside of the bazaar to a side street where the small shop was to help us get an uninflated price. Everything was closing up early for ıfta (breaking fast at the evening call to prayer) but I'm looking forward to going back when we have more time.
With all the things I got at the bazaar, our cooking is likely to improve as well!
We recently received the news that Roland, Josh's uncle has passed away. We were lucky enough to have been able to visit him when we were in Leipzig during August. He let us stay with him, introduced us to his son and his family, and showed us enormous hospitality. We are grateful to have been able to spend that time with him and have gotten to know him.
He will be missed.
Josh:
Instead of providing a blow-by-blow account of our activities, a few thoughts and opinions:
Sultanahmet
Sultanahmet (the main sight-seeing area of Turkey) quickly loses its charm after a week of so in Turkey. Throngs of ill-behaved tourists, overpriced food, and jaded locals looking to make a few dollars from rich foreigners – if it weren’t for the beautiful and historic buildings in the area, I’d be happy to never step foot in the area again.
Our neighborhood is on the European side of Istanbul 20 minutes west of downtown. These neighborhoods each have everything you need to live, such as grocery stores, movie theaters, bars, restaurants, and so on, so generally people tend to spend their time living and working in the same area. Yet each neighborhood is also known to sell certain items which people travel long distances for. Bakirkoy is known for fancy suits and dresses, designer shoes, pregnancy-wear, and plus-sized women’s clothes. Along the main shopping boulevard there are easily over 100 shops dedicated to these same items, and it still baffles me that they can all stay in business. Apparently this is a holdover from the days of guilds, when certain industries would clump together because they needed the same resources or were similarly loud or smelly.
Tuesday Market
Bakirkoy’s market takes place every Tuesday about a ten-minute walk from our place, and we try to buy as much here as we can. Every sort of fresh food is available fresher and cheaper(!!!) than at the grocery store, and they also have everything from sports bras to lemon juicers to head scarves. It is loud, crowded, colorful, and quite a lot of fun, connecting us to the neighborhood in a way a large grocery store couldn’t.
6th Century Construction Workers
We can’t get over the fact that the Aya Sofia was built 1500 years ago! The massive unsupported dome gives the mosque a wonderful sense of expansiveness. This of course leads to thoughts of those 6th century construction workers balancing themselves on rickety wooden scaffolds 10 stories high to build that huge dome in the middle. And the thousands of tons of brick and marble dragged from far-off quarries....
Call To Prayer
I was expecting the call to prayer to be either a) very exotic sounding, or b) highly annoying. But instead I have completely tuned it out. I guess when everything is so different from home, you are more willing to accept distorted Arabic chants blaring from every mosque minaret five times a day. I have not once woken up to the 5am prayer call, even though it is so loud in our apartment that we have to close the windows to talk normally. (Ami interjects that she does not think it is that loud.) Our neighbor’s child incessantly banging his squeak-hammer against the wall is quite another matter, however.
Traffic in Istanbul is a huge, snarling mess. Fortunately they’ve got their public transportation system down pat. They’ve got river ferries, trains, light rail trams, subways, buses, mini buses, and dolmushes (vans) running to every part of the city all day long. And to make things even simpler, they’ve created a keychain-sized electronic device called an Akbil which you can load up with credits and use to ride city-run transit (so everything but the mini buses and dolmushes). They also give you a free transfer. We tried in vain to acquire one of these devices our first two weeks here. Apparently the city had run out of Akbils, and it wasn’t until September 1 that we finally acquired Akbils of our own. With these little babies, we feel like regular commuting locals rather than skittish tourists fumbling with foreign change, timetables, and impatient drivers.
Wages/Prices
Everyone knows foreign English teachers are incredibly well paid considering what the average middle-class job in Turkey pays. This of course feels unfair and perpetuates the idea that everything is better for those who have the good fortune of being born in an English-speaking country. It also leads to some tricky situations: For example, my apartment manager wants me to tutor her twelve-year-old son in English, and she has offered to clean our apartment in exchange. I’ve tutored him twice for free, but I don’t want to make a regular thing out of it, and I know they could not afford the going rate for private English language instructions, which runs about $40 an hour (or more). While they certainly can’t demand free language instruction, it is not without a sense of guilt that I am typing on this laptop with wireless internet during what used to be our regular English time.
Even though our wages aren’t huge in terms of American dollars, they do give us a lot of buying power here depending on the commodity. Loaf of bread: 30 cents. A very tasty lunch in Bakirkoy: $3.50. A DVD (inevitably pirated): $3, a polo shirt, $8. However a beer at a bar is usually $4-6, electronics are roughly the same as in America (meaning very expensive for the average Turk), and a bottle of Whisky runs about $40. I even joined the gym next door, and I feel like a rich man every time I go to work out. You automatically get a personal trainer, everyone (but myself) is in designer sportswear, and the treadmills have their own TVs with cable. Some nights I am tempted to go to the gym and simply walk the treadmill to enjoy the free cable TV.
Ami:
We've finally started teaching! My first class was a little nerve wracking - what if they just sit and stare at me? - but everything went smoothly. Josh and I are both looking forward to getting regular classes so we can get to know the students and get into a normal pattern of lessons.
At the beginning of every new class the students ask us questions to get to know us a little. These questions inevitably are: Are you married? Where are you from? How old are you? You're so young! Why did you come to Istanbul? (Generally in this order.)
Outside of work we've been poking around Istanbul a bit more. We took a ferry up the Bosphorus from
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Eminönü to Sarıyer. The Bosphorus is full of boats - small personal fishing boats bobbing in the wakes, huge freighters that look like they're going to crush everyone else, tour boats packed with tourists in sunglasses and flipflops leaning over the rails to take photos, and the ferries that crisscross between Europe and Asia all day. Istanbul lines the length of the Bosphorus and you can pick out the changes in districts as you pass by. Each district has it's own dense center full of tall buildings swarming up and down hills and finally thinning out and giving way to thick trees and huge houses right at the water's edge. These houses are probably about a million dollars a piece, give or take a few hundred thousand, and have little boats docked right at their backyards next to the gardens and lawns below the impressive terraces. The day we took the ferry was Victory Day (Zafer Bayramı) and every house, office building, skyscraper, and bridge was hung with Turkish flags. The flags from the bridges (bridges between 2 continents!) are about the size of buses. Unfortunately because it was a holiday, there were a lot of people who had the day off work on the ferry. Including a group of loud, brash, and tactless American English teachers. Who naturally sat next to us. It turns out that many of the sterotypes of US travelers/expats are not totally unfounded. We actually got off the ferry a little earlier than we had planned just to get away from them. In Sarıyer we walked along the water past rows and rows of men fishing (these men are on every bridge, dock, and sidewalk that is over the water), kids jumping off the old docks, and fishermen untangling their nets. We had tea and coffee at a little cafe where we could watch the boats coming and going before we caught the ferry back down the Bosphorus. |
We'll add another update really soon, but for now there are a few new photos to look at!
Josh:
Success!
We have a job and a home! Yesterday we signed a yearlong contract with Istanbul Lisan Merkezi, a small school with a very solid reputation in the Istanbul suburb called Bakirkoy. Our (sizable) salary is pegged to the dollar, meaning we don’t have to worry about the somewhat volatile New Turkish Lira; the school’s facilities have been recently renovated and are quite charming (even if I wouldn’t have personally chosen certain color schemes); there is relatively low student and teacher turnover; and the teachers we have met are really down to earth and serious about teaching.
We don’t start for a week, which means we get to enjoy the school’s best perk of all: free furnished apartment! We couldn’t have asked for a nicer place (and certainly couldn’t have paid for one). What a satisfying feeling to finally put our backpacks and sleeping bags away and make a real home. The kitchen is a huge step up from what we had in Portland, we have more than enough space (we have three bedrooms!), and there are tons of windows that let in a lot of natural light and a nice breeze. They even brought us new pans, silverware, and sheets, which just so happen to have big gaudy roses on one side (“because we’re a couple,” they said).
Of course what’s paying for all this is our supposed ability to teach. Having spoken to teachers at both this school and others, I know we’ll be fine if not a little panicked our first week. Most classes teachers simply present the material from the book. But this school, more than others, encourages teachers to be creative with their lessons, and the teachers put up with much less bureaucratic oversight as a result. One teacher we met is going so far as to start a movie night and an additional conversation class. All this freedom also means there won’t be anyone to assess our teaching methods. We will have to remain motivated and realistically self-critical on our own.
This evening we went grocery shopping and made ourselves a
little meal in our new place, enjoying the sense of “homeness.” Ami is writing in her journal and we’re
splitting a cheap Turkish wine. It’s
finally cooling off from a high of around 95 Fahrenheit.
This is really going to work out.
Ami:
We've been in Istanbul for 3 days now and it's been a little adventure already. We're finally (temporarily) settled into a nice little hotel and are really getting moving on the search for jobs. It's been extremely refreshing to have a quiet room, a relaxing place to email and send out job applications, and to be in a place where we can run out to the grocery store, have a class of tea, and go on an evening walk.
We arrived in Istanbul in the evening and took a bus to Taksim Square, a bustling area on the European side of Istanbul. Getting off the bus with our giant packs we were surrounded by people - vendors selling simits, roasted corn, and water, teenagers on cell phones in tshirts emblazoned with flourescent English slogans, and several hundred people of all other varieties. We walked about a half an hour through the crush of people on Istiklal Caddesi (street) looking for our hostel.
And we found it!
And they had cancelled our reservation!
Really. They had received a phone call only a few hours earlier from someone cancelling their reservation and misunderstood the name. So they ended up putting us in the room usually used for the employees to sleep in, "chill out and sometimes have meetings." We're on the 6th floor in an open air room - no door, just a curtain, and open windows (no screens) looking out onto the crazy busy street we just traversed. But we're tired and the hostels are full and so we stay. The mosquitos were bad, the street noisey, the room hot and the breeze chilly, but at least we could lie down. The next day however, 3 more mattresses are dragged in and the room becomes a 6 person crash area. That's fine, we still have beds. At 3am we're woken by 10 people hanging out and smoking at the foot of our beds. "Sorry we woke you up, but you can join us." the manager tells us! I probably don't need to elaborate on how difficult it would be to get dressed and prepared for interviews in a place like this.
The one upside from our 2 nights there was going out for kebabs and beer with two Italians, a German, a Turk, and a Kurd. Through a mix of Turkish, German, English, Spanish and Italian we all managed to have a decent night. Josh and I practiced our Turkish and maybe even made a friend.
We're now staying at a quieter place just south of the Blue Mosque by about 3 blocks. We can see it from the street outside. On the other side we have a view of the Sea of Marmara. Last night we took a walk along the sea side and went to a little cafe for tea and roasted eggplant with yogurt sauce.
We did a brief tour of some major Istanbul attractions (Blue Mosque, Aya Sofia, Basilica Cistern, and Hippodrome) and took a ferry across the Bosphorus and a tram across the Golden Horn. We're both looking forward to getting settled and feeling less like half-tourists and wannabe-locals.
