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.

Things to Come

So those of you who are actually reading this blog are most likely thinking “This is so great, Kelsey, hearing about all your wonderful trips and activities. It’s really filling my life with such joy.” I’m very happy to imagine you all thinking this but I also know you are probably thinking, “But what is to come of Kelsey next?? She is such a bad bogger and I can’t wait for another blog update to know where she is and what she’s doing!” I can commiserate with this so I’ll just give a life update because I’m just not sure when I’ll get around to blogging about it all.

Okay so next:

Rome for New years with my friend Christine followed by Spain with her and a bit of Portugal. Yaaaaaaaaaaaay!!!!

From there I am off to Istanbul, Turkey for 3 months to be an Au Pair. Very exciting indeed! I’ll be with a family that has 2 kids, a 5-year-old girl and a 7-year-old boy. Their parents want to expose their kids to English mostly so I just get to play with them after school and be American in hopes of transferring some useful language skills.

Berlin and Prague

I am bad at blogging. It’s been almost a month since my last trip and I will now tell about it. I went to Berlin to visit my friend Nathan and then we went to Prague for 2 days. It was a thoroughly enjoyable time. Berlin was a great city and I managed to see all the important sites. On the first day I just followed Nathan around aimlessly and he directed my attention to buildings of importance and gave interesting facts and figures like all good tour guides should. Ooo we also went to great German Christmas markets. They had so many exciting snacks. Most having to do with sausages but quite a few having to do with candy and sweets which made me happy. Nathan and I both tried our first roasted chestnuts and I have to say I approve and would gladly indulge in such a snack again. The most exciting snack of the day would have to be the fresh waffle with nutella. It was great. You just get to walk around with it on this little cardboard thing and eat it. I ended up with a lot of powder sugar on my scarf but some sacrifices need to me made for delicious things.

We randomly ran into some American- we’ll say “friends” – that Nathan knew at this monument. We ended up meeting them out for a drink that night. The place that we went to was really great. I guess one of the things Berlin is known for is the living room style bars it has. There was a lot of comfy couches and tables and chairs etc. We ate dinner there as well, which was really good. They did this buffet style homemade dinner. It was potato lasagna, which I never had but it was really good. I think I’m going to make my mom attempt that at some point in the future (thanks mom, ahead of time).

The next day we set off for Prague. We did a carpool thing on the way down to Dresden. We went on the autobahn- very fast. It was enjoyable taking a car ride with stranger, in the not being abducted kind of way of course. Everyone spoke German so I just looked out the window and slept, not at the same time though. From Dresden we got a train to Prague. The train was very exciting indeed. We got our own compartment and could even open the windows and stick our heads out. I was thoroughly entertained.

Prague was really good. There were lots of great old things to look at- cathedrals, the astronomical clock, synagogues etc. It was really pretty especially at night. We found this hotel that had a rooftop bar so we snuck up there twice to get wonderful views of the city. They were putting up all their Christmas decorations while we were there as well so it was really pretty. There was a big Christmas tree in the center of the main square area, which was nice. That first night we went to this really neat bar. It had lots of different levels and underground parts- catacomb style. They had such good beer. I never thought I’d be one to really like beer a lot but I did enjoy the wonderful Czech beers we had. The next day we took a guided tour of the city so we got to see more old things and hear about the history of Prague, which was really interesting. It really is a beautiful city with fascinating history. We also went up to the castle that evening. The views from the castle were really good and the cathedral within the castle was beautiful. We got a train back to Dresden that night but before we did we spent the rest of our Czech money on chocolate. Definitely a good idea and it made for an entertaining time while waiting for the train.

In Dresden we met up with one of Nathan’s friends, Andy, that also went to UW-Madison and just toured around the city. We spent the day being led around the city by a couple that Nathan’s family is friends with. They were very nice and had lived in the Dresden area most of their lives so were very informative. Dresden is a really beautiful city as well and it is amazing how it recovered from the all the fire bombings of WWII. It was also very interesting and insightful hearing about communist Germany from the perspective of people who lived within it. We then had thanksgiving at Andy’s house with quite a few other Germans. It was a really good Thanksgiving with all the necessary food items, well minus pecan pie. Apparently you can’t really find pecans anywhere- I checked. It was nice to celebrate with a few fellow Americans and lost of people around. We then headed back to Berlin. It was Nathans birthday that day as well so we met up with some of his friends drank and did some cake. I was excited about learning German so I practiced saying, probably over one hundred times, “Nathan, it’s your geburtstag!!” It was a good time and Nathan managed not to get too annoyed with my novel German language skills.

The next day we went to this really wonderful Turkish market. I get very excited about street markets and new snacks- there were plenty there. There was a lot of food and fun things being sold so it was enjoyable. Oo we also went to a few second hand stores, which are another thing that excite me, and I got this wonderful German hat that was most likely owned by and old German man before me. We also went to the longest stretch of the Berlin wall still standing. It was really good to see. Thinking about a wall separating two completely different ways of life and being aware that life was so different just on the other side of a barricade is an intense idea. We also went to a shtazi prison camp just outside of Berlin that day. It was one of my favorite things that we saw. It was so interesting and enlightening to hear about the things that went on. Not being a history buff and relatively unaware of life outside of my own word it was intense to learn about these things that were still going on in the 1980’s and to be more aware that these things still go on all over the world. It made me feel like a bit of a jerk walking around with a communist Mao messenger bag. Especially after being called out for it.

Dear world,

I am not a Maoist. I find the bag ironic, it says 'Serve the People'.

Sincerely,

Kelsey Hawkins

Before going to the prison we went to this really great East Berlin restaurant. There were just a few old people there and then Nathan and I. When the old ladies left they said auf wiedersehen to me, I felt very special. The last night we went shopping with Nathan’s wonderful friend Phillip and he showed us all the great things about the German consumer culture. One thing of importance to note- there were signs on the escalators that showed crocs crossed out and read ‘no crocs’. Apparently they are a hazard on escalators. The next day I headed for the airport and that ended my wonderful German-Czech escapade. I really had a terrific time.

Between now and then I’ve just been gallivanting around Dundee Scotland with Erin and our wonderful British friends, who I am going to miss! Nathan came to visit Scotland on his way out of Europe so it was really fun getting to be a Scottish tour guide. It was my first time having a friend here so it was a splendid experience being able to share the joys of Scotland with others. Erin left for the US for Christmas and I realized I’m going to miss her a lot. It was really nice having a fun fellow American to live with and tell secrets to, of course. I went and hung out at my Grandmas on the west coast of Scotland for pre-christmas-ness and went to my cousins in Glasgow for a big family fun Christmas dinner with lots of children and yummy things to eat. It was a nice time but different than what I am used to at Christmas so I missed home and my family a bit. I am now back in Dundee getting ready to embark on my next few trip! So hooray for life and European things.

London and Bath

So I went to London and Bath about 2 weeks ago now so I should probably write about them...

Both trips were really great. I saw all of the necessary sights in London and got all the pictures that everyone else has that has been to L

ondon. I can now check that off the list. I really enjoyed the city. It seemed like a really great place. I walked most places and I really liked seeing different parts of the city. The parliament building was one of my favorites. It was really nice. Also West Minster Abby was beautiful. I stayed in London for about 3 full days so I was trying to squeeze in as much sight seeing as possible. I think I succeeded despite the horrible amount of rain for two of the days that I was there. One of the good things about the rain though was the resulting clouds that were pretty amazing. I enjoy sky things and it made for more interesting pictures. A lot of walking happened and quite frequently I wanted to rip off my feet. I will never overestimate the power of a good pair of walking shoes ever again.

The people that I met at my hostel were great as well. It was a really fun group. I

met 2 girls that were also traveling by themselves so I got to hear a lot of stories and ask questions. The best part is that the one girl who has been traveling the longest recommended wearing a ring on your ring finger of your left hand in order to deter some creepers. So basically I get to go buy some form of a band and start telling people I'm married! I think some really great fake stories could come from that so that makes me happy. Soon soon.

Also there were several french boys at our hostel who were all really nice. They cooked for us the first night that I was there and I decided it may be in my best interest to marry a french man. I enjoy food. Mmm.

From there I traveled to Bath. I was really excited to go because it is where my mom grew up and I have always wanted to go and see where my mom was a little kid. I've heard lots of stories about it so it seems nice to know some of the stuff my mom talks about now! The city was beautiful. Old buildings, historical roman baths, etc. It was a nice smaller sized town so everything was very close which was a nice change from London. My favorite part was the Roman Baths. They were very impressive. Those Romans sure knew how to construct things. Bath has the only natural hot spring in the UK and the Romans put it to good use. It was crazy because all of the original plumbing things were still working to keep the main pool full. That is a very long time to still be functioning. Way to go Romans. They also thought the hot spring was there because of one of their gods so they would throw things in it that they wanted to the goddess to have. I really liked that people wrote curses on metal pieces for thieves that stole their things and then crumbled them up and threw them in the water. There were some great curses for people who stole cloaks, gloves, etc. from others at the baths.

Both of my trips were very nice and I'm glad I got the chance to explore england more! Hooray.