The Adventure Years

My dear friend Melissa was planning to come visit us in Izmir in October. Plane ticket bought, schedules cleared, Google Doc in the early stages of planning... and then the news hits that the US and Turkey are no longer issuing tourist visas to each other's citizens. We sit on this news for a week or two hoping it will sort itself out. I search [turkey visa] on Google News on a daily basis to see the latest. We're down to the last week--Melissa's supposed to be arriving on Friday and we need to make a call. So we start looking at flights. Our friend Tristan had mentioned Budapest awhile back, and we decide to start there, since we can both get there fairly cheaply. We look at some maps and decide we'll do Budapest, Vienna, Zurich, and Paris. Paris was already planned for Earle's birthday the last weekend of Melissa's trip anyway -- plane tickets purchased out of Izmir already. But no matter. We'd get to Paris some other way. Maybe by train! Car! Air! Who

It's hobby time here in Turkey! After some emergency adventures last week (more on this later), I'm back in the country and exploring some of my favorite hobbies here in Turkey. First up, choir. I love choir. Making music with a small group of other singers is one of my favorite things. I wasn't sure what I'd find here in Turkey--none of my extremely knowledgable chorus friends in CA knew about any Turkish choral tradition. But I checked around on some expat Facebook groups, and a woman had written that her friend's choir was looking for members--ideally men, as choirs often go, but they'd take women, too. So I reached out to this nice Dutch lady who told me where and when I could sit in on a rehearsal. I figure, yay, Dutch lady, posted in expat group...this will be a good group for someone like me new to the country and looking to sing. So I went to yesterday's rehearsal a few subways stops away. I walk in right around rehearsal start time. There are 4

We've been going on so many adventures outside of Izmir that this past weekend, we stayed local and explored our new city! Here are some things we did: Made tortellini in the Turkish return of Pasta Fridays with one of Earle's coworkers. No ricotta? Let's use this yogurt cheese. Throw some Turkish pepper in there. Etc. Went to the waterfront and ate Turkish Breakfast, in which they serve you a couple dozen tiny dishes (cheese, sauces, honey, eggs, vegetables, breads, etc. Took the subway to IKEA and tried to identify which words were Turkish words we haven't learned yet and which were Swedish furniture names Took the subway to a ferry (#boateveryweekend) and went across the bay to a brand-new part of town that was as crowded as Times Square Had rooftop döner for a "snack" Ate street corn (literally a cup of corn with the spices of your choice) Ate more pasta and watched a Turkish comedy movie with friends Went out for drinks back out on the waterfront

Last weekend we took a boat to Greece. A ferry, in fact. We left our house a little before 7am and got on the subway. That got us to the bus station where we asked half a dozen people in succession where to get the bus to Çesme. They'd each point us in roughly the same direction, where we'd head until we started feeling unsure again and asked someone else. I aspire to a level of Turkish where I can feel confident after one person's directions. So we hop on the bus; it's about an hour to Çeşme, which is a peninsula in the Agean. From there we got on the 9am ferry, which was the "maller one but still sat hundreds of people. Our ferry took a little over half an hour; there's a bigger/faster/more expensive one that's 20 minutes. So, yes, you can take a ferry from Turkey to Greece in 20 minutes. (From Chios you can take another ferry to Athens that takes about 8 hours. Stay tuned; we may do this in June after school is out, in the style of last spring's SF

Yesterday after school we hitched a ride with a coworker to her part of town and then got on the Teleferik, which translates to "cable car" or "ropeway". For ₺8 apiece (about $2.20) you get a ride up and down the side of a mountain. We didn't do a good job of taking pictures at the top, but there's a whole village there including a shop called Et Evi (Meat House) that will sell you raw meat to cook at one of about a hundred little picnic stoves around. The Meat House wasn't open on Wednesday at 5pm anyway, so we'll have to go back for another adventure sometime soon and get some proper pictures. Spoiler alert! Here we are at the top! No line on a Wednesday afternoon. Many cars out of commission presumably due to the low crowds. Up we go! At the top looking out over the mountains, as opposed to the city view in the first picture. Side note, I think Earle's Pixel camera blows my 5X out of the water. We walked most

I mentioned in an earlier post that I'll be spending some time learning Turkish. This is first and foremost because I love learning languages; secondarily it is because many people in Izmir do not speak English. I put it in that order because the latter doesn't seem to be a dealbreaker for many of the expats I've met; some have lived here 4 or more years and don't speak much beyond the basics. This may be because many of them are married to Turks, or are at least good friends with Turks, so they make it work. But I'm pretty excited to be that random American who can speak decent Turkish. (See? Just when you thought I was showing signs of Ravenclaw (motivated my knowledge) I descend back into Slytherin (motivated by recognition). Story of my life.) So. Turkish. I've been learning via Rosetta Stone, which I love deeply because of one very specific key feature:  Rosetta Stone Audio Companion , which you can download as a bunch of audio files that repeat the phras

"Okay Kimberly," I hear you say, "all these rambly posts are great and all, but what are you actually up to in Turkey other than, like, learning Python? You can do that from anywhere, you know!" I do know that. So we are making the most of our weekends, starting with last weekend, which was my first weekend here. In Turkey, it's really useful to have friends who speak Turkish, and James has done a great job of meeting many excellent people who speak Turkish and   love adventures as much as we do. Once of his coworkers chartered a boat last weekend, which is ridiculously cheap: ₺600-₺700 ($165-$195) for a boat that holds 12 complete with captain. Then they bought a bunch of meat because there is a freaking barbeque on the wooden boat  and so in addition to our private cruise, we also had delicious meals. We stopped at a bunch of places and jumped in the water. It was a bit cold, being the end of September, but really nice in the shallow areas and hanging