thanksgiving and bulgaristan

I had a turkeyless Thanksgiving in Turkey. After teaching my one morning class I went over to Collette and Hande's house to cook. We went to the grocery store in a car, the first time I can remember doing that since I left the US. My contributions were a pumpkin pie, stuffing, as well as chopping lots of califlower and potatoes. The pie was sort of a challenge. I did have the lovely measuring cups I got at IKEA, so the crust went okay. They have pumpkin here, and Collette had gotten one for thanksgiving, so they had a huge amount of cooked and frozen pumpkin in their freezer. The thing was I had no idea how much a can of pumkin would be of this frozen stuff, and I had no evaporated milk. So I substituted heavy cream stuff and just added things until it looked like the right consistancy. Collette's oven is just big enough to fit one pie. For the stuffing I used celery root, because they don't sell the stalks here, and used sage leaves intended for tea.

Thanksgiving dinner was great! We had zuccini al gratin, this vegetable loaf thing, tavuklu pilav, borek and poğaças made by Hande's aunt, mashed potatoes, steamed califlower, stuffing, bread and mini quiche things. For dessert we had pumpkin pie (which I think was the best I have ever had), cranberry cake, and vanilla ice cream (no fresh cream for whipping here). The attendees were Collette, Hande, Chad, me, Amy, and Amy's collegue. After eating too much food and watching the football game we sat around singing random song's from Chad's computer. Yay thanksgiving!!

Atatürk designated November 24 as öğretmenler günü, or teachers day. Because the 24th is a Saturday this year, my school celebrated on Friday. They told me I shoudl come for the ceremony in the morning, and then the feast at noon. I didn't have any classes, but convinced myself to get up early to go. The ceremony consisted of the 8th to 2nd graders saying sentences in English and Turkish about what teachers mean to them. The best was the 2nd graders - they were so so cute!

I had some idea that students gave presents to teachers, but had no idea that I would be getting anything. I ended up with two boquets and a rose from students and a set of Turkish coffee mugs that the founder gave to all the teachers. The day before one of my students gave me an amazing drawing with "I love you teacher Katty" at the bottom. I felt so loved. It was sort of an acceptance - you are a teacher and you belong here and we like you. The feast was great - lots and lots of food.

Friday afternoon, I was once again reminded how small the world is. It was beautiful and sunny, so I was going to to read by the sea. And as I was passing my neighborhood Akpinar, who should I see but Michal. She has been doing research in Italy, and Sami came to visit and so they decided to visit Istanbul. I had no idea that they would be here. And for them to be wandering a couple blocks from my house (completely outside the normal tourist zone) precisely as I was walking past was, well, I would say amazing, but I feel that's not enough.

So I showed them my house, walked with them along the pedestrian street, and then took them to the market. They loved the food market especially. We ate mandolinas, and then got very messy sharing a pomigranite. After the market I went with them over to sultanahmet to investigave this neighborhood they wanted to see. We ended up in a fish resturaunt/market area, and after being asked to eat at every resturant, and having a guy from georgia tell us the names of all the fish in his case in spanish, english, italian, japanese, and some other languages, we sat in the circle near all the resturants, drinking beer out of bottles. We had some guys come up and tell us we were going to get sick from sitting on cold stone. We found a lahmacun place that looked to be closing as we walked past, but they opened it up for us. They had no bathroom, and the mosque bathrooms were closed, so the woman from the resturant took us accross the street to a place where guys were making fake prada shoes so we could use their bathroom. Then Ibrahim from the workshop came over and talked to us as the baker made our lahmacun. It was interesting to talk to him and he invited us for tea after we ate. It's nice being with other people because when I am alone I am sort of wary of talking to guys because they sometimes get the wrong idea. After the excelent lahmacun we went back to their hotel and had rakı on the terrace.

And then it was time to visit Bulgaristan (Bulgaria). I woke up yesterday at 5:40 am, and left to take the 6:15 boat. Except I had read the weekday schedule, and on saturdays the first boat is at 6:30. I had to meet Kelsey and Mija to take the servis to the bus station at 7, and it wasn't going to wait. I took a taksi from Karakoy to Besiktas, and I have never gotten their so fast. When I told the driver I had to be there at 7, he ran some red lights for me. I just made the servis, which took us to the main metro office, and from there we took a very crowded van to the bus station. The bus ride was about 2 hours to Edirne. Turkish buses all have a sort of attendent in addition to the driver. First the attendent splashes lemon cologne (mostly alcohol, used for hand cleaning) on everyone's hands, and then he passes out cups, tea bags, or nescafe, hot water, and a little snack. It all seems very civilized. I slept most of the ride. In Edirne we had to take another servis into town, and then after lots of confusing directions, found a dolmuş (shared taxi) that would take us to the border.

And then we walked accross the boarder. We got a number of funny looks. Some people aren't allowed to walk accross and have to get into a car, but they let us walk. First customs, then being stamped out of Turkey, then getting sprayed accidentally with the stuff they use to clean the bottom of cars, then stamped into Bulgaria, and customs on that side. There isn't much on the Bulgarian side. I changed some money and we had some fantastic pizza and bulgarian beer. Then we hailed a bus, but when he told us how much it was to Sofia, and that he wasn't going through any other towns, I had him let us off by the closest village. The village was named Kaptain Andreevo, and there we met some teenage boys with great mullets on very old bicycles. The older one knew some English, and they accompanied us on our walk around the village. In the village there were some photos of people posted on walls, and when we asked, the boy told us they had died. We walked toward the church, and when we asked if we could photograph it, the boy thought we meant the photo of a dead person, and said if we took a picture of that we would also die. We crossed the highway and found a store owned by a guy from Edirne. There we tried this really weird Boza stuff, and had some more beer. There weren't really any busses to svalengrad, the nearest city, and so we walked back and went back into Turkey. We had one problem when they just stamped my and Kelsey's visas again because they had not yet expired. The whole goal of the expedition was to get new visas. We asked and were told where to buy them and then had to get them stamped again. I think the cars we cut in front of might have been a bit pissed.

The custom's officer told us there were dolmuşes back to Edirne, and so we were just going to take the bus that was going through inspection straight back to Istanbul, when he found a woman going to Edirne that would give us a ride. She told us there had been a flood and that the border had been closed for four days, explaining why the line of Trucks to get into bulgaria extended all the way back to Edirne, some 20 kilometers.

Back in Edirne, we realized there were few hotels, and it was going to be expensive to stay. So after trying two places, we found a ticket the third place, where a weird guy worked that spent a lot of time telling mija how she could improve her skin. We were all tired and cold and had some soup and tea for dinner. Then used the internet and took a city minibus to the bus station to get on the bus back to Istanbul. When we got to the big istanbul station there were a lot of people, and drums. Guys were being thrown up into the air and there were firecrackers. Mija explained that a group of guys were about to begin their military service (mandatory in Turkey) and that their friends and family were there to see them off. Took another servis to taksim (had to stop at one point so the driver could put more fluid of somekind into the van) and then I took a dolmuş home.

In total that makes three large buses, 7 small buses/vans, one boat, one taksi, and one experience hitchiking to get my new visa. All in all I would have to say the day was a success and bonding experience.

And now to get out and enjoy the sunshine before the clouds return!