Ishikawas in Istanbul (and other things)

On Monday night I had a call from Shingo, he was here with his wife
Amelia, and their 5-month old foetus for a visit. Lucky for me, I had
the day off on Wednesday, so I arranged to meet them and go to the
Grand Bazaar.

We met, wandered and a good time was had by all. Bargaining,
sightseeing, and just being tourists. Thanks to Shingo we found a nice
little tea garden, a nice respite amidst the noise and bustle of the
bazaar, and with the tea being only 35 YTK, which is the equivalent of
about $0.25, it was all good!

We then met up with Suzan and her husband, whose name evades me right
now, although when I think it might be Gokhan, it feels kinda right.
We had dinner at Hala, the favoured restaurant when I was in Turkey on
my 2 trips from Haifa. Well, not really dinner, Shingo and I had
appetizers. Then we went to chicheck pasaji. The Turkish spelling of
that would kill my blog if I try to type it here, but that's the
pronounciation. It's known for the seafood restaurants that vie for
your presence as you walk along. I've only eaten there once, about 15
years ago, however, at the entrance there's a place where you can get
deep fried mussels on a stick for 1 YTL which is something like 60
cents in euros, and stuffed mussels, for about a third of that price.
When I took Vero, Lyndsay and Aida there last year, we stood there and
had dinner and it came to like $2.50 each, and we were stuffed with
mussels ourselves! On Wednesday night I had my fair share. Shingo will
probably have the pics. Here's one of the 2 pregnant couples!

I seem to be one of the few non-Turks who eat the stuffed mussels in
the street. Okay, so the idea of having seafood being sold by a street
vendor is sketchy at best, and scary at worst, but I realise now that
when I was here as an exchange student, I was led around by the
locals, and did the things the locals do. Turks walk up to street
vendors and buy mussels, prepared with seasoned rice and stuffed back
into the shell. They squeeze some lemon on it and there you are. It's
absolutely delicious and a great snack. Eat enough and you can call it
dinner... really cheap. I didn't think twice about it when I was with
my host family or my school friends and we all stopped and ate them. I
never got sick then, and I probably won't get sick now. In case I do
though, I've found out the name of the active ingredient in Immodium
(that story is for another blog), and my flatmate has a supply, so I'm
good to go!

Despite my love for Turkish food, and my recent reintroduction to all
my favourites, I've lost some weight since I've been here. I've been
sticking to the Spanish meal schedule (also popular in Barbados, but
all meals about 4 hours earlier!). It works perfectly with my teaching
schedule, and it's much cheaper. Light breakfast, lunch main meal,
light late dinner. S'all good

I haven't shared the story of The Flat yet. It's still a continuing
saga and I don't really want to get into it until it's resolved. But
in a nutshell, the flat that Lydia and I were moved to is absolutely
tiny, has no privacy, and has a choice of rooms that are very loosely
termed bedrooms. One is a bedroom with a wardrobe and double bed and
nothing else, no room for anything else. No windows either, except a
sliding window to the other room which is actually a sunroom. Plenty
of windows, no bed except a very uncomfortable sofa bed, and no
wardrobe or anywhere to put your things. The kitchen is miniscule, the
fridge is out on the balcony, on the other side of the flat from the
fridge, the bathroom, I won't even get into. Suffice it to say, that
we looked at it in horror and let the school know that if they
expected us to stay there, they needed to think again. They're working
on finding us a better place, so it should be a matter of days, a week
at most.

The teaching is going really well. I really love my classes. I went to
lunch today with some of my upper intermediate students, and i love my
weekend students, as I may have mentioned one or two (or 10) times
before. so I'm really looking forward t otomorrow. For the past 4
lessons, the pair of private students that I've had have been not
coming, alternately, so basically for 4 lessons I've had to prepare 2,
which is fun!