Super Ski Weekend

(Mountains.  Snow.  Rad Grindage.)

This weekend we (Kate and I, Kate of the Islands) took a short trip up to the mountains around Bursa to do some snowboarding.  Despite my horrible luck with rental cars in the past, we went for it, and ended up with a 2011 Ford Focus...

Automatic transmission.  Power locks and windows.  And it's own Albany-sweatshirted driver.  The best thing about renting the car?  Probably the fact that Hertz didn't really care when we brought the car back with a few extra scratches.  The worst thing?  The 150 TL 3/4 tank fill up.  But, most importantly:  What did I learn from the rental car experience?  You can do whatever you want in a car in Turkey and nobody will care at all.  People habitually drive the wrong way down one way streets, block other cars into their parking spots, jam their cars into improbably small gaps in traffic and generally drive like they're in a Pitbull video.

But the mountains!  We went to Uludağ, a mountain near Bursa... about a 2 or 3 hour drive from Istanbul.  We took the car-ferry across the Marmara to get there...

...but it cost a lot of money, so we took the long way back, which ended up being about 4 1/2 hours.

Not too bad!  We stayed at a "boutique" hotel in Bursa... probably one of the poshest places I've ever stayed at.  I'll spare you the details but we had this as a standard room accessory:

(There was also a chandelier in the bathroom.)

(The outside of the hotel... not a great shot, but certainly the most well maintained building for miles)

Okay.  I'm getting to the mountains.  We're there.  It was great.  The mountains were a lot bigger than I thought they'd be; certainly a lot bigger than the Czech mountains.  The conditions weren't ideal... a lot of fog, wind, and ice on 90% of the trails.  So much fog, in fact, that sometimes I wasn't really sure if I was actually moving down the hill, let along which direction I was headed in or how fast I was going.  It was nice to know that I still got it though.  No wipeouts, just muscle memory from what, 13-14 years ago?  As lousy as the weather was, it was really nice to be out there.  Again, you might find yourself asking, "but what did he learn?"  This is what the mountain taught me.  Kate is a quick learner on the snowboard (she reads this, clearly).  Turks can't ski.  A lot of people go to the mountain just to hang out.  In fact, some of them go for weird club music and bowls full of vodka next to a roaring fire while sitting on some weird fake polar bear skin couch.  I can still snowboard well, and I want to do more of it.  A lot of dogs live on the mountain.  Nothing is cheap.  Everything rules, especially the restaurant with all you can eat* lamb** roasted on a spit by the side of the road.

(The road up the mountain.  There were a lot of minibuses.) 

(Real ski lifts.) 

(Not pictured: roaring fire) 

(She stands.) 

(So does he.) 

(Not so cheap roadside shack.) 

(Roasting lamb** at the Not So Cheap Roadside Shack)

* We think it was all you can eat.  We're pretty sure the guy said we could have more if we wanted.

** We're also pretty sure it was delicious lamb, but other options could include delicious goat and delicious mountain dog.

Back In The 'Bul

(This picture was taken on Sunday, February 5th.  It was like 50 degrees in Istanbul when I got back)

Sunday we* decided to take a trip out to the Prince's Islands.  This time we went to Helbeliada, one of the smaller of the islands, and had a picnic at a closed up beach club.  Don't worry, the gate was unlocked, so I don't think it would be considered breaking-and-entering.  Check out the pictures below.  In them you'll see...

...picnicking with lachmacun amid extremely unsanitary conditions.

...a temporary island buddy.

...the sunny bosphorus.

...the ferry terminal on Helbeliada.

...an old man repairing some seriously unpretentious bikes.

...a birdshit covered dock.

The moral of the story is this:  On Sunday it was 50 and sunny and we went to the islands.  By Friday it was like this:

*I went to the islands with my girlfriend. Her name is Kate.  She loves everything.  She has no hangups about sitting in birdshit.  She works at the school with me.  We haven't told our co-workers we're dating yet, but we fail to see how they could not pick up on it.  She will probably be annoyed by this description of her.  Description has never been my strong suit.

Scotland!

(Edinburgh; she's got a great set of panoramas on her, I tell you what)

Here are some pictures from my whirlwind tour of Edinburgh to see Aficionado/End of a Year.  Here are all the highlights fit to print; midnight evacuation of the hotel, haunted bars, a volcano, a statue of Abraham Lincoln, singing an old Bell County song that Aficionado now covers, the Parthenon, a statue of that bastard Wellington, late night goth karaoke, a big bottle of scotch.  Of course, capturing everything on film was a bit problematic, so I don't have pictures of it all.  See if you can match the pictures below with some of the descriptions above.

Mutlu yıllar! Happy New Year

Happy New Years everybody!  In case it's not obvious, that's a picture of my diploma from my first level Turkish course!  I got an 88... yeah, not great, but not bad, either!  I'm going to continue with the next level I think, but I'll hold off on that until after our semester break.  Be well!

Christmas and Exhibit B: Canım Ciğerim

(My first successful attempt at cookie making, and they were pretty damn successful)

Well... I don't really have any pictures to post from our Christmas over here.  Without a day off, the idea of travel was far fetched, so I just stayed in Istanbul.  I hung out with some co-workers, a pleasant first for me, and had a great time eating, drinking, being merry; all that good stuff.  Heck, I even had a stocking! 

I did get to go a really good restaurant though for a pre-Christmas Christmas dinner with my good friend Zeynep (who actually knows Nick Mullins).  It's a great place called "Canım Ciğerim," which translates to "My Dear, My Liver."  They serve skewers, lots of skewers, and tons of flatbread and veggies on the side.  It's delicious.  They're always super packed, so we had to wait outside for a bit, but it's well worth it.  

(The disembodied hand of Santa Claus)

In other news, I'm really looking forward to my trip home at the end of January, so I've been amassing a stockpile of Turkish goodies for everybody (though, admittedly, some of the goodies are gooder than others).  But! Before I come back to the states, I've got one short trip coming up...  I'll be going here:

To see these guys:

And bring some of this back to Turkey:

Exhibit A: Boza

 (A picture from last week's bike ride up the Bosphorus.  It's a fishing boat hauling in the nets.)

I'm slowly realizing that Turkey is home to a lot of weird food, so I've decided to start cataloging it as I happen to think about taking pictures.  I figure it'd be interesting for you guys, so I'm starting with a seasonal drink, something akin to Turkish eggnog (minus the eggs).  It's called "Boza," and it's a sweet winter drink, very thick and slightly alcoholic.  It's usually served with cinnamon and, oddly enough, chickpeas.  It's made from slightly fermented corn and wheat.  It dates back to the 10th century, and was extremely popular during Ottoman rule.

 It's really delicious stuff, but It's sold chilled, so I don't know if it would survive the trip home.  I guess I'll have to bring some raki back instead.  As for nutrition facts... I don't know, nor do I really want to know.  It's delicious, thick, creamy, and sweet... They used to use it to feed the army during the winter, so I doubt it's terribly healthy.

O, Christmas Tree!

Hey family!  I'm sorry I haven't written anything in a while, but I haven't really had any pictures to post.  But here's a short recap of what's been going on.  I've been teaching a lot, trying to figure out how to best teach 200+ kindergarten-ers English.  So far, we've just been singing a lot of song and playing a lot of games.  It's been working out well, so I guess I'll stick with that.

I saw all of the pictures from Thanksgiving, and I'm extremely jealous of you guys, but I was able to have a little Thanksgiving of my own.  I got together with some American/English co-workers an we cooked a turkey in a toaster oven.  It was a 10 kilo (about 22 lb) bird.  The door could barely close.  We had pumpkin pie (made from scratch), Stove-top stuffing, mashed potatoes, the works!  It was a really nice, close approximation, to a real American Thanksgiving.

I also went out and chopped down a tree for Christmas.  The man at the tree farm was nice enough to wrap it in that white netting stuff so I could take it home on the metro...

 (supplies)

Then I had some friends over who helped me trim the tree.  We drank some egg nog (and nobody died), let the branches fall a little bit, and then put on the lights and decorations.  A Christmas miracle!

(We had to improvise some of the ornaments)