winter festivities

I guess I left off with Istanbul Wintercamp. Wintercamp was a couchsurfing event. If you haven't heard of couchsurfing, it is an amazing organization to meet other people, sleep on their couches, and learn more about other cultures, while also making it cheaper to travel. A great majority of my friends in Istanbul are couchsurfers or friends of couchsurfers.

Anyways, for wintercamp, 650 people from Istanbul, Turkey, Europe, and places even farther away gathered together to tour istanbul, go on a boat ride, learn various kinds of dancing (greek, latin and belly dancing among them), see a fire dance show, dance to two live concerts, share stories, laugh, eat new foods, have a great time, and bring in the new year together.

I didn't attend all the events, but did learn some greek dancing, a latin dance called the borchata(?), watched the fire dance show, went to one of the concerts, went on a boat tour, and met some amazing people! I plan to go visit two of them in Serbia for the second week of my winter break at the beginning of February.

For New Years Eve, I decided not to go to wintercamp because my roommates had decided to have a party at our house. Fransizka, Orçun's girlfriend was around most of December and into January, and she had two German friends visiting - Dani and Eli, making a total of four Germans in our house. Then, down the street, Amy was gone, but Dilek, Dilek's sister and Ivonna were around, as well as Fransizka's friend Maija and Ivonna's boyfriend Patrick (thus adding 3 more germans to the mix). I invited my friend Kelsey, and then Tuğberk. Other Turks also came whose names I have forgotten. We made a lot of food - cooked vegetables, raw vegetables, yoğurt dip, tomato butter, pudding cake thing, and then Dilek et. al. brought more food and then a turkish family brought more food, and soon we had two full tables. There was also punch (beware the strong punch), hot wine, normal wine, and beer. Perhaps we got a little too excited about the food and drink.

As we have no central heat, we mostly all sat in Orçun's room, as it is the largest. We played games, ate, drank, talked, usual party stuff. Fransizka's birthday is the first, so at midnight there were two cakes for her and presents and everything. We were getting a bit sleepy, and then Fatma and her friend showed up with a bottle of tequilla at maybe 2. Dangerous stuff, tequilla. And then things got a bit crazy, with some funny photos to prove it. Kelsey fell asleep in my bed around 2, and then I went to sleep at around 6. Tuğberk slept on my floor. That night there were 8 of us in my flat.

The next morning the house was an absolute mess. It's the time when you really want a dishwashing machine. But instead, we all got to do lots of dishes. Fortunately there were 6 of us cleaning, and by about 3 it was starting to be okay. Lisa, a fellow american couchsurfer in Istanbul called me up in the evening to see if I wanted to go find something resembling black-eyed peas and greens. So I drug myself to europe to meet her. We did not find the exact new years food, but we did eat some beans, and some greens in the form of lettuce to wrap çiğ kofte (not cooked very spicy meat) in. And then we went and got some mussels. In the fish bazaar we saw some black cabbage that looked like proper greens, so I tried to explain to him about eating greens on new years for money. He looked at me a bit strangely.

Happy New Year to one and all!!