Last Things

I feel that this was never finished and there is an ellipsis in my online representation of my travels. I think its about time to finish off this ellipses the best I can. Sine I last posted I have been, I have gone, and I have left and as I sit here now on a different side of the ocean I'm a bit nostalgic. So here are the cliffs notes to an amazing last 2 months of my life abroad.

Turkey: I visited, I played, I'm no longer a nanny!!!!!

Shortly after my last post I went to Ephesus and Cappadocia in Turkey. These were two amazing places with some amazing experiences. Ephesus was hot, very old and Greek, and the air smelt like blossoms. Perfectly marvelous in other words. I explored the old Greek city which had poppies growing all over and lots of stray cats, climbed around in a courtyard of a mosque, saw some great sunsets, and went out for one of the first nights all by myself. Oh and there were storks all over! There were ancient aqueducts of the city that were in ruins and on most of the pillars you would find a large stork's nest with some funny storks in them. My favorite moment of that trip came when I was walking back to my hostel on a clear beautiful night with a turkish dessert in one hand while staring at the turkish moon and stars. It was a moment for deep breaths.

From there I hopped over to Cappadoccia. This is a place that has some very unique stone formations, underground cities, and high up cave/mountain houses as well. Playing in the underground housing was a very good time. I felt like I was in goonies! The cave houses were also great for playing in. We were able to climb everywhere and explore.

I returned to Turkey for my final weeks and eventually I was set free and no longer a nanny!! This was one very very exciting day. I returned to the life of a normal twenty-something- year-old and went out with friends. I was able to go to my good friend, Aysegul's home town of Eskisehir. It was so great to see her home town and meet her family and just spend time with her. After that more going out with my Istanbul friends happened, along with a wonderful going away meyhane dinner. After some Turkish tea, cookies, and a pirate taxi ride I made it to the airport and left my Istanbul life behind.

Scotland for a bit.

I went back to scotland and spent time crashing on my friend Steph's couch in Edinburgh. It was so good have some down time with a friend before I picked up and started my last 3 weeks of travel. I didn't do much besides snack, walk around, and chat with Steph. It was an enjoyable and much needed week!

France: oh la la indeed.

I spent an amazing, amazing week in the south of france with Jean-yves, the brother of one of our very good family friends. He showed me the most amazing time. I stayed in his beautiful villa in a small town on the french riviera. He took me everywhere (Monaco, Italy, all over Provence, Cannes, Saint Tropez...), introduced me to wonderful people, and we ate the most amazing french food... ever. He also brought me fresh croissants and pan au chocolat every morning. oh la la indeed. Jean-yves is at least in his 70's and it was such a great experience to bond with him and spend so much time with someone that age. I was able to meet the rest of their family and see some great old pictures. He also told me wonderful life stories about France back in the day, living in Africa, flying planes, and playing the trumpet. Jean-yves was a perfect friend and tour guide.

From there I made it up to Paris. Paris was so much of everything. By this point I was kind of being a lame tourist and probably should have seen more of the "must see" places of Paris, although I think I managed to cross most of them off my list. I was truly content just lazing around in parks, drinking wine, eating cheese and having coffee. I was lucky enough to have a french friend to do this all with, Antoine. I got to follow him around like a non-french speaking puppy and inflict myself on him for almost a week. It was splendid. Metros, the Eiffel tower, walking around, sleeping too late, going to bed too late, graveyards and practicing saying un peu. Amazingly two of my wonderful friends from UW-Madison, Meg and Leah, were also in Paris at the same time! Being reunited in the city of love after one year was perfect.

From Paris I went to Amsterdam. It was a very cool city. Canals, Anne Frank, bikes, prostitutes, and coffee. I just had a short stop but it was truly a beautiful city.

Sweden!

I went to Sweden to visit my friend Ottilia that came and studied abroad at UW for one year. It was so great to see her again! We had some really great times at madison and she showed me an amazing time in Sweden. Her family was kind enough to let me stay with them. It was great meeting her family and her mom made some wonderful swedish dishes! Ottilia was the perfect tour guide and night life guide. We went to some very fun places and saw all the beautiful things around Stockholm. I was there towards the end of may and it was staying light out until about 11 o'clock or so. It was so strange to me. Every day seemed like 3 days. It was light during the day, it got almost all the way dark by the time we were getting to a bar, then when we were going home it was light again. One of my favorite images of being in sweden was cutting through the woods to get to Ottilias house after going out. It was already getting light out with the hazy almost morning light shining through green leaves in the woods. It was damp and we were trying to avoid stepping on snails. Hearing the crunch every now and then made me sadly realize I am not good at avoiding things.

Scotland: The mother land.

I spent my last few days in Scotland. I love Scotland and I miss it. I got to visit Erin, go out with friends, drink cider, and visit my cousins. It was a brief stop off and mostly consisted of my hopping to different cities to collect all my things I left sporadically at people's houses.

And home to the U.S. of A...

In Chicago I was scooped up at the airport by one of my besties Christina. I had a quick whirlwind, fighting jet lag, fun filled experience in chicago then headed to good ol' Wisconsin...

Reflecting back on my experiences now makes me incredibly grateful. I was able to meet amazing people, form wonderful friendships and bond with so many people. I miss you all and loved my time with you. Thinking about my experiences abroad will throw me into my own world and result in a happy sigh for a long time to come.

I had to go to Bulgaria

This past week I had to head to Bulgaria. It was a strange process and had nothing at all to do with needing to get a new tourist visa to stay in Turkey longer. When I was heading out to catch my very early bus to Bulgaria I was quite excited. Thinking "I am going to Bulgaria today. Who gets to say that?" I had great thoughts of hanging out in a funny Bulgarian town for lunch that had dusty streets and then hopping on the next bus back to istanbul. It ended up being quite a long day. The bus ride was about 4 hours each way. A lot of sleeping happened. It was really great to see some more of the country side of Turkey though. It is really beautiful. Very green and hilly. Once in Bulgaria I just ended up staying at the bus station type place that basically seemed like an airport. I wandered around the duty free store for a long time and bought some mound bars. Yum. Sadly there was no great Bulgaria town with dusty street and old ladies selling things. I caught the next bus back and by the time I got home I had had a 14 hour day of going and coming. I was tired.

I went to Asia for a pillow fight.

On world pillow fight day, April 5th I believe, I headed to Asia to take part in a large organized pillow fight. It was a very exciting process indeed. Getting pillows. Meeting up with people. Getting a dolmus and crossing the bridge to the asian side of Istanbul. The getting there part might have been more exciting than the actually being there part, but the asian side was really great. We caught a beautiful sunset and got to hit strangers with pillows. Unfortunately the boys kind of dominated the pillow fight scene so it was a bit rough. Kate and I decided to just go and attack groups of girls that were standing around with pillows. That worked out pretty well for a while. We also saw two 6 year old girls fighting each other so we thought that was a perfect opportunity to get our pillow fight groove on. Also, great pillow phrases that don't usually happen were said like, "Can I borrow your pillow?" and "Take my pillow, I'm not using it anymore." Basically it was a splendid adventure.

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.

I'm here, really I am.

I went to Yildiz Park today to walk around. It is spring now and things are growing and making you notice them. I saw bees today and they had no idea that they were Turkish bees. I wonder how they would have felt if they were made to face this fact. It is surprising how much warm weather and green things can make things better. I am here and I need to start being here more.

Things I have done as of recent: Celebrated St.Patrick's day in istanbul-funny, smoked hookah at a cafe (finally!!), made another splendid friend, ate more ice cream, felt anxious, sprained my ankle, visited an old train station, took deep breaths, stared at the bosphorus, cried in a bar, watched pigeons for a long period of time, attempted to sell back a book to a book vendor using Turkish- why is my Turkish so bad?, became a runner, stopped being a runner due to injuries, decided I am not me, sat and read, missed things, decided I really really don't want anything to do with Turkish guys, missed people, felt lost, felt almost found, remembered I am here, laid on the ground, came to conclusions, felt confused, made up my mind, decided I love coffee.

I have been in Istanbul for two months now. The weather is getting nicer and I am here for two more months. Well maybe another month and a half. There is still so much to see and do and I think the nicer weather will push that along. I'm going to do it all and figure it out. Yes.

Some Turkish Things

I live in Istanbul, Turkey. I am an au pair. Both of these statements have been valid for exactly one month now.

Things I like about Istanbul: The food, the buildings, windy street

s, mosques, islamic

prayers/chants heard projected from the mosques at prayer times (5 times a day), old people, the old men with hats and mustaches, the old ladies that shake blankets out of window, laundry being dried outside, all of the stray cats and dogs, the fact that I laugh whenever I go out from watching the cats do funny things, speaking- well trying to speak- turkish, hearing people speak turkish, not having to know what everyone is talking about all of the time, the Bosphorus, the Bosphorus at night with lights shining on it, salep, ice cream with a knife and fork, hazelnut flavored vodka, the crazy neat antique stores, the weather.

So basically I enjoy most things here. I am liking the family I am living with also. They moved here from Sweden this past summer. The mom is Turkish and the dad is Swedish so the crazy children know swedish, turkish, and english. Very nice. I hang out with kids a lot. Specifically a 5 year old girl and a 7 year old boy. They cry frequently, especially the 5 year old. Temper tantrums or something. That is not that much fun. But when neither of them are crying we do fun things like play with a ball, listen to music and dance around and play card games. They are fun half of the time and naughty the other half.

Ooo I have seen some pretty wonderful things here so far. I have been trying to get out during the days and hit up the must see places of Istanbul. I have been to the Blue Mosque, several of the Bazars, and definitely the most amazing of the places the Basilica Cistern. The citern is this underground chamber with 336 columns that was used to hold water. There is still water on the ground with fish in it and it is very sparkly because people all throw coins in to make wishes. It felt like a place that you saw in a dream once but can't really remember. Well either a dream or a video game. It is definitely on my list of most beautiful places that I have seen.

I have also gone to several mosques. I have really

enjoyed them. They are very refreshing to go to after seeing so many roman cathedrals in europe. The architecture is different and it is carpeted. You get to take your shoes off, that always seems fun, and I get to wear a scarf over my head. I enjoy all of the arabic writing and all that I have seen have great chandeliers in them as well.

I have also tried going to this one Jewish cemetery near my house. Old cemeteries are always interesting and a Jewish one seemed more exciting than christian ones I've seen before. Unfortunately I got denied because I am not Jewish. It was sad. I probably could have lied and gotten in but I felt bad. I peaked over the walls when I was walking back. It seemed very run down and would have been great to explore. I also saw stray dogs that got to be there. They must have been Jewish dogs so I guess it was okay.

What else have I seen? Oh I went to this very cool fort built during the ottoman empire in only 4 months! Which is crazy because it was quite large. I went with my wonderful new american friend that I met, Maureen. We explored it and walked very carefully- no hand rails or ledges in very high up places. It was a gorgeous day when we went and the bosphorus looked amazing. It was a fun place to see because there weren't too many restrictions on what you could do and where you could climb. We enjoyed it, çok güzel.

I started volunteering at Jinemed hospital as well. They specialize in In virto fertilization treatments and get many foreign patients, a lot from the UK. I hang out with the lady that helps all the english speaking patients. I've been learning lots about fertility drugs and hormonal cycles. Very exciting. This is the first time I've actually applied things I've learned at University. Hooray for education! They let me see a lot of really neat things as well. I have gotten to put on scrubs, a hat and a face mask thing and watch egg collections and embryo transfers in the surgical rooms. The coolest thing I think was being able to see the live embryos before they did the transfer. Funny 8 cells of potential human life. After learning all about development and seeing images in text books of embryos it was pretty neat. It's also good because it gets me out of the house and gives me something different to do. It has made me sure of what I've already known as well, I don't want to be a doctor. Hospitals are a weird place and people are definitely in very vulnerable states and loose some of their dignity I think. People need to have things done in hospitals to get better sometimes but I think I want to stay away from that and not have to think about it. It might have to do with having spent time in the hospital myself, I am not sure. I do really like learning about the medications that the patients are taking and how they are effecting them. That is neato in my book.

The grandparents of the kids came the other week and it was great. Turkish old people are so very nice. Their English was probably about as good as my Turkish so it was a bit difficult communicating with them but we managed to get points across. I learned new turkish words which was good the grandma made amazing food. I felt extremely Turkish when she was here because all of our meals were big authentic Turkish ones. I love the breakfasts here. It's usually olives in olive oil, tomatoes in olive oil, hard boiled eggs, toast, walnuts and honey, and tea. It's so great. I will miss that when I go home. The grandma also read fortunes from the coffee ground of the turkish coffee you drank. It was so exciting. I watched her read the house keepers fortune and it was so neat. Although I couldn't understand any of it I was very enthralled. She read mine later in the week with the mom translating for her. It was my first fortune telling experience and it just seemed right. A wonderful turkish grandma on the couch reading my fortune after we all drank coffee. Apparently it's very common here for people to do that. I think it's a neat thing for sure.

Well that is all of the Turkey things I feel like talking about for the moment. I will try to be a better blogger and talk about other things soon. Until then.

Rome, Portugal, Madrid- oh my.

Finally.

So I did a bunch of traveling last month and had such and amazing time. I think I will do a somewhat condensed version of my travels.

First of all I was in Rome for New Years with my friend Christine. We spent 5 days there and 4 nights. It was a really great experience and we got to eat a lot of gelato. Mmm. We saw all the wonderful things one is suppose to see. The coliseum was by far my favorite of the old roman things. It was really amazing. Those Romans had their stuff together. I had so much fun traveling around with one of my friends. We ate a lot, laughed a lot, and took way too many pictures- so all the great things’ traveling is suppose to be about happened. We even managed to go see a movie in Italian in a very small cinema with snacks. It seemed to be an okay movie from what I understood of it. The city was beautiful and I loved the streets and the balconies and the cats. ALSO I loved the fact that there were orange trees all over the city. We continually tried to pick them and after a few attempts realized you shouldn’t eat them because they are horrible and sour. But it was exciting nonetheless succeeding in picking roman oranges. Hooray. We had a few wonderful days weather wise and then a few rainy ones as well. We still managed to walk around constantly and had pretty sore feet by the end of the trip. New Years itself was so much fun. It ended up pouring down with rain so our original plans of seeing concerts at piazzas were nixed. We went out with some of the people we met at our hostel and tried to find some bars to go to instead. We ended up getting lost (I’m not sure how because I had a compass and I was using it) and came to bars that were all closed for private parties. This one group decided to let us come into their private party because it was so close to midnight. They liked us and let us stay, which was wonderful. There was tons of great homemade Italian food and lots of champagne plus an openbar. The people were all really great and interesting to talk to. I was able to practice Italian, Spanish, and then test out my beginner’s Turkish. It was such a random night but really turned out quite wonderful. It was also nice to ring in the New Year for the second time with Christine. It was meant to be. Then the next day after eating, having coffee, eating some more and a 5 hour delay we headed back to Madrid.

From our 24 hour stop off in Madrid we headed to Porto, Portugal. We went there with two of Christine’s wonderful friends, Jem and Tom. We stayed for three nights and four days I believe. I really loved Porto. It was slightly run down and had really great windy streets with a lot of splendid character. Also there were occasional old people hanging out of their windows just looking around which is always good. All the houses were tiled there so it gave the town this great glossy look. We walked around a lot and saw all the things to see and ate a tremendous amount of bakes goods. Most of the baked goods there were tinted orange. I’m not sure why that was but it was something special and I liked it. We tried the Portugal specialty the franceshinia too. It was basically a sandwich with every type of meet (including hot dogs cut in half) and then covered in cheese and this special sauce. It was interesting to say the least. We should have stopped after we all split our first one though. On one of the days we went to the beach. It was really great. It rained all day but cleared up and had an amazing sunset. There were Portugal surfers there as well. I didn’t even know they existed but they do and were at the beach. On the last day we did two Port wine tours. It was really interesting. I learned a lot about port wine and that I don’t really like to drink it that much, very sweet. Maybe with snacks it would have been better.

From there we headed back to Madrid. I attempted to do some sight seeing but I managed to catch the worst week in Madrid probably out of the whole year. It was cold and rainy and then cold and snowy. It really put a damper on exploring. I did get to go and see the Guernica though. It was really amazing seeing it in real life because after learning about it. Not being an art buff I appreciated the fact that it was so big. Who knew?

After Christine’s family that she stays with offered us one of their vacation houses for the weekend Christine, Jem and I headed to Salamanca. The house we stayed in was very nice and we spent the first night bundled up in blankets and watching tv episodes on the computer. It was cold out. The next day… my birthday… we made it out and explored Salamanca. It is really a beautiful town. I think it would have been more enjoyed again if it was a bit warmer but at least we got sun. The sky was so amazing there. It had really wonderful and crazy sunset-ness going on. I really enjoyed that. That night we went out because it was MY BIRHTDAY! Hooray. We celebrated the fact that I turned 23. Before heading out I got birthday flan and champagne. I was in Spain and flan with a candle was definitely called for and it was amazing. It was a nice night out and great to celebrate with friends. The next day, after nearly getting snowed in, we headed back to Madrid.

I ended my 3 weeks of traveling in Madrid and followed Christine around, visiting her life for a while. It was nice. Madrid seems like a really fun city to live in for sure- a lot of tapas, bakery, and drinks. Plus they get naps during the day, so that is nice. I managed to get most of my sight seeing done despite of the cold weather. I had an amazing time traveling with Christine. It was really sad to go but I love that I had the chance to travel with one of my friends from University and get to bond even more in foreign countries. We had a lot of good laughs and I didn’t even get annoyed at her once! What a successful trip.

After coming home from Madrid I had less than 24 hours in Dundee to pack up my life and move to Turkey for my au pair job in Istanbul. BUT that is another thing to blog about. THE END.