Bulgaria Trip

Well last week Eleanor and I had a much deserved vacation. We took five days and shot off to Sofia, Bulgaria. Well, it was really only three days vacationing because all day Monday and all day Friday were taken up by the 10 hour bus ride - but it was fairly comfortable and only cost 80TL round-trip.

We did lots of cool stuff: visited the Rila Monastery in the mountains near Sofia, went to an awesome Indian restaurant, went to a great bar, drank lots of good beer, ate at lots of other good restaurants, saw the archaeology museum which had some awesome Thracian treasures - including a gold burial mask, went to the Nevsky Memorial Cathedral, visited the ancient Boyana Church, took a 30 minute gondola ride up the Mt. Vitosha. Yeah, lots of cool stuff. We even went to the Mall of Sofia and saw Alice in Wonderland in 3-D. They also had a supermarket where we could buy some Belgian beer. Mmm. I also enjoyed a Cuban cigar and some fine Bulgarian wine.

While we were visiting one of the churches they had an orthodox Christian baptism ceremony, which involved three members of the clergy, lots of singing from them, and some chanting from a choir hidden somewhere in the back. We also visited the only mosque in Sofia, since we don't get enough of those here in Istanbul, and visited a beautiful synagogue with a 2 ton chandelier.

Eleanor managed to find out about this free concert on the internet, which was on Thursday night at a enormous concert hall. It turned out to be a bunch of community members who were putting on the show, a bunch of amateur groups. It was laid back and really fun - the audience was mostly made up of the friends and family of the performers. There were tons of acts and it went on for three hours. It started with some ballet and little kids dancing and singing. In the middle there were some older kids 12-17 singing American pop songs karaoke-style while other teenagers did some dancing in the background: very strange. We almost left at one point, but then the last 40 minutes turned out to be a bunch of Bulgarian dancing and singing complete with traditional outfits, so we were glad we stuck around. At the end, the lights came on, the whole crowd stood up, and a professional opera singer led the whole crowd in singing the Bulgarian national anthem. Quite a slice of Sofian life.

Here are some pics (if you click on them they should send you to our Flickr photo stream where we have lots more pictures and even a 1-2 minute video of some great Bulgarian dancing!):


Traditional Bulgarian dancers.


Mt. Vitosha from the gondola.


At the Rila Monastery.


Eleanor is passing through a hole in the roof of a cave where St. Rila (Bulgaria's most revered saint) once lived. It's said that if you go through the hole you'll be cleansed of all your sins.

A Running Tour

Wow, I can't believe it's been so long since our last post! A lot has happened, but I won't try to catch you up all at once. Eleanor's position at her school has changed a lot and now she's also teaching high school freshman half time. I'll let her tell y'all about that stuff later.

I'm planning a trip to Bulgaria at the end of this month. A short trip: just five days in Sofia, the capital. It has lots of nice parks and I'm hoping to do some jogging to explore.

We also have some friends coming to visit next week! Shelby and her boyfriend Andy. They'll be staying with us in our apartment for about a week and we're very excited to share our new home with them.

I've also started training for the Copenhagen Marathon, which is on May 23rd. Last week during a beautiful sunny day, I took my camera with me and stopped to take a bunch of pictures - it was a very slow run! This is a route that I run twice a week, sometimes more. I put all the pictures in our photostream on flickr, so if you want to see more hopefully you can just click on one and it'll take you there. It's a nice running route - it takes me over the Ataturk Bridge (which goes across the Golden Horn) and then I run up the shore of the Golden Horn. It goes pretty far inland. Hope you enjoy!


These are some people fishing off the Ataturk Bridge. When the set their poles down to put on new bait, I sometimes have to do hurdles!


These are some boats docked on the shore of the Golden Horn and an early blossom!


A picture of my nice running path through some parks. To the right side you can see some Turkish people using the strange exercise machines that are in all the parks here.


This is on the bridge with a mosque in the background. Next to the minaret you can see the Galata Tower sticking out - which is, of course, right next to our apartment.

More blog posts to come, we promise!
-Mike

Snow!

So it's still been snowing here in Istanbul. On Saturday we got 2-3 inches that stuck on the ground and my classes were cancelled for the weekend. A bit melted on Sunday, but there was still plenty. Today it's snowing even more! It's crazy, and very beautiful.

We've occasionally had to deal with blackouts. İsmail tells me this is because everyone has electric heaters so when it gets cold people crank them up. We had three blackouts in two days. They only lasted an hour to each time. So we had some candlelit hearts games and wine, and got to know each other better. Kar çok seviyorum çünkü o güzel, ve çünkü şimdi sokaklar konuşmuyor.

Last night I wandered around a little taking pictures. There were only a few cars and people on the streets. I was blown away, since Istanbul is normally so crowded. It was wonderfully quiet. You can click on either of these pictures to bring you to our flickr page, where there are 20 more. The video is of the Blue Mosque during the last call to prayer (adhan) of the night. We also have some new roomates: a Spanish guy and a French girl, so Eleanor can brush up on her Spanish and je peux pratiquer le français avec elle.

A Lovely Cold Day

Yesterday we visited Ortaköy and Yıldız Park. Ortaköy is a cute little neighborhood near the Bosphorus. We found a nice spot in a plaza by the Büyük Mecidiye Cami (a mosque built in 1855 - you can see the Western influenced architecture). We watched large ships go by (some over 100 meters) and sketched the view of the Atatürk Bridge.

It had snowed the night before, so when walked up Yıldız Park - which starts at sea level and then goes up a few hundred feet - there was still some snow at the top, as well as a lovely fountain and some swanky tea houses. The tea houses were closed since it was so cold, but it was nice to walk around the park anyway. Istanbul is a crowded place, so enjoying a stroll through a quiet, empty park was quite a treat. On the way back, we stopped to take pictures of the mosque attached to Dolmabahçe Palace.

Today we have even more treats planned! We're going to take an 80 minute ferry ride across the Sea of Maramara to Yalova where we'll visit the thermal hot springs at a town named for them - Termal.

Here's a little video from Ortaköy. We'll have more pictures of our day's dalliances on our flickr page.

Surprise Weather

So it's gotten colder, and it's been snowing/slushing a bit today. Here are Eleanor's thoughts on the subject:

First Thoughts on Amsterdam (by Eleanor!)

It's hard to know where to begin. I didn't realize, until I scrolled down our blog today, that I hadn't written a post since the first week of the CELTA. Thanks, Mike, for keeping us up to date! But I'm sorry to those of you (mostly Dad) who were wondering what had happened to my voice on the blog. Things got really busy for a while, and I also was going through some pretty deep culture shock that made it hard to find motivation for anything beyond the course.

I'm feeling much better these days. As Mike said, the CELTA is finished and we both earned top marks. It feels good to have done what we came here to do, and to have done it well. I've started teaching part-time, and we've moved into a new apartment in a much more inspiring neighborhood. These things have helped me to reset my attitude about living here in Turkey.

Another thing that helped was the very special Christmas week Mike and I spent in Amsterdam. There's so much I want to say about the trip, that I think I'll break it up into a few posts. I hope I don't put you to sleep with it-- for me, it will be good to have a record of all the thoughts that flew through my head that week. Going there sort of snapped my brain back into focus, and I want to hang onto to that focus now that I'm back...

We were lucky to fly in on the day after a snowstorm in Holland. We missed the travel snarls, but still got to enjoy Amsterdam under a blanket of snow. The canals and side streets all had this hushed and misty quality that was immediately relaxing.

We spent that first afternoon wandering around without a destination. The whole city was lit up for Christmas. Each street had its own lighting theme, which made it easy to navigate. If we ever became lost, we turned a few corners and arrived back at a scheme we recognized.

When I walk around in Istanbul, I usually feel tense. It's crowded and the traffic is dangerous. There are bad smells and loud noises. To appreciate the beauty of one tiled wall, or flower covered balcony, or view of the Bosphorous, I have to screen out fifty other distractions. I know this is the wrong approach to enjoying the city. The people who really love it here are those who can appreciate the city as a whole-- who are energized by its commotion and rough-edgedness. I'm still searching for that ability in myself. I like things to be pretty and well-designed, and, yes, a bit safe. I think that's one of the reasons it's good for me to be here, stretching myself.

But as a vacation retreat, Amsterdam let me indulge in all the things I love. Everything-- from the people, to the scenery, to the food-- was pleasant. Every time I looked through a window into someone's apartment home, it was like looking into a design magazine photo shoot. Even in the snow, the whole city was still wheeling around on their bikes, toting children, groceries, art school portfolios. Every third door seemed to lead into a hole in the wall pub, decked in cedar swag, where it was impossible to buy a bad beer...

That first night, I didn't think I could go back. That instant feeling of comfort would be too hard to let go of. In the end, of course, I did. For all the grit in Istanbul, at least you can see what's really there. I'm sure that Amsterdam has grit (the red light district is probably a good place to start looking). And if it doesn't, that just means it's been pushed somewhere else. But at Christmas all of us try to create our own fantasy worlds, don't we? So, just for that week, I exhaled deeply and lived in mine.

Soon, I'll write a bit more about the other things we did. I especially want to get down some thoughts about the art we saw. I'll leave you with a few more photos from our walk on our fist evening in Amsterdam.

Take care everyone,
Eleanor

More Art

So today we had another one of those cool art classes. This time we did three drawings. The first one was a head shot, the second was the head and shoulders, and the third was a crazy group portrait where all of us - including the model - were looking into two mirrors that had been pushed together. In Eleanor's group picture you can see the crack between the two mirrors. Her art was, of course, amazing. The head and shoulders one she did looks exactly like the girl we were drawing. Since I don't have the skills, I went more stylized and abstract :)




In other news, Eleanor says she's still working on a blog post about our Amsterdam adventures, so it'll be really really cool when it comes out. She has so much to say, in fact, that she might serialize our holiday trip.

This Thursday we're planning a mini-adventure. We're going to take a ferry from Istanbul across the Marmara Sea to Yalova where there are some lovely natural hot springs! Hopefully it won't be raining, but either way we'll have some fun and enjoy a nice soak.

Tah tah for now.

Art and Ikea

Our apartment was in need of some furniture so we headed over to one of the two Ikeas in Istanbul the - close one. This involved a ten minute walk (steeply downhill) to the nearest lightrail station, 25 minutes on the lightrail, getting off and walking five minutes to a metro station, a 15 minute metro ride, followed by a 10 minute walk through Forum Istanbul - one of the many modern shopping malls that have popped up in Istanbul's prosperous suburbs. I've attached a photo of all the loot we bought. We can safely say that Ikea is the same in Istanbul as in the Northwest - for better or worse. In our case, it was kind of nice - and Eleanor had some Swedish meatballs with gravy at the Ikea cafe. We carried almost all of it back in the first trip. Those 2 big, thick boxes contain two heavy dressers - probably weigh about 90 lbs each. We shoved the rest of the small stuff into backpacks. Carrying the one of the dressers around, up and down stairs, escalators and ramps, trying not to smack people in crowded passageways turned out to be very challenging. So when we got off the metro we took a cab most of the way home, so we only had to trudge for 2-3 minutes uphill to get to our apartment. Of course, we live on the 3rd floor so we still had to do that, but Eleanor saved me and carried it the rest of the way. She'd been carrying the bookshelf this whole way.

Then we went back again for the other dresser and the coffee table (this is fascinating, I know). But since we finished our purchase during rush hour, we knew a taxi trip would take forever, so we jammed ourselves and our furniture into the subway, onto the lightrail, and then onto the funicular so we could avoid the uphill. At the end of the day, our arms were rubbed raw and we each had several bruises forming. But we now have a place to put all of our stuff so it was definitely worth it. And the guy we rent from is buying all the furniture - we just had to do the grunt work.

So that was "Our Ikea Adventure." Here's a picture of the goods:


On another note, for the past two weeks we've attended a Monday night art class put on by a British expat. He only charges 10TL for two hours of artistic entertainment and supplies all the necessary materials. The first week we did some still life sketches. This week we did some sketches from a live model. Eleanor is, of course, the class of the class. She's also been extremely encouraging. She's been trying to teach me some sketching back at the apartment, and these drawings are some of my attempts from the class (pics of Eleanor's art to soon follow):

New Apartment

Hello friends and family,

Eleanor and I have recently moved into a new apartment! Our previous apartment was in a pretty characterless part of the city, had a closet kitchen, and - to be blunt - a poop smell coming out of the pipes in the bathroom's sink, shower, and toilet. We didn't want to deal with moving while we were doing our CELTA, which is finished! So now that that's over moving was a high priority.

Our new place is a shared living situation. We have two large rooms to ourselves so we'll still have plenty of privacy, but there is a shared kitchen and two shared bathrooms, and one shared shower. The kitchen is large and we have an oven! We also have a fantastic view of the Galata Tower from the kitchen window (see below). Since it's shared, rent is also cheaper in this apartment - so that means we can save more money for travelling! We have two roomates - a Turkish law student and a Dutch college student, but he's going back to Holland in a few weeks. After him, an Italian architecture student is moving in. We are happy to say that they're both very nice people.

Our neighborhood is also a big improvement over the last one - it's more lively and has a lot of fun places, and not as much motor-vehicle traffic. Plenty of pedestrian traffic, but the roads are too narrow for lots of cars, which is nice!

So yeah, our CELTA is over. We're happy to report that we both received the top mark of "Pass A." Eleanor also got hired at a language school, so we're both employed and earning money. We also had a fabulous, week-long trip to Amsterdam from Dec. 22nd to Dec. 28th. You can see pictures of it on our flickr photostream, and Eleanor promises she'll write a blog post about it soon.

Love to everyone!

-Mike and Eleanor

The End of November

Hello Everyone,

Eleanor and I have some exciting news! We just booked a flight to Amsterdam for Christmas week! It also happens to correspond with our visas expiring. So we'll spend Christmas in Amsterdam, see the Van Gogh Museum and some other Dutch art, tour the canals, etc, and then get another 3 month tourist visa for Turkey. Maybe after that we'll get residence permits.

We recently saw my parents again, along with some other family friends (you know who you are), as they stopped overnight in Istanbul after finishing up an amazing tour of Turkey, Syria, and Jordan. They had some fun stories to tell! My parents also got us a Turkish carpet for our apartment! (see pic)

Tomorrow we're going to take advantage of some (hopefully) sunny weather and go on a hike in the famous Belgrade Forest! We're both really looking forward to getting out of the big city for a bit and seeing and hearing some nature, rather than car horns and old engines. Walking down some streets you pretty much have to shout to be heard by the person walking right next to you.

We miss you all, and hopefully we'll have some fun pictures of the forest to share soon!

Love,

Mike and Eleanor

A New Job and Marathon #7

Mike:

So sorry it's been so long since we've posted! It's been very busy here. First of all, my family visited for a week and my sister visited for almost two weeks so I was entertaining them. It was great fun! We did a lot of fun stuff together and I'm sad to see them go. My sister flew back to Portland on Thursday and my parents continued their trip through Turkey and will soon head toward Syria and Jordan. Fortunately, I'll get to see my parents again when they swing back through Istanbul for 24hrs before they fly home.

I've also been busy because I got a part-time job as an English teacher at the American Cultural Association language school in Bakırköy - a section of Istanbul. I work for 12 hours on Saturdays and 11 hours on Sundays, so I'm super busy on the weekends! One of their native speakers had to leave on a family emergency, so they needed to hire someone quickly. One of the other students in my CELTA course works for the school and she recommended me and when I interviewed they hired me on the spot and said I'd start in two days!

It's been a little crazy, and it was hard at first adjusting to teaching so many classes a day and so many different levels (introductory, elementary, pre-intermediate, and intermediate), but I just finished my 3rd weekend of classes and it's getting easier and I think the students are getting a lot out of it too. The school mostly wants the native speakers to focus on improving the students' speaking and listening skills, but I teach some grammar as well.

ALSO, on Oct. 18th I ran the Istanbul Marathon! It was my 7th marathon and my slowest! I couldn't spend much time training because of the moving to Istanbul, and once I got here there weren't a lot of places to run, but I toughed it out and I'm glad I did. It took me 4hr 45min. I was so relieved to finish. The course was beautiful though, it started with a run across one of the bridges over the Bosporus Straight, so I ran from Asia to Europe! Istanbul also has absolutely horrid traffic, the worse I've ever seen in any country - but for the marathon they closed all the main roads and it was very enjoyable to enjoy seeing the city sights free from all the car noise and honking (people here love to honk!).

Anyway, congratulations if you finished reading all this and sorry I don't have any pictures. I'll try to remember to take some of the school and will post them later.

Hope everything is good back in the Northwest!! I miss nature.

Cheers,

Mike

Week one is a success!

It's so beautiful here right now! Bright, bright, warm, breezy days. We hear it might be the last hurrah of summer (the temperature is supposed to drop quite a bit next week), so we are trying to enjoy it while we can. A couple days ago, Mike and I went for a walk along the Bosphorous near the Kabataş ferry docks and milled around with the commuters and pleasure seekers there. If it's nice tomorrow, we're thinking we'll go back and hop on one of the ferries out to "the islands", where there are no cars and possibly even a little scrap of nature.

I'm feeling good this weekend, having survived my first week of CELTA. Yesterday, each of us taught a twenty minute lesson to real English learners. For mine, I worked on asking for phone numbers with a group of beginner students. There are a lot of things that I want to do differently next time, but it feels good just to have a little teaching under my belt.

I feel a lot of support and encouragement from our teachers and fellow students. And the view can't get much better from our school. Here's what I see when I lean out the window:

Not bad, right?
Love,
Eleanor

Settling In

Coming to Istanbul has been unlike any travel I've ever done. This past week, we've been doing the tourist stuff, but at the same time, we know that we are something different from tourists. It's nice, because we have been able to take our time and take in Istanbul's marvels at the pace that they deserve. But it's been frightening as well, knowing how much work we have to do to make ourselves a home here.
We've made some serious headway, though, and today I am feeling really good. Yesterday we moved into a studio apartment in the Harbiye neighborhood. It's within walking distance of our school and Istanbul's only organic market, which happens every Saturday. Check out our haul!

It feels good to have a stocked kitchen, a cozy apartment, and even (gasp!) homework to do. Routine is my refuge right now, the more of it the better (I don't speak for Mike, of course). We start school this week. Orientation is on Monday, and classes start Tuesday. I'm excited!

We still have lots of sightseeing that we want to do. Last week, we took a cruise up the Bosphorous on the public ferry. We drank cup after cup of çay on the boat, and then had fish lunch when we stopped at Anadolou Kavağı, a village at the mouth of the Black Sea. The next day we saw Topkapı Palace. Our photos don't even begin to convey how enormous it is. Courtyard, within courtyard, within courtyard. The tiles in the harem are amazing.

More soon, when we have some news about school, or maybe after we check out the Princes' Islands!
Love,
Eleanor

Hello From Istanbul! (Sunday, 9/27)

We left Portland on Thursday afternoon and arrived in Istanbul 20 hours later at 5:30 pm local time. A shuttle was waiting for us and whisked us down some crazy streets right to our hostel. The sun was starting to set by the time we got there (7:30 pm) and something clicked so we instantly fell asleep without exploring.
The next day we dealt with bank troubles (card cancellations-- even though we called ahead of time!!) and did some tasks in town, such as buying cool little akbils for getting around the transit system, stopping by our school to pick up text books, and buying soap and shampoo. We also got a a chance to explore the tea gardens near Topkapi and had a long lunch with a great view of the Bosphorous. Again, we fell asleep at 8pm!

Today we've done some more sightseeing-- checking out the Turkish and Islamic Arts Museum and walking around the Hippodrome and the back of the Blue Mosque. We've even been trying out some Turkish phrases, with much success... we think. Tonight our goal is to stay up to 10 pm.

Much love to everyone,
Mike (and Eleanor)

Here we go!

So many things to do on our last full day in the country! One of them is to finally publish this blog I've been telling everyone about. I'm hoping it will be a useful tool for Mike and me to stay connected with all of the wonderful people we have collected (and will collect) around the world. Here, we can post our photos and thoughts about everything we experience.

We leave tomorrow for Istanbul, where we will have about 2 weeks to sight see and settle in before we begin our CELTA course on October 6th. CELTA stands for the Certificate in English Language Teaching to Adults. It's given by Cambridge University, so it's very well recognized around the world. We're taking the course part-time, on Tuesdays and Fridays. We're hoping we can find some part-time teaching work while we take the course, so it will be an easier transition to full-time teaching when we complete our course in December. More on that bridge when it's time to cross it!

I think this is going to be a rewarding adventure for us. Mike and I are both interested in teaching careers, and we both want to spend some time living abroad before we get tied down here. I feel lucky to travel with such a solid partner in both work and play. And to have such fabulous friends and family. Thank you to everyone who has offered travel advice, moving help, reading suggestions, professional opportunities, Turkey contacts, well wishes, and more. We go confidently because we know we are supported by our community. I hope you will check in with us now and then to see how it has all paid off!

Thanks for reading,
Eleanor (and Mike)