Playing catch up

For everyone who works in foreign service, being back in D.C., whether it’s our hometown or not (more often than not, it’s “not”) is a series of reunions and blasts from the past. People we’ve worked or trained with, for however long and however long ago, appear before us, prompting a series of catch-up conversations, happy hours and other events.

Even if the person crossed your path briefly, it’s a time to find out where the person has been, where they’re going and why they happen to be in D.C. And you don’t know when the reunions will occur. Usually, it’s at our little college-like training center, the main office building or any random hotel where we congregate (in my case, Marriott Residence in Rosslyn), but they happen all over the D.C. area. For example, Trader Joe’s (the one in Clarendon) seems to be a place where all us posted overseas come back for a fix and we run across each other there.

Last go-around, I left Guangzhou on a Friday and had a class on Monday morning. When I arrived, I discovered the person teaching the class had been one of the TDYers who had come to work in my department. I didn’t recognize her at first, but we both thought each other was familiar and discussed it enough to figure it out. When realization hits – THAT’s where I know you! – suddenly, you’re old friends catching up. (In that case, we had yet another commonality: she’d just come from India the Friday before and we were both jet-lagged like nobody’s business.)

Since I’ve been here, on a daily basis, I’ve met up with at least one new person from my past each day. Two of my colleagues from Istanbul randomly showed up for their own trainings, and both brought their wives and little girls. One of the wives is one who worked closely with me before she went on maternity leave. I’d thought I’d seen these people for the last time in my life, and then suddenly, we’re having breakfast together every day. It’s just random and wonderful.

Some of the people you catch up with, you’re seeing for the first time. A reunion of someone you’ve never met sounds odd, but we have so many e-ways of communicating that you can know someone without seeing them in the flesh. On Monday, when I walked into my classroom, I found I knew via e-measures three people plus had met one before my first tour started. Of the others, one was headed to where I was going and another to the same country.

It’s all very incestuous. When you ask someone where they’re going or where they’ve been, your brain jumps around, trying to find the people you know who might know that person. Invariably, there’s someone.

In an effort to track down everyone, we do things like plan post reunions and throw out a net to invite anyone who might have walked through the post when you were there. I’ve got two such get-togethers on the calendar, one for Guangzhou and one for Istanbul. I’m looking forward to both equally.

It’s a small world for us in foreign service. Today, I took a bus to a different site. There was a woman struggling with her bags – she’s headed out to her new assignment after this training and didn’t have a place to leave it – so, after loading them up, it seemed natural that we sit together and chat. 

Turns out, we’d both been through Guangzhou. She whipped out her photos and showed me some. In the very first one, one of my friends, whom I’ve made a point to meet with since I’ve been there, beamed back at me. That person had been in Guangzhou a year after me, and the lady started to show me more from that trip.

The sights were familiar; she’d lived in my same apartment building and had similar photos to what I took. She also went to one of the hot springs while she was there, a trip I made twice. In viewing the photos on her iPhone, I took a look at the dates and realized that she’d been in Guangzhou in February of the same year I was there, and I left in April. We overlapped and didn’t realize it.

In one of her hot springs photos, I thought I saw another familiar face, albeit behind a pair of sunshades. I took the camera and did the englarge-y thing with the fingers and confirmed that yes, in the small world of foreign service, that was indeed me in the photo.

I’d been catching up with a colleague without even realizing it.

Getting back at it

 Home leave is an amazing thing. It’s a time mandated by Congress that I spend in the U.S., getting back in touch with the country I represent overseas. For me, it’s something to take seriously, which is why during both of my home leaves so far I’ve spent a chunk of time on the road. The first one, I drove to Nashville and then Disney; tell me that’s not an All-American thing to do. This time, I went to Birmingham, Orlando and then Prescott, Arizona, taking in a lot of the country.

 

Of those, I think Universal Studios in Orlando was the most fun. I met a Foreign Service friend and we stayed with another friend on Disney property, so it was kind of the best of both of those worlds. I’d never been to Universal and loved it; it’s a bit edgier than The Mouse.

My favorite was “the Mummy” roller coaster: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZhW1wBCA7I. We did that one twice. Honestly, the Rock N’ Roll one was probably better, but it kept breaking down and there was no single rider line. It took us well over an hour to get through it. Had it taken half the time, it would have been No. 1. The start is straight up so, literally, after that first drop, it’s all downhill after that. The fun thing is you select the song you listen to as you ride. I went with ZZ Top’s “Sharp Dressed Man,” and it would have been fun to try it with a few more genres. I mean, c’mon. It was a chance to hear KC and the Sunshine Band again: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NQHNDCAF6k.

I did all the roller coasters I could, but wasn’t a fan of The Hulk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OsjdYQJc748. Maybe it was the time of day or something, but it didn’t do it for me. The Rockin’ one and The Mummy, though, I’d go back again and again.

What is with the virtual rides? There were so many of them, like King Kong, the Simpsons and the New York thing with Jimmy Fallon. I think it was Jimmy Fallon. Those, more than the roller coasters, make me a little sick. The Harry Potter ones were pretty bad, but I thought the Simpsons was worse. However, I loved wandering down through Springfield.

Universal has thoughtfully now included stationary seating for some of the 3-D shows and man, I just wish they’d have put a little more thought into it. We opted for the seating for the Minions because it was a 5-minute wait vs. a 90-minute wait for the “lively” seating. Now, note: the seating is just seats. They move, but they stay in one place. So the bounce, lean up, down or sideways but you don’t go along a path in any way. The show is on a movie screen, and the stationary seating is on the very first row.

This was a mistake. While it’s true you’re not moving, you are craning your neck straight up. Honest to God, it made me more nauseous than the roller coasters combined. Oh, man. Done in by Minions.

The purpose to the trip, as much as there was one, was to check out Harry Potter Land. I can’t remember what it’s called, so I just referred to it as Potterville. It was pretty amazing, I must say. My friend got chosen to do the wand selection and played along well.

Wandering around Diagon Alley and taking the Hogwarts express was just too fun. There were so many people; it was by far the most crowded part of Universal. Everyone wanted a piece of Potterville. Gosh, it was so much fun.

We stayed on Disney property, though, which was also a lot of fun. I hadn’t been to Pop Culture before and thought it was a trip going back through time. We were in the 80s building; the one with Rubik’s Cubes framing the staircases.

We stayed in the 80s. Good times.

We did two days at the park, dining at City Walk around 6:30 p.m. and then going back into the park to finish it off. The Hard Rock didn’t have fish and chips and I wasn’t into burger so I took a chance on this spicy chicken macaroni and cheese and holy cow, it was fabulous. I couldn’t believe how amazing mac and cheese could be. And I got my fill of fish and chips the next night at Margaritaville, so all was good.

On the third day, my Foreign Service friend had planned on doing Disney but I was just going to hang out by the pools at the hotel. However, my Foreign Service friend was a stranger to Florida humidity and by day three was not up to yet another theme park, so after a late start she headed to Disney Springs. I hung out by all three pools and finished my Janet Evanovich book before meeting her at a movie (Jurassic World; it seemed appropriate) and finishing the day at Disney Springs.

That was about halfway through home leave and I decided that every Foreign Service person should meet up with a colleague halfway through home leave. We live such an odd life that is hard to explain to our pre-service friends; it’s nice to decompress halfway through with someone who gets that part of your life.

It’s almost comforting to get back to the work routine, and that’s where I am now. It’s still this in-between part of my world, but I’m in the “training” phase prior to my next deployment. This means I head to DC and go to class in one of a handful of different locations before I am shipped far, far away again.

I only arrived on Monday but got right to it; it really is nice to be back into a routine. It’s sort of a twilight zone. I’m working but kind of not, because the hours are 9-4 with an hour lunch and a 15-minute break both in the morning and in the evenings. There’s a shuttle to the worksite, so it’s kind of this grade-schoolish thing. I’m taking a school bus and, next week, plan on bringing my lunch. There’s a cafeteria but I ate there this week and not only was it expensive, it was bad.

Especially compared to food in the area. DC is a smorgasbord of good food. Today I had a three-hour brunch at a place called Farmers Fishers Bakers, which is owned by North Dakota farmers. We left around 4 p.m.; four hours later and I am still utterly stuffed and cannot think of ingesting another morsel lest I explode. The night before, I ate at this wonderful place called Nando’s; it’s a South African-based restaurant that I discovered while in Malaysia. Before that, it was a Vietnamese joint. And I’ve eaten at “Tonic” twice already; it seems to be the place many of my colleagues head to for lunch, so I met two on back-to-back days there. The salmon chowder with a side of tater tots was a smart choice!

I’ve got several more weeks in the DC area before I head off to my next post, so I’m open to dining suggestions.

Red light, green light

I’m on a side trip now and thoroughly enjoyed the interstate, even though the scenery on I-10 isn’t exactly spectacular. Part of the enjoyment, I think, was that there aren’t any red lights on the interstate.

To get to my parents’ house – I guess now “my mom’s house” – you have to take one of the main artery roads in Tallahassee and drive a stretch. The “truck route,” as longtime Tallahasseeans call it, is a heavily-traveled road most hours of the day. And my mom’s house entails several left turns.

There aren’t left turns in Turkey. There aren’t really stoplights at all, really. There are a few, but mostly there are crazy intersections and mirrors, with some roundabouts thrown in. On day, walking to work with a colleague, we got to the five-way intersection that I walked by every day, and he looked me dead in the eye and said: “I’m going to die at this intersection.” There were a couple of mirrors – the intersections are totally blind so without the mirrors it would be a total leap of faith – but that was all. No stop lights, no stop signs. Basically, the main rule, as much as there is one, is “first come, first serve.”

It’s chaotic, but once you look deeper, it’s controlled chaos. Well, sort of. There are rule of thumb – but not really a rule – is that bigger ones have the right of way. “Bigger” can mean either cars or balls.

Istanbul traffic. It makes sense in its own way.
Photo from:
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSJstVmD6fBp_3ylMgQ3ppzvdBw5w9RFw1mlt8g8RjebgVKdjNq

I figured this out driving through that intersection. There were four roads intersecting, but not in a star shape. There was a “main” road, or main road-ish thing, so coming from both directions, then two roads coming off diagonally; you turned one way and there was another road immediately there; it was impossible to tell which one people were aiming for. (Apparently, blinkers are illegal in Turkey.) To top it off, there was a large apartment building with a driveway there.

Taking a taxi home from one direction, I’d have to give the direction, “right,” and then “straight, no straight right, but not that straight right.” The turn was some kind of geometric angle gone wrong, but I usually got it right.

And walking was frightening, but driving no less so. With no stop signs, I felt back on my American mentality, which is, again, wrong in Turkey. In America, people don’t have “the right of way.” Laws, at least in Florida, are written not as “this person has the right of way” but “In this circumstance, this person yields the right of way.”

So silly me, I get to the main “T” of that intersection (meaning I’ve held my breath past one of the roads and the driveway) and to me, I’m on a secondary road approaching a main-ish road, so the main-ish road people have the right of way. However, in Turkey, if I get there first, I am expected to go first. This seemed to me to be even in the case where there were cars coming – quickly, I should add – from both directions. Since I was trying to turn left, this would mean, in America, I have a little wait in front of me before I can turn, because both those guys – as well as the guy behind one of those guys – should have the right of way.

But in Turkey, this is not the case. If you hesitate, like I did, the guy behind you will get pissed off but not honk. Honking is only done when you have no other move, like when you really are at a stoplight and it turns green. In that instance, even if you’re 17 cars back, the Turkish rule is that you lay on the horn immediately, as you’re powerless to do anything else. But if you’re at an intersection and some let-me-yield-the-right-of-way-to-these-two-fast-moving-cars-coming-at-me idiot, the correct thing to do is swerve around the idiot and turn in front of him/her in front of the fast-moving car(s).

As a result of this, although I miss Istanbul, I do not miss driving in Istanbul. However, you gotta say, if those rules work, there’s something to them.

The first come, first serve method would save me a lot of time on the way to my mom’s house. The heavily-trafficked artery is full of left turns, and since there’s so much traffic, you have to sit and wait forever on the green left turn arrow.

Probably 20 percent of my home leave has been sitting at left turn arrows stuck on red. I don’t understand it. I get there first, but I have to sit and wait for minutes on end. Sometimes as I drive up, I can see the darn red left turn arrow from afar and by the time I get there, it’s still red and I still have to sit and wait. It’s especially aggravating at the little tiny crossroads, like the last one I have to cross, because it takes forever for enough cars to pile up to register that it’s time for the light to change.

We can learn from Turkey on this one. First come, first serve, biggest balls win.

Back Home

Back in America for about three weeks now, and so far it’s been pretty shitty. My father died.

#Whataburger celebration. More at
https://www.facebook.com/carol.wartenberg

This, I guess, wasn’t a total surprise, but it was unexpected. He’d been in kidney failure and on dialysis (at home) but in the roughly 10 days I’d been home, he’d been doing better. He had been getting up and making me a little bacon biscuit for breakfast each day.

He died on Monday, 7/9. On Saturday, Zippy and I went to Gainesville to pick up Zac for the next week. He didn’t have a camp to go to so he was going to hang out with us, so we headed down there, met the family for an $80 Red Robin lunch and turned around and came back.

Since the new house has considerably less space than the old house and there’s no Den of Sin, I opted to go over to L&D’s house for the week. They were headed on a road trip to celebrate their 20^th anniversary so I accepted the offer to house-sit and get some peace and quiet.

At midnight, Zippy called and asked me to meet her at the ER because Daddy couldn’t breathe. She’d called 911. I jumped up, got dressed and waited and then she called back because she couldn’t get my car started. I was driving hers and in my car the clutch has to be pressed in all the way.

Anyway, I said never mind, that I’d pick her and Zac up since I felt she had no business driving. She said the ambulance still hadn’t left, but by the time I got there, there was one paramedic-ish vehicle left. Apparently there had been at least three and seven people.

One at the hospital, we were taken to the trauma ward, where we learned Daddy had lost pulse twice up to that point. They’d done CPR and brought him back, but upon arriving to the hospital and checking his records, realized he had a do-not-resuscitate. So it went downhill from there. The first doctor came in and told us about the CPR, stressing that only 3 percent of people who have CPR recover, and warning us that since he’d lost oxygen to his brain twice there was no telling what would happen should he recover.

Who could turn down this face for a tummy rub?

So we waited for a room in ICU, not really able to do anything. Daddy was completely unresponsive and had no idea who was there.  At some point, I took Zac back to the house because all he was able to do was play video games, I brought Daddy back a new shirt because his had been ripped during CPR. Around 4 a.m., a different doctor came in and started talking about “in the days ahead” and listed different doctors Daddy would need to see. At that point, I wondered if I’d misheard the first doctor (whose shift, I guess, was over) because it sounded to me like there would be a tomorrow.

Since that felt a little better, I went back to Leanne’s, reasoning Zippy would stay there and then I’d get some sleep and take over, but, about an hour and a half later, she called and said his heart was failing. I rushed over there but missed – he’d died.

For us, this is really the first death in the immediate, local family and we had no idea what to do, but Zippy had lined up someone at a funeral home so she called her and got that ball rolling. We opted for just a visitation since Daddy really didn’t do much outside the house.

Zippy, though, does, and the visitation was like some kind of reunion for old GCA teachers and ERS employees, plus softball and pickleball players left and right. I mean, I think we overwhelmed the funeral home; we just took over the place.

Since there were so many people and we just wouldn’t leave, someone proposed heading to Whataburger, Daddy’s favorite restaurant, after the visitation. Twenty of us went, which I think freaked them out a bit – a line out the door that came out of nowhere – but the staff was so nice.

Since then, it’s been one thing after another, just trying to get a grasp on what’s going on. Fortunately, some stuff made sense and has fallen into place. Unfortunately, some other stuff hasn’t.

Finally, though, I’m starting to do some of my originally proposed home leave stuff. Last weekend, I went to a martial arts competition to watch Little Bit in her first tournament, which happened to be Tiger Rock’s national event. (Her dojo.) She kicked butt, literally.

Next weekend, I’m doing the crown jewel of home leave – a visit to Universal Studios Orlando to see Harry Potter land, or whatever it’s called. I’m not a fanatic, but I do like HP and I’ve never been to Universal.

In the meantime, I’m fulfilling what Batgirl assumes to be my purpose on earth – rubbing her tummy.

Last run

Laodicea

It’s my last week in Istanbul. Definite mixed feelings about this, but I’m making the best of it.

Last weekend, the post-Ramadan holiday, I took my last getaway on Turkish Airlines to Macedonia (still the Former Yugoslavian Republic of Macedonia, but soon to be Northern Macedonia). I left on Wednesday night and came back on Sunday, starting in Skopje and finishing in Tirana, Albania.

The highlight was absolutely Lake Ohrid, a big lake on the Albanian/(Northern) Macedonian border. I left Skopje (a really cool city with, I swear, more statues per square kilometer than any other place I’ve been) by bus on morning and arrived around 1 p.m.

Pergamon

My place was an AirBnB I’d totally recommend. It overlooked the lake and, if you looked sharply to your right, the fortress. But the lake was the amazing thing. It was pretty big – so big that, when walking around it, I started looking for seashells. I didn’t find any, of course, but it took me awhile to remember that’s because it was a lake, not the sea. I’m surrounded by salt water in Istanbul and I just forgot there was such a thing as fresh water. It was just so big, too, that it took me a minute to realize why there weren’t any shells or seagulls.

I suppose it might be like Tahoe, not that I’ve spent too much time there. The city had a vibrant downtown area, though it was tiny. Pearls were their thing, but I didn’t buy any. I just had a great time walking up and down. My little tracker said I did over 20k steps and 51 floors that day. It was a lot of hills!

The fortress had a great view, too, especially of the stormclouds as they were coming in. The skies unloaded, but there was at least a big gateway I could stand in while it passed by.

The boats get to me. I probably took 20 pictures of boats from all angles. I really need a beach house.

Turtle porn! Spotted in Macedonia.

Tirana was the last stop, and it was fairly fun, too. There weren’t many amazing photo ops there, but they did have all the electrical boxes on the roads painted like cartoon characters. I saw Homer Simpson, Lego Batman and Betty Boop. But the greatest sign was the “Pee and we’ll put you on YouTube” sign. I did a doubletake. I’ve resisted the urge to go to Youtube and search for “Pee Tirana,” but feel free!

I arrived back exhausted and in need of preparing for packout, which was today. Everything’s gone, except 17 pounds of liquids I couldn’t ship. I also have barely enough clothes to make it through this weekend, my last in Istanbul.

And the jury is out as to what to do. There is just so much to choose from. I’m thinking of seeing the Dolmabache Palace, which I haven’t done yet, but I also want to just hang out in the Galata Tower area for a good chunk of the day. And honestly, as I left the gym and walked back to my apartment via the pool, I have to say it’s super tempting to just sit out and enjoy that for an afternoon.

Boats. 'Nuff said.

Man, I will miss this place. And the country. The weekend before last, I finally got to the Six (of the Seven) Churches of Revelation, which are all centered around Izmir. I went with a mom and daughter from work, who drove the five hours down there. We rented an apartment and just hit the road to the farthest one first, Laodicea. It was about two and a half hours away. We’d planned on seeing three each day and then heading back to Istanbul, but we managed to get horribly lost with the help of the GPS.

Eventually, we figured it out but we decided to swing by Hieropolis and Pamukkale, which I’d done before but they hadn’t. There, we splurged on a golf cart tour of the place, which was the right move! We swung by Philadelphia on the way home, where the ruins aren’t as extensive as Laodicea. Philadelphia is basically a city block. You think for a second how convenient it is to have the ruins right in the middle of the city and then realize that the whole point of them being there is because it’s been a city for centuries!

I truly believe this is the
greatest sign ever.

The next day we hit the four remaining churches. (For the math minds reading, I know there are seven churches mentioned in Revelation, but all three members of the party had been to Ephesus before so we skipped that one.) As cool as it was to see them (Sardis, Thyatiera, Pergamon and Smyrna), they do kind of run together after awhile. When I got back, I tried to pull the photos off the iPhone but if you’ve ever done that, it gets confusing. They don’t show up on Windows Explorer in the same order the pop up on the iPhone, which makes it something like a game of Old Maid. I sorted by time and figured some out, but it was far from perfect. After thinking I was done, I counted the folders and realized I’d forgotten Thyatiera, so I had to go back through all of them and figure those out.

However, that didn’t take away the fun of the trip. I am so glad I got to see them; we’d postponed the trip twice. It’s something I wanted to do as soon as I found out I was coming to Turkey, so I’m really happy I got to do it before I left.

One lucky punk

News from home: Clint Eastwood’s new movie, “The Mule,” is being filmed in Augusta, Georgia, which apparently looks like Detroit in the post WWII era.

Here’s what Variety had to say about the movie:

[“The Mule]” is based on a 2014 New York Times Magazine feature by Sam Dolnick and follows Earl Stone (Eastwood), a man in his 80s who is broke, alone, and facing foreclosure of his business when he is offered a job that simply requires him to drive — easy enough. But unbeknownst to Earl, he’s signed on as a drug courier for a Mexican cartel, and also hit the radar of hard-charging DEA agent Colin Bates (Cooper).

http://variety.com/2018/film/news/bradley-cooper-clint-eastwood-the-mule-1202788236/

Since Clint Eastwood is 88, it’s possible it will be his last movie. It’s also Karen’s first. Yes, my aunt in Augusta is going to be an extra, playing a horticulturist at a meeting that the protagonist attends. She answered a casting call, and, being a gardener herself, is already being typecast.

Karen follows in the footsteps of her Golden retriever, Butter, who has appeared in print ads for Mahindra Retrievers: https://mahindrausa.com/sites/default/files/tractor/pdf/Mahindra_2018RetrieverBrochure_0218_LR_0.pdf (Butter is the blonde.)

I think it’s fantastic. I love Clint Eastwood’s movies (Coincidentally, I watched "Absolute Power" this week) and find it funny that Karen has yet another talent and another thing on her to-do list. Her scene will be in the opening part of the movie. I’ve no idea when it’s due out; she’s filming her part in June.

Here, I am not really counting the days but feel the departure date creeping close. I’ve been really busy over the weekends sightseeing but this particular one went off the rails.

I needed to work on Saturday morning and suggested 8 a.m. to start, which was readily agreed upon. The project wasn’t supposed to take long, so I had delusions of getting home around 11, stopping really quick at the street market and hitting the gym before returning to the area of the office and cooking for part of our security team. There’s one woman who’s done it on her own once a month forever, but this month we have some guests, so I offered to help. The plan was to get there at 3 p.m. and start frying chicken, eat around 5 p.m. I figured I’d be home around 7 p.m.

Well, nothing worked out. The contractors, whom I really didn’t think would be there at 8 a.m. but I figured around 9 a.m. for sure, arrived about 10:30, and the “couple of hours” project was still going at 3:30, but at that point someone else offered to take over, so I headed to the building to jump in with the cooking, but the coordinator wasn’t there yet.

Around 5:30, I was wondering if she really meant Sunday, but as the people to be fed assured me it was Saturday, she finally arrived – she’d been cooking the side dishes at the house and got behind. At that point, we thought we were ready, but then we had issues getting the cooker to work. The American propane connector, on the cooker, didn’t want to work with the Turkish gas tank, so we ran back for a turkey fryer, which took forever. Basically, I thought I was going to be home at 7 p.m. but we didn’t even start cooking the chicken until after that.

But when it was all said and done, the chicken was awesome; I brought an extra piece home for lunch. Cornbread too. Man, she thought of everything. Talk about feeling lucky!

Today, I’d planned on doing more sightseeing – I’m running out of weekends – but after getting home after 10 p.m and skipping the gym yesterday, I decided to just play homebody today. I hit the gym, pool and sauna, then took a short nap before pulling myself out of bed.

A friend is coming this weekend so I have to clean; I feel staying home was a smart move. I’m on the second load of laundry and have run to one store but the street market calls.

No real feel on what we’re going to do this weekend. This is one of those visitors who’s not so much in it as Istanbul as a destination but more of a “I need a peaceful break” kind of thing. There will undoubtedly be some sightseeing (I will use anyone/anything as an excuse to go to the Galata Tower area!) but for the most part, it’s going to be chillaxing by the pool – and possibly catching “Han Solo” at the theater. That, more than anything, would make my day.

Get moving

Get shopping at the Grand Bazaar

It’s a great time now in Istanbul – our movement restrictions got lifted, so we are free to move about the city. And man, what a city!

Coincidentally, a friend came to visit the weekend after we got the green light, so I was able to go and play tourist. We visited the Hagia Sophia, the Blue Mosque, the Galata Tower and the Grand Bazaar, plus this quirky place called “The Museum of Innocence.” Later, I hit up the Pera Museum and Topkapi Palace.

Istanbul is just amazing. There is so much to do here, and I really hope I can make a dent in the list before I leave post.

My big errand over the weekend was to take the rug I bought in Morocco to be fixed. I bought it used and it had been unraveling at one end since I got it. It was only around $25 or so, but it’s got sentimental value since it’s a Peace Corps acquisition.  I took it to the same rug guy whom I’ve bought three rugs from. He’s going to fix it and I have to pick it up next weekend. This means I get another run at the Grand Bazaar, too, which is awesome.

Galata Tower. My favorite area.

Since the rug is heavy and bulky as heck, I plan on that being the last thing I do on Saturday. That morning, I’m hoping to do a little Bosporus ferry “cruise.” It’s not a cruise in that it’s a touristy thing with booze or anything. Well, they have those, but I’m not doing that. Instead, there is a public ferry and it makes a good handful of stops after it departs the Sea of Marmara area and then finally finishes up at the mouth the Black Sea two hours later. I forget the name of the city – I reckon I’ll have to figure that out before I leave – but you’re there for a couple of hours before you head home on the ferry. You have time to either head up to the Rumeli Fortress or you can just wander around the little city and then have a great seafood lunch. I’ve done it before and am looking forward to doing it again.

I am just so lucky to be posted here. There are so many options, whether you stay in Istanbul, wander around Turkey or leave town. Hopefully, I can hang around town for the most part before I leave. It’s really mind boggling how much there is to see and do.

Look closely at the pattern.

My favorite area is the Karakoy area surrounding the Galata Tower. There’s a street that’s got some fun shopping, not entirely touristy, and it goes straight downhill to the bridge. I could walk up and down it all day long, although I learned after a couple trips that there’s what’s called a funicular that will take you up the hill and then you stroll down, looking at the music stores, leather places, funky clothing stores and all kinds of random stuff, and you can get freshly squeezed pineapple or pomegranate juice on the way. As far as I’m concerned, it’s paradise.

As is the whole city.