Hello from Istanbul!

I'm watching the sun rise over Istanbul. Anne and I wrote this blog to chronicle our semester studying abroad in Madrid. We haven't posted here in ages, I'm not in Madrid now, and I'm not studying abroad. Still, this is our first time back go Europe since we left Madrid, so posting here seems appropriate. After all, we arrived in Istanbul on the five-year anniversary of our first post on this blog, and I once again have the pleasure of feeling utterly lost and foreign in a new place.

You might call bullshit on this post, pointing out that the Sarah you know is never awake early enough to see a sunrise. So, I took the precaution of photographic proof of the sunrise. Don't worry, though, I'm still not a morning person. I'm just still confused by traveling eight time zones east.

Sunrise over Istanbul

View of the city - you can see a sliver of the Bosphorus strait in this picture.

About an hour ago, around 6:20am, I heard the morning call to prayer. It was still dark outside and the city was beautiful with zillions of twinkling lights. The call to prayer blended with the wind whistling by the big windows where I'm sitting.

Thank you, hannah!

Where am I in Istanbul, and why? I'm here thanks to our wonderful hostess hannah, who is in the foreign service and is just finishing a tour serving here. She and her fiance Eric are graciously putting us up for our nine days here, feeding us delicious food and bulgarian wine, introducing us to their friends, guiding us around the city, and being generally generous and wonderful. Thank you!

Pretty much everyone else here has the good sense to be asleep right now, but hannah's adorable kitten Şimşek (pronounced Shim-shek, means lightning that races across the clouds) is keeping me company. It took a few tries to get a picture of her because she kept headbutting the tablet each time I tried to snap one. She's extremely affectionate and sweet, but she' was spayed a few days ago and so is currently suffering the indignity of a cone on her head to keep her from licking her stitches. Poor kitty. Beej, hannah's other cat, is far older and wiser than Şimşek and is probably off sleeping like everyone else.

Poor Şimşek, scratch her ears for her.

Istanbul

Istanbul is in the far northwest corner of Turkey, near Greece and Bulgaria. Istanbul extends to both sides of the Bosphorus strait, which connects the Black Sea to the Aegean Sea and then the Mediterranean Sea.

map from planetware.com

The Bosphorus strait is the dividing line between the Europe and Asia. Right now I'm on the European side of the city, but we will visit the Asian side of the city before we leave. In the picture of the sunrise, you can see a little sliver of water to the top right. That's the Bosphorus strait. So the other side of the strait is Asia. Like Sarah Palin (claims), hannah can see Asia from her house (and I can see it too, right now)!

Flight and First Impressions

We flew to Istanbul direct from Chicago on Turkish Airlines. The flight was as nice as a 10 hour flight can be, and they treated us well. Before we took off, we sat on the tarmac at O'Hare for an hour and a half, because it snowed a wee little bit in Chicago, and Chicago pretended like it had forgotten what snow was.

But, Turkish Airlines treated us well. They served complimentary hazelnuts and cocktails as an initial snack, then a hot dinner of pasta or chicken with green beans, salad, warm bread, butter, cheese, raspberry cheesecake, and more cocktails. Overnight they had self-service soft drinks, cheese sandwiches and lemon cake, and then they served a hot breakfast before we landed with scrambled eggs, vegetables, fruit, cheese, warm bread with butter and jam, and tea or coffee or soft drinks. I'm getting hungry just thinking about the food. It was all really good, and served on cute trays with actual metal silverware. It's so exciting to have airlines serve you food. They also gave all of us little pouches with sleep masks, a change of socks, lip balm, a toothbrush, and toothpaste. Lovely!

As we landed in Istanbul, I was amazed by the density of the city. On one side of the plane I could see the sea, and on the other land that was covered with fairly tall buildings as far as I could see. The buildings were so compact that I couldn't see any streets as we landed, just lots of buildings. Out the window on the other side of the plane, I was struck by how many big ships there were! This really is a major port.

The snow followed us to Istanbul! Saturday morning/afternoon had some continuous snow here, which Istanbul really didn't know how to handle. A power plant went offline and most of the city was without power for several hours. We were lucky and had power because hannah's awesome building has backup generators. I caught up on sleep for most of the day, but we went out that night and had Falafel for dinner and a drink at a bar near Taksim square, which is an area with a lot of night life.

I expected to find lots of Falafel in Istanbul since all the supposedly-Turkish Kebab places in Spain had falafel as well as shaved meat, but our hosts told us that the Falafel restaurant we went to was perhaps the only one in the city (although you can get meat Kebabs all over). The food was great, maybe the best Falafel I've ever had (sorry, Oasis in Iowa City).

Cevahir

Yesterday Anne and I ventured to Cevahir (pronounced jeh-VAH-heer), the mall that is right next to hannah's building. It's not just any mall, it's the 2nd largest mall in Europe (the largest one is also in Istanbul, though I have no idea why they wanted to outdo the one we saw yesterday). We had to go through metal detectors and xray security at the mall entrance.

The mall is six or seven stories high, and man was it PACKED! Anne's expression sums it up pretty well. I think that all 20 million people in Istanbul must have been at that mall yesterday.

We didn't stay at the mall a long time, but it was fun to watch people and look at styles in stores. It reminded me quite a bit of Madrid, except that I can speak enough Spanish to buy and order things, while the only Turkish phrase I could remember was thank you. But, we managed to buy a couple of things by smiling, pointing, and mumbling "teşekkürler" (thank you) and "Coca-Cola Light."

Coming up...

That's about it for now. I have some bread that I'm making that I'm going to go bake. I think today we are going to the Old City part of Istanbul and heading to the Grand Bazaar. I'll be sure to take lots of pictures, and will try to post again, especially if I keep being an insomniac.

Lessons Learned Late

Well, we're leaving Madrid in one week. I'm psyched about coming home, but it's hard to believe that it's already time to leave. I'm going to miss a lot of things: the city, people, my Spanish classes, Europe, the late eating schedule, and probably more that hasn't even hit me yet.

Yesterday we were looking for a place to fax our housing acceptance form for next year and we turned down a street in our neighborhood that had looked like it was just a bunch more apartments. Much to our surprise, we found a locutorio (internet and cheap international call center), another grocery store, two cheap general stores, and two beautiful fruit stands. Aarrghh. We've been buying everything from Carrefour (a French version of Wal-Mart) all semester because we thought that's all we have. Now we know we could have gotten everything from pots and pans to cleaning supplies and fresh fruits and vegetables of better quality at better prices. Not to mention supporting local economy instead of evil, exploitative French billionaires. Sigh.

We're all done with our Spanish class now. I wish I could take it every semester, it was great. I learned lots of Spanish, I just need to keep practicing now. Now it's time to frantically try to do everything we've put off and say goodbye to our favorite places and people as we pack and clean the apartment.

On the upside, Spain has been wonderful. I can't wait to see everyone at home. Love to you all.

For Mark Sorensen to decypher

Class schedule for next year

16A:152:001 United States in World Affairs

Time & Location: 11:00A - 1:20P M
The instructor: David Schoenbaum

Description:
A semester-length overview of how, where, when and why Americans have interacted with the world, with an eye to institutions, processes and decision-making; the past as prologue; and future challenges extending from international security, the globalized economy and the conundrums of the Middle East and China, to energy, the environment and public health. A series of guest lecturers, with experience in the White House, State and Defense Departments, Congress, the military, media, business, NGO’s and think tanks, will reflect on what they learned there. Readings will include basic documents, solid journalism and historical background. There will be a mid-term and a final exam.
This class is both a regular course offering and an ongoing public event. Presentations by distinguished visitors will be open to the public. The class will meet Mondays from 11:00 to 1:30 at the Englert Theater (221 East Washington) and the Iowa City Public Library, on a schedule still to be determined. Registered students will be notified via e-mail of the place of the first class meeting.

045:175:001 Revolution in American Culture

Instructor: Laura Rigal
Time & Location: 2:30P - 3:45P MW N221 LC

Beginning with the Revolutionary War, the recurrent possibility of revolution at home or abroad has been a source of both utopian hope and paranoid anxiety in the United States. By examining the emergence of revolutionary identities in the U.S., this course analyzes the paradox that revolutionary assaults on the social and economic order of the U.S. have often, although not always, worked to reaffirm that order. Students will confront this structural paradox, and will become alert to the recurrence of the binary of revolutionary hope versus counterrevolutionary paranoia in U.S. cultural forms. They will confront the religious roots of revolutionary acts and fantasies in the U.S., and the way in which the plot-line of the frontier (or the western) came to inherit the dynamics of revolution in America.

Readings, lectures, and discussion will be organized around specific sites of revolutionary actions, practices, and representations. These will include many but not all of the following: the American Revolution; the Whiskey Rebellion; the the Haitian (and later Cuban) Revolutions; Native American movements such as the Red Stick revolt and the Ghost Dance religion; slave revolts prior to the Civil War; the Mexican Revolution; the Mexican Revolution and responses to the Mexican-American War; the Old Left labor and populist movements of the late-nineteenth century, through the emergence of the New Left in the second half of the 20th century. Materials will include the Gothic novel Wieland, or The Transformation; the early American utopian fantasy Lithconia; Eric Foner’s Tom Paine and Revolutionary America;Joel Martin’s Sacred Revolt; James Mooney The Ghost Dance Religion; Herman Melville’s Benito Cereno and The Amistad; John Rollin Ridge’s Life and Adventures of Joaquin Murrieta and Viva Zapata (or The Fugitive); the autobiography of Emma Goldman, and films such as Reds and The Weather Underground. Course requirements include one short paper, a longer research paper, a midterm, and a final exam.

045:090:001 Seminar in American Cultural Studies: Diversity and American Identities

Instructor: Deborah E Whaley
Time & Location: 9:30A - 10:45A TTh E146 AJB

Description:
Diversity and American Identities will familiarize you with interdisciplinary approaches to understanding the history and culture(s) of America, concentrating in particular on citizenship, cultural identities, and social stratification. We will use cultural theory and criticism, cultural and social history, autobiography, literature, art, and documentary film to examine a variety of American identities. In particular, we will explore conflict and commonality among groups in the U.S. while focusing on the following variables: race, ethnicity, gender, class, and sexualities. The course requires active discussion, 1 page bi-weekly response papers (You may also write or present a more experimental response to the required reading, for example you may write a poem, construct an original art work, short story, give an oral presentation, or do a short article or book report), a midterm exam, and a final research paper of 10-12 pages.

045:095 Honors Project

Instructor: Rob Latham

045:250:001 Seminar: Topics in American Studies

Instructor: Rob Latham
Time & Location: Time & Location: 6:00P - 8:30P M 216 EPB

Description:
This course will offer a solid grounding in cultural studies methods by means of an exploration of theories and practices of subcultures. Gelder & Thornton’s Subcultures Reader will provide the backbone for the class, as it covers major traditions within the field, ranging from the urban ethnography of the 1940s Chicago School, through the innovative fusion of marxist and semiotic approaches by the Birmingham Center for Contemporary Cultural Studies in the 1960s and ‘70s, through more recent and eclectic interventions. Because it is what I know best, our primary materials will relate to youth subcultural movements, principally though not exclusively American, of the 1970s-1990s (punks, skinheads, goths, rappers, etc.). An abiding concern will be to see how youth subcultures, as popular generational forms of identification, intersect with other compelling markers of collective identity, especially race, class, gender, and sexuality. To this end, we will survey relevant texts from various media and genres, including fiction, sociology, film, music, and popular fashion, among others. Student work will include a series of short response papers, an in-class presentation on a selected topic, an annotated bibliography relating to an individualized research project, and a final paper. Although the course, as noted, will focus specifically on youth subcultures, I am open to projects that apply the theoretical perspectives we canvass to other subcultural movements, broadly construed.

Good eating

With Anne's new kitchen knife from Toledo (and our new relative poverty due to Iowa's never-ending wisdom) has come a wonderful excuse to entertain ourselves by cooking me delicious food. Anyone who said that the food is bad in Spain wasn't talking about my apartment. In the last week, we've eaten:

Monday
salad - spinach with Raspberry vinaigrette, strawberries, and oranges
mostacholi with homemade spaghetti sauce cooked for hours
garlic bread
homemade rice pudding

Tuesday
Anne made some biscuits and we had a snack of biscuits and tea.
Stir-fry with broccoli, sweet peas, and low-mien

Wednesday
We had some friends over to work on a project, so Anne got to make meat for them. We had a salad with spinach, raspberry vinaigrette, toasted almonds, Roquefort cheese, and oranges
They had pork chops with mushroom gravy, I spaghetti
Then we had chocolate-walnut brownies made from scratch for dessert

Thursday
Fajitas with red peppers, onions, zucchini, TVP, and cheese.

Friday
Anne created a noodle bake with spiral noodles, peas, and a creamy broth/sauce with vegetable broth and cheese. Then she baked it with bread crumbs and our sharp special Manchego cheese on top.

Saturday
Today we cooked together and made a delicious Middle-east style curry dinner. We started with a mild yoghurt-curry sauce from the store, but we added all kinds of spices and some tomato to it to make it more delicious. We put it over cooked potatoes, peas, and broccoli and also made Basmati rice. To top it off, we toasted some flour tortillas to make a flat bread and added some bananas, just like Ahmad's in Omaha.

Sunday
Today I got hungry for a snack, but Anne outdid herself making some of the best nachos I've ever had. She used the TVP and taco seasoning that my parents brought and added red peppers, red onion, tomato, and red beans to make a taco "meat" mix. Then she put the mix, refried beans, and more onion and cheese on the corn chips. Add salsa and enjoy. Mmmm


With that, I think I'll sign off and go get another serving. Stop in for dinner if you're in the neighborhood!

Things that sucked in the last month

1. My aunt Jackie died and I miss my family.

2. Iowa took $1000 from me this week because of scholarship confusion, and now we're broke. No big trips for the Workers' Holiday week off like everyone else.

3. We don't have the internet.

4. I got a rash on my whole body and I don't know why. Someone at a drug store told me to take these odd red pills and it went away.

5. I thought my purse was stolen, and I cancelled my only debit card and called to get the locks on the apartment changed. Someone returned it (thank you anonymous good Spaniard), but I had no money for several weeks.

6. I leave Spain in less than a month.

7. We finished the fourth season of Northern Exposure and we're out of episodes to watch.

And virtue shall triumph at last...

Spring Break

Sarah's family and I piled into a rented car and headed south for Andalucia.

La Mancha:

Despite a few setbacks, like running into a curb and getting a flat tire before the car even got to our apartment and getting lost every few miles, we had an awesome trip.

First, we stopped by a little town in La Mancha, humming, "I am I, Don Quijote..." to see a bunch 16th century windmills alongside a castle whose age

I can't remember. The scenery was beautiful and we walked through the castle, currently undergoing restoration.

I got pretty terrified towards the top, because I'm afraid of heights, but Sarah was brave enough to climb all over the battlements.

Granada and the Alhambra:

Katie, me, Sarah, and her mom in the Alhambra.

Overlooking a fountain in one of the gardens.

The Alhambra is probably one of my favorite things in Spain so far, though it's hard to compare night clubs and cities. It's a complex of buildings - a city, a palace, a mosque, bath houses, and lush gardens - that were the stronghold for the Muslims in Spain until I believe Carlos I took over and built his own palace on part of the site (what a stupid idea - it looked tacky in comparison). The walk through the Alhambra and Generalife was beautiful and inspiring. It was cold and rainy, but it didn't matter to me. We also visited the cathedral in Granada where Queen Isabella, who unified Spain under one government and sent Christopher Colombus off to India, are buried.

Cartejma:

The second night of our road trip, we stayed in a tiny town near Ronda called Cartejima. It sits in the mountains and has about 140 people. A hippy British guy runs a hostal bed and breakfast (El Refugio, the Refuge, if you're curious), which turned out to be one of the coolest places I've ever stayed. We had a great night, even if we woke up to the blaring horn music from the church at 7am for Good Friday.

As we drove into the city, a flock of sheep crossed our path, and we saw this baby lamb stumble after its mother and struggle to keep up with her. It was so adorable. Spring's here, I guess!

Cueva de las Pilas

We tried to visit a cave where a farmer discovered paintings over 10,000 years old. Unfortunately, it was full both times we tried to go there. Worse yet - we had to climb halfway up a mountain on a narrow, winding path with deathly drops just over the edge AND NO HAND RAILING to get there. I survived, barely. In this picture, Sarah and Katie are smiling and I am terrified.

Sevilla (Seville) and Holy Week:

We got to Sevilla just as preparations for the Good Friday procession were underway. Holy Week is a big deal in Spain, and the biggest processions take place in Sevilla. We learned that all of the Catholic churches in Sevilla dress in different colors, and begin the procession at their respective churches. They meet up when they go through the cathetdral. The costumes look like the klan, so it was definitely a culture shock moment to see them marching through the streets.

At the cathedral in Sevilla, we saw what are supposed to be the remains of Christopher Colombus. I also think it was the first time I've seen flying buttresses (that I've noticed). Very cool city. We didn't stay too long because we had to get out before the procession began or we wouldn't be able to leave until very late, and we had many more miles to cover before the end of the night.

Arcos de la Frontera

Our last hotel was in Arcos, and although we didn't spend much time there, Sarah's dad snapped this beautiful picture of the town.

Castle of Lunch:

As we headed back to Madrid, we noticed a castle alongside the road. It was marked with only one sign. We drove up to it and found it open. A few men were working on it, and there was a sign that talked about its origins and history, but there were no markers besides that. We were able to walk around it freely. It's not only amazing that so much of it was still standing but that this kind of thing could just be sitting there without being a major tourist attraction. I guess that's what happens when you have a lot of fourteenth century castles lying around.

After climbing three (or four, depending on how crazy the individual) stories into it, the five of us ate lunch in the middle of the open courtyard. Beautiful day.