What would Gilligan do?

Well, we weren't marooned on a desert isle, but our trip to Ateşehir on New Year's Day was a new milestone in our public transportation adventures! It was a four-hour round trip extravaganza to the Asian side--and not even the furthest eastern point of Istanbul. On the way there, the transportation gods smiled: the 150 bus was coming down the hill just as we approached the bus stop, from Sarıyer the Beşiktaş dolmuş made good time in light traffic, from Beşiktaş we caught the ferry to Kadıköy with just 5 minutes to spare, from Kadıköy we took the metro to Bostancı where we met our friends (the host and another guest) and took a taxi to the hosts' house. 

It was a lovely evening--low-key conversation with the most generous, delicious meal. I wonder if they had been cooking for days... and I only wish I could cook like them. So, the menu included: roasted red peppers, stuffed eggplant/tomatoes/zucchini, lentil salad, green salad, mushroom soup, chicken popovers, whole grilled fish! (çopra / loach), and bread; followed by Turkish coffee, poppyseed cake with fresh fruit and tea. Mercy, that was three meals worth!! The sad part was that we couldn't stay as long as we wanted because of the long road home. 

On the way back, we three guests took a bus to Kadıköy. About one minute into the bus ride, our friend noticed that he had forgotten his phone, ooooops--time to panic! We almost got off the bus to go back with him to retrieve the phone, but he figured out that he could live without it in the last two days of his time in Turkey (before going back to Arizona). From Kadıköy to Sarıyer, we had two more dolmuş rides, which in terms of time, were about as efficient as it gets. 

But on the first ride, we witnessed an ugly incident. As the dolmuş was filling up at the first stop, an older man, clearly drunk, started by annoying the very young driver and his friend and then moved back to sit next to a young woman behind us. For a while, it seemed like he was just being noisy. Then, I don't really know what he did to harrass the young woman, but she complained loudly. Everyone on the dolmuş was on edge. The dolmuş driver told her to move up to another seat, and another passenger gave her his place. The old man started shouting at her and as she moved to another seat towards the front, he spat at her. I don't think the spit hit her at least. The man sat back where he was before; I wonder why he didn’t get kicked off the dolmuş at that point. Alex guesses that the driver didn’t want to risk a fight. A couple stops later, the old man got off the dolmuş, much to our relief. I suppose it’s good that this is the only such harrassment I’ve seen in the five months that I’ve been here...

The new year...

It is such a gray day... it's almost noon and I can hardly believe it's not twilight. The Black Sea sure does generate heavy, low clouds here. I'll have to get some energy soon because we are going to take a huge trek across Istanbul to visit friends who live in Ateşehir for a New Year's Day celebration.

I'm trying to take one day off from doing planning for the Spring semester. After working so much in the last month of the semester and in the week following exams, it's very hard just to sit still and not get anxious about what I haven't done.

There's a goal for the new year--get my life-work ratio in balance. Oh that, write more in my blog, and get more exercise--not particularly novel ideas, but still worthwhile.

So, here's to a less hectic, more fun New Year!

Anna's Bakery

Oh my. So deelicious..... a real berliner, a real chocolate croissant, and a real latte! Hard to believe this happened in Turkey.
How did it happen, you may ask with good reason. My coworker was determined to find a German bakery somewhere in Istanbul. He did, but it was in Göktürk, a part of the city that doesn't connect well with Sarıyer by public transportation. He convinced another coworker (who has a car) to join in the quest, and since I was there at the right moment, I got to come along, too.
Göktürk is saturated with boutique shops, especially French and German ones, and its central area hardly looks like Istanbul at all. We speculated that it was a kind of Turkish Truman Show set. There were plenty of people and cars, but this photo is basically what it looks like:

The bakery, however, was the real thing. It was so much fun to drink a cappuccino that can be distinguished from a latte! (My coworker took the photo, so that's why the latte was featured.) I brought home some tasty treats so we can extend the mystical bakery experience a couple more days...

Happy Solstice!

From: NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day

More Snowy Pictures from Campus

Some of my students hadn't seen snow at all before, so they were eager to take photos from the classroom (during class, of course). In exchange for a 2 minute "snow break," I asked to get copies of the photos :D
Here are a few of those:

Now it is all melted... no surprise since it was a wet, slushy snow to begin with. Maybe we'll get more later, who knows?

First Snowy Day

After much anticipation, and a teaser of sleet yesterday, this morning we have a blustery, truly snowy day. From the inside, I'm a lot more impressed by the wind than the snow. We'll see if I think the same later today. Some of my coworkers were hoping for a snow-day today. If that really happens, the threshold for "too much snow" is very low. I guess there's still time, but I very much doubt that we have a free day today.

Here's the view from the porch this morning:

Here are a couple photos of campus later in the day:

Winter is here!

Also of note, my mini-bus commute was rather exciting as we fish-tailed up the hill to the main road. When we arrived on campus, I wanted to applaud! On the way home, I got a ride from a coworker, which was much better.

Fall Semester Countdown!

Two more weeks of teaching to go... and yes, I'm counting!

The last three weekends have been crammed with grading and a bit of hasty planning :((( I've been forcing myself to use the Pomodoro timing system to keep focused (see http://tomatoi.st/ixka ), and it works, but I'm really sick of it. This is when it helps to have a little more experience in a job because you know when the assignments will pile up and can try to spread them out better. I didn't; now I cry, cry, cry.

In the meantime, the weather has finally turned cooler. It'll be close to freezing when I go to work this morning. The rest of the week is supposed to rain in the low 40s, which means icy rain overnight, I bet. We're keeping warm in the apartment all the same. On campus, the rooms are overheated, so students end up opening the windows--energy efficiency, what's that?

The final exams will be on December 23rd and 24th, and the grading day is the 25th. I've been told that we can grade at home--woohoo! I'm a bit vague on the next week or two, but it's not break. It seems to be a planning period for the Spring Semester and a tutoring time for students who will be taking the university entrance exam in the first week of January. Out winter break starts January 11. The big news is that Alex and I are going to visit his family in France for part of the break--this has been a goal for a looooooong time. From Istanbul, the flight is just over 3 hours to Lyon... not so bad!

Oh! It's 7am already--time to get movin!