monDay on the Town

Today was such a perfect day! Number one -- my only class was canceled, so I had the day to get some stuff done. Sarah and I headed down to Karikoy, to get our student Akbil (the transportation pass used on the buses). It was pretty much madness, especially since we had to hit the bank first to pay the 5 lira fee. Everything closes at midday for lunch, and everyone who needs the bank during lunch stands outside waiting for it to open up again. They apparently haven't found the logic of people working shifts so as to control the pre/post lunch crowd... so we crammed into this tiny bank lobby and pushed our way through to a group of people holding similar looking papers, and paid the fee. Then we head over to an equally crowded transportation office that I'm sure was suffering the post-lunch onslaught of people. There is a line out the door so we awkwardly stood in it for a few minutes, responding to peoples questions with blank, deer in headlights stares. Out of nowhere this cop is like "student?" and waves us through the line into the office. Here we find a crowd of students waving their applications in the air. A different officer herds them off somewhere and we give him our typical awkward giggle/deer in headlights combination. And all of a sudden we find ourselves being led through lines of people holding the same applications as us, brought into an empty, open office with comfy chairs and told to sit. And within 5 minutes our new shiny transportation cards were ours. Simple. When it comes down to it, it's all about being awkward and giggly.

Now that we had our cards, we also needed the physical Akbil part to attach to them. This proved harder to find so we only managed to get one... but, they sell them all over the city, so I don't need to go back to Karikoy again. Which, since this city is so huge, is like an hour away. I also finally tried the infamous fish sandwiches that people are always talking about -- delicious fresh fish fried up and put on a bun. They sell them right by the Golden Horn, so we sat on the edge and ate them, then found our way to the Galata Bridge where we were lured into a restaurant by free tea. We sat inside, doing our homework and getting tons of tea and even more attention from the bored/enthralled wait staff. We were sitting there, just doing work, looking onto the Golden Horn about 10 feet away, Ayasofya, Blue Mosque, Topkapi Palace all in view, and were like "Wow... I am sitting here, doing homework, in Istanbul. Istanbul!" It's just so crazy to be doing something so mundane and tedious and look up and realize where you are. I can't say it enough, but I am loving it here!

We also went to Taksim tonight to meet for dinner with a girl who is coming to school in Michigan. Her friend found Sarah and I on facebook and set up a dinner tonight so she could ask us about Michigan. She is actually going to Western next winter. It was so weird to be describing Kalamazoo and Western to someone here! I was telling her -- all my friends go there from home! My little brother is going there! That is the closest mall to my hometown! And then we found out she is from the same hometown as Can, my Turkish friend at Michigan. Such a small world! We told her we were planning to go to southern Turkey for spring break and to meet with Can and go to Mersin, his hometown, she got so excited. "Ah, we can go swimming and sunbathing, and you can meet my family too, and maybe we can go to Northern Cyprus!" Yeah, I'm ready for warmth, so that sounds niiiice. Beach time baby!