Dinners in Asia

Sadly, this post is not about Chinese food. (I have only once had Chinese food in Turkey, it was ok, but expensive and not very common.) Fortunately, this post is about dinner with friends and ferry trips, both of which I enjoy very much.

On this map, I live about two inches off the upper right corner, on Robert College's campus. I take the bus down the Bosporus to Besiktas, which is just in the upper right corner. From there you can take the ferry directly acros to Uskudar, or down and around to Kadikoy. Many of my friends who are also new to RC used to teach at schools on the Asian or Anatolian side and still live there. They take the ferry or the school service bus every day, but it was an adventure for me to go visit their neighborhoods.

Saturday October 15th, Keeley and I went to Uskadar to meet Stuart who lives with his wife and two sons up the hill from the ferry terminal.












It was a rainy yucky day and we sat inside the ferry to keep warm. The trip across only took about 20 minutes and we were early when we arrived.

Stuart had told us he would meet us at the big clock. I had in mind a clock tower and we searched and searched before finally finding exactly what we were told to see, a big clock.

We crossed the street away from the water and up to the main street which goes up the hill. Here we caught a dolmus, or private mini van taxi. It goes on a perscribed route, but more frequently than the city bus and you can get off when you'd like. The driver has a bunch of coins in his dash board and there is a posted list of prices for various distances. It was great, much easier than I thought it would be, but since we sat in the first row, we were expected to pass money up to the driver from the passageners who were seated behind us. They would give us some coins and say where they were going. The driver would make change and we would have to pass the money back to right person without forgetting anything or dropping the money. I was a bit clueless the first few times this happened, but Stuart caught me up and helped with the transfers. I think if I was more familliar with the place names and more aware of what was going on, I could handle this transaction ok.

We got off the dolmus in Stuart's neighborhood and walked the few blocks to his house. This was the first off campus apartment I had been in and I didn't really know what to expect, but it was very nice. They even have a small yard since they have the ground floor apartment. It is a fairly new building and in good shape. We met Stuart's wife and Mehmet, who is four, and Metih who is 5 months. Mehmet was supposedly getting over a stomach flu, but he was quite the entertainer. He is learning both English and Turkish and seemed qute comfortable in either. Metih will be more interesting in a few years.

We had a fantastic dinner of Manti (like mini ravioli with little bits of meat in them) which is eaten with yogurt and tomato sauce as well as bread and salad. Stuart was running the marathon the next day and a friend of his (along with a new teacher) from Uskudar were running the 8k so they were carbo loading. I was just doing the walk, but I definately enjoyed the meal.

Keeley and I didn't have to figure out the Dolmus on the way back since there happened to be a city bus right there, which is easier since you dont have to talk to anyone. Back on the ferry, and another bus back to the school gate. I have plans for a bus blog post one of these days... stay tuned.

Saturday October 22nd


Sam (who teaches French, and Sibel, who teaches chemistry) also live on the other side and take the same service bus each morning from Kadikoy. (The service busses pick up students and teachers from all over the city and bring them to school in the morning and take them home in the afternoon. There are over 40 of these 16 passenger vans run by the Gursel company which come to RC at least twice every day. They could be their own blog.) Sam plays tennis with Jack, Marshal and Uzgur on Friday evenings and has been trying to organize a night out since the begining of school and we finally managed it.

Jim making a acid/base rainbow

Sibel with elephant toothpaste

This was the day of the Autumn Teacher's conference, but the timing worked out great, I got off the bus from the conference and met up with Jack, Marshall, Keeley and Corrine to walk down the hill, pcik up Janelle and get on the city bus to the ferry. This time we were going from Besiktas on a longer ferry to Kadikoy.



It was a much nicer day than the week before, but still cloudy and cool.



Jack

Janelle

Marshall

Keeley

Sunset over Sultanamet

Sam, her friend Jessica, and Sibel met us at the Kadikoy ferry terminal and we walked from there through what seemed like a secret passage way to a pedestrian walk/market place. There were lots of fish sellers, resturants, and little shops that sold anything you might be looking for.



Dried pepers and aubergine for stuffing with goodness.



I bought a Tavla (backgammon) set that is beautiful wtih inlayed wood and mother of pearl. Keeley went into the same game shop to buy larger dice for his set. (The dice they come with are incredibly small) but the shop keeper told us (through Sibel) that the dice are supposed to be small so you can flip them properly into the box. He showed me a couple of times, how he holds the dice between his thumb and middle(?) finger in a stack, and then makes a snapping motion to pop them out and into the board. I have tried this a couple of times in the relative safety of my own house, but still cant get the hang of it.

Sam had made a reservation for us at an outdoor fish place, so they were ready for all nine of us. Clockwise from the left: Keeley, Jessica, Janelle, Sam, Corrine, Marhsall, Jack and Sibel. I am taking the picture, of course. 

They brought out two trays of mezes, or starter dishes. You get to pick from what they have, most of them are cold and vegitarian and they include patlecan (eggplant in various forms) potato salad, greens, cucumbers in yogurt, spicy tomato sauce, beans, beats, shrimp, etc. There is always a big pile of bread to eat them with and they can be very good. Jack ordered Raki, which is kind of the national drink of Turkey. It is similar to Uzo in Greece, an anise flavored liquour. It is unusual in that it comes in its own bottle and is clear and colorless. The waiter also brings water and two glasses. One glass he fills half way with raki (rak-uh) and the other with water. You then add the water to the raki and it turns milky white. From a chemists perspective, I am very curious about what is going on here. I figure there must be some solute that is soluble in alcohol, but once it is diluted with water, it becomes insoluble and turns into a colloid. I tried it, it isnt bad, but I dont think I could drink a whole glass of it, let alone a bottle. (It is similar to the anise flavored beverage we were served in Peru to clear our pallets this summer.)

There are cats everywhere in Istanbul, but what made this one unusual was how fat it was. I guess it found the right street to hang out on. It was certainly very persistant, as it came over to me and kept bumping into my chair, putting its paws on my leg and mewing, hoping I would take pity on it and let something drop from my plate.

Dinner was lovely and the company was delightful. We promised to do it again sometime soon, but since I was going out for an all day tour early the following morning, I excused myself from the bar scene. Marshall, Jack and I headed back to the ferry to the bus and on campus.

In both of these excursions I felt like the other side was a bit more relaxed than the European side. People were not quite as focused, and more casual. Maybe it was because I was with friends, but it seemed a little less pretentious and more friendly.

Laundry

By request, a post about laundry.

I will not claim to be a laundry expert. I have never needed to learn the intricacies of the delicate cycle, or running the water twice, or the pre-wash soak.  I don’t wear the sorts of clothes that require anything beyond ‘go’.  Perhaps I have missed out, or perhaps it is a good thing, because if I was picky about how my clothes were washed in Turkey, I might have to go naked, and nobody wants that. 

They are English letters, but it is Greek to me.

We are very fortunate to have a laundry room at the bottom of our building, available to residents 24-7 free of charge.  The only catch is, to use the machines, you need to be initiated.  It is not just that the dials are labeled in Turkish.  A dictionary helps with that.  It is that some of the dials are labeled in machine language, washing machine language. 

This is the dial on the ‘bad’ washer.  The letters are not defined anywhere, they aren’t even in order!  I avoid this washer, thinking if I turn it to the wrong setting I may open up a worm hole in the space time continuum. 

These are the dials on the ‘good’ washers, of which there are three.  There are some nice numbers and you might think they follow a pattern, but no.  Pamuklu is cotton, and soguk is cold, aktif sounds active and mini sounds small.  It turns out that Aktif is a four hour cycle, or so I have heard, I got the tutorial before I discovered that on my own.  Felicia says, “Only ever do mini.  Mini is all you need.”  And it was true; I had never needed anything else before last night.  You see, I had ignored the dial on the right.  I could not have guessed that my laundry downfall would be determined by the position of the other knob…

"All you need is mini."  was my mantra, not realizing the importance of the right dial...

As a general rule, I don’t use a dryer for my clothes.  Part of this is environmental, part is being a cheapskate, and part is that I hate shopping and don’t want my clothes to either shrink or wear out any faster than they have to, because I don’t want to have to replace them.  So when I was doing laundry last night, I was no help at all to the Australian visitors who were trying to figure out the dryer. 

How dry do you want your clothes?  Extra dry? Cabinet dry? Ironing dry? or Canada Dry?

They left and returned with a teacher who speaks enough Turkish to translate the settings.  The arc on the left is a time dry, with dk standing for minutes.  Sentetik makes sence if you say it out loud, is synthetics, and we have met pamuklu before: cotton.  For a language that was theoretically ‘purified’ in the 1920s by Ataturk, it is amazing how many sound alike words have crept in (not that there are enough to be helpful, but it is fun to find them.)  Ekstra kuru is extra dry, Dolap Kurulugu is dry enough to put away, where Utu Kurulugu is dry enough for ironing, which is to say, not completely dry.  Narin is delicate and Havalandirma is air conditioning or ventilation, which as best as we could guess was all air and no heat.   Their problems solved, the Turkish speaking teacher went on to the ‘go’ button, similar to the one in this picture from my washer.  She said, to start, push the Basla button for 3 seconds.  This made sense to me, there was a hand, it was pointing to the button, and under it, it said 3sn. 

A case of too much information is a bad thing.

When I had loaded my laundry in to two machines, I set it to Mini as I was told, and I pushed Baska button for 3 seconds.  Nothing happened.  But this has always worked before.  Try again, counting slower.  Nothing. Eventually, I figure the only thing I have changed was the 3 seconds.  Before I knew about the three seconds, I was a laundry genius.  So I tried it again, just pushing it and releasing.  The magical whir of motors and the comforting addition of water indicated that I had started the cycle.  Now I come to find that iptal means cancel; I was canceling my wash before it even started. 

Anyway, it was going now, so all was back on track.  I go up stairs, I goof off for a while and more than an hour later I get an email from Janelle telling me the ‘good’ dryer was available.  Oh, yeah, I was doing laundry.  Down stairs I go to find that one of my machines produced clean but damp clothes and the other had produced clean sopping wet clothes.  Ack!  As stated above, I don’t know how to do anything fancy with a washing machine in the US, where the dials are in English, there is no way I can figure out what to do here.  So I start wringing out my clothes in the sink and prepare to hang them up in my apartment wet.  Enter the Australian.  He suggest putting them back in on spin for a while.  Great idea, but I have no idea how to do that.  Sikma means spin, he says.  How do you know that?  I ask.  ‘I spent a long time in here looking at the diagrams and comparing them to the machines.’  Sure enough, there was a note on the wall where the second dial on the washer was labeled spin speed and there was the word again at the bottom of the setting dial.  Looking back at my soggy washer, spin speed was set to yok, or not.  Ok, lesson learned, soggy clothes go back in, spin speed turned up, and the go button pressed and released.  I brought my appropriately damp clothes up to hang and went back down in a few minutes to get the rest. 

Tonight, I am going to pop in a movie and fold up all of those now dry clothes that have been adorning my apartment for the last 24 hours.

Please let me know if there are specific things you would like to hear about and eventually I will try to write about them.

Istanbul Marathon

There are two bridges that span the Bosphorus and I live right between them.  The one to the south (although Turks would be hard pressed at any time of day to tell you which was south was) is called the 'old' or 'first' bridge.  It lights up beautifully at night with changing colors and patterns.  It is also the one which hosts the begining of the Istanbul Marathon: "The only marathon to start on one continent and end on another."  Marathon day is the only day that the bridge is open to pedestrians and after the serious runners (marathon (42.5 km) the 15k and the 8k races start) get started, they open the bridge for the 'fun run' and un-timed, un-ranked 5k which starts 1km behind the runners and stops suspiciously close to the the end of the 8k run for it to really be only 5km.  It was possible to register for the race or fun run at booths all over the city the week before, but I signed up to chaperone another residential life event.  I was excited about this until I found out we had to be at the bridge gate at 6:30 am to get the bus to the bus which would take us to the start.  Who needs sleep anyway?

I talked Joe into getting the Gursel to pick me up at the bottom of the hill after picking up the students, so I was down stairs and ready at 6:40... for a 7am pick up.  Really guys?  Fortunately I was in contact with Jack to know that they were still coming, just slow.  Ok, we are on the Gursel on the way to Taksim where the city busses are waiting to take every one the other side.  Since it is first thing on Sunday morning and there is no traffic, we arrive at Taksim at 7:30 to chaos.

This is our group, It is fuzzy because it was so low light.  But we were fuzzy to, so it is appropriate.

  There are two sets of buses, which we work out are for the runners and for the walkers (us).  We make our way across the square to where the walker's busses are lined up and Joe runs into some friends of his from the summer program at RC.  They are still waiting for some one and they need to get coffee, can we wait for them for 5-10 minutes?  Sure, no problem.  The kids get simit, Jack gets water, we chat, it isn't raining (yet) and 20 minutes later we get frustrated that they are not back and finally get in line for the bus.  It was startling how orderly the line was for the bus.  Turks dont respect most lines or queing opportunities, but here they did.  Joe's friends meet us while we are in line and the line progresses. 

I should take this opportunity to mention that we got such an early start for a 9:30 start time because they close the bridge so the runners can have it to themselves.  The race starts at 9 and they close the bridge at 8.  We got on the bus at 8:07.  Well, let me amend that, Jack, Justin, Ulkem and Joe's friends get on the bus at 8:07, the last bus, according to the cops fascilitating this transfer.  As we pull off, there is Joe with the 14 kids on the sidewalk waving.  What can we do?  Our driver wends his way around and down and eventually across the second bridge (duh, the first bridge closed 7 minutes before we got on the bus) and eventually makes it to the back of the start where folks are congregating for the fun run.  We text Joe, did you get on a bus?  How is it going?  He replies, (paraphrasing) 'our idiot bus driver doesn't know where he is going, it is trying to cross the first bridge!'  and 'Every 100 meters there is a cop telling him he can't go that way, he must stop, but he just keep on going.'  Eventually, they made it to the front of the marathon starting line.  I can just imagine the scene: a thousand runners getting ready to start, and a city bus comes nose to nose with them and a bunch of high school kids get off.  They made their way back to behind the start and actually got there before us.  We met up with about 30 minutes to go before the start of the walk. 

Another very crowded bus unloading right after we arrived

Simit, a bagel like bread food, covered in seaseme seeds for 1TL

Ponchos for sale, and braided rope
to show support for your favorite team.

This was still 15 minutes before the start, but we did start pretty close and already it was very crowded.

Every country has their porta potties.

I didn't end up getting one of these,
 but I did find one on the ground later

We did a pretty good job of staying together before the start, but once we got going there was really no way.  I got held up because I tried to catch one of the Turkish flags that the politians were throwing from their bus, but Jeremy and Ulkem were kind enough to wait for me and we walked together.  It was cold and misty, but the rain didn't start until about half way across the bridge, or about 10am.  There were folks selling water, ponchos, braided ropes indicating sports teams, and umbrellas as well as simit (a harder, bigger version of a bagel) and even some folks selling hot tea by the glass. 

The second bridge.

As we walked, we were coraled to the center of the bridge, apparently this is a major suiside spot, which is why the bride is closed to pedestrians most of the time and there have been people who wait for the marathon day for their opportunity to jump.  I felt a little bad for the volunteers who were trying to keep people away from the edges of the road way (let alone the walk way beyond it) when people just wanted to get a good picture of the Bosphorus or the second bridge.

This volunteer was trying to keep people like me from taking pictures too close to the edge.

I am bummed I missed turning around to see the welcome
to Asia sign on the other side.

It took about an hour to cross the bridge and looking back on it, it was till filled with people.  The number I was issued for the fun run was in the 90,000s.  Since numbers for the fun run were free, I am sure there were more issued than used, but there were plenty of people without numbers.  Even if they started with 10,000 so that all runners would have 5 digits, that still means there could have been 80,000 registered people crossing that bridge that day.  We were not super at the front, but there were a lot behind us too. 



You can see that the bridge is still packed all the way back.



Close up of people coming off the bridge.

It took another hour (all in the rain) to get to Besiktas to the end of the run.  I am not a fast walker, but I dont think it would take me 2 hours to walk three miles...  At the end there was a guy passing out flyers listing the places we could get our race packet.  They do not give out t-shirts to everyone who signs up, or even shows up, you have to finish to get your packet.  That is cool, and we finished knowing that.  What we didn't know was that we couldn't just pick up our packet at the end point.  All we got there was the list and a stamp on our bibs to prove that we got to the end (or at least our number did). 

We followed the black line for the fun run.

Jeremy and Ulkem were off to find a hot breakfast and I wanted to find Marshalls house in Ulus, so we parted ways agreeing to figure out the t-shirt thing later.  We walked together as far as the funicular and I got on to go up the hill back to Taksim.  I had planned to take a bus from there, but there were no busses running.  They closed not only the bridge, but a bunch of other roads as well, so all public transport that runs on the streets was out of wack.  I was left with no choice but the metro.  I knew I could take the metro to Levant and take a taxi to Ulus, but I am not a fan of the communication needed to take a taxi.  Jeremy suggested getting off one stop earlier so that the taxi would be facing the right direction, and when I got out of the Metro I found a bus stop instead of a taxi.  I got on the third bus to stop there, asking 'Ulus?' on my way in and I was set. 

I figured out where to get off when I saw the Gormet Garage sign in Marshall's neighborhood.  He had suggested checking for cream of tartar there since they have the biggest spice wall of any grocery store he had seen.  I went in (in jeans, a beanie and soaking wet) to find a few shoppers and a dozen of so workers.  They had a deli counter with many tasty and fancy looking items and I went down stairs, but all they had was wine.  A woman was following me, I am not sure if it was because I looked lost, or I just didn't look like I belonged.  But I was not able to communicate that I wanted Krem Tartar sucessfully.  I did come back up stairs and eventually did find the massive spice wall Marshall mentioned.  It did have more choices than any other I had seen, including baking poweder (which contains cream of tartar in the US, but it is unclear if it does here or not) which I hadn't seen anywhere else.  But alas, no cream of tartar.  I left, despondant and made it to Marshalls, where I warmed up, met his cats, ate lunch and played a game of scrabble with Marshall and Keeley, who was already there and Jack, who came later, but took over Keeleys position in the game.

Jack was a bit ahead during the walk and made his own way to Marshalls.  He had also gotten the stamp of completion at the end of the walk, but he was more persistant and actually found somewhere to pick up his packet.  (not that it was easy).  He showed us the certificate of walking across the bridge, the t -shirt (which wasn't all that impressive since the sponsor's logos were larger than the event logo) and the metal on a ribbon.  It was pretty cheaply made, but metal, and with no sponsor logo, it was the best part.  Jack was willing to share his packet, but I held out, I wanted to get my own.  So today (Tuesday) I met up with Justin who had found one of the addresses on that list to be pretty close to school.  We took a cab up to Ulus looking for a Sports Center.  The cab driver didn't know where it was, none of the people the cab driver stopped to ask knew were it was (which is not to say that some of them didn't quite confidently point in one direction or another).  We got out of the cab and asked five more people.  We even went into the mall and asked the consierge to look it up on google maps (which Jeremy had on his phone) before we gave up and decided that either it didn't exist or it was a mistake on the list.  Apparently the name given might have been the name of a bus stop, but the phone number given is that for a bus station...  I have given my number to Jeremy so he can try another spot that is closer to where he lives and may hopefully beable to get both of our packets.  And I walked home through Ulus, Arnovutkoy, into a grocery store and home to eat leftovers from Sunday and write this up.

Outings

I am sorry that it has been a while since I have posted anything.  I have started collecting lab reports which need grading, which isn't fun, and I have been getting out more, which is fun, and both of them take up time that I could spend writing.  I have been out today and I do have lab books to grade, but I am taking an hour or so to write about some of my adventures before I get back to work. 

Two weeks ago, on Thursday, October 6th, we had a school holiday in commemoration of Istanbul Liberation day.  I thought maybe there would be parades, fireworks, or at least barbeques, but no, really schools just aren't in session.  Everything else goes on pretty much as usual.  This is great for me, all the busses and museums were still running, but I wasnt teaching.  It wasn't that great for my students who lost a day of review for Friday's test, but they dont really need me to review.  A friend I had met a few times at the Union Church suggested we get together and even had some ideas for what we could do.  She is a science teacher (even taught at RC when it included a middle school) and when she found out I am not opposed to museums, but don't really like looking at art, she suggested the Koç Museum.  http://www.rmk-museum.org.tr/english/index.html  I thought it looked great and we arranged to meet.

I think the Koç museum was born out of Rahmi Koç's private collection of old cars and machinery, and it was eventually rounded out and opened up as a museum to the public.  The Koç family is very well known in Istanbul and they have been very generous with their money in the areas of education and arts in particular.  Kim and I started in the planetarium where we were the only patrons.  The story was about the Clarke Space Elevator up to geosynchronus orbit where the Einstein worm hole telescope is located, allowing scientists and lay folk alike to look back in time.  It was pretty well done if a bit far fetched.

We then went through the machinery wing, ending with the olive oil manufacturing room. 

Next came old cars.  Including the Turkish version of Knight Rider with their own version of KITT, but in not so nearly a sporty car and a copy of the flying car from Harry Potter.

 The also had old bicycles, boats, maps and airplanes.

 We ended the afternoon with an ice cream out on the patio.  It was a very nice way to spend a Thursday holiday!

My next outing was last Saturday to Minaturk.  There are about 180 residential students who live on campus in the dorms either for five nights a week or all seven, depending on how far away their families are.  The student activities director, Joe, coordinates many activities for these students on the weekends and evenings to events or attractions around Istanbul that they wouldn't otherwise have access to.  Apparently, these activities are posted in the dorms along with a brief description and the cost.  If students sign up and pay, they will find teachers to chaperone them.  Teachers in turn, volunteer to be on the Residential Live Activities mailing list and we can sign up to chaperone activities that look interesting to us.  I offered to be on the list, and the first event I signed up for was last Saturday.  Joe had ~25 students who wanted to go to Miniaturk.  I googled it and found out that it is many of the famous sights in Turkey in miniature.  http://www.miniaturk.com.tr/en/category.php?id=1 I had images of Lego Land in my mind when I met the bus and headed out there.  (One very nice thing we have access to is a fleet of buses - more later on how day students get too and from campus.  The school contracts with a bus compnay called Gursel which can be called on to take groups places even in off times.)

 We had three busses, but with only 23 students and two teachers we wouldn't even fill 2 of them (they hold 16 each).  Joe didn't want to send one away right away, apparently they dont like it if you call for three buses, but only need two, I don't know if that means one of the drivers doesn't get paid.  So we had to get some of the students off the second bus and on to the third.  I stepped on and asked if there were any 'cool kids' who wanted to join me on the third bus.  Half a dozen girls got up and came with me on the third bus.  They were all prep students (the year before 9th grade, but after 8th, which is intended to bring their English up to snuff and indoctrinate them into the RC way) so their English wasn't great, but I asked them where they were from.  Of course, I didn't know where any of the cities they mentioned were, but they generalized:  'in the south east' or 'on the sea coast' etc.  They were generally friendly and we got to the park without event. 

Joe dealt with the tickets and let the kids loose with a meet up time of 2:30, about an hour off.  He and I stuck together to look at the models.  At each one there was an electronic scanner which would read the bar code on your ticket and tell you about what you were seeing, much like the zoo key at the SF zoo about a million years ago.  The one we had at first made boxes speak in Turkish, but he went back and got us an English one.  The models were amazing but the recorded info was not all that interesting and often we had to wait for someone to finish listening to the Turkish before we could start it in English.

 We had listened to maybe 25% of them when the time was quickly approaching when we agreed to meet the kids on the other end of the park.  Joe didn't seem worried and he told some of the girls who were on the miniature train to move back the meeting time 30 minutes.  Even so this was not enough time and when we sauntered over to where they were dutifully waiting we were at least 20 minutes later than the pushed back deadline.  I guess this is what is called Turkish time, but it was hard for me, and I know if I was on the other side I would be annoyed at waiting.  We gave them 30 more minutes to make it back to the entrance side (a five minute walk if you didn't stop) and we went to the Istanbul part of the park before meeting them at the entrance, again late.  This was somewhat made up to them by letting them go on the go-karts if they wanted.  Only four of the boys did want to, so the other just had to wait some more.