Easter in Istanbul

Holidays in places that do not celebrate your holidays are always an interesting experience. They seem more like your own and you realize that you enjoy your traditions or what traditions are important to you. It feels like your secret holiday that no one else knows about or cares about too much. You can do anything that you like with it, because it is yours and no one else's. Maybe it's like being little when you have some make believe events- a tea party, your cats birthday party, etc. Most of all, I think any sort of holiday or celebration is a wonderful opportunity to spend time with people and relate to each other on another common level. We all love to dye easter eggs. You like to eat chocolate? Me too!! Let's be friends forever. In a cute apartment overlooking the Bosphorus in Istanbul, Turkey this is just what happened on my make believe easter.

Thanks to a wonderful care package sent by my glorious mother, copious amounts of chocolate (well I ate most of it before easter got here) and an egg dying kit were at my disposal. The decision was quickly made to have an easter extravaganza, american girl style (not the dolls of course, but that would have been fun too), at Kate's current place of apartment crashing.

An aside about Kate- she is my new great American friend. She is halfsy English like me and did a bunch of traveling before landing in Istanbul. One of the many

marvelous things about Kate is that she is in search of a job. MEANING she has free time during the day to be my friend during my odd au pair hours. I am very happy that we met and we have shared many a splendid coffee and chat together.

Okay, back to easter. Kate, Maureen (my other

wonderful pocket-sized american friend), and I dyed easter eggs to our hearts content, ate chocolate past the point of our stomaches content, drank coffee and had some of Kate's watermelon & mint salad (sounds strange but it's good). We sat on a balcony overlooking the Bosphorus, discussed our disapproval of cruise ships, enjoyed the sun and each others company. Our eggs turned out to be quite marvelous. Unfortunately I squished mine on the bus ride home, BUT it was the prettiest green squished hard boiled egg I have ever seen. Overall my easter was truly splendid in the make believe, having it be exactly what you want it to be, kind of way. I loved being with people that understood the importance of colored eggs, chocolate shaped like rabbits, and talking about nothing in particular.