7 weekends later

This weekend was my first time being in Istanbul since Halloween weekend. On Thursday night I cooked dinner - chicken, tomatoe, spinach and pasta soup. I invited a few people over because I didn't want leftovers. After dinner we headed to Besitas for "the best nargile in town". I beg to differ especially since the service was so sucky. After about an hour the 9 of us headed to the main road to find a cab to take 4 and 5 of us to Taksim. One cab driver had the nerve to say to me that he would get a ticket if he had 5 people in his cab. I told him I had be living in the country for 3 months and witnessed drivers driving up the wrong side of the road and many other things...

Our first stop in Taksim was BBQ Chicken (the restaurant name) for seasoned french fries. The store had been closed for an hour when we arrived but Lexie went in and flaunted her blonde hair and magically the fryers were on. 10 minuets later 7 of us had patatas. We left to find a good place to dance. We did find one place Club Purple, where men were throwing napkins in the air for our group to dance. Weird I know. The other weird thing was how many times I was called Beyonce or how many times people tried to convince me to get my friends to come into their club.

The night was wrapping up and we were waiting for Jasmine to come out of the bathroom of a Kumpir (baked poatatoe) shop. While waiting I saw a polis pick up a beer mug in the middle of the street. He looked at me with disdain and hand it over. Score! Another souvenir was added to my collection. We walked up Istakkal St. for a cab for the 11 of us. Before hopping in a cab a few people decided to try wet burgers. Yuck! After that we split into two cabs. (Ha! Remember the cab driver earlier said that wasn't possible.)


The next morning I headed out to Sultanahmet area to buy my train ticket to Sophia, Bulgaria for New Years with Lexie, Melissa, Becca and Raven. It began to snow for the first time while I was waiting on the dolmus. I was not thrilled as I thought I would miss the snow in Turkey. On the way to Sultanahmet we decide to stop in Taksim for 2 hours. Melissa, Lexie and I decided to go to BBQ for food. Our favorite person, the manager Mehmet was there. Mehmet has a crush on Lexie, so he purchased a bracelet for her while we were there, taught us some Turkish, gave us free food and drinks and mugs.(I call that a successful trip.)

In Sultanahmet we went to the Spice Baazar or Egyptian Baazar. There Lexie and I picked up match shirts, some jewlery and some tea. While in the Baazar the group of us were referred as Spice Girls and I was called Obama on atleast 6 occassions. After purchasing my ticket with Becca and Raven we headed out to the Mosaic museum and then the baazar (open market) that was there. I finally purchased my nargile, a pretty ceramic one with bronze accents.

By this time the weather is hailing, sleeting and mighty cold. The group split up to buy specific things in the area and met again on the tram. While on the tram we met an American man who moved to Istanbul 18 years ago to teach and was moving back to the States in January.It's funny that we met him because last week we were questioning where would we live outside of the US. The group split again and this time I went with Raven and Becca to try kumpir (baked potatoe) on Kumpir Sokak (baked potatoe street). I had a kumpir butter, cheese, corn, red cabbage and cabbage mayo. But there were lots of other toppings to pick - hot dogs, american salad, bulgar, olives, olive paste and more.

We arrived back to campus around 8pm and I was exhausted. I cancelled on hanging out in Taksim with the girls and the 57km/hr winds. Instead I opted to catch up things and ask Becca, my roommate 30 questions. She's quite interesting.

The next morning I woke up at noon when I was suppose to be up at 10 to make brunch with Becca and Raven. Becca was the star today. Last night she told me she could not successfully cook eggs. So I taught her and she made amazing scrambled eggs with cheese, spinach and tomatoes. I'm so proud. My stomach is too!