Lee’s Birthday!!!! August 16th. Yeah if you haven’t given me a Facebook shoutout yet it’s been duly noted. Belated congratulations for my biggest accomplishment-to-date are acceptable.
Anyways, woke feeling a bit more mature (did I mention it was my birthday) and attempted to shave but apparently I’m never going to grow a beard. Went to class. They sang (that’s right: Happy Birthday in Turkish).
After class we went and visit ITU to see the Dean of the Architecture school, Prof. Dr. Orhan “Hosh------name to long to remember”. He looked like an architecture professor… what does this mean, he had thin rimmed but clearly designer eye glasses, he wore a crisp shirt, no tie (obviously) and had a breast pocket filled with drafting pens (really, drafting pens? who drafts anymore?). He explained ITU’s six-step registration process which involves three signatures. The process sounds like a real doozey compared to Tulane’s go online sign up for your classes and that’s it. Anyways he explained some other stuff about the school but I will not bore you with the details until school begins.
We went on a little adventure. We ended up going through neighborhoods with beautiful old buildings, nothing new, abandoned Armenian Churches, mosques, and beautiful old town houses. This was a perfect collection of buildings that was crumbling together while still remaining a vibrant neighborhood. So many areas here shun their physical environments and are safer, friendlier, and more alive than what stereotypes would lead one to believe. In these neighborhoods almost everyone is observing Ramadan, which means it is not the right place to look for a good Turkish meal. So we headed up the hill a little.
We ended up at this unbelievable kebab place. There we met a guy named Alex who was from New York but has been living in Istanbul since 1998. When you meet an American (expat) in the middle of Istanbul you get excited, especially when he’s fluent in Turkish. Long story short he told us that his favorite bar was right up the street and he and his girlfriend were having a drink there with some friends and that we should join them. We did. It turned out to a great decision.
(1) His girlfriend and her friends were beautiful
(2) they were very interesting people; he’s a translator (lot of money in knowing both languages fluently) he also was in a Turkish Soap Opera (playing an evil CIA agent who blows up mosques and schools and stuff) she was an architecture history major and was beautiful and was designing textile patterns among other arts
(3) most importantly they drew a map for us of where good bars, clubs, music, etc. etc. etc. was in the area. The map is our prized possession; in many ways we are the sisterhood and the map is our “traveling pants.” We were idiots and didn’t get any contact information from them, but we have a way of constantly bumping into the few people we know.
Check out this work. “George Georgiou in Modern Turkey.” This article was on NYTimes.com.
Can’t say that this is a complete view of an entire country or city, but the man is trying to make a strong point about the dehumanizing and vapid traits of modernization in a globalizing world. I think it would serve him well to photograph the traditional living styles alongside the new and explain (if it is his opinion) how the new is adversely effecting the traditional. All and all the photos are beautiful. http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/20/george-georgiou-in-turkey/?hp
(pat)
On Tuesday Tuesday tap-your-shoes day we went to Galatasarey Island. It's in the middle of the Bosphorus; Europe? Asia? Neither! Or both? But anyways you take a ferry to the island on which there is an awesome pool. This is "sexy Istanbul" where the beer flows like wine, a little place called Isssssstanbul. We went with our good friend Keiran (New Zealand) and had a delightful swim. Then we fell asleep for a while and when we awoke our friend had disappeared. He slunk into the shadows, never to be seen again (until the next day).
The view from the island is unreal. There is a building preservation rule that prevents new construction along the shore of the Bosphorus; anything new must be built exactly as it was originally. This is a problem for creative building and ingenuity, but it also allows for a truly beautiful image of the city as it has existed for a long time. The steep hills of Istanbul also add impressive height to the view from the water. I love being able to see the city's geographical height and variation. However I hate experiencing said height when I am traveling on foot, which is almost always.
On Tuesday Tuesday tap-your-shoes day we went to Galatasarey Island. It's in the middle of the Bosphorus; Europe? Asia? Neither! Or both? But anyways you take a ferry to the island on which there is an awesome pool. This is "sexy Istanbul" where the beer flows like wine, a little place called Isssssstanbul. We went with our good friend Keiran (New Zealand) and had a delightful swim. Then we fell asleep for a while and when we awoke our friend had disappeared. He slunk into the shadows, never to be seen again (until the next day).
The view from the island is unreal. There is a building preservation rule that prevents new construction along the shore of the Bosphorus; anything new must be built exactly as it was originally. This is a problem for creative building and ingenuity, but it also allows for a truly beautiful image of the city as it has existed for a long time. The steep hills of Istanbul also add impressive height to the view from the water. I love being able to see the city's geographical height and variation. However I hate experiencing said height when I am traveling on foot, which is almost always.
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