EuroBlog...: Catching up: More of Istanbul and a week in Paris!

Hi there, friends! It's been a little while since I updated everyone... So I'll start with a few recent pics around Istanbul. :)

On the ferry... I'm now totally spoiled and hate taking 'regular' busses/dolmushes/etc, because the traffic in Istanbul is always so terrible! At least on the ferry, not only is my commute time cut in half or more, but I can sit, enjoy crossing the Bosphorus, and really soak in the magic of leaving one continent and going to the other... :)

My dear friend I met on the havas bus in from the airport to Istanbul my first night! She was a medical inern at a local hospital for a 4-week program and we got to hang out a couple of times... This is on her last night in town, with our last lahmacun together.

One day I heard someone playing an accordion closeby... I looked out my bedroom window, and there was a gypsy family - mom toting the kids and dad playing away, just walking down the street...

Turkish BBQ chicken! Totally superior to any BBQ chicken I've ever had in my life, anywhere in the world.

Ahhh yes. My one vice in Istanbul... I haven't done much shopping (shocking, I know!), don't spend too much money on food, and haven't done the touristy stuff like organized mosque-trips, etc. But I sure do enjoy a real Turkish Coffee now and then. ;)

I live next to a hamam! This is the view from my bedroom window.

Simits are like bready-pretzels, sold on the street on nearly every corner for 1TL.

My flatmate and I, eating a simit and about to enter the Tuesday Bazaar on the Asian-side of Istanbul, close to where we live... Here we go!

Knock-off heaven!

Yes, these were shirts... in tiny shrink-wrapped cubes... ???

Another local 'street-food' type of thing... These little corn-stands are everywhere too (like the simit stands) and are also just 1TL a cup.

A view from the main street my flat is just off of.

A particularly beautiful sunset on my ferry-ride home tonight...

Istanbul remains a challenge. I have still not found work, despite my near-constant attempts to scour the internet and contacts I have for any possible leads/openings on an all-day, every-day basis. I am hoping to at least do a gig or two here, before heading off to Greece in the beginning of June, but if it's just not in the cards I am trying to make peace with that and just enjoy the city for now.

In my last post I mentioned having to return to Seattle earlier than I had initially anticipated... I'll be coming back sometime in October and will need to get some work lined up pretty quick -- I'm sure I'll be financially drained (already out of a lot more money than I thought I'd be at this point, actually) and will be in desperate need of a paycheck... And am also not sure what my housing-situation will be like (more couch-surfing??). For now, the more-immediate plan is to stay in Istanbul until about the beginning of June and then head out to Greece to meet my partner-in-crime. :) We'll stay there for about a month and then have tickets to Rome lined up around mid-July... From there, we aren't sure what will follow from then until our return to Seattle in October, but we are open to ideas/suggestions/friends to stay with! I am also loosely thinking about doing a year of university in Paris for the 2012-2013 year...

Ah yes, dear friends! I went to Paris for a week! I had to clear my head of Istanbul after about a month of being here... Loneliness was starting to push in and the heaviness of my challenges here was getting to be a bit much. So I took off to Paris to see some dear friends and refresh my soul a bit... Ahhhh I love Paris! What a lovely city, and such a contrast to Istanbul!! People actually say 'please' and 'thank you', and 'excuse me' when they accidentally bump into you. Seeing greenery - special areas just for trees and nature and beauty, people actually using crosswalks in intersections and waiting for lights, traffic actually stopping for a stray pedestrian (gasp! no!!)... This is the Europe I really love. Istanbul has been a very educational experience and I'm definitely glad I came here, but it's not what draws me to 'this' part of the world -- I say 'this' because I'm realizing that Turkey is really not in Europe. I mean, technically yes, but the energy, the culture, the food, the religion, the music... It's just not the western/northern/eastern Europe we Americans are used to mentally conjuring when hearing the word "Europe". I literally live on the Asian-side of Istanbul -- I have to cross the Bosphorus to set foot back on Europe again!

But anyhoo, back to Paris. While I was there I also sat in on some conferences dealing with the racism-issues towards Muslims in France, specifically the first and second generation northern Africans and Arabs in Paris and laws being set into motion to limit their religious freedoms. Very interesting stuff... They had brought in a super fabulous black woman-Ph.D. professor/researcher/speaker from the U.S. to talk about her experiences growing up in the rural south, her perspective on living through the U.S.'s Civil Rights movement, and to give the some sort of perspective on how to go about staring a civil rights movement of their own in France, against these outrageous laws against Muslims in non-violent ways (boycotting, protests, sit-ins, etc). Interestingly enough, the top new story of today when I woke up was that a new ban has been put on wearing face-veils in public in France, and two women were arrested this morning. Very curious that I was just there and talking with young black French people in depth about this...

Some pics for you...! :)

The beautiful street my friends live on. :)

Shopping heaven!

Yum! My friend and I stopped for a super fancy hot chocolate in one of the most beautiful shopping centers (if you can even call it something so common like that) I have ever seen in my life.