A Snowy Night in Istanbul

The party went well Saturday night. Halil, a Turkish I.T.U. student who is head of the Erasmus (international student) program, brought several French students over who are going to school here this semester as well. I put out some of my Tzatziki sauce and it was a big hit! :)

Sunday was spent in hibernation for most people. I didn't do too much. A little school work and a little relaxing.

This morning I went to studio around 9 am to work on my project. First thing, I went to the copy room to get copies of the floor plans I'm working from. At I.T.U. students have to pay each time they want to make a copy or print something off. At Auburn we have a ridiculous Professional Fee that we must pay in addition to tuition, allowing us to make unlimited copies/prints for the year. I arrived in the copy center with a few girls in line ahead of me. One student was working the copy machines. After the other girls left, I told the guy I wanted 5 copies (beş kopi). He replied with a string of Turkish words. All I could discern was "dört" (four), so I thought maybe there was a four copy limit, smiled, and nodded my head as I said "dört". He made a few copies, each time they were extremely zoomed-in and went off the page. I thought maybe he was new and wasn't sure how to do the settings correctly. Then he said another sentence in Turkish. I told him I knew very little Turkish (çok az Turkçe biliyorum). He sort of looked exasperated then kept repeating the same sentence, slightly differently each time. I just shook my head, and he looked annoyed. Eventually a girl came in who spoke English. She said to me "You cannot blow it up 5 times because it will be too big." Finally understanding, I replied, "Oh, no, I just wanted 5 copies of each." She explained it in Turkish to the guy who rolled his eyes as another worker walked up and made my copies for me. I hurriedly paid and left. They kindly did not charge me for the first blown-up versions.

I finally returned to studio and worked for the rest of the morning on diagrammatic floor plans. I ate the lunch I packed just before studio began. My professor seemed to really like my wine and cheese showcase idea. We travel to Mardin next Thursday, and he wants us to do as much work as possible before that so that we have plenty of questions that can be answered on the site visit. So, I have a lot of work to do for Thursday's class. I feel good about this project though.

After class, Christine and I went to the market in the Kanyon mall. I loaded up on these tiny marshmallow puff cookies I tried the other day. It's a cookie with a marshmallow on top, covered in either chocolate sprinkles or coconut. I love them!

Just a little bit ago, Casey came up to the apartment to let us know that it was SNOWING! We all stood outside enjoying the snow and taking pictures. The people inside the shop across from us were laughing at us all outside dancing in the snow and huddled on the sidewalk. I got a few pictures. The flakes were large!