Mochi Madness (or Jenna and Chris living in Singapore, now sin-free!)

2009-04-01T06:44:00.000-07:00

Angkor Wat at sunrise..and then some

2009-04-01T06:40:00.000-07:00

Trip to Chiang Dao and from Chiang Dao Nest

2009-04-01T06:37:00.000-07:00

At Doi Suthep hill outside of Chiang Mai

2009-04-01T06:35:00.000-07:00

Sending off Thai paper lanterns for good luck:

2009-04-01T06:04:00.001-07:00

2009-04-01T06:04:00.000-07:00

2009-04-01T06:03:00.000-07:00

2009-01-21T22:12:00.000-08:00

Top 10 Reasons I love Laos, and especially Luang Prabang/Northern Laos:

10. Fried Rice Salad at Tum Tum Cheng in Luang Prabang

From December-January 20082009 Trip

9. Mint Chocolate Chip ice cream at L'elephant in LP

From December-January 20082009 Trip

8. Christmas lunch at Tamarind in LP (I realize it might be piggish to have food be 3 of your 10 favorites, but the food in LP was really, really good!!)

From December-January 20082009 Trip

7. Monks

From December-January 20082009 Trip

6. Puppies
Note: I have no pictures of puppies. I was too busy playing with them, but look at www.dailypuppy.com for some cuties!
5. Monks and puppies together!

From December-January 20082009 Trip

4. Cutest. Kids. Ever!

From December-January 20082009 Trip

3. Gorgeous, charming architecture

From December-January 20082009 Trip

2. The incredible night market

From December-January 20082009 Trip

1. Laos is where Chris and I got engaged!!! The big moment took place in these caves!

From December-January 20082009 Trip

This is a photo taken right after we came out into the light, dazed and excited (and giving direction to the man we asked to take our photo)!

From December-January 20082009 Trip

This is a photo of the "temporary" ring, which I still do love and might even consider wearing still, if I didn't lose so many "stones" throughout the week or so that I wore it, and if I didn't get such a beautiful replacement in Chiang Mai!

From December-January 20082009 Trip

Also.....

From December-January 20082009 Trip

2008-12-19T05:22:00.000-08:00

A Long Overdue and Quick Update

I know that I haven't posted anything in over 2 months, almost 3. But I have a good excuse! I have been so busy with my coursework that I didn't have the energy to write anything else. And, as I'm finishing my last paper tonight, I still don't.

We leave tomorrow for a 3+ week trip around Laos, Thailand and Cambodia. We'll be spending about 10 days with our friends Abigail and Jesse, in Vientiane, Luang Prabang and an unknown location that Chris has organized for us. Then, we'll spend New Year's in Bangkok and, after recovering on the 1st, we'll welcome my parents as they make their first trip to Southeast Asia. We'll visit Bangkok, Koh Samet, Chiang Mai and Chiang Dao in Thailand, then head to Cambodia for a stop at the Wats in Siem Reap and a quick visit to Phnom Penh.

I'm excited for the whole trip and to show my parents our adopted and adored "home." But I'm really excited for Laos. Every person we've mentioned it to has either said, "Ohhhhh I LOVED Laos" or "Ohhhh I can't WAIT to go to Laos." I just stumbled upon a blog post whose writer put into words what I've expected Laos to be like (the last paragraph, not the "Dragon" part...) and I'm even more excited to get this paper done, get packed and get out!

Here it is: http://www.bravenewtraveler.com/2008/12/18/gonzo-traveler-robin-esrock-discovers-why-he-travels-in-laos/

Happy Holidays to any of our friends and family who read this! We wish you all every happiness as we move into a new and HOPEful year!

xoxo Jenna and Chris

2008-09-25T19:04:00.001-07:00

A great website!

I just came across this website that tells you (out loud) how to pronounce words...I always wondering if I am pronouncing words from other languages correctly (place names, food names, etc.) and this is a great resource!

http://www.forvo.com/

Check it out...

2008-09-22T18:21:00.000-07:00

Below are some photos from our recent trip to Siem Reap to visit Angkor Wat and the other nearby temples. I'm not sure what I expected from Cambodia, but it was really amazing. It is a poor country, filled with people who have suffered unbelievable atrocities under Pol Pot and his regime, yet everyone seems to have a smile on their face. I can't wait to go back! More details to come...

2008-09-22T18:20:00.000-07:00

2008-09-22T18:18:00.000-07:00

2008-09-22T18:16:00.000-07:00

2008-09-22T18:14:00.000-07:00

2008-05-08T19:48:00.000-07:00

Part I: Greeting the Smells of India

OK, as promised, I'm starting the large task that is writing about our India trip....

The trip started out in Delhi. Actually, that's not true, it really started at the Bangalore airport. If you've heard of Bangalore, it's probably in its capacity as the IT capital of India. This, despite all of Chris' warnings that India was going to be "tough" and unexpected, put me in the mindframe of expecting something, oh I don't know, modern? However, we get out of the airplane in the "International Terminal" and begin to look for the "Domestic Terminal" from where we will continue our journey. I use the quotes because I am not sure I would even call them a terminal or separate them into two, because they are basically 2 big, connected rooms that you still need to go outside to move between. We step outside and, wham!! India whacks me in the face. First of all, it doesn't smell good, a little like curry, b.o. and pee, all mixed into one, fine package. Secondly, many, many rickshaw drivers start accosting us. The ones who weren't peeing in the bushes on the side of building, that is. As we are carrying our luggage and walking toward the "Domestic Terminal" it didn't seem to make sense, but as we were continually reminded throughout the trip, making sense and India didn't really go together. This would be proved, not a moment after pushing through the rickshaw drivers, by the x-ray machine at the entrance to the "terminal." First, you go to a window outside, with your e-ticket printout and pick up your ticket. Then you walk to the door, with a "line" (anytime I use the words line or queue, they must be taken with a grain of salt. While we Americans tend to be an orderly bunch, the Indians prefer "cluster" approach. One you propel your way to the front of the cluster, you arrive at the machine, where a guard asks you what bag you are checking. This bag, and nothing else you are carrying, gets put on the x-ray machine. Now, to me, this didn't make sense. Couldn't you just go inside and check in another bag when you get to the counter? Yes. But again, it goes to show I know nothing about what makes sense here.

After braving this chaos of the outside world for a few minutes, we were safely inside the "Domestic" piece of the airport. A true caffeine addict, I was ready for a non-Indian-Airlines-brewed cup of coffee. I figured they wouldn't have a coffee shop in this 1970's throwback of an airport, but I started to wander around. Lo and behold, I found a place that claimed to serve coffee. We hadn't changed money over before we left, generally preferring to use ATM machines when we arrive, to get the best rates. I stood in line at the coffeshop and asked if I could pay with a credit card (I was that desperate). No? Maybe Singapore Dollars? Hmm..US Dollars? With the shopkeeper growing increasingly impatient, I asked where I could find the nearest ATM. "No. No ATM" How can an airport NOT have an ATM machine?? So I move on to a man selling silk scarves. Surely, HE'D know where an ATM was. Shot down again. No currency change booth either. Finally, I gave up, knowing that my coffee dream was slipping away. Instead, Chris and I got into line to check in for our flight. I couldn't remember the time difference between India and Singapore, so I started surreptitiously checking out other people's watches. "Crap," I thought, "my watch stopped again." I thought this because everyone's watches showed a half hour time difference (plus the time zone difference) from mine. I mentioned this to Chris and he looked at his watch too - Same as mine. This is when we asked someone else in "line" about the time. Turns out - India is HALF AN HOUR away from the rest of the world on time. That's right - it's 3.5 hours different from Singapore, and likely about 8.5 from the Eastern US. I personally think this is what's thrown the whole thing off!

Anyway, coffee-free, we eventually board the plane, Kingfisher Air, which just seems to be the nicest domestic airline in India. We were really impressed and would definitely fly them again! It was a nice treat, after our short and already overwhelming introduction to India!

Note: Bangalore is in the process of opening a NEW airport, which I'm sure is going to be very nice, so you shouldn't be afraid to go!

Part II: Delhi in my Belly...Coming soon

2008-05-07T16:33:00.000-07:00

It was just requested that I update the blog, and since I can't say no to a fan :) and since I now spend my days at a desk with a lot of free time, I really have no excuse. I was thinking about why I update this blog so infrequently - is it sheer laziness? Well, yes, I do have that nice lazy streak everyone wishes they could have, but it's more that Singapore just isn't as "interesting" at Turkey. By "interesting" I of course mean bizarre, frustrating, foreign, hilarious, etc...It's just a much nicer, and more "normal" place to live. This isn't to say one is better or worse than the other. I have recently put together my "Istanbul list" for a few friends who've gone to visit Istanbul and it made me miss it. I now have a small and constant hankering for lahmacun, and I occasionally miss the ferry ride commute to work (which truly proves that there's nothing like time to erase the negative - like the stares and the crowds and being surrounded by a boat full of people lighting up a cigarette at 8am).

On the other side of the coin, Singapore is everything people say it is; it's clean, efficient, organized. It's also lush and green, and hot, hot, hot! The food is delicious and the shops are more than enough to get me into trouble! There just haven't been many things here that make me say, "What???" Rather, things just kind of "make sense". Hence part of the reason for my lack of communication. The other part is that I've been pretty much working full time and I just completed my first semester of my Masters program (yay!) It was alot more work than I expected and took up most of my free time. But now that I'm free from classes (for a few more weeks) I appreciate that free time even more. One of the projects from this semester was to design a website, which I did, and it's here. There are some updates on there about the trips we've made this year (to China, Thailand, India and Bali) on the website, along with some library related things that I don't recommend you look at unless that's what you're in to (Flight of the Conchords reference, if you weren't sure. Are they coming back on the air? I miss them.)

Our last trip (well, my last trip. Chris' last trip was a field trip with his students to the non-resort part of Bintan, Indonesia) was to Bali. It was incredible and is now on my list of favorite destinations. The people are amazingly friendly and warm, and the places we stayed were nothing short of luxurious, all at a good price. We were amazed by how upscale it was (of course, I'm talking about the tourist areas.The local parts of the island were more rustic). Rather than a bunch of beachside shacks, the restaurants and bars in Bali were chic and the food was some of the best we've had in our travels. And not just local cuisine either. I had several italian dishes that would rival anything I've had in New York, and a usual meal, including wine or beer, appetizers, a main course and dessert, would be well under $20USD per person. It was amazing! One of the best experiences in Bali was taking a day trip with Wayan, who we met at the Three Monkeys Cafe, in Ubud, where he was our waiter. He is such a nice guy, working hard to support his family and he was really knowledgable about the island. During out tour, Wayan took us to a temple where there were hundreds of school children on a field trip. They were so curious about us and so friendly with the biggest smiles - It made all three of us (Chris and I and our friend Katie, another teacher) want to try and find a way to teach, at some point, in Bali). 4 days was too short of a time to spend in Bali and we look forward to going back and getting to know better the island and the Balinese people.

Still nagging me is the knowledge that I have to post about our India trip. As I think I've mentioned before, I'm intimidated to begin writing about it. It was such a long trip and overwhelming in so many ways, that I was mentally writing a long post about it while we were there, but now it's hiding somewhere in my brain. I do promise, though, that I'm going to start it today and hopefully finish it tomorrow. The photos are in a few different places, including the website I mentioned before.

On an exciting note, both Chris and I leave Singapore soon for our US summer holiday! We can't wait to get home to see family and friends and leave a bit of the heat and humidity behind. See you all then!!

2008-02-06T23:23:00.001-08:00

The Police!

This is a great week! We had a short week thanks to Chinese New Year, which we got to experience last night. We also got to go see The Police play at Singapore Indoor Stadium on Monday. The Police aren't a band I'd even think of going to see at home (although I do love so many of their songs) but there's something about being far away from home that any "import" is a big deal (and yes, I know the Police are from the UK and that is not my home either!)

It was a really fun concert, preceded by some more fun beer and pizza's at our friends' place. I didn't get videos or decent photos of my own, because i had read that we couldn't bring cameras into the arena, and you just don't break rules here. Or so I thought. Most people had cameras, and I found this good montage of the show YouTube:

And I learned one very important lesson from the show...Old(er) Sting...Wayyyy more attractive than Young Sting. Who knew?

Chinese New Year photos and a posting about India (that I've been putting off because there's so, so much to write about) to come!

2007-12-12T20:14:00.000-08:00

I Hate It When...

The NY Times beats me to the punch! I always have big goals for my updates here, but I slack off way too much! I meant to write about our visit to Beijing and Xi'an back in October but it never happened. I meant to write that the nice people we met on the Great Wall gave us super tips about fun places to visit in Beijing, such as Pure Lotus, a fantastic Buddhist, vegetarian restaurant, with fabulous atmosphere, beautiful presentation,

great tableware and really funny names of dishes on their giant menu. I felt totally behind the times when I opened up the nytimes.com travel section to see the 36 Hours in Beijing article where they wrote just about the same thing.

At least they didn't also mention the Red Capital Club, another place we were directed, a bar/restaurant where Mao and his buddies used to hang out, furnished with old Communist relics, where all the drinks had names relating to the bar's theme. From the Club, the Maitre'D put us in a cycle rickshaw, where the driver took us through streets of the old hutong to the Red Capital Residence - the related hotel, where you can go into the courtyard, slip down a rabbit hole and end up in an former bomb shelter, where you can have a drink and watch old Communist propaganda films in the background. If you're heading to Bejing, we highly recommend an evening at one (or both) of these places.

2007-12-05T06:21:00.000-08:00

Help!

Once again, too much time has passed since I've posted, but I have an excuse...I have been working pretty much full time since we returned from our fantastic trip to Krabi!

I will update more soon, but now I'm writing with a favor...I have been taking a photography class and we have to print up and turn in for critique 6 photos, covering different categories. They are: Portrait, Night, Motion, Macro (super close up,) Landscape and Architecture. I think. Anyway, I've posted some that I thought might be fitting in each category to my Picasaweb page

If you are reading this and have lots of free time, please take a look and either post a comment here, email me or post a comment on my photo page if you have any thoughts on which one, if any, in each category I should print? (I know there's only one now in Macro, I need to do some more work on that one)

I have looked at them so many times that none of them are looking good. Also, if there's any other picture that you see that's not in one of those recent albums, please tell me. And if there's a photo that anyone else has taken that you think I should co-opt and use instead, definitely tell me!

Thanks!!!!!!

2007-11-26T21:31:00.000-08:00

Krabi (or Dear Jenna and Chris, Though you have different ideas of the perfect destination, we have created a place that is, individually, the dream location for each of you. Please come. Sincerely, Thailand. And Nature)

Chris and I were both really looking forward to our trip to Krabi, but for different reasons. Krabi is known as one of the world's premier rock climbing destinations, and also has beautiful beaches and plentiful spa/massage amenities. It is also very inexpensive and has great food. Based on these things, there was pretty much nothing to not like about this place. But we ended up liking it even more than we anticipated!

We stayed at the Railay Bay Resort in the area called Railay Beach. The hotel was great, overall, but our room wasn't quite as nice as some other places in the resort. It was a huge place though, and you can't get to this beach by car, so comings and goings were by longtail boats. We were welcomed to the hotel on our arrival by this sign
possibly the first time I've ever been welcomed visually (well, technically it was Chris, not me) to a hotel before...

This is me sitting at the restaurant hotel, with the beach in the background

and this is Chris enjoying himself on the rock

And my favorite (of the 6 massages I tried in our four days in Krabi - each one cost between $6 and $10USD for one hour) masseuse, Mama

The rest of our photos are here

Krabi, Thailand - Thanksgiving 2007

We really did not want to leave Krabi and we can't wait to go back!!

2007-11-11T04:56:00.000-08:00

Best. Taxi Ride. Ever.

I have been nothing short of amazed by the service of the taxi drivers here in Singapore (once you're actually in the car. Actually hailing a cab is another, long and frustrating, story.) In contrast to what we experienced in Turkey, and on occasion in the US, they are honest, friendly, helpful, chatty, informed, well-spoken and really interesting. They also (with few exceptions) speak perfect English. Usually I will end up chatting with the driver, sometimes even if I'm just in the mood to stare out the windows and listen to some music.

Today was one of those days. I had just gone all the way to the East of the island to see Chris and 3 friends compete in an all day (11 hours to be exact) group mountain biking race in Tampines. After doing my share of cheering and picture taking (photos to come) I decided to leave and take a bus ride home. Unfortunately, taking a bus from there to our place would likely take 2 hours and my bladder wasn't sure if wanted that long of a ride on the bus. So after a good, long walk to the bus depot, I changed my mind about public transport and hailed and hopped into a taxi. I had about 5 minutes left on the Grey's Anatomy I started watching on my iPod and really wanted to sink into the back seat and focus on George and Izzy's problem, but I had a feeling it wasn't going to happy when I got into the car and in an oddly loud, yet friendly voice, my driver said:

"Lady, where you from?"

Me: The US

Driver: Yes, Yes, where in the US?

Me: (this is a departure, as I normally just say "New York" since everyone knows NY, but it just popped out of my mouth) Connecticut....Near NY

Driver: Ahhhh, Connecticut. Hmmm...Let's see. Greenwich (green-witch)? Cos Cob? Stamford? Westport?

Me: (shocked) Um...Yes, Greenwich (Grenich) How did you know that? Have you been?

Driver: No!!!!! w...w...w...yahoomaps...com

Me: Wow, that's really amazing.

Driver: Let's see...Connecticut. That is I-95 anddddd....Merritt Parkway, yes?

Me: Yes. Wow.

Driver: Now, what does the Merritt Parkway turn into? The Taconic-no, that's not right.

He couldn't come up with the Hutchinson Parkway, but knew right away when I said it. This went on and on - with my College, knowing exactly which highways went by this small town in upstate New York, and continued on with more knowledge of Connecticut. Just by studying maps online. I was shocked and awed for the whole trip home.

After he finished regaling me with tales of Northeast USA roads, we moved on to a conversation about politics in Singapore versus the US (in Singapore, the government is like a 'farm family father. He wants to tell the son what to do all the time, but the son is 42 years old. Sometimes he wants to say "piss off" but he grudgingly says okay to the father', and in the US, we actually tell the "father" to piss off) and the pros and cons of the tight hold the government has on the people (a little less freedom and a lot more safety.)

I didn't get to finish my show, but I had yet another amazing taxi ride in Singapore. I have really learned a lot from the cabbies here!

2007-11-05T19:10:00.000-08:00

Oktoberfest and China Part II

Before I continue to update on our China trip, I thought I'd just share a fun story about Oktoberfest. Chris participated in not one, but two competitions! One was eating and drinking, and one was a tag-team Erdinger drinking competition, more of a marathon than a sprint. Chris and 3 of our friends were victorious and won us free drinks for the rest of the night and an Erdinger "Oktoberfest" set, complete with 2 glasses, 4 beers and coupons for free things around Singapore. Here are photos of the victorious group before and after their win!

Now...Onto China...

After a restful day/night at the Simatai Guesthouse, we moved on to hike the portion of the Wall between Simatai and Jinshanling, about 5 km. We had been told by several people that it is difficult and steep at the beginning of the hike and then it calms down, but I didn't get that at all! I felt like I was climbing up stairs and downstairs, and upstairs and downstairs, and...you get the idea. For about 5 hours. It was fun though, and the views were beautiful. I did feel a bit dumb though - we brought Chris' daypack and left our other bags in the car. However, we didn't really measure out how much that would hold, versus what we wanted to bring with us. It ended up that I had to carry a shopping bag (brought from home, but it happened to be a Duty Free bag) on our whole hike - I got some weird looks for that!

This is the scary bridge he had to cross to start our day:

and some of the ups and downs...

We had alot of people following us, trying to get us to buy 'beer, soda, water, postcard, t-shirt?' - all said in rapid succession. But, being used to hawkers from our time in Turkey, we were able to shake them off pretty easily. We had been told that we'd find our next host through his wife, who'd have my name taped up to her stall of 'beer, water, etc...' and we were very unsure about whether or not this was actually going to work out. But sure enough, we walked into the nicest, most 'together' tower we'd seen that day, and there is a woman, smiling like crazy, with my name on her table.

She served us tea, on our 'terrace' where we hung out for the afternoon, looking at the wall in all directions.

Eventually, her husband arrived, at just about sunset, and walked us into town to his home/shop/restaurant for a fabulous dinner!

Some shots from dinner:

After the humongous dinner (including, among many other things, a plate of dumplings for each person!) we took the 20 minute walk by flashlight back up to the watchtower, shared a bottle of wine on our new friends' watchtower and took our walk home along the wall to our home, where Mr. Sun had set up our beds for us and we went to sleep to get up at 6am for sunrise.

After seeing the beautiful sunrise, we walked down to meet our driver to take us into Beijing. We got stuck in a ton of traffic on the way home, but had some time to relax before starting on our whirlwind tour of Bejing and Xi'an...to come...

2007-10-26T20:07:00.000-07:00

China...Part I

I had planned to write about our amazing China trip as soon as we returned but, as I actually had to work a bunch, and I had 1,211 pictures to sort through, it kept getting pushed back, but I'm here now...

Our trip had an auspicious start as soon as we left Singapore. We were so responsible and booked our flights months ago, while we were still in Turkey. On the way to the airport, we were chatting with our taxi driver who also had plans to go to Beijing that same week. It turned out that his entire trip, with a full tour, cost about as much as one of our airline tickets. We also did not have a nonstop flight to Beijing. This turned out to be to our advantage...After the short leg of the flight, we had a layover in Kuala Lumpur. From there, we had about 6 hours to Beijing. I was disappointed to find (since I am so large and need alot of space) that I was stuck in a middle seat on the plane. While we are sitting in our tiny, cramped seats, someone comes back and softly asks to see our boarding passes. He tells us that they'd like to give us an upgrade to Business class "but separate seats. Separate. You won't be able to sit together." By the first "sep-" I had (sophisticatedly) shouted "OK" started crawling over Chris, likely elbowing him in the face to get a move on and continuing "yeah, yeah, we see each other all the time." Let me make sure to give them a plug...We were flying Malaysian Airlines, my new favorite airline...And the flight attendants were so nice that they actually asked someone else to move so we could end up sitting together. While one person was putting our bags in the overhead compartment, someone else was handing us glasses (glass glasses. Not the plastic stuff that cracks if you accidentally bite down onto it) of champagne so we could have a pre-take off flight. Chris was so exhausted from all of his hard work at school, so he fell asleep immediately after takeoff. I, on the other hand, love feeling important and pretending to have a luxurious life, so I stayed awake for most of the flight, taking advantage of more drinks "keep 'em coming" might have been my exact quote to the amused flight attendant, the best chicken and beef satay I have had to date, and the personal video screen filled with movies and television shows. Oh, and when they served us food, they set our tray tables with LINEN. We should not have to eat off of mere plastic tray tables, surely not! Basically, it was the best flight I've had since the "NY to Orlando upgrade of 1993" and has led me to the undeniable conclusion that: Coach is for suckers.

Anyway, back to the actual visit to China. The trip was partially to visit China and partially to visit with Chris' parents who were in Beijing as part of a longer trip around the country. We had planned to be with them on their tour from Sunday to the following Saturday (we were arriving early on a Saturday morning,) but visit the Great Wall of China on our own beforehand. Being the over-researcher that I am, I contacted about 5 different companies that do hikes of the Great Wall with a one night camp out on the Wall, nearly signing up with one, before I inadvertently realized that we actually weren't meeting Chris' parents until Monday so I decided to start organizing a 2 night trip on our own. In subsequent research, I came across a guesthouse at the Simatai section of the wall, along with contact information for a man in the US who created the website for the Chinese owners (who didn't speak much English.) I decided to contact this guy, who ended up being an invaluable resource when planning the trip. I'm not going to put his name on here, but we'll call him J, because I don't want him to have to be harassed by anyone else! Basically, he called the owners in China for us, to organize our stay and also organized a driver to bring us from the airport out to the Wall, hold our luggage while we hike, and take us to our hotel in Beijing 2 days later. For our second night's stay, I had contacted the (also invaluable) tour company representative that Chris' parents were using for their tour, and asked if she wouldn't mind contacting a man who I had read about online as someone who rents out a watchtower on the Wall and provides dinner and breakfast to his guests (and who also does not speak English.) As we were going to be hiking along the wall, I wasn't sure how we would hook up with him or figure out which watchtower belonged to him. I was told by the tour agent "his wife runs a stall on the wall, and she'll have your name taped to it."

There were so many loose ends here, I wasn't really sure if it was going to work out, but never one to like failure, I had my fingers crossed and...It couldn't have turned out better! The driver, who I was warned (there's a theme here) didn't speak English, actually brought his college-aged, English speaking niece along for the 3 hour trip, just to make sure we could figure out all the details about where he should drop us off, when and where he should pick us up, and if there was anything else we needed. She gave us her phone number, so we could contact her for any reason, which we did when we decided we wanted an earlier pick-up time on our final day (after 'roughing it' for a few days, a girl needs a couple of hours at the Silk Market...More on that later)

We arrived at Simatai at about 9am on Saturday morning and, in the pouring rain, started our walk. After following the "walk along the river and take a left at the first watchtower" type of directions we got from J and thwarting some would-be Wall-escorters/postcard-hawkers, we arrived at the Simatai Guest House to meet our friendly hosts for the night - "You're the Americans!" he said as we walked up to the place. After finally getting some sleep on the beds (wooden planks with 1" thick foam stapled to it) in the Guesthouse, we awoke in the afternoon and had some amazing sweet and sour chicken, fried rice and homemade (and delicious!) noodles and a couple of beers. After our first meal in China, and after the rain cleared and we realized we could see the Wall extending as far as we could see, from our patio, our host offered to take us on a walk (he did speak a little English) up to the Wall for sunset. It was awesome.

Here are a couple of pictures from the Guesthouse and our sunset hike. We are heading out to Oktoberfest today, so I can't write more but I will update the rest of the trip in the next day or so...

2007-10-04T20:12:00.000-07:00

I meant to post these pictures from the Singapore Zoo...I was lucky enough to get paid to help out on a school field trip here. Pretty much the coolest zoo I have ever seen. In some of these photos, the animals were literally a foot away or less - no bars! Apparently the primates are intimidated by the local monkeys so they stay in their little areas even though there isn't much built to keep them there. These aren't terribly well edited so feel free to fly past the multiple White Tiger shots or the many, many Baboon ones...

We're off to China today, to visit the Great Wall, Beijing and Xi'an and to spend some time with the Emersons! I'll update this with lots of stories and photos when we return!

2007-09-28T21:51:00.000-07:00

As promised, here are some initial photos of our new place. Most are from outside, but a few from inside the apartment. More to come...

2007-09-17T21:11:00.000-07:00

It has been a busy few weeks, especially with work (even I have been working most days!) but made slightly less busy by both Chris' and my long weekend trips falling through! Note to anyone who needs it: You need a visa to go to India. Who knew?

But we have been doing lots of fun things as well...First of all, Chris took part in an amazing race, called the Coastal Challenge. It looked incredibly tough to me, but Chris had a great (full) day!

Here are some pictures of the finish line (the only place I could watch any part of the race, because the locations were top secret) and Chris and his race partner/co-worker Phil finishing the race, triumphant!

More photos and stories to come soon...

2007-09-11T08:11:00.000-07:00

Singapore...the land of little monkeys (though I have yet to encounter one,) lots of heat and MOCHI, the inspiration for the new name of our blog: www.mochimadness.blogspot.com

We have been here now for awhile...Well, Chris for longer than me, but even I've been here for over 2 weeks now. We are absolutely loving it - our condo is great, the school is fabulous and the ease of doing just about anything is amazing! More to come, including photos and mayyyybe even a 360 tour, just like on the real estate sites, if you're lucky and if I'm feeling bored, I mean motivated, but now that we're not in Turkey anymore, we're going to change the name of our blog.

Tonight, I decided it should be Mochi Madness - Mochi (which admittedly doesn't sound appetizing on Wikipedia,) for those of you who have not tried the delectable little treat, is the ice cream dessert that we have been mildly obsessed with since arriving here (and I'll be honest, the obsession actually started at Whole Foods back in Greenwich...) It is single serving, so you don't fill yourself up, easy to eat in it's own little package, and just delicious. Chris actually vetoed the blog name Mochi Madness, but...since I'm the one who actually writes this thing, I decided my vote should count twice...

So, for now, until Chris writes a little something, I mean, gets a second vote, I mean, notices...the new address for our blog is www.mochimadness.blogspot.com - Although, if you're reading this sentence, you're already here :) so, welcome! And go try some Mochi!

2007-07-17T11:28:00.000-07:00

Beautiful photos from the best hellish trip I've ever been on...

More details from the trip to come, but for now check out some great pics from the trip:

http://picasaweb.google.com/bluecruise2007

2007-06-24T23:28:00.000-07:00

The Home Stretch

We're counting down to our last few days in Istanbul, before a short Blue Cruise, before heading home (yay!) The movers came the other day, whirling through here like a tornado, shoving our clothes and everything that wasn't tied down into boxes that all seemed to be for

"knicknacks."

If the movers' exuberance and lack of English speaking skills weren't enough, I stepped out onto the balcony to check out our moving truck, where I immediately noticed that it was similar (identical) to the trucks that bring fruit and veg to our Monday market. The picture below left is one of our belongings, the one below right is of our street as I am writing (as it is Monday) - notice the similarities for yourselves.

We are both excited to come home and then move on to our next adventure, but a little bit sad to leave such a unique and interesting home. The other morning, quite unusually, I woke up with the 4:20 am call to prayer. The call to prayer is the sound that initially terrified me about moving to such a 'foreign place' when heard incongruously in my Greenwich apartment through the a telephone call with Chris, and the sound that now is so normal that it can fade into the background of our lives here, but can also be a main focus, depending on the day/time (ie if you wake up at 4:20 in the morning from the sound.) It is something that if we ever hear outside of Istanbul will immediately transport us back here.

One thing we are going to miss is the great feeling we get when actually making ourselves understood in Turkish. Living in an expat-free neighborhood (with the exception of the 10 -15 of Chris' coworkers who also live in our building or surrounding blocks) you really get a chance to practice your Turkish, and today I actually made 2(!!) appointments over the telephone, completely in Turkish. I was so proud of myself, I had to call Chris immediately and tell him (update to follow on whether the appointments I THINK I made, were actually made...) Of course this progress is all just in time for us to leave.

I thought, as I'm a little hopped up on caffeine and I have all day to finish packing, I would make a quick list of top things I am going to miss and not miss about this place (I haven't yet decided how long each list will be...)

Top Things I Will Miss:

Lahmacun - As I have only discovered this fine culinary treat recently, I feel I have to eat it as often as possible..Once a week? Definitely not enough! We will be eating this tonight...

Inexpensive and quality beauty treatments and other services: Hemmed pants (original hem), 3$! A suit jacket and trousers for Chris, completely taken apart and taken in, 45$! Eyebrow threading, 6$! It's amazing...

The thrill of making myself understood in Turkish (on the rare occasions it happens)

Travelling in Turkey: Cappodocia, wow.

Ciya

The unique and extreme friendliness, helpfulness and hospitality of the Turkish people (with the possible exception of taxi drivers)

Crossing the Bospohorus on the ferry

Top Things I Won't Miss:

The amount of paperwork and silly things necessary in order to get things done (Chris is currently on full day 3, in attempt to get ownership of his car removed from his passport)

The bizarre rules that accompany much of your daily life ("Yes, you can put more money into your savings account. But you must wait until the day of the following month that is the same as the original day you opened the account or you will miss a full month's interest." Um, what?)

The dirt. Never before have I been a "take my shoes off as I walk in the door" kind of person. But I can't bear to wear shoes that have been on the stray-dog strewn streets in here.

The smoke. Everyone smokes. Everywhere.

Being stared at incessantly, every time I leave the house, unless I am in a full turtleneck/long pants combination.

Being screwed over by nearly every taxi driver in the city.

Crossing the Bosphorus (or going anywhere on) the bus: Hot, windows closed, armpits everywhere. It's not nice.

In that vein, this is my all-time favorite Time Out Istanbul article. It perfectly sums up public transportation here. Before you read it: A dolmus (pronounced domush) is a van that seats about 8 or 9 people and follows a loop all day/night. They are very convenient, as you never have to wait long for a bus, and they are cheap, less than $1 for a ride, but as you'll see, the dolmus, and really you can substitute any regular bus, are not always the plush, relaxing ride you might hope.

After re-reading my list of the things I won't miss, I realize I probably sound negative about Istanbul. I don't feel that way, it's an amazing place, but you definitely have to take the good with the bad!

Tonight, however, I'm going for some inexpensive beauty treatments, going out for Ciya and Lahmacun and then taking the seabus (fast ferry) out to the airport to meet Chris' friend Jessica, our final visitor, so it should be the perfect Istanbul night. Let's just hope our taxi ride home doesn't screw it up!

Unrelated:

I didn't get a lot of responses for what to re-name this blog when we move (next week.) If I don't get any more ideas, I will have to go with my father's suggestion: http://www.jennaandchrislivinginsin(gapore).com/ and we all know I don't want to do that :)

2007-05-28T03:32:00.000-07:00

Larry, Moe and Curly Work the Border Once Again

I have been meaning to update for awhile (again) as things have been busy here with finishing up work and entertaining visitors (life's tough, i know)...But the one thing I have meant to write about for awhile, because it's amusing, at least to Chris and I, is the latest "border fiasco" that took place when we went to Kalymnos a couple of months ago...

Getting to Kalymnos requires about 2 days and several transport changes...First, we flew down to Bodrum, in the South of Turkey, and then had to take a ferry to the Greek Island of Kos and from there, another one to the less touristed island of Kalymnos. We flew to Bodrum one night, stayed in a hotel and headed to the ferry first thing in the morning. Because we were taking the boat to another country, we (along with the other passengers) had to navigate x-ray machines, metal detectors, passport control and customs agents before getting on the boat. This being Turkey, it was more haphazard than was really necessary. First, as we were going through the metal detectors, there were children on one side of the detectors, handing large wooden boats bearing the names of local beloved football teams to their parents, around the metal detectors. The guards at this post were merely raising their fists in the air and shouting in agreement "Galatasaray, woohoo!" Let me clarify the size of these boats - they were at least two feet long, definitely large enough to hold large weapons and/or many, many drugs. After passing through this checkpoint, we then were able to decipher (despite the lack of any signs telling us about this) that we had to head to another, slightly out of the way building to visit passport control. After getting our passports stamped for exit from turkey, we got in line to get on the boat. Well, first our visiting friends showed their passports and moved onto the small ferry. Then I showed my passport, with no problems. Chris was behind me in line, and as the humorless and stereotypical customs agent flipped through his passport, he stopped at one page, looked up at Chris and said "Where is your car?" In Turkey, foreigners who own cars have that information stamped on their passport, I think so that they won't abandon the car in the country and disappear forever (which seems to me to be less of a problem for the government, who could just reposess the car than for the owner who would be out their money and a vehicle, but that's just my opinion.) As Chris was the owner of lovely Renault Spring (and still is, if any foreigner you know in Turkey is interested...) this fact was stamped in his passport. He incredulously looked at the customs agent and said "It's in Istanbul" to which Customs replied "You cannot leave the country without your car" which was of course in sharp contrast to our Bulgaria trip, when we couldn't leave the country WITH the car." There was an exchange in which we explained that we lived in Istanbul and flew down to Bodrum, and besides how would we get the car on the small boat. I was getting frustrated by the lack of sense of what this man was saying, and started to get a bit, well...mouthy. As Chris, who has much more experience with this sort of thing than I do, later informed me, you want to be polite and deferential to these official and things will generally work out much easier. Of course that didn't occur to me at the moment though, when, after asking if we understood what he was saying, I replied "I understand the words that are coming out of your mouth, but it doesn't mean it is making any sense" and "Does that mean that any who ever wants to leave this country via an airplane has to find a way to take their car with them." At one point, after we had been pulled out of line, waiting on the back ramp of the boat, unsure of whether the climbing trip that Chris had been planning and looking forward to for months would actually occur, Customs said to him, absolutely deadpan "These are our RULES" - it was all very intimidating and infuriating, and also of course mildly amusing. About twenty minutes later, once every other person had made it onto the boat, Customs called over his buddy, who looked like any tourist, and certainly not a customs boss with his big belly, comb-over and gray Member's Only jacket, who took a look at the passport, grunted and said "It's okay. They can go," we got on the boat, to the stares of all the British package tourists and sailed off to Greece.

The best part is that we thought we were being very funny once on the boat, saying "Yes, like we're supposed to bring a CAR on this tiny ferry (who's bottom floor had enough room for the passengers' luggage and a couple of plastic chair,) haha..." When we walked back downstairs to get off the ferry, we saw that there WAS in fact a car that had been driven on before we departed. It was a VW Golf-type thing, and was barely on the back the boat, being held up by the boat's raised ramp, and had a few suitcases resting on the hood...

And one more quick customs note: Greek Ouzo and Turkish Raki are very similar, anise flavored drinks. Also, there is no love lost between the Turks and the Greeks. Both of these facts came into play when we arrived at the port in Greece, and while waiting in line for passport control, saw signs hanging all over that said "Yeni Raki (a popular brand of Raki) is not allowed to be imported into Greece for health reasons"

Besides the initial passport problem, the rest of the trip was amazing and our photos, which I can't remeber if I have previously posted, are here...

Next up, a report on our evening living like the rich and famous...

2007-05-13T02:40:00.001-07:00

I know I haven't updated in awhile and I will, but...I just wanted to say a super special

HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY

to my cutest, sweetest mommy and to Chris' super mom and of course to all of my friends who are celebrating Mother's Day for the first time this year with their little munchkins. These sentences deserve exclamation points, but unfortunately my computer decided that today the "number row" wasn't going to work, so there you go...

2007-04-19T23:44:00.000-07:00

Coming out of the (over-cluttered, environmentally unfriendly) closet

In honor of Chris' birthday (yesterday, April 19th...I'm a bit late I know, but feel free to send him lots of birthday wishes!) I thought I'd post this as a bit of a birthday present for him.

After about 2 years of harping on about the environment, my wasteful ways, etc...I think Chris has finally done it. He's turned me into a(n) ... (budding) Environmentalist! Happy Birthday, Chris!

In honor of that and because Earth Day is coming up soon (Sunday, April 22nd - I'm a bit early for that, but we'll be away on the actual day) I thought I'd post a little Public Service Announcement on how YOU TOO can start on your way to becoming an Environmentalist (and know that I probably sound extremely hypocritical as I'm just beginning to turn over this leaf myself...)

I read this article in Real Simple* the other day (Thank you to Ed and Theresa for helping me get my magazine fix over here!) *and yes, I know...magazines = paper waste = bad for environment. Like I said...a BUDDING environmentalist - i'm not all the way there yet!

I saw the website Greener Penny this morning on Daily Candy (I know, my mentioning Greener Penny is doubly hypocritical, as the site is about both the environment AND cleaning!)

Also in Daily Candy, these ideas for reducing your carbon footprint.

Oh, and one more thing...This month's Vanity Fair (thanks mom and dad for THIS magazine hookup!) is their green issue and is Carbon Neutral, which made me feel better about it!*

*See above asterisk

OK, the PSA is over, but if you have a chance, take a look at these sites. The more Chris tells me about how we're really screwing up the poor planet for ourselves down the road, the scarier it becomes (and yes, I know you've probably been beaten over the head with this in the media in the States now and I'm wayyy behind the times) I just wanted to throw my two cents in. If I can change (or at least start to), anyone can!

Unrelated and Fabulous!
I love and miss my former coworkers at Armstrong Shaw for many reasons, but the latest being that I received a big box from them (more specifically Terry, Lisa, Joanne and Robin) the other day, containing an adorable felt Easter basket, more candy than I'm going to be able to eat for the rest of this year (and still remain on my Bridesmaid Dress Diet) and a Colony Grill (yum!) T-Shirt. I took a picture of all of this beautiful candy - including Tootsie Rolls, Hershey's Hugs and Caramel Kisses, Mike and Ike's, the ever-controversial Peeps and numerous other delightful surprises - but am having some technical difficulties uploading. I'll try again when we get back from Cyprus next week. It was the best package I've gotten in a long time, and my neighbors, students and I are all enjoying and partaking in it! And I'm pretty sure that candy is always good for the environment :) Thanks guys!!!

2007-04-17T00:31:00.000-07:00

Kalymnos, Greece: Land of over-enthusiastic hotel owners, free coffee-givers and lots and lots of rocks...

Due to my lame internet connection, over the past 3 days, I have successfully uploaded 43 of my 113 Greece photos online. Hopefully the rest will be up soon, and they'll be located here.

In the meantime, you can see even better pictures, taken by our friend Ed, here ...

We had a great time with all of our visitors over the past two weeks, and a super time in Greece, where the people were above and beyond the nicest I have met anywhere.

Some examples are...
George, the most enthusiastic hotel proprieter I have ever met. He ran up and down the stairs of his hotel, Melina's Apartments to show us each and every available room so we could decide which we wanted.

Panos, the above mentioned free coffee giver. Our first morning on the island, we stopped at his place so my caffeine addicted self could get a fix. He has a restaurant, which we later learned was the 'go to' restaurant for all the climbers on the island, which also had the description "coffee bar" painted on the outside wall. I went in and asked for a coffee to go. After an "Of course, dear, why not?" He ran across the street to the minimart and bought some styrofoam cups to take the coffee on the road. While waiting for the coffee, we decided to take a taxi to our climbing destination (or "Crag" as I learned it is called) of the day so we had coffee at Panos' place while we waited for the taxi he called. 2 minutes into the coffee drinking, a large bottle of water showed up on the table, along with a huge plate of delicious homemade cookies. We, of course, were thrilled, and when our taxi arrived, asked for the bill. "No charge!" Panos replied, "It doesn't cost me anything to make coffee!" We were shocked, and ended up going to his place for breakfast (always free, and the last day had delicious pound cake instead of cookes) and dinner (always included a few free beers and dessert!)

Everyone we met was so much fun and so nice, it was like a magical land of the super friendly!

I'll add more detail in the next day or so, but now I've got to get back into the swing of work and prepare some lessons!!

2007-03-26T04:42:00.002-07:00

I LOVE working part time!!

After we got back from our January break, I decided to start working part time. This decision was based on several reasons, one being that I need to study for my GRE's (which has been a truly humbling process) and another was that I was feeling way too burnt out in relation to the small "salary" I was receiving at the end of each month. It has been great. I am still working 6 days a week, either giving private English lessons or working at my regular job, but just a couple of hours each day, for the most part. It's been great. I have a whole day I can use before I go off to work. Sometimes, like today, my private lesson students will cancel, and I feel like someone gave me 4 extra hours for free! Granted, I lose out on a good bit of money, but these days, time trumps cash. Anyway, these days are usually spent catching up on emails, studying for the GRE's (lately math, which leaves me feeling slightly depressed), doing some yoga (which makes me feel slightly better) and reading(which I also count as studying, because I highlight, look up and create a spreadsheet of words 'I will soon know' - trying to put a positive spin on my limited vocabulary. I have also used the time to cook and bake. Today, after a 3 month hiatus (beginning on Christmas day when I broke our blender) I decided to re-enter the hummus making world (no, it's not common to find it in stores here, so if we want it, homemade is the best bet.)
It's gorgeous out today, and it's a Monday, which means Market Day in our neighborhood, so to prepare for my cooking session, I went out and did one of my favorite things, which I never had a chance to do while I was working all the time....The European-style shopping trip: First stop: Ekonomik Market, a small grocery store/mainly produce market, where I bought broccoli and yogurt. I plan to use the broccoli tonight in my new favorite dish to cook- Lemon/white wine/olive oil marinated artichoke hearts and broccoli over penne (look mom, I'm eating veggies!!) We'll buy the artichoke hearts fresh at the 'real' market, but I like to go with Chris because conversing with the (super friendly but English-free) market guys on my own about how much everything costs (and the fact that they always try to give me fruit makes me a little nervous. Next stop, the Sarkuterie, another little shop (the name of this type of store is based on the other word that sounds like it "Charcuterie" - the Turks have co-opted alot of words like this, like Taksi, Kuafor, etc...) that sells meats and cheeses (nothing international though. White Cheese or Yellow Cheese are the choices) and where I bought my can of chickpeas. Next stop, the Zeytin (olive) store, because we're nearly out of olive oil. These shops are always tiny and sell different kinds of olives and olive oil (sometimes house-made) and sometimes olive oil soaps, etc. I bought a small Poland-Spring type bottle filled with olive oil for 5ytl, about 3USD. From here I spotted the friendly gypsy lady on the corner, from whom we usually buy flowers. I bought a gorgeous bouquet of all white flowers (I'd post a picture but for some reason I don't see my camera around here...) She wanted15ytl, about 10USD but I talked her down to 10YTKL (approx. 7). I'm not sure if that's still a bit high, but I figure she probably needs the money more than I do, and on a nice day like today, flowers are a must! After visiting the gypsy flower seller, I went to Bag (pronounced bahhhh) my FAVORITE bakery and bought a delicious bread, sort of corn-bread-like, but not so heavy or sweet, and a bunch of cookies. I love shopping in this neighborhood, because the proprieters are all soooo nice to the teachers. We are the only foreigners who live in this neighborhood and I think they think we're amusing and/or they feel sorry for us. I asked for 10 cookies today, and the man weighed and priced them and then discreetly put about 3 or 4 more in the bag. After Bag, I decided that I really needed nail polish remover. So I stopped into the grocery store and picked up a bottle of that for 85 kurush, about 50 or 60 cents. For some reason, the combination of the cool enough for a fleece yet warm enough for sandals day, the friendliness of everyone around me and knowing that we'll only be here for a little while longer, has put me in a really good/slightly nostalgic for something I'm currently experiencing mood...Then I came home and tried to cook (by cook I mean make some hummus). I'll digress for a moment and share the fact that Chris has taken to calling me the Swedish Chef, a fair statement due to the fact that I can just LOOK into a kitchen and food and cooking utensils will be everywhere. Again, I wish I could find my camera because in the middle of making my hummus, I looked around - a blade from the blender, covered in hummus, was on the floor, tahini was spilled all over the counter, as was some exploding hummus from the blender. I mean, I don't know how it happens. It's sad, really, but I'm just not sure how to help myself! Regardless of my messy kitchen behavior, I think that my time cooking has started to pay off - My peanut butter M&M cookies are my new addiction (I had to stop making them, actually, because I need to be in a bathing suit in two weeks, and it wasn't really working out to have them in the house) and Chris actually eats just about everything I cook! Which is generally more complicated than my "cheese and crackers" or "bowls of cereal" or even "containers of ice cream" of the past! I highly recommend that everyone works only some of time...It's amazing what you can accomplish!

2007-03-21T02:58:00.000-07:00

And this reminds me...

We're going to need a new name for our blog, now that we won't be in Turkey any more!

Any suggestions???

2007-03-21T02:24:00.000-07:00

After we left Paris, we had a relatively uneventful flight to Boston (barring the fact that the Charles de Gaulle airport is an absolute nightmare - something that was confirmed both leaving the country and travelling back through on the way to Istanbul) and were so delighted to be back in the US, with people who spoke English to us, and Dunkin Donuts on nearly every street corner! I was delighted to see a television (HD with DVR no less - Thanks Will!) and to catch up on my favorite shows! The first night we were there, we were pretty jetlagged and went to dinner (at a pub - where the waitstaff talks to you in English! and there are multiple, good beers on the menu!) with Will, our gracious host for the week, and his fabulous girlfriend Christine.
Over the next couple of days, I was lucky enough to spend time with many of my favorite people:

Freshman year college roomies reunited (and with babies - cutest babies ever by the way, not that I'm biased - wow!) It was such a special treat to be all together again!

Leigh and Gretchen, at an all day magarita/mexican food/shopping drinks party. I missed the mexican food and the margaritas nearly as much as I missed these two fabulous ladies!

My cute family, who I was hoping to surprise, but had to settle for a run of the mill "Come to Boston, please, I'm here!" reveal.

Chris' parents, brothers and their girlfriends:

and Chris' friends of whom I have no pictures...

It was a really fun trip. It made us realize just how much we missed home and made us think that we really were ready to go back, despite Chris spending so much time at job interviews during the two weeks, until...The morning after our big get together with our friends, Chris decided he should really just go on one last interview. Would be rude to cancel, and all that...And he ended up really liking the school, the director, the principal, the location and the job. SO...After a couple of hours of speedy internet research and lots of talking, we decided that next year we are....Singapore bound! After more internet and book research, and alot of talking to friends who know, we are even more excited for this next phase. I'm excited because Singapore has: Chinese, Indian, Thai, Malaysian, Japanese food all over the place, is close to Thailand, Indonesia, Australia, Malaysia, etc. etc. and is equatorial, which means warm weather year round. I'm also excited because, while Chris beat me, by a long shot, in the visitor department this year, Singapore is close to so many amazing travel destinations that I think I'll be able to put up a good fight for the title next year...My calendar is open and waiting!

2007-03-19T01:55:00.000-07:00

Writing about our France trip has turned into a long project for me...This will be my last post about it. We drove to the Loire Valley and stayed at a lovely B&B, La Maison Blanche, in the town of Amboise. Amboise is on the Loire river and is, as are all of the towns around, really quaint and smelling of fresh bread everywhere. After being deprived of great cheese here in Turkey, it was wonderful to be able to walk into any grocery store, or even quickie mart and find some artisanal French cheese, wrapped in paper with an AOC label. The second night we were Loire (the only place we stayed for 2 nights) we just got a bunch of bread, cheese and wine and stayed in for dinner. We actually discovered possibly the best goat cheese we'd ever had, in some small grocery store, but of course we don't remember the name, nor is it likely that we could ever find it outside of the Loire. The first night we were in Amboise, we went to dinner at a place our lovely B&B proprieter recommended. It was a perfect recommendation called Les Ramparts. The website is in French, but you'll get the idea. It was tiny, maybe 10 or 12 tables, and they had a great multi-course menu, along with local and fabulous table wine, that cost maybe $50 or $60 total. Unfortunately, that night I was feeling ill (I think my body was confused by being back into contact with such good cheese!) and I couldn't finish my meal or (shock of all shocks) my cheese plate. The waitress (owner?) was so concerned that I didn't like the food. It was all very sweet. Anyway, back to our B&B...It is owned by a lovely woman named Annick, who is so chatty and friendly. We had breakfast in a lovely room with windows on a whole wall, overlooking her wooded property. When the WiFi that we were supposed to have in our room turned out to not work, she gladly opened up that room to us, at any time, so we could organize the tickets we needed to buy for the rest of our trip. Also, she has 2 horses and 2 adorable dogs, Snoopy the Golden Retriever and Taylor (like Elizabeth) the deaf Great Dane. They were the best part of our stay! In and around Amboise, we did some wine tasting, visited Chateau de Chenonceau that was really beautiful, situated over a river. The most impressive part of the chateau was the kitchen, or kitchens, i guess. Really understated, gorgeous light coming in. Definitely a kind of kitchen you'd want for yourself! The rest of it was quite nice too, but that was the most impressive part to me. We also visited Clos du Luce, where Leonardo DaVinci lived his last years and where he died. In the basement of the chateau are models of many of his inventions and then there is a big park, with life size models. You can actually test them out, it was really cool! After the Loire, we visited Versailles, which of course is amazing, but almost tooooo big to walk through and stay interested the whole time. The gardens are great too, but it was kind of a rainy day. We got the idea of it though and then got back in the car, drove to Paris, where I unfortunately directed Chris to drive right through the center of the city, which he claimed was far worse that driving in NYC and even Istanbul, the city in which I cringe, with eyes closed, every time I'm in a moving vehicle. From that awful Arc du Triomphe experience to finally arriving at Gare du Nord, to drop off the car and catch the Eurostar, took us on a long journey through the city. We got to go up to the Montmarte area, which we weren't able to really tour once we got back to Paris, so that was a positive, and we got to see "everyday life" in Paris...or something like that, to make me feel better about my poor navigation. Anyway, we got to our train just in time to go to London to see Tamar and Pete and for Chris to go to some interviews for next year. While poor Chris had to dress nicely and sit in interviews all day, I was lucky enough to spend time with Tamar, and do some all-important shopping and the most important...wedding dress shopping for her! It was a really special weekend. After a whirlwind London trip, we got back on the Eurostar (at 5am, I believe) and headed back to Paris for a few days. We stayed in the Latin Quarter, in an apartment for which we had high hopes but was really just so-so. The best parts about it were, a) we were two minutes walking distance from Notre Dame Cathedral and a relatively short walk or Metro ride from everything else we wanted to see and b) we were in close proximity to one of our new favorite restaurants, Les Papilles (the photo in this article is in that restaurant). It is in a small gourmet shop and there's not menu, just a set meal for the night. That night we had a creamy carrot soup, which I never would've tried before, but it was amazing. Then a curried chicken dish over penne, a cheese course (certainly) and an unbelievably good orange creme brulee! The best part is that the store stocks some food but is mainly a wine shop and when you get there, you can stroll and find a wine that looks good to you (or rely on the suggestion of one of the owners, because you have no idea) and they tack on a 6 euro corking fee, to the shelf price of the wine. He selected a reasonably priced Bordeaux that was so delicious we were practically holding the bottle over our mouths to get the last dregs when we were finished. I'm going to try to remember the name of the wine and I'll post it back here if i can...The rest of Paris was just doing the regular touristy stuff - Louvre, Eiffel Tower, some shopping, etc etc. It was lovely but I think both of us were excited to get to the last part of our trip, Boston, to see friends and family, and for Chris to again sit in interviews all weekend...Boston leg of the trip to come...

2007-03-13T01:32:00.000-07:00

So in the last post, I left off with us heading to Brittany. Due to my keen detective skills, I was able to re-find the website of the place we stayed in Cancale, La Metairie du Vauhariot. As with all of our B&B's, we found the proprieter charming and the surroundings fantastic. This is Chris standing in the impressive stairwell, and this is where we had breakfast. Cancale was a really cool town, although like most places we visited, nearly empty in January. The food was amazing and (again, I'm guessing this is due to the off season) we had a 4 course meal, including 10 oysters apiece, wine and of course a cheese plate (!) for about $30 or $40! I wish I could remember the name of the restaurant, but it's a cute little place on a corner and it looks like this inside. The waiter/owner (I think he was the owner) loved Americans (imagine that!) and loved Vegas! He was telling us about his yearly Vegas/LA trip and how this year he was going to take his head chef. It was really sweet and the food was fabulous! Many of the restaurants we found in France served this great dish of steamed mussels, but in a creamy, rather than clear broth. The one we had here was the best mussel dish I've ever tasted, although I'm sure the cream made it entirely too unhealthy.
After we left Cancale, stopped by the medieval walled city of St. Malo, for a little visit before driving directly South through Brittany (Cancale is just to the East of St. Malo - at the very tip of the peninsula) to Vannes. St. Malo is really amazing - the whole city is really enclosed in walls. It was fun to just walk around in the narrow, winding streets and to walk on top of the wall around the city. I can't find my photos of it just now, but the walls go along a beach area and at one point, there is a pool ON THE BEACH. With a diving board! We had great, cheap paninis here before our drive South, proving apparently that if you're French, anything you cook will be good.
It took us a few hours to get to Vannes, where we stayed in a sort of boring, but convenient and parking lot equipped, Comfort Inn kind of place. The town was nice; a University town, again with the cobblestone and the cozy little streets - but we thought that if we had to do it over again (and in the same time span - 1 night in each place) we might skip it, as it wasn't too different from the other places we'd visited and it was a good drive to get there. The serendipitous thing about Vannes is that there was a new/used CD store in the town and in it Chris found a years old cd by a little known (I don't actually remember who she is) (not French) artist that he and his friend Will (who we would be staying with in Boston later during this trip) used to listen to during their cross country adventure about 5 or so years ago...So that part was really fun :)
After Vannes, and after driving along the coast that looked surprisingly like the coast of Maine, we left Brittany and headed into one of the great lands of wine...The Loire Valley. More to come...

2007-02-26T05:01:00.000-08:00

Once again, I've been terrible about updating, but we recently (does two weeks ago qualify as recently?) returned from a great 2 week trip, including Northwest France, London, Paris and Boston. It was really fun and an absolute whirlwind of food, drink, friends and, for Chris, job hunting, but I'll get to that part later. Our trip began in a most non-Bulgarian way. Our flight actually DEPARTED EARLY from Istanbul! I really couldn't believe it. I think our bags were the 3rd or 4th on the conveyor belt once we landed in France, and we picked up the rental car and got out of the city with only one wrong turn! No multi-hour waiting and doing nothing, no people trying to smuggle cigarettes into France. It almost felt wrong. But in a really good way. We stayed in a standard roadside hotel the first night and then left that morning for our first destination - Normandy and the DDay Beaches. Going to these sites was something Chris was really interested in, and I just kind of went along for the ride. But I ended up being surprised about how powerful and moving it really was to see where these battles took place (we went to Omaha beach) and the accompanying cemetery.
After we did our historical siteseeing, we stayed for our first of several nights in fabulous B&B's. (note: We stayed at a bunch of great places and a couple of mediocre places. I had wanted to give all of the information about them but, sadly, a few days after we returned, my entire Yahoo Mail account was somehow emptied of all it's information. No more email addresses, contact information or emails. They have all been deleted. Of course Yahoo said there was nothing they can do. So there you have it. All of my reservation information is gone. I've been trying to retrace my steps as far as where I found these places online, but to no avail. If I find information on the places that aren't at the top of my head, I'll post them later. In the meantime, I hate Yahoo.)
Anyway, we stayed at this great B&B the first night. Part of the house dated from the 1700's and the hosts were a lovely husband and wife. The husband didn't speak much English, but managed to point us in the direction of (and make reservations for) a fabulous small restaurant called Chez Francois. It was tiny, with a big fireplace where they cooked all of their meat, and as we would come to expect, had a great wine list, all for about under 20 euros and fabulous!

New update: France Photos are now HERE...

On our second day, we went to Mont St. Michel which is one of the neatest things I've ever seen. It's this huge abbey/island that you can see from really far away and from the parking lot.
The best thing about our trip was that, while it was pretty cold, visiting France in January, we were nearly the ONLY tourists around! Literally, at Mont St. Michel, which is one of the biggest tourist attractions in France and is apparently mobbed with tour buses for most of the year, there was one other couple who happened to be in the same area of the Abbey with us through most of our visit. Right as we were leaving, we saw a tour group come in, but luckily we were on our way out.

Mont St. Michel sits at the corner of Normandy and Brittany, so we headed into Brittany after we left the island. Our first stop was Cancale, which is known for it's oysters, where we stayed in another great B&B.

This is my first installment of the trip, and I'll update more, and hopefully make our photo album really fancy, later...

2007-01-23T01:29:00.000-08:00

I forgot to mention...We're going to France next week: Brittany, Normandy, the Loire and Paris. My job is to plan Loire and Paris, and Chris will do the others. If anyone has any great ideas for these places - restaurants, sites we must see, a great place to stay in the Loire (we're set on that front for Paris), SHOPS I MUST VISIT, please leave me a comment here and let me know! THANKS!!

2007-01-22T03:14:00.000-08:00

New Years Part II:

I am so lame, I know. I try to keep up with my posts on here but ridiculous things like "work" and the like are always getting in the way. Anyway, before I end up waiting until NEXT new years, I thought I should post about the rest of our trip to Bulgaria, which was made even better (I think) by the trials of getting there.
Since the snow was minimal (although it didn't seem too bad to me, on the bunny hill, on my first day skiing in at least 5 years, Chris and Nam weren't too fond of skiing over rocks and grass on their fancy skis and snowboards) we spent alot of time at the nearby hotel's spa, sitting in the sauna and getting massages. There are certainly worse ways to spend a vacation. After we finally settled into our hotel and spent a little time on the first day at said spa, we hit my new favorite restaurant, Pitsina Kruchma. DuWane and Chris knew of this place from last year's visit, and the owner of the restaurant recognized them too. The hospitality at this restaurant and in much of Bansko (much unlike the hospitality of the Bulgarian customs agents) is Turkish-like in how at-home they make you feel. When we walked in, the place was nearly empty, but the "best table" was in front of the fireplace. It had a 'reserved' sign on it, but the owners' daughter came over and told us, "My mother wants me to tell you that you guys should sit here by the fireplace, but that our friends from Sofia are coming in a few hours. I'm telling you this not because we want you to move, but because they will join you. They're all very nice." And sure enough, after an AMAZING meal - they have these potato-cake things with ham and cheese and all crispy on the outside, and surprisingly good domestic wine, not to mention HUGE portions (after Nam finished this dish, he started in on the half of my garlic and cheese stuffed fish that I couldn't eat!)

From New Years 200...

- the friends from Sofia arrived. We had already had a couple bottles of wine and, as for how the night progressed, I think the photos can tell it better than I can:

From New Years 200...

(that's the owner I'm dancing with...)
You get the idea, it was a perfect night and the perfect antidote to our hellish travels!

The next day was our one day of skiing, and it was also New Year's Eve! While on the slopes, Chris and Nam met an American couple, Lori and Dave, who are doing the International teaching thing, like we are, in Cyprus. They said they approached Chris because he was the only person on the mountain Telemarking, and I'm so glad they did! We met up with them that night - I felt terrible that we said we'd meet them before midnight, but due to the dinner we ended up having (see below), we finally got to the bar at about 1:30...

For dinner that night, we wanted to go to a traditional Bulgarian Mehana, much like the night before, but they are really working over the tourism thing, and while our first night's meal cost us about $12 apiece, all of the restaurants wanted at least 50 euros, and sometimes more, per person for a meal. So we found a pizza place that was completely empty and not doing the prix fixe thing, and went in. Another serendipitous find, as the food, both my pizza (wood fired) and the guys' food (all Bulgarian stuff) were wonderful! The waiter

From New Years 200...

was a really nice guy and told us that he'd give us a free bottle of champagne if we stayed through midnight. We were having such a great time that we decided to do that, and were again, were so glad we did, as I've never experienced a New Years quite like it. The owners' of the restaurant and their family were all dining next to us, cheers-ing us (Nazdrave in Bulgarian) and dancing around, lighting sparklers. Then we went outside to watch the fireworks displays, which were great, but not as good as the show of one of the owners or perhaps a family member, who was shooting off a gun to ring in the new year

From New Years 200...

After that, we took a bunch of pictures:

From New Years 200...

and watched DuWane get beaten by a stick (I guess it's Bulgarian tradition that kids make 'wands' from sticks and decorate them and go around whacking people with them for good luck)

From New Years 200...

Then we left to meet our new friends who, thankfully, waited around for us!
We had a great night that night, and the next day just walked around Bansko (I won't fully detail the disaster Chris and I had trying to find lunch. It was like the border crossing part II. Suffice it to say, it took four hours and we ended up with crepes. Great crepes, but crepes.)
The next day, the four of us and our new friends set off in search of some thermal springs that Lori had heard about. It turned out that it's a pool in a hotel that has the mineral water, and not some natural, gorgeous spring, but we grabbed a few beers and hung out in the warm water for hours. Here are some pics:

From New Years 200...

We're all very coordinated...
Oh, I forgot to mention the weird parade we saw while waiting for our 4 hour crepes...Men walking around covered in animal skins pounding drums...Sounds strange. and it was. But it was very cool looking too.

From New Years 200...

and my favorite...

From New Years 200...

The next day or so progressed about the same way, kind of lazy, good food, good wine, it was nice. When we left to head back to work, we took one bus to another bus to the border and it took only about 7 or 8 hours to get there. When we got off the bus and got to the car, Chris sort of walked ahead of us to make sure it was there. I see him throw down his bag and curse loudly. I walk around to see what the problem is - there's a boot on his car. I was afraid we'd just have to drive back with it, a la when Homer Simpson got booted in NYC...thump...thump...But Chris, as determined as I've ever seen him, walks over to the tire, kind of shimmies the boot, and it pops right off. Fine Turkish construction if I've ever seen it...If there's anything I regret, it's not taking that boot with us. But I did take a photo for posterity:

From New Years 200...

Oh yes, and one other thing. I'm not sure if it was mentioned in Chris' summer details about Bulgaria, but apparently Bulgarian women are the most beautiful women on the planet. This is the first thing his friends told me about when I asked about their roadtrip this summer. And I'm not kidding. Anyway, the Bulgarians must take some pride in this. It's been awhile since I've been home, but I seem to remember that the "women" signs for bathrooms in the US are nowhere near as "developed"

From New Years 200...

Compare:
http://static.flickr.com/4/7328348_b35abc8afa_m.jpg

2007-01-07T11:14:00.000-08:00

International Lampoon's Bulgarian Vacation

Note: Everything I write here is completely true. There is no exaggeration. This is travelling at its extreme. Not for the faint of heart...

Friday 12/29/06 1:15 pm: Chris, our friends Nam and DuWane and I plan to leave the apartment in Chris' car for Bansko, Bulgaria for a long weekend/New Years/welcome Bulgaria to the EU trip

2pm: We leave

2:25 pm: We're on the bridge between Asia and Europe in Istanbul and Chris turns to me and says "I'm having a minor paperwork freak out. I think I need temporary international insurance*" *in addition to regular Turkish insurance. Why, i have no idea. We get off the highway several kilometers from his car paperwork company and sit in traffic for a little while. Finally, we get close and can see the building from the road. Chris says "I am going to go the back way to avoid traffic*" *There is generally tons of traffic in this area and we have had a disastrous experience in the past, so this made sense. About 20 meters onto the "back way" (another small highway) we see construction and realize there is actually no exit to take us where we want to go. We end up turning onto yet another highway and as we do, I see multiple cars backing up off the road. I took this to be a bad sign, but this does tend to happen here quite a bit, so we kept going. Unfortunately this little detour forced us to sit in stopped traffic for about 2 hours.

4:40 pm: We arrive back to the place where we changed to go to the "back way". We decide to do a chinese fire drill so DuWane can drive the car while chris runs to the company, which likely closes at 5.

5:10: In about 20 minutes and over 100$ later, Chris emerges from the building with the "international insurance"

7:30: No more unplanned stops, we're about a mile from the border where get a quick cafeteria-style dinner and visit one of the many horrifying, terrifying bathrooms that plagued us for the trip.

8:15 pm: We're through the first part of the border. Now all we need to do is have Chris stand in line with his car paperwork, including the fancy new insurance for awhile, get a stamp and go through. Keep in mind it is at least freezing, if not below while all of this happens. All of the cars at the border are "lined up" (in a haphazared, rules-free style parking lot) while Chris waits and DuWane and I buy booze at duty-free and start drinking it to stay warm.

8:45 pm: Chris comes back to the car. "There's something wrong with my paperwork. I need to go over there and talk to someone." (points back toward our original border check.) DuWayne and I sip a little more warming liquer.

9:30 pm: Chris walkes back to the car, gets into the back seat, and at this unusual placement, before he even spoke the words "We're f*$ked" I knew something was wrong. Apparently there was a misprint. Not on the new insurance, which I'm not sure they even looked at, but on his original car registration, which I'm sure his paperwork company looked at multiple times without noticing. The end result is, after 7 1/2 hours that we'd never get back, we can't take the car across the border. Chris says the border guards say we could try to hop on a bus going our direction and, nice Turks that they are, tell him of a hotel nearby where he can leave the car. We aren't sure this is going to work but for the sake of the apartment that we've already paid for a week's lodging (even though we have to be back at work in 5 days) we decide to give it a shot.

9:45 pm: Chris leaves us with all our luggage on the side of the border, near the 3 tiny duty free shops and goes to park his car. We are standing with our luggage, freezing (eventually I couldn't feel my fingers and toes) and sneaking into the same 3 duty free shops over and over again with tour bus groups, pretending to be interested in the carts of cigarettes with huge warning labels stating "smokers die younger" and "smoking reduces sperm count" for a few seconds of heat.

11 pm: This is the first time the phrase "Where's Chris" was used on the trip. As far as we knew, he just went to park the car close by so I was starting to get nervous. I called his cell phone, he answered, in a hushed tone and enlightened me to the fact that he was in the office of the head border guard who was attempting to extort first $4,000 from him which was reduced, due to the efforts of the "good cop" in the room to a mere $1,000. After multiple attempts at telling them that he is just a poor "ogretmen" (silent 'g' and it means teacher) they eventually believe him and send him on his way. Meanwhile, I made several lame attempts at finding us a host bus. I was quite proud of my Turkish, which while didn't amount to a ride for us, showed me that I knew how to say "Plovdiv (town we needed to get to in Bulgaria)? Ummm...4 people. OK, UM. Hmmm. Big car problem. I, and 4 friends. We go Plovdiv. But car problem. We go, but no car." then I pointed at him and the bus. And he actually knew what I was saying. But it doesn't help us at all. Finally, Chris gets back, and feeling guilty (though it was not his fault his paperwork had problems) he is determined to get us on a bus.

11:30 pm - 12:30 am: Chris finds us a bus. It is a bunch of Turks going into a part of Bulgaria I didn't know and their tour guide was more than happy to take a bunch of sad "Yabanci"(s) (prounounced Yabahnja's, means foreigners) on as a charity case. Apparently going through a border on a bus is even more of an undertaking than in a car. And don't get me wrong here, I was greatful to these people for bringing us across the border. At an American border, crossing into Canada let's say, if a group of foreign people who don't speak your language (very broken requests for bus access aside) asked for your help in crossing the border, people would likely think you were a terrorist, or a drug mule (oh yes, that's in the story too...we'll get to it later. But I digress...Each person has to get off the bus (please keep in mind the weather I mentioned before. Oh yes, and I wore my thin socks so as to keep my wool ones clean for skiing) and stand at the guard gate so he could flip through each passport. We all have to stand there until the whole bus (these are big Coach-type buses) has had their passports checked. Then we get back on the bus and drive about 3 meters and wait for the customs agent to come by. At this point, we all get back off the bus (ahem, freezing) and stand with all of our bags for the customs agent to check us. At this point (and this isn't the drug mule-ing I'm refering to, I'll come back to that later) I am a little nervous, because the kind lady who let us on the bus handed me a duty free back filled with cigarette cartons and explained to me (I think) that the cigarettes in the bag would be what 3 or 4 people could take across the border, so if I could just hold them and say that they are mine and my friends', well, that would be great. I'm happy to help, but it's been about 10 hours so far, I'm tired and confused and as we get off the bus, I forget the butts. I needn't have worried about that at the moment, because the more pressing concern was the woman attempting the comic Tom and Jerry or Wil E Coyote style tiptoe behind the customs agent, which he OF COURSE saw and which pissed him off to no end. At this point he lined us all up again, started to look through each person's bag again and started pulling people out of line. In the middle of this he gave some sort of speech, of which I understood "Prime Minister" and "cigarettes." The tour lady gave some sort of speech as well, of which I understood "I don't want" and again, the topic of the night "cigarettes." After this, customs man gets back on the bus (this is where I really start feeling freaked out about "my" cigarettes, but I think tour lady might have pulled the stupid foreigner ha-ha card for customs man so I was off the hook) and looked around for awhile. After this we all get back on the bus. Yay! I think, We're free to go! But of course that wouldn't happen! What was explained to me later was this this was likely a group of lower class Turks and the border guards felt like they could bully them (especially as they are now big-shot EU members) so they were taking advantage.

12:30 am - ..... 3:30 am: We sit on the bus. Some people get called off the bus. They come back on the bus. Many, many other buses pass our bus. We pull forward about 10 feet. We sit some more. The aforementioned drug mules come onto the bus. Exchange what was possibly money with the bus driver. They play rintones loudly on their cellphones and chat, also loudly with the driver. People start smoking. On the bus. One man, who had successfully hidden the contraband cigarettes from customs agent, started stuffing many, many packs of them into every part of himself he could find. As Chris and I had seats in the front of the bus, and he was in the entranceway, we got to see it all. And through all of this, the amazing thing is that no one was freaking out. Could you imagine being stuck on the border for hours and hours and not getting upset. They started having SING-ALONGS! and DANCING! on the bus! It was amazing. I had to go into a kind of mental hibernation so as not to freak out myself. Luckily our group of 4 was amazingly calm as well. We were about 1/2 of a kilometer from our car and had been for the past 7 hours. You could really freak out.

FINALLY....The last 'prisoner' was brought back onto the bus and we started lumbering away. After a 1+ hour trip, on which the other passengers began to think of us as mascots or pets, telling us to sit down and relax whenever the bus would stop and we thought it was where we got off (for yes...part 2 of our adventure), we finally arrived in Hravsko (or something like that. All the signs are in cyrillic. It's not helpful.)

5 am: We negotiate with a taxi drive to take us, essentially across the country, for 100 euros (I know this map is tiny, but Hraskovo or whatever is close to where Turkey, Greece and Bulgaria meet and Bansko, is almost at the Macedonian border). We are finally sitting. And thrilled about the prospect of some actual sleep. We pile into the tiny taxi, with our bags, Chris' skis and the 4 of us, lean our heads on the seat-backs and ....sit up with a start when our taxi driver decides that now is the right time to play Tupac's greatest hits. for 3 1/2 hours. OK, fairs fair, he played Tupac for about hours, and then, as the sun was coming up, as we headed into the mountains, he switched to Enigma. It was the perfect end to our travels.

8:45am: Nearly 18 hours after we began, and thanks to Chris' amazing visual memory based on his last visit to Bulgaria, we arrive at our barely marked Aparthotel, the Montblanc apartments. We walk in, a bit punch-drunk, give them our reservation name and await real sleep, finally. However, as we've now actually come to expect, there's a glitch. Our reservation is nowhere to be found. Of course. After attempting the art of patience (quite difficult after our "evening") we decided to go next door and get breakfast, assured the problem will be solved when we return. We had a great breakfast of omlettes and (a special treat when you live in a Muslim country) ham, we found out that the restaurant had rooms available, so we keep that in the back of our minds and head back to the Mont Blanc. We get back and they had done nothing on our reservation, had nothing to do to help us. All we wanted was our money back, but for some reason that was not in their vocabulary. After another hour or so, it is now....

10:30 am: I am laying in the sauna of Mont Blanc to clear up some of my bone-chill and eventually the guys come in to tell me some good news, they are planning to upgrade us to "the best hotel in Bansko" with pool! sauna! steamroom! much nicer than where we are now. Success! Something worked out! Haha ... A driver comes to pick us up and take us to our palace. He's about, ohhhh 85 and has no. idea. where to go. This is a small ski town, granted a new building is going up daily, and shouldn't be that hard. I mean, it shouldn't take 1 HOUR of driving in circles to find our place.

11:45 am: We finally arrive at our destination and find, not the luxurious residence we were described, but a place fully under construction, with zero amenities. No pool. No steam room. No sauna. No internet even, which was ubiquitous in the advertising of the apartments in the town. And the receptionist had never heard of us, or our plight. We were certain the driver had taken us to the wrong place. After I (I fully admit this, felt horrible and apologized to her many times before) yelled at this poor woman, who eventually was kind enough to even offer me her very own bottle of water because I had requested some, she called the hi - i'm working on a blog post now . manager and we found out we WERE in the right place and had been scammed. But ... we could use the amenities of the hotel down the road. For 15 euros. Per person. Per day. I was of the opinion that we shouldn't have even had to pay for our room, let alone anything extra, but luckily Chris got on the phone with the people we originally rented from, and hearing him madder than I ever have, he got us free passes to the spa for the whole time we were there...Finally, a little over an hour later, our room was ready and at

1:30 pm: We finally sat down and had a nap.

More to come but writing this has made me relive it and I'm now exhausted and must sleep!

2006-12-25T04:43:00.000-08:00

A Very Mullet Christmas!

It was a very mullet Christmas in our household this year. Or was it? Is my new haircut the much feared and awed "Tur-mullet"? It's up to you to decide!

Modern take on an 80's haircut or not, we had a great Christmas! Chris' school helped fund a wonderful Christmas dinner for the foreign teachers (about 30 of us), which included two Turkey's, much (Turkish, but you forget after awhile) wine, and many potluck dishes. I'm biased, on both counts, but I thought that Chris' cauliflower with curried cheese sauce was the best dish at the party! Not quite as inspired were the rock-hard Snowman Peeps that someone tried to pawn off on us unsuspecting Peeps fans!

After dinner, we had a White Elephant (old crap) gift exchange in which I won a bracelet, which I think was the nicest gift, although I'm sure the person who won my 'barely used' Garnier Fructis conditioner would disagree.

I'll put up more pictures from the evening soon...We just opened our gifts (you can see them under our Plant, below) - I printed and framed a bunch of pictures from our travels for Chris, and I got (best gift ever!) a package of Aromatherapy Massages from a spa nearby from Chris, who knows me too well!

Today, I'm going to make the traditional Christmas hummus to share with our friends, while we watch Elf, A Christmas Story and two more episodes (5 and 6) from this season of Lost!

Have a wonderful Christmas!

Here is a picture of our stockings. Chris' (the red silk one) and mine, the Grey Thor-Lo.

From Christmas 2006

2006-12-25T04:00:00.000-08:00

Merry Christmas!!

From Christmas 2006

2006-12-20T04:31:00.000-08:00

As Promised....

Photos of our N.W. set of 9 candles

and our N.W. Plant with our N.W. set of 9 candles in the background...

Ohhhh, Ahhhh, The Holidays!

2006-12-19T00:46:00.000-08:00

Technology strikes again...

I like to think I'm pretty tech-savvy, but recently anything I try to do on the computer fails miserably. Mercury must be in retrograde. Anyway, I took a video of what we've decided to call our Nondenominational Winter Plant and I'm putting it here...BUT it's sideways. And I can't get it to turn right side up without becoming terribly distorted. If anyone knows how to fix it, let me know, otherwise, it's only about 30 seconds, so turn your head sideways. I think I am going to need to move from PC to Mac sometime soon to be able to do any real movie stuff...

Watch this space for pics of our N.W.P. with our N.W.Candles, our improvised menorah using a combination of tealights and large scented candles...

2006-12-18T04:30:00.000-08:00

One of the more frustrating things that has happened to me recently was that I spent a good portion of my Sunday afternoon uploading photographs and writing 4 or 5 new posts. I told Chris that I updated some things and when he went to look at it, poof! Nothing was there. Some problem with the software blah blah blah. It made me very sad and I'm not sure when I'll feel ok enough about it to try writing all that stuff again.

But...Since I'm here, I might as well write about our GREAT weekend! Friday night, I was invited to an expat ladies night, where I met some new foreign women and I discovered a new and drinkable Turkish wine, Kav....I had just enough, but not too much so that I was able to go to work the next day and do "fun projects" with my kids...

Saturday night was a mystery to me. One of Chris' coworkers was hosting a party/amateur photography exhibition which we were able to attend for a little while (and have some of her amazing home-made Sangria) before we left to go on a date about which Chris was being very secretive. We went over to Beyoglu, a fun nightlife area in Istanbul, where Chris took me to a fabulous Thai restaurant that has been described as the best in Istanbul, and we were not disappointed! After dinner, and after leading me through the winding streets of Beyoglu to "throw me off track", we ended up at Babylon, a club that tends to be the go-to venue for most of the foreign bands that come through here, to see Buckwheat Zydeco, a band I had heard of but never had the pleasure to hear personally. They were amazing and if you ever have the opportunity to see them live, do it. Here's a video, not of the show we saw, but another one at a Blues Festival elsewhere in Turkey. The guy with the accordian is Buckwheat himself, a mature gentleman who was really energetic and quite funny too. The two best parts of our show were 1) when a guy in the audience wearing and playing his own washboard chest thing that is the "Zydeco instrument" was pulled up onstage and played a song with the band and 2) when a group of about 7 expat-looking older guys walked in in full Blues Brothers style - dark suits and sunglasses, some of them with bow ties and some with long scarves. We had a great vantage point to see all of this from up on the balcony.

Apologies if this post isn't at all entertaining, I think I used up all my funny on the posts that never made it ... Sorry!

2006-12-03T03:31:00.000-08:00

Great Turkey Photographs!

A friend sent me this website...This guy is a well known Turkish photographer and his depictions of Turkey and it's people are amazing!

http://www.nuribilgeceylan.com/turkeycinemascope1.php?sid=1

2006-11-26T06:13:00.000-08:00

As most of you who actually read this have probably figured out, I (Jenna) actually write most of the stuff on here. But, Chris recently sent out a long, informative and funny email to some family and friends, so I thought I'd post it here (with some additional comments by me where I couldn't resist) so you could read about our life - and mainly our travels this summer - from his perspective....Oh, and most of the pictures in here (or at least the best ... meaning guts and speedos ... ones) were taken by our friend Matt. We can't take credit for those genius shots!

Merhaba, Zdravei, Salut, Sziasztok, Zivjo, Ahoj, Guten tag, Bok and finally Hello,

After a summer of travel and mangling the above versions of hello, I hope this missive finds you all well and enjoying life. All is good on this end, particularly so now that I (we) am finally out of the dreaded long distance relationship, as Jenna decided to move over in June. After a nearly three month holiday spent recovering from the ravages of money management and its ubiquitous 2 week vacation she has moved into the education field working with the little guys (3-8) at a progressive after-school program. Anyhow we are enjoying the process of learning how to live together and thus far successfully navigating the delicate "lifestyle" issues that inevitably arise ie. dishes, underwear and the dreaded socks. (ie. Jenna is messy) (False. False false false. Anyone who knows me knows that!) In commemoration of the move and the fact that at the end of the year I didn't want to look at another child again, I took the whole summer off for the first time and traveled. Jenna and I began our cohabitation with consecutive visits from our respective families. While probably not the easiest segue, we had a fantastic time showing them how wonderful Turkey is when you get away from the rich people's children. We headed out with a large group of friends to Cappadocia, which has to be one of the most amazing landscapes in all the world. Here is a great article on it. After that we headed down to the coast for what is called a blue cruise which roughly translates into lots of beautiful scenery, swimming and lounging on a traditional Turkish boat. Here is a recent NYT article about it: After that we met Jenna's parents in Bodrum, which is something akin to a cross between South Beach and a quaint Turkish village.

After returning to Istanbul we had a day to recover before Scott, a college friend, arrived. After showing him the city, he and I took off for a road trip out to Cappadocia while Jenna headed to Bar-tha-lona to visit a friend. I couldn't believe she turned down driving around, hot and sunny, southern Turkey in a small, Turkish built, French car with no A/C and two stinky dudes whilst camping. It was really great to get back out on the road with Scott. Check out Scott's blog here: http://roadtripturkey.blogspot.com/

The Road Trip Begins....Of Clown Cars and Border Crossings

Close on the heels of Scott leaving, the next crew, Matt, Scott #2 (Dubbed "The short Scott" for expediency) and Will, arrived for the big question mark of the summer. The plan was to drive my previously mentioned small car (see photos, note the wheel well when fully occupied) full of 4 guys and there respective baggage from Istanbul to Prague and back again. Mind you that I'm by far the smallest at 6'1" 160, needless to say it was a tight fit, so much so that we felt kindred spirits to the poor fellows who make their living piling into small cars with face paint. After a few days of traipsing around Istanbul we hit the road bound for Bulgaria. Thankfully sans face paint as it would have melted off from our sweat, obscuring a beautiful drive through the sun and sunflower soaked countryside. Quick math side note; 4 guys = 750 lbs, 4 guys gear = 160 lbs, snacks = 2.854 lbs = Total = 912.854 lbs ¸ 1.2 liter manual transmission equals what an elementary physicist would regard as a mathematical impossibility. A 1.2 liter engine generates roughly 73 horsepower giving each of us 18.25 horsepower to get our asses to Prague and back. Chaos theory would indicate that something was bound to go wrong. Chaos theory was wrong, or at least for awhile.

Upon arriving at the Turkish border our car was forced into a concrete lined queue, as the Turkish people as a whole don't understand the concept of queuing, that forcing was a good thing. However, throughout this 2 hour process of advancing in the queue, we watched repeated attempts by doggedly stupid peoples to bypass our place in line. These others, upon arriving at the border and finding an empty line between two very long lines would go right to the front and begin honking their horn. They apparently believed that they had been granted this good fortune due to the grace of god as opposed to the line being closed. Upon this stark realization, resultant to being yelled at by the various authorities, each of them would then begin the lengthy process of asking why this line was closed. This in turn would slow down our line, further angering the many others who had gone through this same exact process many hours before. All in all quite funny when you have moved beyond getting frustrated with the utter lack of efficiency. Once to the gate we exchanged a few pleasantries and were allowed to pass. Evidently from here we were to park the car and get into another queue, although this time a human one, meaning there were no concrete barriers to keep people in place. This is where the real fun started. Upon entering the queue we became witnesses to a scene of Byzantine comedy. Evidently this wealthy German family in (actually, out of and yelling) their perfect Mercedes wagon, had discovered upon returning from their trip to Turkey, that their passports didn't have the proper stamps. They had evidently passed through this border 2 weeks prior thinking all was good. Upon arrival at the border the guards told them that they didn't have the proper paper work and were thus "working on it". . . all day. They were not finding their predicament in the least bit funny. It's strange what happens to people when all you want to do is get through a border. My regard for fellow man disintegrated into a wish that this guy would stop yelling and I could get through this god forsaken no mans land. I and my fellow line mates should have risen up and made the guards acknowledge the arcane stupidity of the Turkish government and their place in it and demand that they let this family through instantly but we quietly bowed our heads and physically pushed the guy next to us who was trying to take our spot as we thought about the right thing to do. Shockingly we got through this line in about an hour leaving the poor family to their bribe negotiations and were sent on our merry way, or at least until the next booth. Here we were met by a man who demanded our passports again. Upon typing my passport number into the computer he began saying something to me in Turkish. When his words were met with a black stare and acknowledgment that I speak very little Turkish he became highly agitated. From here he began hitting the top of my car yelling, KOMputer problem. KOMputer problem. When this didn't phase us and the blank stares remained, he left the booth and continued gesturing and striking the car for us to go back while yelling KOMputer problem. A quick u-turn and telling of the guy at the computer that there was a "KOMputer problem" and we were back to our final hurdle. This time however the guy quickly put the passport number in and we were on our way with a high five that much resembled Borat's failed attempts at connecting to western culture. Our border crossings would be relatively easy and peaceful from here, aside from the 1 1/2 hour work-over the car received going into Romania and some troubles in Croatia. Now, you can tell me by looking at the photos, but I don't think we, in the least, resemble drug runners but the earnest Romanian authorities gave our car, henceforth referred to as The Spring (early 90's Renault make), a full body cavity search, while letting all other cars pass with nothing more than a nod. After getting under, looking through the engine compartment and trunk, removing seats that weren't removable and making us unpack every bit of our belongings, they gave an understated OK and we were into Romania.

Romania. Just like Connecticut. But with Speedos and Beauty Queens

Romania was and is strange, and made all the stranger when a few kilometers into the country we spotted a Connecticut license plate ahead of us. Not wanting to miss this opportunity to figure out why there was a car with a Connecticut license plate on the border of Bulgaria and Romania I put the pedal to the floor and made those 73 horsepower earn their keep. Upon waving down the driver of the late 70's MG, top down, full of little kids, we met Vern. (check out Chris and Scott's faces in this picture, politely pretending not to notice that one of the men they were chatting with- not Vern, incidentally, he is on the far right - was wearing a speedo and boots) Vern, evidently, was born and raised in Wethersfield but due to "economic and political" circumstances had decided to move to the Black Sea coast of Romania. Whence there he had his car shipped, 10 years prior mind you, and failed to register the car with the Romanian government. Vern began by telling us a bit about his life in Romania, "ahh man this place is paradise, especially that little hippy town you just passed a mile back. The place is heaven, I found it about 8 years ago and I've been spending my summers down here, just everybody hanging out and having fun . . . so many ladies." During this time there were two young boys who were bouncing around the car and when the attention shifted to them Vern introduced us to "these guys, they're my kids and I'm heading home to put them to bed before heading out, well I should show you around, you know take you out, I don't see many folks from CT but I have a date, actually a double date, you know two ladies". Upon the double date clarification, with its requisite wink, the distinct impression began to overtake me that we were looking at a modern day 70's style swinger. Equipped with the requisite hairy gut and back, he fit the bill, only his swinging lifestyle had obviously hit a few bumps, actually two, sitting in the back of his car ready to be put to sleep. A quick examination of Dictionary.com yields a number of definitions for the word "Swinger" but the one that I find most humorous and apropos of Vern and his historical place in Romania is; A person who actively seeks excitement and moves with the latest trends. Romania is most definitely experiencing its fair share of excitement and massive influx of access to the latest of trends. It was fascinating to witness how those changes are evincing themselves. On one hand you have a country of gypsies who live in dirt poor villages straight out of the middle ages (in fact, the Borat village scenes are shot there), horse carts taking up the road (WHICH ARE TINY and are also full of large trucks that are carrying the goods that are partly responsible for the changes) and on the other you have a country that is coming into the EU this year. It all leads to a very odd, disjointed access to and hunger for foreign cultures. Everybody seemed to pick a look and take it to the n'th degree but were perfectly willing to hang out with everybody. As America has had many years for their distinctive individual sub-cultures and looks to solidify, Eastern Europe has not and nowhere was more emblematic of this cultural egalitarianism than in the aforementioned "hippy town" of Vama Vece. After the glowing recommendation of swinging Vern we had to check it out. What we were met with was something akin to the dirt Main Street's of the Old West, only every store was a saloon or beer and liquor laced bodega. What was sold as a hippy town looked, from people to architecture, distinctly like some sort of post apocalyptic Ozz cum Warped Fest. Goths, metal heads, square guys, bohemians, punks everywhere. Where was the summer of love, people with flowers in their hair and freedom from commercial convention? After finding a place to crash, I won't dub it a hotel, although it dubbed itself the "punk hotel", we hit the town. Finding the place initially sadly bizarre we decided to head down to the beach. What we found were huge sound systems, open air bars, hundreds of tents and thousands of people dancing to everything from 50's Chuck Berry to Nine Inch Nails. Literally every major sub-cultural look in America was represented and all of them were hanging out and dancing to Britney, Abba and Queen. There is something strange in watching a pierced and tattooed punk singing his lungs off to Mrs. (I'm sorry, Miss. now) Spears. As the night wore on and we tried to get away from the large mosh pit full of naked hippies, punks and metal heads we found ourselves dancing next to a group of seeming supermodels who began trying to talk to us. We, 4 white guys without one iota of rhythm, are by no means good dancers but must have "had it going on", at least comparatively, to the naked mosh pit guys. As it turned out they were in town for the Romanian Diaspora Beauty Pageant and this was their one night off from pageant festivities. While they seemed younger than us, we thought they were 21, maybe 22 but when one of them said in seeming anticipation of the interview portion of the event, "When I graduate from high school I want to see the world and make it a better place." We decided that after a photo for posterity we should move on. If you're interested, check out the link http://www.missdiaspora.ro/main.htm. We danced with the winner! From there we headed to Bucharest, where I can confidently say I wish to never return. Aside from the second largest building in the world, built by Ceausescu, which took 3 shifts a day of 20,000 workers and 700 architects, 5 years to build, it's a typically crummy communist city filled with little joy. Seriously, no one smiles, it may just be their affect but its makes you want to get out of there as fast as you can and that's what we did.

Having seen what communism has wrought throughout Bulgaria and Romania I can't help but see the striking corollary between the following quote from the great Samuel Johnson and what we witnessed from Bulgaria to the Hungarian border (although I'm told that we just missed the same in Hungary, Czech Republic and Germany). "I look upon it, that he who does not mind his belly, will hardly mind anything else." Having forced the people to suffer through communism they gave them the gut. It, the gut, fueled by bad food and booze, allows them to overlook all else, from the horrific housing and infrastructure to the poverty and alcoholism, the men and women seem comfortable in their skin and their place in the world. As you can see from the accompanying pictures of guts and speedos (sometimes together. YUCK!) there is far to much skin

being shown. For the first time in my life I, or at least my eyes and stomach, were wishing for a little more Christian conservatism or Islamic fundamentalism. Oh the humanity. After the dermal overdose of Bulgaria and Romania it was good to get to the cold and wet weather of Hungary. Budapest is a lovely city that, at this point, is much more Western Europe than Eastern or at least when they're not rioting due to the incompetent, albeit democratically elected government (not unlike a certain other government we know...)

Czech Republic...Where the Beer Was Cheaper Than Water (it's true!)

After picking up Jenna and sending Matt and Scott on their way back to the States, we decided to hightail it to the Czech Republic to begin the beer tour. A few days prior to his flight, Will found a Wall Steet Journal article (I tried to link to it but the cheapskates at WSJ require a password. If you can get it, read it, it's a good article!) about beer tourism in Czech (oddly followed by a different article on the exact. same. subject in the New York Times (who, seemingly, are not as cheap as the Journal) the next week and we figured it wasn't a bad way to see a country. What with beer goggles making most everything else attractive it couldn't be the worst approach to travel. As all we had was a general 1 by 2 inch map of the country with various dots and no roads marked we decided to drive to what looked like the location and begin asking around. Shockingly our first stop, Stramberk, proved quite difficult to find. Evidently Stramberk is the Czech equivalent of Springfield. After debating which one to head to with the wonderful woman at the local tourist office, we struck off to what would prove to be the correct place. What we ended up finding was an absolutely gorgeous little village and the brewery the WSJ author claimed to brew the "best beer [he'd] ever tasted" nestled between steep hills overlooked by a castle tower. After exploring the brewery and its underground stone labyrinth of nooks and crannies we settled in for the first pint on the communal outdoor tables that overlooked the town square. The brewery would indeed prove to hold the best beer any one of us had ever tasted (as beer is highly subjective I am loath to call it the best beer in the world but it's as damn close as you can safely get) and as we settled in for an evening of beer and Boggle (we became addicted to the game) we noticed the locals eying us relentlessly. Evidently the town sees very little tourism and what it does see comes from Poland and Czech Republic. So as we sat in the fading summer sun we struck up a conversation with the highly drunk and boisterous table next to us. They were in town, having ridden their bicycles from the surrounding countryside, some up to 50 km away, to celebrate their friend Vidus's birthday. As the Czech Republic ranks number one in per capita beer consumption at 160 liters for every man, woman and child I sensed that this crew was and would do more of its fair share. As the night wore on and they felt safe that we were anti-Bush they opened up telling us about their impressions of America today and how they contrasted with their impressions before the curtain fell. How they felt Bush was destroying their and the world's perception of America. How different their lives have been since the Velvet Revolution and what an exciting time it is to be Czech or at least that is what I remember before my brain was fully submerged and swimming gloriously in the local brew. As the night wore down one of the guys went off to try and unlock their bikes. After much discussion and laughing they revealed that they had forgotten the code and were therefore preparing to sleep in the park. After laughing about how in the hell you forget the code to the bike lock you've been using for years I suggested that I may be able to cut it with my leatherman, you know, McGyver style. Knowing that the leatherman fears nothing I plunged in headlong. While it wasn't easy I can now say that it is possible to cut a bike lock with a medium sized leatherman. I don't know if that's a compliment to leatherman or a reflection of post-Soviet bike lock manufacturing. As they unevenly and unsafely rode off into the night I prayed for any one of the various Gods to see them home safely. I know that if I had to get on a bike and ride anywhere from 20-50 km I would most assuredly kill myself. The next day we ended up having dinner with Zuzanna (a local fluent in English, living in Rome, doing Czech to Italian translations for the Czech consulate) and her mother who eased our fears by telling us that everyone had gotten home safely.

From there we headed to Prague with its tourist clogged streets, and would suggest visiting out of season. It's as beautiful as they say though if you can deal with the hoards. After a few days we decided we had had enough with city life and headed back to the country or more specifically to a beer spa. That's right, a spa that is based on the healing properties of . . . err, beer. While they offered the usual massages and wraps, the reason people go is for the beer baths. This entails lying in a large metal bathtub full of a stout-like beer while drinking more of the same. It's a kind of internal and external cleansing that sure as hell beats your run of the mill heath club scene. Admittedly, my skin had never felt softer so there must be something to it. Add to this a 12th century fermentation cave turned into a restaurant that serves the most garlicky soup in the world and you have yourself a perfect vacation destination that both sexes can agree on. After our paradigm shifting "de-tox" it was time to re-tox so we headed down to Cesky Krumlov and its Eggenberg brewery. Situated on a large oxbow of the Vltava River, over-looked by a requisite castle, it's one of the most picturesque towns in Europe. Jenna says to make sure and do the tubing. (ha, ha. I nearly was lost forever to the Vltava River. In the rain. it was fun) From here we headed west to Munich for a few days before Jenna and I turned south (back towards work) and Will headed to Copenhagen. Crossing Austria in a hurricane like deluge on constant aquaplane (yeah, the car might look good but isn't the best in the rain) we crossed into Slovenia as the clouds were parting. Due to time constraints and the fact that we couldn't pronounce it, we skipped Ljubljana and instead headed for Bled. Suffice it to say, Bled is all the tour books make it out to be, a picturesque town on a mountain lake with good pizza. At this point we were getting antsy to get to our next destination of Croatia and getting a few days of hiking in before heading back to Istanbul.

Croatia would turn out to be a land of many troubles, from the 20 minute, highly sketchy, closed door interrogation I received at the border for being a "drug smuggler" to the inability of finding a hotel room in Rovinj and subsequent night of NO sleep in an old lady's "extra room", to signs stating "Do Not Enter LAND MINES" along a road to the largest national park, to the car breaking down, we may have been the first people happy to see the Welcome to Serbia sign. We did end up getting some hiking in and it's a beautiful country, I just suggest going out of season as it was a mad house.

Speaking of land mines and other such horrors of war. . . Serbia. What can I say about Serbia, well, it's about as nice as Bucharest. It was fascinating to enter a city only 7 years out from a NATO aerial bombardment. Still having major bombed out city center buildings laying in various states of disrepair, its not your run of the mill vacation spot. Its got a long way to go but you could see rebuilding everywhere, sadly I suppose the people are used to this as the city has been destroyed and rebuilt 40 times in its 2300 year history. Another humorous, very much in hindsight, aspect of Serbia, is the fact that currency exchange businesses at the border don't even take the currency. This proved to be a problem when all we had were Serbian dinars at the Bulgarian border. After telling each and every currency exchange place what I thought of them and their mothers I found and then pleaded with a guy, buying 5 cartons of cigarettes at duty free, heading to Serbia, who was willing to give me 10 euros for 16 euros in dinar. All to pay the Bulgarian border patrol, who only accept euro to "disinfect" my car. Freaking Balkans.

After an all out assault on the Bulgarian motorways, we got to the Turkish border in a few hours. After the uniform brusqueness of the Eastern European border patrol, what would ensue at the Turkish border was a sight to behold. As I have mentioned in previous emails the Turkish people have to be the most hospitable on earth and this story is just the icing on the cake. As the border guard was inspecting our passports I asked him in my broken Turkish where Jenna (cough: illegal) could get a new visa. He pointed us to a booth off to the side and said we could park the car and walk over to it. After rustling up the visa official, who was asleep, we were back to the first booth. After exchanging the usual pleasantries he asked us if we would like to have tea with him. Not being asked this at any of our many other border crossings, we accepted. At this point he left his booth, effectively closing the border, to take us off to the guard shack, to have a drink with he and his coworkers. So as we stood in the no mans land of the Bulgarian-Turkish border, drinking our hot tea, the head lights began to pile up. Jenna and I gave each other a few looks wondering if they noticed or cared. Obviously they didn't because they drank and chatted with us for 20 minutes before returning to their posts, gracious hosts to the end. So here we are back in Istanbul adjusting relatively seamlessly to cohabitation and our respective new jobs. I am teaching younger kids than last year and am enjoying it while Jenna is having a great time with her kids. Who can argue with a job where your coworkers order a bunch of chicken wings so that you can bury them in the garden and the kids can dig them up as archaeologists. I hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving and have a little turkey for me (surprisingly its very hard to get here). Chris

2006-11-23T01:11:00.001-08:00

Happy Turkey Day to everyone at home! We wish we could be there. Eat lots of Turkey and get sleepy for us, as we can find no Turkey here. Ironic, isn't it? Sending some holiday cheer from us to you....

2006-11-05T10:36:00.000-08:00

In my day, we had to walk from Asia to Europe. Sometimes in a snowstorm!

This was an interesting weekend....I left for work on Saturday morning in a snowstorm. You can't see the evidence very well in this photo, but I tried my best. It's only November, but the storm lasted all day, and while barely any of the snow remained on the ground, it still looked and felt like a blizzard...

This was mildly disturbing for several reasons (like the fact that my winter coat is sitting snugly in a closet in a sleepy Connecticut town or the fact that it's only NOVEMBER!), but it was mainly disturbing because we were supposed to participate in the Istanbul marathon the next morning, and there was no chance I'd go if it was snowing!

*Luckily* when we woke up this morning (unrelated but notable...after a big win at poker night last night - up 60 lira, collectively between us! It definitely saved us face after a disheartening loss in our last poker night) it was to a beautiful sunny, albeit freezing, day for the marathon. Chris was quite impressive, waking up at 7am to run a 15k starting with the above-mentioned dash across the bridge from Asia to Europe (the one day a year that the bridge is open to pedestrians). I was slightly less impressive, but still managed to walk a 10k, a little later that morning (and with a simit stop midway, with some other teachers. Here are some pics (unfortunately, I have none of Chris, since I was sound asleep while he was racing across the continents)...

Here is the start of the marathon (obviously) on the bridge over the Bosphorus... As I learned today, most of the Turks just use the opportunity to walk across the bridge and then turn around and walk back.

Welcome to Europe:

There was an anti-smoking campaign going on today, but the only (and I'm not exaggerating) sign of it was this odd-looking sad/angry cigarette standing on the side of the bridge. All on it's own. It was very strange and confusing.

2006-10-16T06:28:00.000-07:00

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...

2006-10-04T00:48:00.000-07:00

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!

2006-10-04T00:24:00.000-07:00

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?

2006-09-15T03:38:00.000-07:00

Back to Work!

I have been busy getting started at my new job, which is why I haven't updated this site in a while. You know, busy playing with pre-schoolers computer games, researching ideas for great crafts and science activities for aforementioned pre-schoolers, before they arrive next week. Quite a difference from my last job!

In my research, I came across this great site: www.jacksonpollock.org - Check it out, but I'll warn you, you might become addicted!

I'll try to update some posts soon!

Oh, all of my photos from the summer are now here, feel free to look, and I'll update as soon as I can!

2006-09-01T04:13:00.000-07:00

One of the best things about my family's visit is the fact that everyone found a little love...

Maryn was eyed by more Turkish men than defensless countries during the reign of the Ottoman Empire. She got her first marriage proposal from none other than Marco, our carpet seller in Selcuk.

He gave her a lovely bracelet to remember him by,

And even took her on a Magic Carpet Ride!

I know this suitor seems a little old, and well, stiff. But I can assure you he had a GREAT personality!

After we finished our coastal travels and returned to Istanbul, Maryn (well, her father, if we're being technical about it) was offered many camels for her hand in marriage, by a few different men, including an apprentice of Huseyin's (see below) and a textile merchant about whom we haven't entirely made up our minds, but by far the most eligible bachelor was one Roger Stubbs, father of Peter, teller of great tales, and offerer of many, many camels!

Roger, Maryn or no Maryn, let's hang out again soon!

2006-09-01T04:01:00.000-07:00

Mom, still quite a looker at the ripe young age of 45, had many many gentleman callers of her own. Including, this guy:

This guy:

And our favorite, Amigo:

2006-09-01T03:56:00.000-07:00

Not one to be outdone, dad found some "friends" of his own..

This is the famous Huseyin, seller of many carpets to my parents, boss of one of Maryn's many suitors and all around good guy...

In the end, though, none of these suitors was fine enough for my father's taste, so he took his fake Louis bag, strolled away...

... and said:

2006-09-01T03:33:00.000-07:00

Here are a couple of pictures from our day on the boat.

This is us relaxing in one of the coves we stopped in for some swimming...

Maryn, Chris and I with our fearless Captain

2006-09-01T03:29:00.000-07:00

Genuine Fakes! I'm still not sure exactly what it means...

Maryn shopping for some Genuine Fakes!

2006-09-01T01:11:00.000-07:00

Bodrum

After we left Jesse's group and, the next day, Chris' parents, Chris and I took the next two days to get from Antalya, where we left the group, to go to Bodrum to meet my family. After a couple of days traveling on a bus, and excited to see my family, I was more than thrilled to find that the hotel I had booked us in, the Munahan, was as fabulous as it looked on their website. This is a photo of it from their roofdeck:
Unfortunately, one of the rooms we had reserved was double booked, so the put my parents in a suite at no extra cost...It was a rough day :)

The pool at the hotel was amazing, rather than being concrete, it looked as though it was a pond, with rocks as the edges. As we lay on the chaise lounges next to the pool, the people who worked at the hotel made sure we had constantly filled places of ice cold fruit (see, the fruit thing never ends!) and bottles of water. The Turkish breakfast is always a variation on the same theme: Bread, cheese, honey, butter, olives, tomatoes, and either coffee or tea. You wouldn't think it could vary too much, but at the Munahan, it was superb. The bread toasted just right, enough variety with the cheese, and the added touch of walnuts, which were great drizzled with honey.

Not to rave toooo much about the hotel, but the owners also were able to set us up with everything we needed, including a fish dinner literally ON the water. In the photo of us at the dinner table, our table and chairs are in the sand. The name of the restaurant was Balkci.com.tr, which I thought was odd, but the food was fantastic, and as the Munahan owner (a friend of the restaurant owner) called and requested, they treated us like royalty. The hotel owner also booked us on a sailing trip around Bodrum for the next day. Bodrum is a huge party town and there are tons of 'party boats' that will take you out, but you are like one of a pile of ants loaded onto these boats. Knowing my parents wouldn't be too fond of that, we were able to get onto this little (pretty run down looking) boat with our Captain (Osman, i think) which was also a music composer and gave us all cassette tapes of his music to take home. At the end of the trip, when I asked my parents and Maryn about their favorite experience, they all mentioned this day on the boat. Maryn was also a big fan of Bodrum because it seems as though the town specialty is knockoff bags and watches. She bought a Gucci fake the first night we were there, and a few more after that! I have a great picture of how they advertise these "genuine fakes" but I'll have to put it in the next post.

This sunset was seen from the roofdeck at the Munahan.

Below: The same evening...The same roofdeck.

2006-09-01T00:03:00.000-07:00

This was our blue cruise boat. Where you can see everyone sitting on the back (the stern?) is where we would eat our meals, play cards, etc. At the bow, underneath the blue awning is where we slept. There were some individual cabins, but it ended up being so much nicer on deck that nearly everyone stayed up there. It was covered in the mattresses that you use on a chaise lounge, and they were all strapped down to the boat so they wouldn't fly away. The boat was nearly perfect. The only negative was that, although it looks like a sailboat, there were no sails and we motored to every place we visited. OH...the other negative was that, if you were in the bathroom (head) of one of these cabins, and the cabin door was open, you would get locked in the head. This happened to me. Twice. It was scary and just a little embarrassing...I'm on a boat with a bunch of people I barely know, and my boyfriend's parents. And I'm sticking, first my arm, and then managed to find a way to sneak my head out just the right way (yes, fearing it would get stuck), from the tiny window in the bathroom, trying desparately to get someone's attention to get me out. Ahhh, boats.

Unfortunately, I didn't take a lot of photographs on the boat, because there were so many people with cameras. The few photos I have are here. There is also this Shutterfly page on which all of the people on our trip posted their photos. The photos here aren't just of the blue cruise, because everyone was here for longer than that, but if you go toward the end of anyone's album, you'll see pictures from the amazing trip!

2006-08-31T00:30:00.000-07:00

It's about 10:20 am here and I'm sitting here with a (nearly) full cup of coffee, ready to start updating about the last 2 months...

After showing Chris' parents around Istanbul, we joined up with our friend Jesse's family and friends to form a group of about 20 people and we went off to Cappadocia and then to the Mediterranean Coast for a Turkish Blue Cruise (note: the link isn't for the company we used, but I can't remember their name)

We left Istanbul and flew into Kayseri, which is known for their rug production, and drove straight through to Urgup, to our cave hotel in the heart of Cappadocia. We stayed at the Gamirasu Cave Hotel, which ended up being one of the best hotel experiences I have had. There is something about the hospitality of the Turks that is unrivaled in any country I have visited. Our group of 20 Americans arrived at the hotel at about midnight. We didn't plan enough in advance to have dinner before we arrived and were all starving once we set down our bags. We asked the manager, a really nice young woman who was about to start her first year teaching English in the area, where we could get a bite to eat. Being pretty much in the middle of nowhere, our only option was to walk to the small market into town and buy some bags of chips and sodas. As she thought about it some more she said, 'Well, I can ask the shopkeeper to bring a basket of some items here and you can just pay for what you'd like'. We thought that would be a great idea, but she decided it just wasn't good enough. "Actually," she said, "I won't be able to sleep knowing you're all here hungry." So, although she was just waiting for us to arrive, to head home for the evening, she opened up the darkened dining room, set 20 places and, though she wasn't a waitress or a chef, heated up some amazing soup from the kitchen and served us all soup and bread. And with a smile on her face the whole time. It was amazing! I don't have any gread pictures of the hotel interior, but the rooms are all dug into the rock, like the caves that litter the whole area of the country. The website pictures are better than anything I have.

Cappadocia is one of those places that you just have to see to believe, it literally looks like you're on another planet. Here is one of my favorite pictures:

The rest of the pictures are here...

When we finished exploring caves in Cappadocia, we hopped on a minibus for a fabulous overnight drive to the coast to get onto our Blue Cruise. There were some issues with our boat being ready, but mid-afternoon the next day, we were aboard our boat filled with Turkish food, beer, wine and a crew to prepare it all for us! The next few days would be filled with lounging, eating drinking, reading, snorkeling and taking in the Mediterranean coastline.

I'm off to rifle through the packages that Chris just brought in from the school mailbox (Thank you mom and dad, Tanya and Tom and Rebecca!!) and will write more in a bit!

2006-08-29T23:34:00.000-07:00

We're Baaaack...

After a long, and incredible but tiring summer, we've arrived home in Istanbul last night. I am going to work on putting up some pics etc of our trips before I start work. In 5 days. And on my birthday! :( But Chris and I have hit somewhere over 10 countries this summer, between the two of us, and there's a lot to write about so it may take a little while. In the meanwhile, check out our friend Scott's blog of his trip through Turkey with Chris, while I try to figure out how he did that map thing!

2006-08-03T02:54:00.000-07:00

Buyukada

After we had a great few days exploring Istanbul with Chris' parents, we decided to go off the beaten path (sort of...) and hit one of the Princes' Islands. They are a group of islands right off of Istanbul and the city ferries make a few trips to the islands each day. Despite our reading the ferry schedule wrong and missing the first one we wanted (seemed to be a theme of the trip, unfortunately...More on that later) we ended up driving a ways to another Iskele (Turkish word for ferry launch) to get over to the largest island, Buyukada (Buyuk in Turkish is Big and Ada is Island)

The islands are unique in that no cars are allowed. Of course being that we're in Turkey, the land where rules don't apply, this meant "No cars are allowed. Except for some. Sometimes. So don't expect to not worry about getting run over." Regardless, it was gorgeous. Comparisons were made to Charlston and to Bermuda. Huge, old, waterview mansions with amazing, fragrant flowers were seen at every step of our walk. We decided, despite the close to triple digit temps, to walk to the Monastery of St. George, which was up a long and steep hill. Chris thought it was fun, but his parents and I were a little skeptical. Here are the Emerson's at about 1/2 way up...

At the top, we started talking to a group of kids who had also climbed the hill. It turned out that they (with the exception of a friend visiting from Columbia, i think) were all Turkish and were former students at Chris' school. They had all just graduated from college, most in the states and one in Ankara. It was really interesting to chat with them all. This is the whole group of us at the monastery.

After chatting for awhile, we realized we were going to miss our ferry off the island, so we took a horse and carriage ride back to the Iskele. Unfortunately Chris had an awful allergic reaction and was sneezing and tearing up the whole time! But we did make it back just in time for the ferry home...

2006-08-02T07:59:00.000-07:00

Another stop on our sightseeing tour was the Dolmabahce Palace, which I found to be the least interesting of all of the different sights we hit. The funniest/worst part was that they made you wear these elf shoe shaped shower caps on your feet while walking through the house. They were hot and made your feet really sweat AND i'm pretty sure they were recycled :(

2006-08-02T07:57:00.000-07:00

We did so much sightseeing that it's tough to remember everything we saw but this was definitely a highlight - we had snacks and drinks at the Ciragan Palace, which is this super fancy hotel (literally a can of Coke was around $10...) and it's here that we saw one of these "only in Turkey" moments - At the pool at the Ciragan, which is crawling with women in bikinis, we saw this poor woman, fully covered in all black (on an incredibly hot day, I have to mention!) running around after her children...

2006-08-02T07:54:00.000-07:00

Our first set of visitors were the Emersons. We started out in Istanbul with the full Istanbul tour with them and here's a picture at our Monday market...

2006-08-02T06:09:00.000-07:00

Wow, I have been so terrible at updating this! My (very good, i think...) excuse is that I've been away for the majority of the past month or so. I have been trying to think of the best way to update everything and I think I'll try to start from the beginning. Hopefully I won't leave too much out, but it's already starting to blend together. I just got back from Spain last night and today I kept saying things like "Gracias" and "Si" to the poor man who was trying to sell me hummus!

2006-06-27T00:44:00.000-07:00

Tour Guides...

This weekend began the beginning of our visitor extravaganza, and we leave in a few days for two weeks in Cappodocia, the Mediterranean and the Aegean, so I'll probably not have computer access very often.

We've had a great time so far showing Chris' parents around on their first trip to Istanbul. We've seen some sights, relaxed and shopped, but the highlight came last night when, after a chance stop into a rug shop, we peered into the proprieter's garden around the corner from the shop. As tends to happen in Turkey, he invited us to join him and his friends for a barbeque dinner. The other guests ended up being a famous Turkish movie star, a Turk who's lived in NY for the past 20 years and just returned for a visit that night, and several beautiful women who worked in Government. It very much seemed like the 'cultured elite' of Istanbul, and they treated us to lively conversation, amazing food, lots of drinks in this gorgeous garden with a view of the minarets of the Blue Mosque, and even paid for our taxi home!

It was an unplanned, magical evening!

2006-06-22T07:30:00.000-07:00

Fruit, fruit everywhere....

Today I realized the one thing I dislike about the city: People are forever offering you fruit. And it's rude not to take it. Now I realize that this would be a positive for most people. Even I find the fruit allllllmost tempting here, it's so colorful and fresh, but not tempting enough. Since I've arrived, I've been given the following from vendors or just so-called nice people:

5 cherries
2 apricots
2 dried apricots
1 unidentified fruit off of a tree in the yard of a church
I'm sure there are more that I've tried to block out

As a point of comparison, so far I have been given the following non-fruit items:

0 pastries
0 cheeses
0 simits (like giant bagels)
0 isla cakes (yummy chocolate cakes)

2006-06-20T23:36:00.000-07:00

The above picture (of our new trivet), should give you a great idea of my day yesterday...

I met up with Rob and Lauren, my friends who are traveling around the world this year, and their Turkish friend Tefik, to go to this hamam. I was a little nervous (Chris' cautionary tale of his friend who actually "bled" from the scrubbing had it's desired effect) but excited for what I hoped would be a day of pampering. What we ended up with was very interesting....

When we paid at the door, we each got a little scrubbing mitt and a few things that look like rectangular poker chips, each one designating a service we'd paid for (scrub, massage and clay mask for me). We split up (men in one part of the hamam and women in the other) and we went into the locker room to change into a very thin towel/sheet type thing. We then went into the heating room - a large, all marble, room, with a raised marble slab taking over the middle of the room. Unsure of what to do next, lauren and I approaced two of the low sinks with copper bowls floating in them around the edges of the room, and started to rinse off with the hot water. We then followed suit of the other people in the room, and lay on the big marble slab in the middle of the room. Suddenly, a woman with the largest, untethered breasts i have ever seen, wearing nothing but underwear walks in. She points at me and waves me over to her. Hmm, I think. This is the woman who's going to give me my scrubdown? Yes, it was. And you get absolutely, truly bathed. It was really relaxing, and cool to see scores of skin falling off of your body, but slightly less cool when she was grabbing and scrubbing my arm and it kept bumping into her ... stuff. Anyway, after the scrub, she had a bucket of incredibly sudsy soap bubbles and cleaned me with that. Then, to really bring you back to age 3, i was taken into another room, where she washed. my. hair! After all of that was done, I was led back out into a sort of waiting room, for the 'hot oil massage' - This ended up being fantastic and done by a woman who was actually clothed! All in all, a great day, but definitely something you couldn't find in the states. Well, at least something I wouldn't have found in the states!

2006-06-20T00:41:00.000-07:00

The below posts are all from the Monday market, which takes place weekly outside of the apartment. As you can see, it's chaotic, crowded and very colorful. Lots of fun!!
It's not a tourist area at all, so when the shopkeepers saw my camera, they all wanted their picture taken...

This is one of the artichoke heart sellers. These vendors spend all day cutting the heart away from the rest of the artichoke so they end up as the disks you see below...

This is my favorite area, the refrigerated mobile cheese truck....

and it's purveyor...

2006-06-20T00:39:00.000-07:00

Pictures from the market...

2006-06-20T00:35:00.000-07:00

More pictures from the Monday market:

2006-06-19T00:01:00.000-07:00

This weekend was gorgeous! Friday night Chris and I hosted our first dinner party, which I think went quite well! I actually cooked(!) this! And it was actually tasty! Then Saturday we went all around Sultanhamet, which is the touristy area of Istanbul. We visited a couple of carpet salesmen who Chris and his friends know quite well. One of them, Ibrahim (from whom I bought a great ring! He doesn't just sell carpets...) was kind enough to drive us out a ways to one of his favorite restaurants. We had a huge, delicious meal, before heading back into town for some beers and World Cup viewing. It was later that evening that we met up with my friend Robert, who's travelling around the world for a year, and has been in Turkey for a couple of weeks. Unfortunately, I have no pictures of this day, as I thought my camera had been stolen. Imagine my surprise when it turned up in Chris' car. Oops.

Sunday, we went rock climbing here:
It was really warm and so nice to get out of the city!

This is Chris' friend Natalie who came climbing with us...

Here's a picture of Chris, almost at the top of the rock he was climbing... When I tried, I got about as far as.....

Here.

But I didn't mind, because I got to look at this all day!

Today's Monday, my favorite day of the week due to the Monday market! I'll venture out in a little while, with my non-existent Turkish (these days I find it easiest to use "Turkce yok", the Turkish equivalent of "No English") so we'll see what kind of wares I'll bring home!

2006-06-16T02:53:00.000-07:00

I nearly forgot...this is our bookshelf - All organized with our travel guides up top - If you come to visit, you'll have no problems getting around. And if you look very closely, you can see Chris and his friend Doug are posing in that photo with none other than Willie Nelson!

Also please note our 'game box' on the bottom shelf. I've been told it's lame, but I love it!

2006-06-16T02:43:00.000-07:00

Here are some pics of our apartment...They're a bit dark, but you get the idea!
This is our living room/dining room. Note the beautiful flower left for us by one of Chris' very nice coworkers!

This is our living room/kitchen area...

View from the living room- the pole in front is going to be a streetlight, apparently - the tower behind it is beautiful at night. It is just out this front door that there is an amazing market on Mondays! Miles of fresh produce, cheeses, household goods, clothing etc. I'll take some photos of it next week!

Bedroom and guestroom: This side of the apartment overlooks the campus...

2006-06-12T05:29:00.000-07:00

These are the rest of the pics from before...5th Floor (note the beaded curtains) and the cute kittens...

2006-06-12T05:15:00.000-07:00

It's been close to a week since I've arrived in Istanbul but we've done so much, it definitely feels like a lot more! After settling in to the apartment and unpacking, Chris' brother Alex and his girlfriend Jane arrived back in Istanbul after a trip down south to the Mediterranean.Since Chris was working, I got to play tour guide for the day and went with Alex and Jane to the Grand Bazaar (largest, oldest ... i assume ... shopping mall in the world!) and then to the Cistern, an enormous underground place that held all the water for the city, centuries ago and was only uncovered in the last 50 or so years!
After that, Chris met us and we hit Topkapi Palace, where the Ottoman Empire Sultans lived - it was amazingly beautiful. The treasures these sultans had were unbelievable - Giant jewels, 50 karat diamonds, solid gold flasks, mother of pearl thrones...It wasn't hard to belive that they had this much money, after seeing that the palace cafe was trying to sell us cans of Coke for 5 lira apiece (about $4.50) but at least it had a great view!
After our palace tour, we strolled around and did some browsing in the souvenier shops and then watched some of the World Cup in a fun little bar. Chris took us all for a great dinner at 5th Floor restaurant, which was delicious and rekindled my love of the beaded curtain!

Other than that touristy day, I've been trying to get settled with lots of help from Chris. Trying to find my way around and get acquainted with the neighborhood. Our apartment building is attached to Chris' campus and there are the cutest kittens out back...I think I posted a picture of them!

I haven't quite gotten the hang of posting everything yet, so the photos might come up separately than these descriptions. But i'll work on making it more user friendly :)

2006-06-12T05:05:00.000-07:00

2006-05-26T05:33:00.000-07:00

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