Week 2

_____Today’s hallway music? “Fly Me To The Moon.” Friday? Bobby McFerrin’s, “Don’t Worry, Be Happy.” I have no idea what to expect next- perhaps a few choice cuts by Oingo Boingo?

_____I’m STILL on the prowl for a radio alarm clock after being here 10 days. I had no problem buying one in Cyprus, so why all the trouble here? I don’t get it. How do people wake up in this city?! I went to 3 electronic stores and not an alarm clock or digital clock in sight. I still have to rely on Jen and Maddy to wake me up in the morning- I downloaded some alarm clock program for my computer this morning, so I’ll have to try that out until I can find the real thing (if I ever do!).

_____I managed to do a lot of sleeping this past weekend. I needed it with the long school days and the language classes at night. I leave home around 7:15am and get home around 8:45 at night. After Turkish on Friday night, we hung out at the apartment (which still feels enormous to me) and watched “In America” from my DVD collection. On Saturday I slept till around 11:30 and later on we hopped a ferry (they’re the best way to get around Izmir, believe it or not) to another part of Izmir called Konak (I live in a suburban neighborhood called Mavesehir- pronounced Mahva-sheer). Jen and Maddy took me to the lively, gigantic bazaar/agora in Kameralta. It’s a sprawling marketplace, selling just about everything and anything at extremely reasonable prices. A lot of the clothes and textiles are made in factories and sweatshops nearby, so they’re all very cheap but great quality. The area was mobbed, and it’s very easy to lose your sense of direction in a place like this. If I ever have a visitor, this is one of the number one spots to visit. After some shopping, we trekked over to the adjacent neighborhood called Alsoncak (pronounced Allsonjack).

_____We were looking around for a place to eat and saw some place with a very fair-priced menu posted on the sidewalk. We ventured inside and the establishment seemed a lot fancier than we expected. We were ushered upstairs to a really swank eatery and were afraid we walked into the wrong place. Nope. We were shocked. This restaurant with THESE prices? You gotta be kidding me. The food was great, and the whole experience had a lot of cool ambience to it. And to top it off, a traditional Turkish band started playing in the restaurant near the end of out meal. One thing I’ve noticed about Turkish food so far- regardless of where you go, there isn’t a lot of variation in the menu, and the food tastes pretty much the same. It tastes good, for sure, but you don’t get a lot of variety.

_____We headed over to a blues festival at the Izmir Hilton hotel, mainly because we were interested in Izmir’s interpretation of blues, but it was a little too expensive for our liking. Instead we walked a few more blocks to a movie theater and saw Bridget Jones 2. Now, that was certainly not high up on my list, but when you’re with 2 girls and it’s the only English movie playing, you really don’t have much choice. Honestly, I enjoyed the first one, but this sequel was totally unnecessary. It felt very unoriginal, and the movie tried compensating for its weak script with a soundtrack that attacked you and conveyed how you’re supposed to feel every 5 minutes. Disappointing. Ocean’s 12 is supposed to come out here soon, thank god. Something I’d actually see if I were in the states right now!

_____I live by 3 gigantic malls, each with their own mega-sized supermarket. I took my new Ipod full of Christmas tunes and went for a shopping stroll for the afternoon. They don’t celebrate Christmas because 99% of the population is Muslim (not very strict, though, especially in Izmir) but they still go through all the Christmas motions and fanfare (Santa Clause included) on New Year’s Day.