Yalnız karanlıkta evde: Alone in the dark at home

Why was I sitting in our room, in the dark, playing with my 1996 model cellphone last night?

The background to this story is that Alex's program sponsors a number of Saturday field trips. Yesterday they went to Edirne for the whole day (The pictures will be on Picasa soon).

I spent the morning and afternoon with our flatmate, Simem, and her five year old niece, Zeynep. While Sinem was getting ready to go, I played with Zeynep. She told me all sorts of things and I did my best to keep up with her! We played pass the basketball and count to twenty... I did OK with that game. We played with the cats and she explained what the bebe and anne were doing.
Our first stop of the day was the Post Office to mail a suit, dress shoes, and hiking boots to Claudius, who rented the rooms to all of us. We took everything in plastic bags to the Post Office on the assumption they would have boxes for sale. They did, in one (very) small size. Without any explanation to Zeynep, Sinem ran off to get bigger boxes from a fast food restaurant nearby. The niece took it all in stride... at the Post Office with a stranger and auntie just ran out the door. Sinem got one big box, which we used to send the suit and shoes. And then, she asked for two small boxes, tape, and a knife in order to build a bigger one for the hiking shoes. I'm laughing to myself that in a U.S. Post Office, they would have told us to get out of the way and come back prepared. We were doing all of this box construction on somebody's desk, by the way. But it all worked out... and Zeynep didn't get antsy until the very end!
Then we hopped on a city bus to Ortoköy to take a little Bosphorus cruise. Since the cruise wasn't going to leave for an hour, we found a nearby playground for Zeynep while Sinem and I enjoyed a midday beer. We shared a cheesy gözleme that Zeynep fed to the birds. Once on the boat, we got blown about by the wind and watched the other people as much as the coastline. The cruise was just an hour long and more than enough for Zeynep, who started to fall asleep on the bus back to Taksim.
I was pretty sleepy, too, since Alex got up a 5:30am to get ready for his trip to Edirne. After Sinem's sister came to pick up her daughter, I collapsed for a nap. When I woke up in the evening (3 hours later), no one else was home. So, I did my Turkish homework, ate a lazy dinner, listened to "This American Life" podcasts, played with the cats (more on those little monsters later), etc. This was fine until the power went out. Ha.
Then I had to decide how much battery power to drain from the computer. Instead, I sat aroundin the dark, experimenting with every possible key combination with my little phone. I even learned that it has a flashlight! Ha ha. The power fluctuated for the next couple of hours before Alex finally got back from his trip. But, by that time, at least I could use my cellphone flashlight to find my way to the bathroom...