one mosque, two mosque, new mosque, blue mosque

it can be sort of easy to forget that turkey is a muslim country.



until, of course, the blaring call to prayer wakes you up at 4:30 in the morning.



or until you remember that half the women around you have their heads covered.



or until you visit some of the most stunningly beautiful mosques you have ever seen in all your live long days.



it starts with the ayasofya (or hagia sophia, depending on where you're from. i like the first one better because the spelling doesn't remind me of the word hag. but, to each his own.)



ransacked by crusaders, the outside is not much to look at (IMHO. again, to each his own), but the inside is just breathtaking, a wonderful hodge-podge of muslim artifacts, including massive disks of calligraphy bearing the name of Allah, and christian influences, like intricate tile mosaics of Jesus and the Virgin Mary, the doctrinal cross-over owing to the fact that the ayasofya has served as both a mosque and a christian house of worship in its long and eventful life. now it is technically a museum, but don't tell it that.

{my tour book pointed out that this is one of the most impressive religious mosaics in the world. never mind that the bottom two-thirds is missing.}









across the way, you'll find the blue mosque.

the blue mosque is sort of the opposite of the ayasofya. the blue tile and soaring minarets make for a gorgeous exterior, but dana pointed out that the inside is sort of like a convention center. since the mosque is still in use, we decided to forgive this. in fact, we arrived right at prayer time and had to wait outside while the prayer finished up before we could go in.













the minarets on the outside actually caused a big scandal back in the day because there are six of them, the same number of minarets at the big mosque in mecca. no mosque had ever rivaled mecca like that, and no one knew quite what to do. the final solution was to add a seventh minaret in mecca. now you know.

or, if you are looking for something a little more modern, you can head over to the new mosque, which is, of course, not really new at all, but we are speaking in relative terms here.

i can totally pass, right?

lagging

i was on the phone with my mom today while i drove home from the airport.

she asked if i was totally exhausted and spacey.

i said no, actually i feel pretty good.

i said that just as i got out of the car and realized my gas door was open and i had forgotten to put my gas cap back on before i left the gas station.

then i drove back to the gas station to find it.

then i remembered i had put the gas cap on my roof.

luckily, it was still there.

my brain, however, had yet to be relocated.

turkish delight, country roads

i am still working on the picture thing, kids. sorry. exept that i am actually not working on it, exactly. i decided not to worry about it, i just haven't told you until now. that is a project to be tackled as soon as i get home, which will be the day after tomorrow. depending, of course, on when you are reading this and what time zone you are in and so on and so forth.

in the meantime, let me tell you that, should you decide to rent a car and drive it through the back roads and spacious highways of turkey, there are a few things you should know.

like, you shouldn't worry about speeding because there don't seem to be any traffic-related police officers anywhere.

also, you can't worry about how fast you are going because you have no idea how to convert kilometers to miles.

driving in turkey will not be nearly as scary or hard as you thought it might be, so no worries there either. finding a good radio station, on the other hand, might be impossible.

for some as-yet-undetermined reason, trucks go down mountains in turkey at exactly zero miles (or kilometers) per hour. luckily, it's totally OK to pass three or four trucks in a row. like all at the same time. really. just try it.

and, if you happen to pull into petroturk and the attendant filling your tank notices that you have a nasty cold and are blowing your noise on toilet paper you stole from a different gas station bathroom, he will give you a nice, big box of tissues.

which makes the fact that he also just gave himself a three lira tip seem just fine.

turkish delight, an intro

i don't think i have made any secret of the insanity of my life lately, and i was frankly starting to wonder if it was some kind of sign that i shouldn't come to turkey after all. (and don't try to pretend like you don't believe in signs like those.)

but, despite all the odds, i got everythıng done and there i was, friday afternoon, at the airport and ready to go. and then i was feelıng pretty good about the whole thing. (signs, schmigns.) i had two pounds of red vines in my bag, a good seat on the plane (though not as nıce as busıness class seat my friend shane, who happened to be on the same flight to paris, snagged. the stinker), a nice seatmate and i fınally decided to breathe a sigh of relief and let everything go besides the awesome trip in front of me.

a little nap, a football movie that made me cry (and don't try to pretend like that never happens to you), some dinner, a call for a doctor on board, another nap, and then we were suspiciously descending even though i was pretty sure paris was stıll many hours away.

as it happens, i was right and we were, in fact, touching down in montreal. the call for a doctor on board was to attend to a passenger who had a seizure and then went into cardiac arrest at the back of the plane, and we were diverting to montreal to get him off. and no, they were not shooting an epısode of house. it's cool though. i had never been to montreal. plus shane brought me his fancy business class toiletry kit as a little diversion condolence gift.

what was not cool was that the delay meant i completely missed my connecting flight in paris, as well as my joyous reunion wıth dana. i won't lie and say i dıdn't contemplate just headiıng the sign and catching a flight home and bagging the whole thing. because i dıd. but instead i got on a flight to instanbul later that day, made it wıth no problem and was joyously reunited wıth dana at our hotel instead.

i feel like i got the better deal, though, as dana was not joyously reunıted wıth her luggage until a day later.

and so, the trip began.

now, i have loads of really great pictures to show you of stunning mosques and crowded markets and piles of exotic spices and charming ruins, all taken on a super-fancy camera that becky lent me. the only trouble being that i stıll haven't figured out how to get pictures off that fancy camera and onto the computer. so, you'll just have to wait for all of that.

not to worry, though. i thınk you can do it.

bye bye birdies

i am off. right now.

huzzah!

keep your eyes here for updates from foreign lands. (hopefully.)

cracking up

the fact that my editor offered me some of her prescription anxiety medication yesterday should give you some indication of how my life is going these days.

the list of culprits is long and includes (but is not limited to): a broken water heater (and cold showers/washing my hair in the sink for the past four days); a cancelled domestic flight in turkey; a long and ultimately unfruitful call to a call center allegedly located in the u.s. trying to fix it; 4,000 words worth of stories filed in the last two days.

and let's not forget that little cross-country move coming up.

needless to say, there has been a lot of stress lately, and i have been handling it very badly.

but luckily, in addition to all those bad things, these good things happened, too.

bri boiled some water for me this morning so i could pour it into the tub and have a (mostly) warm bathing experience.

stephanie offered to drive out to fashion place mall (past 3300 south. like i have time for that) and pick up some plug adaptors for me.

dana found me another domestic flight to replace my cancelled one.

ricky took me out for thai food last night, and brought over a little travel kit this evening.

i have two pounds of red vines for the plane.

i have decided not to worry about anything else, except for having a wonderful vacation.

and now i think i am going to watch mama mia! to get me in the right frame of mind. a movie set in greece is close enough, right?

mexican train

{this is not actually my homemade flan. though i am positive mine was just as delicious.}

the event: my last sunday friendinner (*sniff, sniff*)

the menu: a mexican potluck, with chicken and bean tostadas (they had a more fancy name, but it escapes me), a delicious salad with pears and grapefruit, strawberries as big as my head and dipped in whipped cream, my homemade flan (first try!) and homemade fried ice cream to boot.

the players: ricky, the gourmand and mastermind; stephanie, who had to leave just as the fun began; elliott, the salad-master; briana of the berries; amy of love and friendship; laura and jake of the mistakenly forgotten tortilla chips; jaron of much chicken-shredding and dish-washing; georgia, who slept through it all; ryan, the hometeacher and repairer of doused pilot lights.

the conversation: various but including why it is so difficult to remove eye liner; the recounting of awkward sunday school moments; what it takes to be an alpha male (peeing off elliott's front porch plays a prominent role); siblings; recipes; something medical and gross i couldn't listen to; how everyone will miss me terribly when i go.

well that makes two of us.