Well. here it is. My bags are pretty much packed. I bought most of gifts im gonna get. my last day of work was Thurs. My 2 month adventure has come to an end.
First though? How grateful i am to have been able to do this. It's such a blessing to be able to do something like this. From playing with coke bottles and sticks as a kid in Croatia to a 2 month expenses-paid internship from a top liberal arts school. That is progress. Thanks mainly to the parents and friends. So props to all you.
Thoughts about Istanbul/Turkey? First, it's a pretty fuckin' clean country. I live in the hood and even here people wash to roads and sweep trash every day. Second, it's not a cheap country. It's actually pretty expensive if you consider the average income, which I've heard is something like $700 a month. Just like in my own BiH, the numbers just don't add up; people should be able to survive here. But they do. How? By doing what I rarely see in the states: squeezing every penny (or here, kuruş).
Then again, there's construction everywhere. Massive skyscrapers mingle with the minaret's of Istanbul's 2500 mosques. I once saw a dirty, poor old man selling worthless crap from China...while listening to an iPod. If you came here for a weekend, you'd think all anyone does is eat, drink, play backgammon, and smoke nargile. I would forgive many people just who came to Beyoğlu or Sultanahmet for a weekend and came back with the most orientalist point-of-view. But go out of the old city to the "new Istanbul" or east towards Ankara and wow, projects galore. You then start to realize, barely, what a 12.5 million people increase in population over 50 years looks like. When I first saw how congested all the apartment buildings were the first thing I thought of some child playing with legos. they really do just look like hundreds of legos stacked together across rolling hills. it's almost surreal looking. even stranger when you look closer and see the thousands of barnacles all over every building - satellite dishes.
But go outside of Istanbul and everything changes. Green, forest covered hills, small quaint villages by the Sea of Marmara. The last 150 km's of the bus ride from Izmir were really beautiful. it looked like someone moved Bosnia a few hundred km's west and gave it a coast line (which would involve flooding Dalmatia and Herzegovina...no loss really, and probably a reality in 50 years thanks to Al Gore).
People are genuienly nice here too. They'll gladly help you get somewhere or find something. My co-intern Johanna says she never knows if they're just hitting on her or are really just that nice. For me, I don't know if they're trying to sell me something or they are that nice. Most of the time, it's a mix of the two. Oh and being Bosnian helped sooo much. I can't say that enough. Everyone with me noticed it too. Plus the whole Muslim thing.
I don't know what else to write. I always start thinking but then look out my window and kinda get lost. I'm excited to discuss all my "adventures" with everyone in person though! And show off my AWESOME pictures. over 1,000. niiiice.
So now I say, goodbye to this blog and görüşürüz to İstanbul!
-Edin
Saturday, July 18, 2009
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
4 Days Left?!?!
Yup. 4 days left in Turkey. how it all went by so quick i do not understand. BECAUSE this adventure is almost over, i'll try and fill in some gaps right now. mainly, the reason why i'm here, my internship.
first of all, my internship did not go as planned. I was supposed to work with my boss but i barely ever talked to her and only as of this week is she on the same project as me (i think). This explains why i've felt so worthless and felt that this internship was kind of a fail. but it's nice to know it wasn't my fault.
i've spent pretty much the whole time here working on one grant proposal for a training session Amnesty wants to conduct with some of its members on the Convention for the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). now although i have nothing against this, i will say that it was not what i was expecting to work on when i got here. I'm a poli sci major and i was much more interested in learning more about democratization, the Kurdish question, the Ergenekon case, etc etc. But I became an expert on women's rights instead...not really but i sure know a hell of a lot more now. The problem is I really never felt passionate about the work i was doing. Not to sound like an asshole, but I'm not really passionate about women's rights either. I think it's fair to say that I think it's something that i care about and think DEFINITELY needs to improve, but i also think global warming is a huge issue for every human being but i ain't doin' crap about it. my passion is politics and the such. For example, one of the most interesting things here was seeing a protest of about 300 people (not one of them a Spartan) calling for a free "East Turkestan." That would be Xinjiang province in China. Uighurs! Craziness. that's the kinda stuff I love. reading about UN laws on what discrimination against women is...not so much.
Halfway through this i was kinda lost. My work felt meaningless, it wasn't interesting, and it all seemed like a dead end. I'm happy to say now those feelings are gone. I still feel like my work is pretty meaningless, but I'm an intern. Individually we're meaningless but i think as a whole we're almost helpful. I'm fairly certain I want to take Turkish at UPenn next year; the language seems simple enough and I think it'd be real helpful to know considering the Balkans and the Middle East are the two regions I'm probably going to end up studying/working with the most. And guess where turkey is! in between em. Also I might finally understand old people's peasant speak in Bosnia cause im pretty sure it's all Turkish. Like how my grandma says "karpuza" for watermelon and I'm embarassed for her cause it seems so hick? Well, "karpuz" is Turkish for watermelon. Hopefully that will work and it won't kill me like German did. Genaaau.
What else? i went to the beach this weekend! that was awesome. got treated like royalty by a nice turkish grandma of a girl i met once. swam in the Aegean. ate a kumru sandwich, which is just cheese, herbs, and salami on a roll but dear god it is delicious. soooo much cheese. Oh, and I went to the ruins of Ephesus. i wondered aloud how weird it's gonna be when hundreds of years from now people go visit the ancient ruins of New York City. probably won't be as many marble columns. it was way cool though. i didn't know it used to be such a baller city but apparently it was the #2 city in the Byzantine Empire for a while. Also the site of the Seven Sleepers from the Qur'an, Mary's alleged final resting place, and the place where the Gospel of John was written. I know right? Lotta stuff. there's pictures of all of this but im kinda lazy to upload them now.
last day of work tomorrow. that's gonna be weird. i still remember the awkward, aimlessness of my first week and the BRUTAL heat that has now actually subsided cause of rain. nice. Friday and saturday will be dedicated to doing one final tour of the Grand Bazaar for gifts for people I like or those i want to think i like them and a visit to Topkapı palace (the biggest tourist attraction here...i was too cheap to visit before but why the hell not).
see some of you soon!
first of all, my internship did not go as planned. I was supposed to work with my boss but i barely ever talked to her and only as of this week is she on the same project as me (i think). This explains why i've felt so worthless and felt that this internship was kind of a fail. but it's nice to know it wasn't my fault.
i've spent pretty much the whole time here working on one grant proposal for a training session Amnesty wants to conduct with some of its members on the Convention for the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). now although i have nothing against this, i will say that it was not what i was expecting to work on when i got here. I'm a poli sci major and i was much more interested in learning more about democratization, the Kurdish question, the Ergenekon case, etc etc. But I became an expert on women's rights instead...not really but i sure know a hell of a lot more now. The problem is I really never felt passionate about the work i was doing. Not to sound like an asshole, but I'm not really passionate about women's rights either. I think it's fair to say that I think it's something that i care about and think DEFINITELY needs to improve, but i also think global warming is a huge issue for every human being but i ain't doin' crap about it. my passion is politics and the such. For example, one of the most interesting things here was seeing a protest of about 300 people (not one of them a Spartan) calling for a free "East Turkestan." That would be Xinjiang province in China. Uighurs! Craziness. that's the kinda stuff I love. reading about UN laws on what discrimination against women is...not so much.
Halfway through this i was kinda lost. My work felt meaningless, it wasn't interesting, and it all seemed like a dead end. I'm happy to say now those feelings are gone. I still feel like my work is pretty meaningless, but I'm an intern. Individually we're meaningless but i think as a whole we're almost helpful. I'm fairly certain I want to take Turkish at UPenn next year; the language seems simple enough and I think it'd be real helpful to know considering the Balkans and the Middle East are the two regions I'm probably going to end up studying/working with the most. And guess where turkey is! in between em. Also I might finally understand old people's peasant speak in Bosnia cause im pretty sure it's all Turkish. Like how my grandma says "karpuza" for watermelon and I'm embarassed for her cause it seems so hick? Well, "karpuz" is Turkish for watermelon. Hopefully that will work and it won't kill me like German did. Genaaau.
What else? i went to the beach this weekend! that was awesome. got treated like royalty by a nice turkish grandma of a girl i met once. swam in the Aegean. ate a kumru sandwich, which is just cheese, herbs, and salami on a roll but dear god it is delicious. soooo much cheese. Oh, and I went to the ruins of Ephesus. i wondered aloud how weird it's gonna be when hundreds of years from now people go visit the ancient ruins of New York City. probably won't be as many marble columns. it was way cool though. i didn't know it used to be such a baller city but apparently it was the #2 city in the Byzantine Empire for a while. Also the site of the Seven Sleepers from the Qur'an, Mary's alleged final resting place, and the place where the Gospel of John was written. I know right? Lotta stuff. there's pictures of all of this but im kinda lazy to upload them now.
last day of work tomorrow. that's gonna be weird. i still remember the awkward, aimlessness of my first week and the BRUTAL heat that has now actually subsided cause of rain. nice. Friday and saturday will be dedicated to doing one final tour of the Grand Bazaar for gifts for people I like or those i want to think i like them and a visit to Topkapı palace (the biggest tourist attraction here...i was too cheap to visit before but why the hell not).
see some of you soon!
Thursday, July 9, 2009
Cheese and Sucuk and çok kuzu
I think a lot of people will appreciate this: a post devoted to food.
First of all, the negatives (so you may leave on the positives!). Food isn't dirt cheap. Yes you can get a hot dog in some places for like $1.50 or a cheeseburger for about the same amount, but these aren't that good. Although, they put spices in the cheeseburger meat which is definitely an interesting take. Also, they're small. SMALL SMALL portions. Actually, scratch that. They're regular portions, but I'm to everything in the US being so damn big that these seem small. Turkish fast food is another story - it's better and just a bit more expensive. Kokoreç, a food that I am sure the Olympian gods must envy, is about $3.50. It's a sandwhich with oregano, spices, vegetables and...lamb intestine. Yeah I know, but trust me, it tastes more like lamb AWESOMENESS. they chop it up REAL tiny so it's just a bunch of minced meat with vegetables. They also have kumpir, which I would also define as a fast food. But nothing exotic here, it's just a baked potatoe with your choice of veggies and stuff. You can aslo find people selling fish sandwhiches, grilled snapper, calamari, and clams. Lot's of seafood in Istanbul. I think that would surprise some people. And it's good too! Although I have yet to try the clams at 3 am...cause they do sell them THAT late on istiklal. Finally, we come to the quintessential Turkish fast food, the Big Mac AND Whooper (although they have a buttload of those too...) of Turkish cuisine...the döner and kebap. Döner is the huge chunk of meat that gets rotated vertically on a spit and grilled by a vertical grill and whenever someone orders a portion, the chef shaves off thin slices of meat and they make a sandwhich/platter! It is pretty good but it's also kinda dry. It's generally lamb (kuzu) but I prefer the chicken (tavuk) because they tend to be less dry, ironically enough. You can get it as a sandwhich or a wrap (dürüm). Finally, the kebap. I honestly don't know how to describe the kebap because it comes in soooo many different forms. I will describe my favorite, but this is from a legit lokanta (restaurant) and is not fast food. The Beyti kebap is minced meat sausage wrapped in a very thin pita into a a long, cylindrical shape and then cut into bite-sized pieces and arranged in a circle on the outside of a plate, seperating each piece from the next with slices of fresh tomato. They garnish it with herbs and put a HUGE hunk of sour cream in the middle of the plate. It is SO GOOD. it goes for about $8 at a restaurant right around the corner and is definitely a filling dinner meal.
Stepping outside of fast food...there's a lot. There's a lot of stews. a LOT of stews. lots of eggplant (patlican) dishes with meat. LOTS OF MEAT. I don't know how vegetarians would cope here. Theyre's also a lot of köfte meals. Köfte is basically just any meat in small pieces. For Bosnians, köfte is our ćevap. I really have no idea what köfte is because everything I ever seem to order ends up being some form of köfte...no matter how different. The breads are delicious and baked fresh every day. I haven't tried TOO many desserts but they ones I have have not really impressed me. Besides baklava, of course, which is I think my favorite dessert. Stupidly enough I'm writing this on an empty stomach...I think i'll go fix that now. 10 MORE DAYS UNTIL THIS IS ALL OVER. I'm really gonna miss it. But i'll be back soon inshallah.
stay hungry!
-Edin
First of all, the negatives (so you may leave on the positives!). Food isn't dirt cheap. Yes you can get a hot dog in some places for like $1.50 or a cheeseburger for about the same amount, but these aren't that good. Although, they put spices in the cheeseburger meat which is definitely an interesting take. Also, they're small. SMALL SMALL portions. Actually, scratch that. They're regular portions, but I'm to everything in the US being so damn big that these seem small. Turkish fast food is another story - it's better and just a bit more expensive. Kokoreç, a food that I am sure the Olympian gods must envy, is about $3.50. It's a sandwhich with oregano, spices, vegetables and...lamb intestine. Yeah I know, but trust me, it tastes more like lamb AWESOMENESS. they chop it up REAL tiny so it's just a bunch of minced meat with vegetables. They also have kumpir, which I would also define as a fast food. But nothing exotic here, it's just a baked potatoe with your choice of veggies and stuff. You can aslo find people selling fish sandwhiches, grilled snapper, calamari, and clams. Lot's of seafood in Istanbul. I think that would surprise some people. And it's good too! Although I have yet to try the clams at 3 am...cause they do sell them THAT late on istiklal. Finally, we come to the quintessential Turkish fast food, the Big Mac AND Whooper (although they have a buttload of those too...) of Turkish cuisine...the döner and kebap. Döner is the huge chunk of meat that gets rotated vertically on a spit and grilled by a vertical grill and whenever someone orders a portion, the chef shaves off thin slices of meat and they make a sandwhich/platter! It is pretty good but it's also kinda dry. It's generally lamb (kuzu) but I prefer the chicken (tavuk) because they tend to be less dry, ironically enough. You can get it as a sandwhich or a wrap (dürüm). Finally, the kebap. I honestly don't know how to describe the kebap because it comes in soooo many different forms. I will describe my favorite, but this is from a legit lokanta (restaurant) and is not fast food. The Beyti kebap is minced meat sausage wrapped in a very thin pita into a a long, cylindrical shape and then cut into bite-sized pieces and arranged in a circle on the outside of a plate, seperating each piece from the next with slices of fresh tomato. They garnish it with herbs and put a HUGE hunk of sour cream in the middle of the plate. It is SO GOOD. it goes for about $8 at a restaurant right around the corner and is definitely a filling dinner meal.
Stepping outside of fast food...there's a lot. There's a lot of stews. a LOT of stews. lots of eggplant (patlican) dishes with meat. LOTS OF MEAT. I don't know how vegetarians would cope here. Theyre's also a lot of köfte meals. Köfte is basically just any meat in small pieces. For Bosnians, köfte is our ćevap. I really have no idea what köfte is because everything I ever seem to order ends up being some form of köfte...no matter how different. The breads are delicious and baked fresh every day. I haven't tried TOO many desserts but they ones I have have not really impressed me. Besides baklava, of course, which is I think my favorite dessert. Stupidly enough I'm writing this on an empty stomach...I think i'll go fix that now. 10 MORE DAYS UNTIL THIS IS ALL OVER. I'm really gonna miss it. But i'll be back soon inshallah.
stay hungry!
-Edin
Friday, July 3, 2009
Turks
I think I'll devote this to just some of odd characters I've met here. Most people i interact with daily will be left out. This is for those people i'll probably never see again. (unless I need another hookah...)
I'll start backwards again. I was in the grand bazaar today and met a guy named Cengiz. That's...Gengis transliterated. Like...Gengis Khan. I wanted to buy a hookah from him just because he was fuckin Gengis Khan. But he was asking for too much. He did explain hookah to me though, which was nice, but as pointless as it gets. I liked him though, he seemed earnest and despite trying to rip me off, like a nice guy.
Second, there's the three guys all working at one shop selling a bunch of stuff, hookah included. I'll see them again probably cause I actually know where the shop is and it's right next to the Beyazit exit. Anyhoo, the main seller is a kid maybe 17 or 18 and he speaks english well enough to sell things but that's about it. The main attraction was his friend, whose heart I broke when I didn't buy a hookah the first time i was there. (he said, "you break my heart!" so im not exaggerating haha). Seriously though, his guy was so friendly and hugging me and stuff, it was fun. It was definitely pressure to buy ANYTHING (like a random scarf for 5 lira? no thanks) but i didn't feel bad not buying. Come to think of it, this may end up being all about buying things in Istanbul. Anyhoo. what i assume was the owner of the shop was most interesting. I bought Sana's hookah from him today and he asked me where im from and I said im a MUSLIM (key) from Bosnia. His family was apparently from Bitola, Macedonia and moved to Turkey in '56. He said they went back after 50 years and hated to see that Bitola was now a village and not really a nice city. He asked me where in Bosnia is nice t visit but refused to go anywhere with Serbs. It was wierd but he REALLY didn'tlike Serbs. I think he said that his blood doesn't like Serbs...but i could be mistaken. I just told him to stay away from Banja Luka.
Next, Said and Dr. Mahmut. They were two guys who helped me look for Zadeh's manuscript in the Sulaymaniyye library. I really like both of these guys. Said spoke Turkish and Arabic fluently (as far as I could tell) but I assumed he was an Arab because Said isn't that common a Turkish name and he seemed to resort to Arabic by mistake (he asked me kayf al-haal but stopped mid-sentence and spoke english). I dunno though. if they got turkish passports they're turks. Dr. Mahmut was a Syrian (now Turkish...) guy who was friends with Mustafa Ceric efendi. HOW AWESOME IS THAT?! well. it is. Mustafa Ceric is the "grand mufti" (i think) of Bosnia and the most liberal grand mufti in the world. but yeah, dr. mahmut looked for the manuscript, told me it's not in turkey (sorry zadeh) and we parted ways. but the man just looked smart as hell. he must be hot shit i don't know though. The library was really nice it just felt very peaceful and full of knowledge like a library in narnia would feel like. yes. narnia.
that's it actually. all men. all from this week. it's funny, pretty much everyone in amnesty is a women and pretty much everyone else i've dealt ith here in Istanbul has been a man. there are sooo few female bazaar sellers and waiters and a bunch of other jobs. the only place where i see a lot of women as in the mosques...that makes me kinda upset. maybe an update on that later!
-peace
I'll start backwards again. I was in the grand bazaar today and met a guy named Cengiz. That's...Gengis transliterated. Like...Gengis Khan. I wanted to buy a hookah from him just because he was fuckin Gengis Khan. But he was asking for too much. He did explain hookah to me though, which was nice, but as pointless as it gets. I liked him though, he seemed earnest and despite trying to rip me off, like a nice guy.
Second, there's the three guys all working at one shop selling a bunch of stuff, hookah included. I'll see them again probably cause I actually know where the shop is and it's right next to the Beyazit exit. Anyhoo, the main seller is a kid maybe 17 or 18 and he speaks english well enough to sell things but that's about it. The main attraction was his friend, whose heart I broke when I didn't buy a hookah the first time i was there. (he said, "you break my heart!" so im not exaggerating haha). Seriously though, his guy was so friendly and hugging me and stuff, it was fun. It was definitely pressure to buy ANYTHING (like a random scarf for 5 lira? no thanks) but i didn't feel bad not buying. Come to think of it, this may end up being all about buying things in Istanbul. Anyhoo. what i assume was the owner of the shop was most interesting. I bought Sana's hookah from him today and he asked me where im from and I said im a MUSLIM (key) from Bosnia. His family was apparently from Bitola, Macedonia and moved to Turkey in '56. He said they went back after 50 years and hated to see that Bitola was now a village and not really a nice city. He asked me where in Bosnia is nice t visit but refused to go anywhere with Serbs. It was wierd but he REALLY didn'tlike Serbs. I think he said that his blood doesn't like Serbs...but i could be mistaken. I just told him to stay away from Banja Luka.
Next, Said and Dr. Mahmut. They were two guys who helped me look for Zadeh's manuscript in the Sulaymaniyye library. I really like both of these guys. Said spoke Turkish and Arabic fluently (as far as I could tell) but I assumed he was an Arab because Said isn't that common a Turkish name and he seemed to resort to Arabic by mistake (he asked me kayf al-haal but stopped mid-sentence and spoke english). I dunno though. if they got turkish passports they're turks. Dr. Mahmut was a Syrian (now Turkish...) guy who was friends with Mustafa Ceric efendi. HOW AWESOME IS THAT?! well. it is. Mustafa Ceric is the "grand mufti" (i think) of Bosnia and the most liberal grand mufti in the world. but yeah, dr. mahmut looked for the manuscript, told me it's not in turkey (sorry zadeh) and we parted ways. but the man just looked smart as hell. he must be hot shit i don't know though. The library was really nice it just felt very peaceful and full of knowledge like a library in narnia would feel like. yes. narnia.
that's it actually. all men. all from this week. it's funny, pretty much everyone in amnesty is a women and pretty much everyone else i've dealt ith here in Istanbul has been a man. there are sooo few female bazaar sellers and waiters and a bunch of other jobs. the only place where i see a lot of women as in the mosques...that makes me kinda upset. maybe an update on that later!
-peace
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
5 Weeks Later
EVERYONE'S A ZOMBIE.
no. but really. these people don't sleep. i was up at 4 am taking Daniel to the bus and there were so many cars out on the road and people drinking and eating and partying. it was insane. it was Monday morning...
I had an AWESOME time with DMW's visiting. He get here Thurs night and left Mon morning so it was pretty short but we saw pretty much all the sights and went up the Bosporus one day and climbed a castle that overlooks the strait and the Black Sea. it was quite good. One of my favorite parts was when we went to Kadıköy on the Asian side and found two large crowds of people gathered around 2 dance circles. I took a video and when I stoped being lazy I'll post it up. It was just really awesome cause they were all enjoying themselves and it was right on the water and the sun was setting. very nice. I also found two hookah wholesalers...so we'll see how that ends. I'm not coming back with less than 2 already.
I think the biggest change for me recently was passig the halfway point of my 2 months here. Yesterday was actually 5 weeks since I got here. I was walking to work and I passed Taksim Squre (like I do every morning) and I thought of my first day here. I was in such wonder at everything. Turkish flags everywhere. The heat. the anxious/what the hell now feeling of finally being here. It all seems so long ago now. My biggest fear is July 19th coming and me feeling like I just got into the swing of things. Then going to bed in Norwalk the next day and thinking that this was all a dream. I hate that feeling. It completely discredits my experiences. This blog will help make it more real. Plus the by now about 1000 pictures....
But yeah, 5 weeks in now. Work got a lot better today cause I was pretty busy the whole time and I think it'll continue like that for at elast a few more days. I'm supposed to meet with "the head of a woman's group" and ask her what the training that I'm supposed to get funding for will be like. This relieves me because I have NO IDEA what this "training" is really. And yet I'm supposed to write a grant proposal for it. Sweet. Also our number of interns is now up to 7 meaning we had a meeting to work out time schedules cause we don't have enough computers for everyone. Nothing changed for me. Annnnd I impressed everyone by understanding that we were supposed to respect the residents of the building and not throw ciggarettes from the balcony. I felt special. I tricked them though cause I BARELY know Turkish. Definitely gonna take that class at Upenn next semester if they let me.
What else? I kinda don't want to thinkg about leaving....is that bad? I feel like I should miss you all so much it conquers all else but im not gonna lie, im having a blast here (I do miss you all though, at least the ones reading this). Oh and final thing, message me your address on Facebook or email me it and I will send you a nice postcard! ay! My freshman can ignore this I creepily have all your addresses and home phone numbers....plus a few other details i found on my own (SS#s.....)
Sincerely yours,
-edin
no. but really. these people don't sleep. i was up at 4 am taking Daniel to the bus and there were so many cars out on the road and people drinking and eating and partying. it was insane. it was Monday morning...
I had an AWESOME time with DMW's visiting. He get here Thurs night and left Mon morning so it was pretty short but we saw pretty much all the sights and went up the Bosporus one day and climbed a castle that overlooks the strait and the Black Sea. it was quite good. One of my favorite parts was when we went to Kadıköy on the Asian side and found two large crowds of people gathered around 2 dance circles. I took a video and when I stoped being lazy I'll post it up. It was just really awesome cause they were all enjoying themselves and it was right on the water and the sun was setting. very nice. I also found two hookah wholesalers...so we'll see how that ends. I'm not coming back with less than 2 already.
I think the biggest change for me recently was passig the halfway point of my 2 months here. Yesterday was actually 5 weeks since I got here. I was walking to work and I passed Taksim Squre (like I do every morning) and I thought of my first day here. I was in such wonder at everything. Turkish flags everywhere. The heat. the anxious/what the hell now feeling of finally being here. It all seems so long ago now. My biggest fear is July 19th coming and me feeling like I just got into the swing of things. Then going to bed in Norwalk the next day and thinking that this was all a dream. I hate that feeling. It completely discredits my experiences. This blog will help make it more real. Plus the by now about 1000 pictures....
But yeah, 5 weeks in now. Work got a lot better today cause I was pretty busy the whole time and I think it'll continue like that for at elast a few more days. I'm supposed to meet with "the head of a woman's group" and ask her what the training that I'm supposed to get funding for will be like. This relieves me because I have NO IDEA what this "training" is really. And yet I'm supposed to write a grant proposal for it. Sweet. Also our number of interns is now up to 7 meaning we had a meeting to work out time schedules cause we don't have enough computers for everyone. Nothing changed for me. Annnnd I impressed everyone by understanding that we were supposed to respect the residents of the building and not throw ciggarettes from the balcony. I felt special. I tricked them though cause I BARELY know Turkish. Definitely gonna take that class at Upenn next semester if they let me.
What else? I kinda don't want to thinkg about leaving....is that bad? I feel like I should miss you all so much it conquers all else but im not gonna lie, im having a blast here (I do miss you all though, at least the ones reading this). Oh and final thing, message me your address on Facebook or email me it and I will send you a nice postcard! ay! My freshman can ignore this I creepily have all your addresses and home phone numbers....plus a few other details i found on my own (SS#s.....)
Sincerely yours,
-edin
Saturday, June 13, 2009
the past few days have been very fun.
i don't remember if i mentioned this before but i found out a good friend of friend's is interning here in istanbul this summer also, along with a few other students from Yale. So Weds night (i think it was weds...) i went out to Istiklal and hung out with her for a while. it's AWESOME to have finally found people to hang out with. that has been my biggest complaint and it's been very good so far. there's also a new intern at Amnesty who is British/Turkish but studies in Emory. seems like a cool dude, plus he knows Istanbul very well since he grew up here. speaking of work...still doing near nothing. i haven't gotten a response back about some questions i had regarding the program i'm writing the grant for and bla, gotta keep waiting.
also, i hung out with Marisa and her mom the past two days! that was so funny and yet very enjoyable. i did a lot of toursity things i wouldn't have done if they weren't here and im glad i did. e.g taking a chair-lift up to the hillsides at the end of the Golden Horn and looking over all of Istanbul (looking over ALL of istanbul is impossible by the way. maybe from a plane. this is a MASSIVE city). also we went to Eyup mosque where one of the Companions of the Prophet (pbuh) named Ayoub al-Ansari is said to have fallen in battle and they built a mosque there. that was...cool. we then took a bus back to Eminonu, had lunch, went to Asia, had coffee and walked around a bit and then went back and had dinner under the Galata bridge.
Well, all of that probably has no real meaning. The problem is, i'm having a hard time "finding meaning" here. Even though the world feels so much smaller to me now than it did say 6 years ago it's still incredible that i'm here. then again, i wonder what the hell that means. I try and take myself out of this and pretend i'm a Turk (or any other non-American nationality) living in NY for 2 months. What would I think if this person, having never before seen NYC, told me, "wow, i can't believe I'm in NYC!" and proceeded to tell me all the wonders of actually BEING in Brooklyn and SEEING the Empire State Building and actually DRIVING across the GW. I'd probably agree that it's a great city and has some cool places to see but at the same time i'd probably think where he's from is SO much cooler. That's something that's been bugging me. I wonder how much of being here is just on-the-surface tourist giddiness. But it all comes back to the history. The history here is just unbelievable. I looked over the Golden Horn today and tried to imagine the massive chain across the entrance or try and understand the fear of the Byzantines when they saw the massive army and enormous cannons all facing them and with the sole purpose of conquering Constantinople. It's bewildering. You read about it and hear about it but you can never really experience it. the past is the past and we all just claw at it just to get some scraps of feeling or emotion from events hundreds of years ago. Being here though, seeing all of this, touching the stones of these old old buildings, seeing the sun set over the Galata tower, it's about as close i'll ever get to feeling what those Byzantines withinthe walls and their enemies without felt.
But it's not just 1453. it's the 500 years of this city being the absolute center of the "east." We talk about orientalism: this is what those writers looked to. the mysterious east. as a bosnian too it's strange being here because this was the capital of the empire. my ancestors MAY have heard of america but they sure knew where Istanbul was. in the bizzarest way, i feel like this city's history is completely intertwined with mine; my country and my religion. At Eyup there's the tomb of Mehmed Pasa Sokolovic, one of the greatest viziers during the high point of the Ottoman empire, and he was sure enough from Bosnia. Coming from a country where the ONE thing foreigners know about it is that there was a horrible war (but can't point it out on a map and then say, 'it's near russia right?'), it was AWESOME standing next to the tomb of the man who had all of europe trembling and paying bribes to the Porte to keep the "turk" out. It's idiotic to think of today's Bosnians as the same as those of the 16th century (that's the idiocy of nationalism friends), but we today know that Mehmed Pasa loved Bosnia because of all the amazing buildings he commissioned there. And it may be roamntic and silly but i can't help but bring up this one line from Ivo Andric's "bridge on the Drina" where he discusses how the adolescent Mehmed Pasa must have felt when he was crossing the Drina on his way to Istanbul. I can't remember the exact words now but the image i have in my mind is of a young boy looking over the Drina to Bosnia and feeling a coldness, physical and emotional, from crossing that dividing line. he must have felt a warmth towards Bosnia if he commisioned the bridge in Visegrad in order to connect his two worlds.
yeah, lotta rambling, lot of bosnian history that you probably don't know. main point: i feel a connection here that's deeper than just being a toursit or an intern in istanbul. it's faint and i can barely feel it but when i get closer to the old city and go see those old buildings it becomes stronger. but that world is long gone. istanbul is extremely different now. the ottoman empire is long dead; the echos of the heartbeat are just barely audible.
i really can't just write all my thoughts here. too disorganized, too many thoughts. this was a good start though. right now i am RIDICULOUSLY tired. got up at 7:30 am, walked literally all day. 2 continents. bla.
till next time. peace
i may be rambling now...but i felt like this blog should be more than a list of things i did. those don't mean anything and they're boring and pointless cause you don't know what any of these places are unless i explain (i assume).
i don't remember if i mentioned this before but i found out a good friend of friend's is interning here in istanbul this summer also, along with a few other students from Yale. So Weds night (i think it was weds...) i went out to Istiklal and hung out with her for a while. it's AWESOME to have finally found people to hang out with. that has been my biggest complaint and it's been very good so far. there's also a new intern at Amnesty who is British/Turkish but studies in Emory. seems like a cool dude, plus he knows Istanbul very well since he grew up here. speaking of work...still doing near nothing. i haven't gotten a response back about some questions i had regarding the program i'm writing the grant for and bla, gotta keep waiting.
also, i hung out with Marisa and her mom the past two days! that was so funny and yet very enjoyable. i did a lot of toursity things i wouldn't have done if they weren't here and im glad i did. e.g taking a chair-lift up to the hillsides at the end of the Golden Horn and looking over all of Istanbul (looking over ALL of istanbul is impossible by the way. maybe from a plane. this is a MASSIVE city). also we went to Eyup mosque where one of the Companions of the Prophet (pbuh) named Ayoub al-Ansari is said to have fallen in battle and they built a mosque there. that was...cool. we then took a bus back to Eminonu, had lunch, went to Asia, had coffee and walked around a bit and then went back and had dinner under the Galata bridge.
Well, all of that probably has no real meaning. The problem is, i'm having a hard time "finding meaning" here. Even though the world feels so much smaller to me now than it did say 6 years ago it's still incredible that i'm here. then again, i wonder what the hell that means. I try and take myself out of this and pretend i'm a Turk (or any other non-American nationality) living in NY for 2 months. What would I think if this person, having never before seen NYC, told me, "wow, i can't believe I'm in NYC!" and proceeded to tell me all the wonders of actually BEING in Brooklyn and SEEING the Empire State Building and actually DRIVING across the GW. I'd probably agree that it's a great city and has some cool places to see but at the same time i'd probably think where he's from is SO much cooler. That's something that's been bugging me. I wonder how much of being here is just on-the-surface tourist giddiness. But it all comes back to the history. The history here is just unbelievable. I looked over the Golden Horn today and tried to imagine the massive chain across the entrance or try and understand the fear of the Byzantines when they saw the massive army and enormous cannons all facing them and with the sole purpose of conquering Constantinople. It's bewildering. You read about it and hear about it but you can never really experience it. the past is the past and we all just claw at it just to get some scraps of feeling or emotion from events hundreds of years ago. Being here though, seeing all of this, touching the stones of these old old buildings, seeing the sun set over the Galata tower, it's about as close i'll ever get to feeling what those Byzantines withinthe walls and their enemies without felt.
But it's not just 1453. it's the 500 years of this city being the absolute center of the "east." We talk about orientalism: this is what those writers looked to. the mysterious east. as a bosnian too it's strange being here because this was the capital of the empire. my ancestors MAY have heard of america but they sure knew where Istanbul was. in the bizzarest way, i feel like this city's history is completely intertwined with mine; my country and my religion. At Eyup there's the tomb of Mehmed Pasa Sokolovic, one of the greatest viziers during the high point of the Ottoman empire, and he was sure enough from Bosnia. Coming from a country where the ONE thing foreigners know about it is that there was a horrible war (but can't point it out on a map and then say, 'it's near russia right?'), it was AWESOME standing next to the tomb of the man who had all of europe trembling and paying bribes to the Porte to keep the "turk" out. It's idiotic to think of today's Bosnians as the same as those of the 16th century (that's the idiocy of nationalism friends), but we today know that Mehmed Pasa loved Bosnia because of all the amazing buildings he commissioned there. And it may be roamntic and silly but i can't help but bring up this one line from Ivo Andric's "bridge on the Drina" where he discusses how the adolescent Mehmed Pasa must have felt when he was crossing the Drina on his way to Istanbul. I can't remember the exact words now but the image i have in my mind is of a young boy looking over the Drina to Bosnia and feeling a coldness, physical and emotional, from crossing that dividing line. he must have felt a warmth towards Bosnia if he commisioned the bridge in Visegrad in order to connect his two worlds.
yeah, lotta rambling, lot of bosnian history that you probably don't know. main point: i feel a connection here that's deeper than just being a toursit or an intern in istanbul. it's faint and i can barely feel it but when i get closer to the old city and go see those old buildings it becomes stronger. but that world is long gone. istanbul is extremely different now. the ottoman empire is long dead; the echos of the heartbeat are just barely audible.
i really can't just write all my thoughts here. too disorganized, too many thoughts. this was a good start though. right now i am RIDICULOUSLY tired. got up at 7:30 am, walked literally all day. 2 continents. bla.
till next time. peace
i may be rambling now...but i felt like this blog should be more than a list of things i did. those don't mean anything and they're boring and pointless cause you don't know what any of these places are unless i explain (i assume).
Sunday, June 7, 2009
I haven't written anything in soooo long
ok. here goes.
Dear diary...*said in mocking-Samee voice*
It's June! It is HOT. Probably not that hot but yeah, it's hot enough for me to mention it. It has been consistenylu sunny since I got here except for one half day of rain. i could not live in a climate like this. i need diversity. haha. Ok so what have I been doing. Well. the biggest news is that my damn laptop is busted because the backlight on my monitor blew so I can barely see what i'm typing. it's like pitch black unless you tilt the screen to cacth some light. there'd be a great physics experiment here i feel. But yeah, i can't see shit. if there are typos...that's why.
At work, I've been assigned my first REAL task. I am to write up a grant proposal for a 2 day training session Amnesty wants to do with sme of its members teaching them about women's rights and such. The target donor is Mama Cash, some women's NGO from the Netherlands. Because I know nothing about this training, I first sat down with my co-intern and came up with 10 questions we had about the trainings that would be necessary to inclue, such as the methods which will be used in the training, the purpose of the training, it's cost, etc. This was on Monday or Tuesday. But because of the MASSIVE amount of people, I think I'll have to wait until like next week to get the questions answered. until, i have no idea what im doing. getting my comp fixed i hope! On weds we said bye to one of Turkish interns who had been here since jan and that was like a mini mini party. delicious cake though. I stood around while they all spoke turkish and made a discovery: it's only possible to be SO awkward in certain sitations, like when you don't speak a language. cause im standing there listening to what people have to say,nodding, counting how many seconds have passed since my last bite of cake, and im thinking, "ok, this isn't too bad. it's awkward but hey, there's not much more i could do in this situation." i felt good about muself.
what else. I went to the asian side on thursday. That was very fun actually. i met up with craig (prof. borowiak) and we went out for coffee and chitchatted and then had dinner. i like the asian side ore i think cause it's calm. and a lot greener. that's another thing, i miss nature. nature does not exist in Beyoğlu, Istanbul. The only bit of trees i see from my window is a cemetary. depressing. but yeah, the asian side was very nice. im gonna go there again soon i think cause it's mad cheap to go: less than $2 roundtrip on the ferry which is such a beautiful ride. i was coming back during seunset and took a lot of cool pictures.
whaaaaaat elseeeee. oh, i started reading "Black lamb, grey falcon." it's a book about Yugoslavia in the 30s. It's long as hell. something like 1,000+ pages. it's interesting but rebecca west talks too much. and it's full of nationalist Serbs and Croats whom she seems to admire. barf. im still on the croatia part though. Oh, almost forgot, my flat mates cousin and bf/gf (still don't know which one was the cousin) were here for a week and i went out to dinner with them on thurs. it was really nice, we went to this place playing serif konjevic-ish (sorry americans, won't get the reference. it's like...if david hasselhoff singing was considered legit) music. it was pretty good so i had fun.
lastly, i basicaly ran out of money this week. i still owe the landlord $300 for rent and that's all got left in me bank account. dadddddy sent money NOW!! *said in spoiled brat voice* but, i may actually have found a part time job teaching so that may not be a bad thing. im gonna go make stir-fry vegetables and sudzuka now.
thanks for listening!
ok. here goes.
Dear diary...*said in mocking-Samee voice*
It's June! It is HOT. Probably not that hot but yeah, it's hot enough for me to mention it. It has been consistenylu sunny since I got here except for one half day of rain. i could not live in a climate like this. i need diversity. haha. Ok so what have I been doing. Well. the biggest news is that my damn laptop is busted because the backlight on my monitor blew so I can barely see what i'm typing. it's like pitch black unless you tilt the screen to cacth some light. there'd be a great physics experiment here i feel. But yeah, i can't see shit. if there are typos...that's why.
At work, I've been assigned my first REAL task. I am to write up a grant proposal for a 2 day training session Amnesty wants to do with sme of its members teaching them about women's rights and such. The target donor is Mama Cash, some women's NGO from the Netherlands. Because I know nothing about this training, I first sat down with my co-intern and came up with 10 questions we had about the trainings that would be necessary to inclue, such as the methods which will be used in the training, the purpose of the training, it's cost, etc. This was on Monday or Tuesday. But because of the MASSIVE amount of people, I think I'll have to wait until like next week to get the questions answered. until, i have no idea what im doing. getting my comp fixed i hope! On weds we said bye to one of Turkish interns who had been here since jan and that was like a mini mini party. delicious cake though. I stood around while they all spoke turkish and made a discovery: it's only possible to be SO awkward in certain sitations, like when you don't speak a language. cause im standing there listening to what people have to say,nodding, counting how many seconds have passed since my last bite of cake, and im thinking, "ok, this isn't too bad. it's awkward but hey, there's not much more i could do in this situation." i felt good about muself.
what else. I went to the asian side on thursday. That was very fun actually. i met up with craig (prof. borowiak) and we went out for coffee and chitchatted and then had dinner. i like the asian side ore i think cause it's calm. and a lot greener. that's another thing, i miss nature. nature does not exist in Beyoğlu, Istanbul. The only bit of trees i see from my window is a cemetary. depressing. but yeah, the asian side was very nice. im gonna go there again soon i think cause it's mad cheap to go: less than $2 roundtrip on the ferry which is such a beautiful ride. i was coming back during seunset and took a lot of cool pictures.
whaaaaaat elseeeee. oh, i started reading "Black lamb, grey falcon." it's a book about Yugoslavia in the 30s. It's long as hell. something like 1,000+ pages. it's interesting but rebecca west talks too much. and it's full of nationalist Serbs and Croats whom she seems to admire. barf. im still on the croatia part though. Oh, almost forgot, my flat mates cousin and bf/gf (still don't know which one was the cousin) were here for a week and i went out to dinner with them on thurs. it was really nice, we went to this place playing serif konjevic-ish (sorry americans, won't get the reference. it's like...if david hasselhoff singing was considered legit) music. it was pretty good so i had fun.
lastly, i basicaly ran out of money this week. i still owe the landlord $300 for rent and that's all got left in me bank account. dadddddy sent money NOW!! *said in spoiled brat voice* but, i may actually have found a part time job teaching so that may not be a bad thing. im gonna go make stir-fry vegetables and sudzuka now.
thanks for listening!
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