Between Yesterday Afternoon and Forever -- Istanbul, Turkey

Today is eight months of travel. I boarded the plane bound for Ireland and George on June 5^th, 2013. Ireland and George didn’t exactly pan out the way I hoped they would, but they panned out in the way I needed them to. I learned a hard, but important lesson regarding expectations and attachment to plans, and George... well, I haven’t heard from him since I left his country cottage near the end of June. I hope he’s well. I’m sure he’s doggedly hanging in there, telling good stories, enjoying Maria’s perfect crackling and complaining (but not complaining) about his many illnesses.

I leave Istanbul in less than three weeks. It feels like I’ve been living here for a time between yesterday afternoon and forever . Some places feel uncannily comfortable and some places feel dramatically different. Some customs are performed mechanically and some are forgotten/surprising/purposefully ignored.

I take off my shoes without thinking.

The obscene price of alcohol no longer makes my jaw drop.

Eyes have grown on the back of my head, the side of my head and on the soles of my Timberland boots. To help me avoid being hit by cars and stepping in poop.

I expect and accept olives for breakfast.

Yogurt has switched sides from savory to sweet.

Black tea is the same as çay.

My speech pattern has changed. I have never had less of an American accent in my life. Everything is slow, clear and concise. I feel like part of the musicality of my personality has been squashed.

I hardly notice when someone says, “come!”

An hour commute seems normal.

I use the sound of the call to prayer to plan my meals. The one around six am is breakfast. The one around noon is lunch. The one around six pm is dinner. I feel like a first-rate hedonist when Umit’s father unfolds his prayer mat and I unwrap my sausage.

I’ve given up on the whole cleanliness thing. It’s not even worth trying for a non-Turkish person. It was so affirming to have Cathy here and to hear her say that Cesim’s apartment was “immaculate”. YES! I thought triumphantly. So it isn’t just me who thinks that Turkish people are obsessive about vacuuming carpets and mopping floors and scrubbing toilets and washing windows and dusting furniture and....

I’ve eaten all the street food except the pickles in purple carrot juice, the simit and the blackened corn on the cob.

Throwing perfectly good glass bottles in the rubbish bin no longer fills me with pangs of remorse and I expect all items to be bagged for me at the grocery store. I hope my month at the wellness retreat in England will resuscitate my conscience (which has been drowned in plastic bags and cigarette butts). 

 If I don’t get a lemon scented wet wipe after breakfast, lunch or dinner, I feel cheated by the restaurant staff.

Being creepily checked out on the tram just feels like another part of public transportation. Like swiping my Istanbul Kart, playing a rowdy game of musical chairs for a seat, passing by the shivering man selling stuffed mussels just outside the stop and guiltily avoiding the begging child, sitting cross-legged and hunchbacked with her cardboard box of coins on the stairs.

I am no longer surprised when I hear that a 35 year-old man still lives with his parents. Just mildly surprised that he’s not married with four kids and living with his parents.

Istanbul has taught me how to live in a big city, how to teach English to groups of all levels and sizes and to survive for a long period of time in a culture drastically different from my own. It’s been an exceptionally rewarding trip wherein I’ve cultivated many friendships and grown in all sorts of which-ways as an individual...

But I am ready to move on. I am ready to be in a country where I can understand pieces of the background chatter (more than the occasional “tamam” and “evet” and “hayir” and “allah, allah!”). I am ready to be in a placement where yoga, art and outdoor adventuring are encouraged and I am so ready to be done with Turkish television and the metrobus.

Cranleigh House Yoga and Healing Retreat Centre, here I come.