Sunday

Today I am having a weekend. I made breakfast which took awhile as I couldn't find the pots and pans. I almost went out to eat in frustration but I bought eggs and eventually would have had to find a way to cook them so I opened my laptop, found the instructions for the apartment that Vivian was smart enough to email me, found the pans and made my breakfast: Scrambled eggs with tomatoes and cucumbers and some of the lovely apricot-combo juice (don't really know, it is in Turkish, but it has pictures of several kinds of fruits).

Then I went to Kahvedan, the cafe where all the ex-pats hang out, to fortify myself with coffee because I really, really needed to get a cell phone, but don't like doing stuff like that. I hung out for a couple of hours, writing, thinking, looking at maps, long enough to run into Robin. I met her through a mutual friend on my last trip and she is a friend of Alex, the woman who I took my ESL class with and who has been a great help to me here. Confused? It's all rather incestual here, which is actually kind of nice.

Finally I wandered over to Istiklal Caddesi, the main shopping street in the area. Thankfully it wasn't crowded yet and I walked right up to the TurkCel counter where after a lot of gesturing, pointing, and rudimentary English from the salesman I succeeded in buying a shiny red phone, cim card, and kontour (kind of like minutes). Then I came home and called a few friends to make tentative plans for tomorrow.

The sun is beating down outside, but my apartment is always breezy. I had planned to clean and unpack but the breeze and my book are too tempting so I am lying in the breeze reading. I will put my iPod in Vivian's genius iPod stereo thingy (I think I must get one of those) and clean later.

I just got a note from my new Turkish friend. We met yesterday and she has already sent me the name of another friend who can help me find an apartment. Tomorrow I start calling schools to set up more interviews (I have a job if I want it starting in September, but I think I can do better time and schedule wise) and getting in touch with my apartment finding referrals.

But today is my weekend so right now I am going back to my book.

Things that are different:
1. The egg yolks are REALLY orange.
2. How could I forget? The call to prayer. This also counts as a thing that I love.

Things I love:
1. Unsweetened cherry juice. My new dessert.
2. Big 5L bottles of water we buy for drinking. No idea why I love them. No one here has been able to tell me why even the Turks don't drink the water although it is fine for washing, tooth brushing, etc. Everyone has a different theory. I think the most likely one is that the pipes are so ancient (Roman?) that who knows what deposits and erosions are washing along with the water. Which leads me to ask, why is it that ConEd can't prevent their pipes from blowing up swathes of New York City? But I digress...
3. The sounds of the ship's horns from the Bosphorous.
4. The shower heads you hold in your hand instead of the stationary wall-mounted ones.
5. My dog. She is being awfully good and has adapted well, although I have not been brave enough to take her outside yet.
6. Sitting in a cafe watching the old men leading their lives in the streets.