Waiting for School to Start

We haven't done much over the weekend. Friday night a few of us went to a bar near the fish market off of Istiklal. It was a lot of fun. We went to the top floor, which will be great during spring, because the whole roof is just an awning that folds back. Our group hunkered down in a cozy corner booth with 4 lira beers- a pretty good price for Istanbul. After about an hour a group of twenty or so people came in and moved all the tables out and the dancing began. The music was mostly American songs from the 1990s, but they still had decent beats.

When I got home I called Walker to see how his flights had gone. He said they went well, but the ride to the airport was quite an adventure. He and a British man were the only passengers on the shuttle to the airport. About a mile away they came to backed up traffic and tons of people in the streets waving flags (Turkish and one they didn't recognize). A man knocked on the door and he and the bus driver spoke in raised voices for a bit. Then the bus driver told them they would have to walk the rest of the way! So, Walker and the British man got out and started maneuvering their luggage through the mob of people. They got to the airport alright, just a little shaken. When Walker got to Atlanta and was able to use the internet he found that the people were awaiting the return of the Turkish Prime Minister who had been at an international debate in Davos; the other flag being waved was the Palestinian flag. You can read the whole scoop here.

Saturday Tarik came to visit. We all sat in Nadim's large room down stairs and drank tea while Tarik gave us an update on what we would be doing this semester. We'll be split between two studios: Tarik's and another Turkish professor's. Tarik's studio will be a vertical studio; it will have all of the I.M.I.A.D. grad students in it, us (fourth year students), and third year students. I'm not sure if the other professor is doing a vertical studio as well. We'll be going to Mardin at the end of February, where three potential sites for our project are. I'll know more about it all tomorrow. We go to campus tomorrow morning to get introduced to everything, but after that studio will be held in the afternoons on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays.

Saturday evening I went out with Christine, Nick, and Tula (one of our Finnish apartment-mates) to find a large supermarket Nadim had said was about 15 km down the road. We walked for a long time, never finding the market, and decided to stop and eat at an Italian restaurant. Tula and I had tasty spinach and mushroom omelets. Most of our group headed back to the bar last night, but I decided to stay in and try to get on a good sleep schedule. I watched the first episode of the series Durham County, a Canadian TV show that was on TNT. It's about a homicide detective and his family who move to a new town across the street from a murderer and his family. It was pretty eerie.

Nothing has gone on today. I've been doing laundry, and we watched the movie Pineapple Express on someone's laptop. A few of us just got back from an Italian place down the street. I got spaghetti with cream sauce, which turned out to be mostly olive oil and pretty tasteless. Oh well. Time for me to get my laundry out of the dryer and get ready for bed!