I have been meaning to write about the best in-store marketing campaign I have seen in a long time. I spotted this in a the window of a pharmacy near the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul, over the summer. I just couldn't get over it. Hopefully you can make out the writing on the boxes. I mean, it's brilliant, and in Turkey of all places! I guess it's just women who are supposed to be modest here...

Better late than never?

OK, so I know I never finished posting about the summer, but I have honestly been really busy, and I'm going to update right now...

After my parents left, Chris' friend Scott came to visit and I took off to sunny and HOT Barcelona to visit Temple, who I absolutely love, and who was living in Barcelona during the summer. We had the best time - highlights included just about the best 'first night' one can imagine in a new city (especially coming from a city where one's favorite foods are very difficult to come by): Oysters and Cava at one restaurant, followed by a visit to a restaurant called CHEESE ME (!!!) and yes, it was as good as it sounds, and was made even better with it's accompaniment of delicious Spanish wine. Everyone should go to Barcelona, athough maybe not in the middle of July, where it was 35 degrees Celsius, I think above 90 Farenheit, at midnight! It has everything - amazing food and drink, a great party atmosphere, incredibly chill bars on the beach, where you can sit at the bar, or spill over onto the sand and it's all fine...It is also one of the most architecturally amazing cities I have visited. I hadn't seen any of Antionio Gaudi's work before visiting Barcelona, but it is just incredible. His famous church, Sagrada Familia was incredible, but remains a work in progress after he was hit by a tram and killed in the 1920's. He was also the architect of the most fantastical park I have ever seen, Park Guell. The story is that it was originally built as part of a high-end housing development, which never came to be. The result is this park, which you really have to see to believe.
We also rented a funny little car and got out of the city for a couple of days, visiting the Teatro Museo Dali, which was insane, and definitely required more than the few hours we spent. The coolest thing in this fun house/museum was "Gala Contemplating the Mediterranean Sea Which at Twenty Meters Becomes the Portrait of Abraham Lincoln" which really really does change from one image to another, as you walk away from the paintin, or as happened in my case, when you look at it through the screen on your camera.

Temple and I were so well taken care of in Barcelona, by her fantastic friend Sam, her two fun kids and of course Alvaro who, while officially charged with watching the kids, ended up taking care of us as well!

It was such a great trip and I can't wait to go back to Barcelona!

The way I see it, I'm practically Turkish...

Last week, although I was wary, partially because of our prior week's disastrous visit to get Chris' car papers renewed (2 hours in the car, surrounded by diesel fumes, to go about 3 kilometers, only to be turned away at the car office because Chris was missing a signed paper he didn't need last year for the original car papers) and partially due to Chris' uncertainty ("you can get one with just an address and your passport??"), I made my way to the Uskudar Tax Office to get myself a Turkish tax ID number... Walking into the 1960's style (and smelly, as most confined public places usually are here) government building and waiting on the "line" (read: amorphous group of people standing in the general vicinity of a desk), I thought my trip would be about as successful as Chris' car re-registration, but after about 45 minutes of waiting in the cloud of body oder, and some helpful translations from a gentleman in line who spoke a few words of English ("name of your father" and "what hotel?" - side note, you can get a tax number if you're just visiting and staying at the Hilton??) I walked out of there the proud owner of a Turkish Tax ID, oh-so-officially handwritten on a little teeny business card.

The next day, I opened my very own Turkish bank account (with the help of a co-worker, who explained that yes, I actually did need to sign each page of the 36 page "small print" document).

So, really, I'm almost Turkish now, right?