An Update in 10 Photos

Breviloquence

Bre*vil"o*quence

A brief mode of speaking.

So I haven't updated in awhile. But I have a semi-legitimate excuse. I've been busy and with my free time I've been writing (curse you MFA writing sample!). And by writing I mean staring at my computer screen, pacing around my room and cursing. But I have made some progress.

So instead of a long winded post that brings you all up to date with my oh so fascinating life (I kid, I kid) I thought I would just bring you a post through pictures. And yes, there will be ducks

A typical Turkish breakfast. Cake, coffee, tee, watermelon, peaches from Firat's garden, cheeses, olives, tomatoes in olive oil and eggs. The housekeeper,( no idea how to spell her name but is sounds like Goo-lee-zar) set everything on the table to be brought outside to the garden so we could eat outside. Lovely.

I found ducklings! Underneath this beautiful weeping willow tree.

I've always loved the grungier side of cities. This is taken from a street we walked down in downtown Istanbul.

We ran into a pigeon lady. LOVE.

How beautiful are these handpainted bowls? We ran into this fabulous mini bazar. It was just a street but there were so many pretty and colorful things! Bowls, plates, crystal hanging lamps and even felted hats!

The buildings here are so bright and refreshing. It makes me so cheery.

Topkapi Palace. And me. And a fountain. (Just in case you couldn't tell)

Hagia Sophia

The famous Bosphorous. Hey look, it's Asia! (On the other side)

While Barkan plays tennis, I spend my mornings laying out by this pool. It's beyond beautiful. There's a main swimming part, and two bridges. If you swim under one you find this narrow little waterway that overlooks tennis courts. If you swim under the other, it opens up to a smaller main pool area, that is surrounded by forest. So peaceful.

This and that: life after college is so "hard"

Halcyon

[hal-see-uhn]

1. calm; peaceful; restful

2. rich; wealthy; prosperous

Well it's been a week since I've departed the US and almost a week since I've been here! I get my first day off on Sunday and Brandon and I are going to go into town, which I'm really looking forward to.

Things here are still really calm and wonderful. The kids are so busy that it looks like I'll have quite a bit of time to myself. Which as a writer, is absolutely perfect for me!

So on Wednesday I had until about 3 pm or so to myself. I was feeling inspired (and after looking at grad schools, a little panicked about my writing sample) so I thought I would do some writing. And I found the most beautiful writing spot.

Part of the backyard: a wood deck with water below it. Plus there was a gentle breeze and birds chirping. Perfect!

After I spent a few hours chopping and re-writing the beginning of a story, then trashing the re-written beginning completely, I decided it was time to take a nice little walk around the neighborhood. There's a great field area with an (artificial) lake and river in the center of it, but it's teeming with wildlife.

I made a friend with this adorable and very friendly cat.

Soo many ducks! These are young--you can see that they're still getting their real feathers.

And itty bitty baby turtles!

Then I walked around the street area of the neighborhood some more. It really is beautiful.

How beautiful are the colors of the houses?

A 600 year old Ottoman waterway (or so the parents say--I think it's an aqueduct).

Then I relaxed, watch some tv and read. I had dinner with the family, talked and played with Barkan a little, talked to Dilara and then it was time to sleep!

Thursday was much the same--I walked, relaxed, talked to the kids a bit. Then Brandon and I went with our families to the kids end of the year party. It was almost in the center of the town, so we drove through the poorer areas (which I thought was very interesting because they were teeming with colors and people) and I saw the Bosphorous, the asian continent and Europe's tallest building. Aylin keeps apologizing to me for not showing me around more because they've been so busy with Barkan's tournament. She's so sweet! Really I've enjoyed having some time and getting over the jet lag.

The graduation party was very fun. Everyone was dressed up nicely and the food was delicious (no idea what it was but yum! There was this delicious rice with roasted almonds). They played several slide shows of pictures of the kids, and there was wine and dancing. Brandon and I caught up, which was also great. No pictures though; I thought it might be rude if I went around snapping photos of random things.

Today has been very chill too. Ate breakfast with Barkan, then he went off to tennis and I took a walk into the mini town area with Brandon. Then we lounged around by his pool and then I had lunch with him. Dilara's last day of school is today, but she's not home yet. Barkan won his tennis match today, so I think he was at least one more game to play tomorrow.

I think tomorrow I'm going to Ankra (sp?) with Dilara, which is where she swims. It's also where Europe's largest (second largest?) mall is. So that should be fun.

Traveling and Arriving in Turkey

Somnolent

[som-nuh-luhnt]

Sleepy drowsy.

Well hello from Turkey. It's been a simultaneously very hectic and very relaxing few days since my last post. So I'll fill you in about the goings on.

The trip to Turkey was....long. Long, long, long. And a little crazy. On the flight from LA to London the wrong plane arrived (wtf United Air?!) so people's seats were all messed up. Which meant my nice aisle seat turned into a not so nice middle seat. And the guy at the ticket desk who was doling out new tickets was super rude. The plus side? I got upgraded to Economy Plus, which I think meant my seat was 5 inches larger. Not much but...the seat still felt small, so I can't imagine what sitting in a seat that was 5 inches smaller would have felt like. Plus I had a nice chat with the family who was sitting next to me. They were off to Denmark to visit their son who was studying abroad there.

Somehow I actually managed to fall asleep, if briefly on the flight (something I never manage to do) but I still felt pretty off when I arrived to London.

Oh London! I really wanted to get out of the airport just to take in more of the English splendor, but just being in the airport was still nice, as (of course) it was chalk full of British people and just fell very very British. I even got a delicious pre-packed sandwich.

So I was there for four hours, got onto my Turkish Air flight and then proceeded to sit on the runway for an hour plus. I was pretty ok with that though; Turkish Air had some very good movies, so I just sat back and watched the Owl of...something (you know that beautifully animated film about owls?) which was very cute. But people were freaking out about missing connecting flights.

Anyhow, I arrived to Istanbul safe, sound and very tired. Going through customs was way easy and the drive back with my family's driver was peaceful.

So...the family! They are incredibly nice and sweet. Like really, really kind. I've been a bit jet lagged and just all around tired from not sleeping for almost 30 hours or so so they've let me take it easy and just adjust. Dilara still has school and Barkan is in this tennis tournament this week, so we won't really be on a normal schedule until next week. So I've just been getting to know the kids and trying to speak some English with them. Dilara has been very warm and friendly. Her English is very very good and she loves to talk and tell stories. Barkan is a little more reluctant (understandably so) and likes to just shake his head yes or no when I ask him a question. But when he's with Dilara he opens up more. Or when I ask him about tennis (he was excited to hear that I was at Wimbledon last year!).

Their neighborhood is very beautiful too. They live in Kemer Country, a gated community of all very nice houses. But the houses here are so colorful, which is really refreshing.

And this is my family's house:

Well I think that's about all for now. In an hour or so I'm going to watch Barkan's tennis game. And later tonight Brandon arrives. Hopefully I'll see him either tonight or tomorrow.

Bye for now!

Pointless Phone Palavers & Packing

Melange

[mey-lahnzh, -lahnj]

A mixture; confusion

So today was the last day before I leave for Turkey. Which meant it was busy!busy!busy! But really it was a semi-successful semi-productive day. Which is really an A+ in my books, so I'm happy.

So I had(still have!) quite a few odds and ends of things to do. Like calling the LA County Jury Service people...which really resulted in 6 calls, being put on hold for 20+ minutes and being told that being out of the country thousands of miles away from LA County is in fact not a valid excuse for postponing Jury Duty.

The conversation went something like this....

JD Lady: You can't postpone your duty past September.

Me: I'll be in Europe until mid-October.

JDL: You can't postpone it.

Me: Uh...so what do I do if I physically can't be in LA?

JDL: Uh.......?

Very helpful. Her response eventually was: you can be fined $250-$1150 and become sanctioned. (Doesn't sanctioned sound like a privilege and not a penalty? Like, "she was sentenced to death, but at the last minute she was sanctioned"). Then she said I should have taken care of jury duty earlier (I was initially called to do it last August). It went like this....

JDL: You should have done this. Why didn't you do this earlier?

Me: I was in Wisconsin.

JDL: And before that?

Me: I was in England.

JDL: And before that?

Me: On an island of 6,000 people 600 miles off the coast of Ecuador?

As you can see, this was a very productive use of my time. But....I got it all worked out eventually, with some....creative thinking we'll say. ;) (And they said my Creative Writing major would never be useful!)

Today I also discovered that if you have a flight with United Airlines and want a Vegetarian Meal option you can't in fact chose that online even if you search their site for half an hour. What do you have to do?

Call their toll free number, twice, have a pointless conversation with a computer until you end up yelling, "Meal options! Meal Options!" for five minutes and the automated systems says "I"m sorry I don't understand. I'll connect you to an operator now", then talk to a very nice man with a very thick Indian accent and have a ten minute conversation with him about vegetarianism.

Duh.

Anyway, what I also did today was pack! Which brings me to the word of the post.

I think the picture really says it all. As you can see my cats thought they would "help" me.

That or perhaps they wanted to come to Turkey too?

And alright, I have a bit of a confession. For the 3 weeks I've been here I kept thinking of books I wanted to bring to Turkey with me. And then I would tell myself to be realistic and decide not to take those books. So I thought I was in good shape--I was bringing only a few books, right? And this is what my book stack looks like....

In my defense, some of the books are to read to the kiddos. But I also have a 600+ book about Ottoman history. But I need that. Right? Really what's surprising to me is how much nonfiction I have--that one about Ottomans, a travel book, the best of science writing in 2010 and a book about string theory. Yup, that's what my summer reading looks like.

Anywho, I take off tomorrow at 5:55. I have a 10 hour flight to London, a 4.5 hour layover (and I have a fiver from last time...think I'll be able to be something for only 5 quid?) and then a 4 hour flight to Istanbul. Then an hour drive to my family's house.

Phew, I'm exhausted just thinking about it.

Next post will come to you from Istanbul!

Ciao!

Welcome!

Hello all and welcome to Dithyrambic!

Dithyrambic is going to be a part travel, part personal, part anything else I feel like blog. With a theme! Because I like themes, and I tend to be a tad too capricious at times, so I thought a theme might give me a solid base of sorts. So each post will be word inspired, beginning with a fun, funky, weird and wonky word that I feel describes the essence of the post. Ok, not much of a theme, but I like words and hey, it never hurts to expand ones vocabulary. Right?

So this post's word is, naturally, the title of this blog...

Dithyrambic:
[dith-uh-ram-bik]

1. wildly irregular in form
2. very enthusiastic

(All definitions taken from www.dictionary.com. I reserve the right to throw the boring definitions of words out and post only the relevant definitions. For instances, the first definition for dithyrambic? "of, pertaining to, or of the nature of a dithyramb". Wow very helpful dictionary.com. Thanks.)

And onto the (more) interesting bits...

I created Dithyrambic for a mutltitude of reasons (ha, lies, mainly just two!). Partly because I'm a recent college grad and figured I should probably use my fancy degree in writing somehow. But mainly because I'm going to be working/living in Turkey this summer. I'll be living with a Turkish family and AuPair-ing. This basically means that I'm going to be a glorified babysitter, but it also means I'll be teaching their two kids English (resume translation: International English Educator, swanky huh?). The family has two kids, Dilara who is 11 and Barkan who is 9. More about them when I actually meet them.

I'll be in Europe until mid October, so until then this will mainly be "Michelle's OMG!Traveling-is-SO-Awesome Blog" and then after that it will be a "Michelle's not-so-exciting-life" blog. At some point this might also be a "WTF?-Michelle-is-applying-to-MFA programs-in-CW-and-is-SO-stressed-out" blog or a "let's-talk-about-science" blog or a blog where I'll post some odds and ends of my writing. Because it's dithyrambic (ha? get it?)

But mainly I just want this to be a blog of cool and pretty things, so we'll see how that goes. I'll be posting a lot of pictures, promise.