After sleeping the morning away on Tuesday, I awoke feeling better but still not at 100%. The rest of the day was spent recovering, catching up on blogging, and planning out what all needed to be done for my project on women’s dress in contemporary Turkey with Kristina. That night we had a delicious pasta supper cooked by Edward and Kristina, which worked great on my stomach.
The next morning, Kristina accompanied me to buy a painting from the artist we stumbled upon in Sultanahmet a few weeks ago and to ask the woman if she would allow us to interview her for our project. After looking through a number of paintings of Istanbul, I settled on the perfect one, which I can’t wait to get home and frame. Once I paid, we ventured in asking the young woman for an interview. With a bit of difficulty getting lost in translation, we settled to come back later in the day with, of course, our handy translator Yekta.
We looked around at some hotels for Kristina to stay in with her boyfriend and then rushed back up to Prof. Sarah and William’s flat for a group discussion. We reviewed our two-week adventure and talked about our projects.
Then it was back to our own flat for some R&R until Yekta finished up helping Clayton and Edward get their “Turkish haircuts.” We headed out around 4:00 p.m. and with Yekta’s help had a great interview with Elif, the artist. Elif wears a headscarf, but not for traditional Islamic reasons. She gave us a lot of things to ponder over, such as the fact that she takes off her headscarf whenever she goes to art shows because of other people’s judgment. We also found out her whole family paints and her father is a pretty famous artist in Istanbul. The painting I actually bought was done by her brother.
Then Kristina and I wondered around checking out hotels, getting lost deep in the Sultanahmet neighborhood. In the process we got shot at with water guns by little boys…somebody didn’t teach their children any manners. Eventually we emerged unscathed and made it back to the flat by about the time night fell.
Thursday was a pretty big day. We had an appointment at the American consulate at 3:00. We walked, took a metro, a dolmus, and a taxi to get there. I think we thoroughly impressed the people at the consulate with our traveling abilities. The consulate is a relatively new building; it had previously been pretty close to us in Beyoglu, but they decided to make it a bit more inaccessible.
The consulate literally now looks like a fortress on a hill with walls that surround its grounds. It illicits mix feelings – one, it’s obviously secluded and standoffish; two, I’m happy it looks pretty impenetrable.
We had quite an in-depth discussion with the people at the consulate. They essentially told us not to repeat what they said as we asked questions on the AKP, American-Turkish relations, and other such things. It was interesting and I think we made a good impression. Afterwards, it was back to the flat to do some work.
Friday was all about the 4th of the July and the party we were hosting. Unfortunately, most of our guests, professors and other such people who have helped us while in Turkey could not make it, but we were not going to let that deter our spirit. After all, our Social Chairs (Amanda and Edward) had carefully planned the event down to dividing us into subcommittees to prepare for it. Meat and Cheese subcommittee for said party (Clayton and I) had potentially the hardest task of all – finding good cheese and something that resembles ground beef. With our skills though, we managed to obtain both. Victorious, we returned to the flat, where it was back to work on various things that needed to be done for our program.
Later, Kristina and I headed to Kanyon Mall, a great postmodern structure with numerous stores in an already ritzy area of town. We were originally going to be interviewing a woman there for our project, but she had to cancel and we decided we wanted to check it out anyway. After browsing around, figuring out how to use Turkish payphones, and enjoying a chocolate-chip cookie, we figured we needed to head on back because both of us were on food prep for the party.
Knife in hand, I cut apples and watermelon without managing to injure myself, and I carefully crafted our mystery meat into burger patties. We had a pleasant party with sparklers included and spotted some fireworks in the distance. We also met a Bogazci University student who would be studying at UNC in the fall.
On Saturday I woke up with a sense of finality. I still had two days left, but time was quickly slipping away.
Kristina and I conducted another interview and then headed back to the flat to due some work for the program. That night was my last real night in Istanbul, so I was up for a little celebration. We went back to our old haunt that Murat, our neighbor before he mysteriously disappeared, took us too our first week. Of course, a little dancing was included even though some of the group left for various reasons.
Waking up Sunday was bittersweet for obvious reasons. We met Prof Sarah and William at the Byzantine basilica cistern for once last touristy thing and then took a boat up the Bosphorus where we held our last group discussion. That afternoon, after a short nap and packing, I managed to find the Nadal-Federer Wimbledon final (now considered epic – go Rafa!) on TV and lingered over it before getting ready for supper that night.
Prof Sarah and William were taking us to a pretty famous restaurant for our last meal together. The food was delicious, but the company was even better. Our Turkish teacher, Hande came with us as well. We relived a lot of stories and ate way too much, but as all things this past week, time passed by way too quickly. Prof Sarah and William each presented us a gift, finding the perfect thing for each of us – a Galatasaray football jersey for me – and quite a number of toasts were given.
That night, once arriving back to the flat, we had a special treat. All throughout our stay, there has been singing and one of our favorite songs to sing together was “Be A Man” from Disney’s Mulan. Though we didn’t have the DVD for it, Kevin managed to download it online and we all gathered around his laptop to watch it. A nice way to put an exclamation point on the end of our trip.
Then came the goodbyes. Kevin and Zoe were first to leave as they had a 5:30 a.m. flight. Kelly and I said our goodbyes to the boys as neither of us expected to see them tomorrow morning when we left.
Kelly woke me up this morning as she headed out the door and now, I’m preparing to leave in just a few minutes. My flight from the airport is at 12:30 p.m., not all that of a bad time, but, of course, I feel the need to leave four hours ahead of time.
Expect one more blogpost soon on reflections and whatnot. Nostalgia and hilarity will ensue.
