Vipikrob

A bit of a strange day. Eka and I went to Taksim to finish shopping for gifts. Every time I’ve thought that we were finished, she’s suggested that we buy something for someone else. What a totally different idea of how to spend a vacation! We were back at the hotel by 4 and I still had a lot of energy. Then Yavuz facebooked and asked if I would want to meet again. Rogor ara! So first Eka and I watched “From Prada to Nada” with our last night of Wi-Fi. Then she went to bed and I went out to meet Yavuz (around 7).

We walked all the way to the bridge to Asia, stopping along the way to study. He told me about a palace, about Ataturk, about New Years in Istanbul…We talked about pretty much everything. Then he fed me mussels stuffed with rice (a very popular street food) because I didn’t know how to eat them. I thought back to when one of my students gave me chestnuts two months ago and I had to ask Matsatso how to eat them. At the time, I was embarrassed to be asking such a question. I’ve asked it so many times since, that this time was more hilarious than embarrassing. We admired New Year’s decorations and told stories and sat on a bus and watched the water of the Bosporus from a park until decided to go to one of the most famous hookah bars in the city. There we had rose-mint hookah and Turkish tea made with milk (and cinnamon? It’s apparently a regional special from Eastern Turkey). When we did decide to go home, we found that our bridge was closed. The nice policeman explained that we would have to walk to the next bridge. While we weren’t opposed to spending a little more time walking around Istanbul and admiring her night-lights, walking to this bridge required walking through a rather shady neighborhood. Yavuz admitted that—while he wouldn’t be nervous alone—he was a little on edge walking there with me because gypsies live there. It can be a dangerous place, he said. But we made it through ok. Maybe I’ll see him again someday. Maybe. It would be nice.

At the hotel, I had to ask for a spare key at the front desk because I left the one we were given with Eka and she was sleeping. The man at the desk asked where I was from, and we talked a little bit about how he was from Capadocia but had lived in Chicago for a little while. While there, he worked for Six Flags. He liked working there. He said that he would love to give every Turkish child a chance to go to such a place because there aren’t such big amusement parks in Turkey. He liked Chicago and he liked the people. But I was a little disturbed at one point because he said, “Only 4 people told me, ‘Go home and work there. Here there are Americans without jobs.” I apologized for such ignorance. What makes my country special (supposedly) is that it’s a land of immigrants. I doubt that any of the people who told my new friend “go home” are 100% Native American or related to the first pilgrims. How quickly we forget who and where we came from! My friend wasn’t upset, though. He said that he saw many people each day and that the ones who said such things were usually teenagers who didn’t know any better. I wish this consoled me the way it consoled him…

 He was a character. He was surprised by how young I am, and he asked why I would possibly want to live in Georgia. He became very serious and told me, “You should stay a little while if you want, but then you must go home and get married.” Suddenly everyone wants me to get married. And they say this in the same breath that they say I’m a child. Ummm…how about I spend a little time being single and independent and a young woman (gogo I can deal with, but bavshvi gets tiring after a while…). *sigh*