"He Looks Like A Simit."

“Okay, I’m coming to Düzce this weekend. I’ll let you know Monday or Tuesday when I get my ticket.” I say this to Kristin on the 23^rd as we’re enjoying a lazy Sunday morning Skype date. After all, I say to myself, Düzce is only forty-five minutes away, and by the weekend I won’t have seen Kristin for three weeks.

Maybe I should explain that in Ankara I was pleased to be nearly inseparable from this woman. She’s hilarious: at dinner our first night in the capital, she found out that I was twenty-seven and responded, “That’s almost thirty!” Thus was born our friendship.

So I bought my ticket to Düzce a week ago—a really cheap deal: only 10TL there and 8TL back.

But luckiest of all, Karl Ramos (another one of “my people”—as Kristin would say—from orientation) texted me Wednesday night just to see what’s cookin’. I couldn’t contain my glee about visiting Kristin, so she and I decided to invite the Karl as well.

Karl and I arrived in Düzce Friday afternoon (he from Zonguldak about two hours away) having packed our adventurous spirits. And the three of us were greeted upon leaving the bus station by the antics of dancing clowns and angels promoting a local department store. Nothing could be more appropriate to capture the weekend.

I was elated to be on holiday with my abla usta (expert sister) and Karl, with whom I’ve actually got a lot in common: we’re both a bit older than most of our coworkers, we’re both growing our long-distance partnerships here, and dang if we both aren’t a bit artsy. The nose piercings are the tell.

Lunch was delicious kofte, and Kristin regaled us with stories about beautiful Turkish men who look like Genghis Khan. What’s amazing is that she kept us totally entertained and in stitches the entire weekend without dipping once into her store of classic Greek and Roman myths (she’s a classics and creative writing major, quite a lot like a certain J.K. Rowling I know of. No wonder she’s fabulous to me.).

So we think to ourselves, “now that we’re all in the same room tonight, who are we gonna Skype?” (Skype has become an incredible anchor for me in my relationships with the folks back home. I can’t even begin to describe how wonderful it is to see your faces almost whenever I want. What my coworker Buket has to say: “it’s not kissing.” To which I reply, yes, but it’s better than words on paper.)

It turns out to be none other than John Choi, who’s on his second year here in Uşak.

So Kristin gets on the phone with him (to warn him he’d better be ready for a Skype date) when suddenly she’s convinced him to visit Düzce. Uşak is seven hours away, and John will be here late Saturday night. What?! And I stand in awe of her incredible capacity to make people like it when she’s bossing them around.

These last few paragraphs have been solely about my friends, but really the weekend was a twofold triumph (the other being Karadeniz). It’s just that I actually had very low expectations for making friends (please don’t ask me why—I think I was simply afraid I wouldn’t because of language barriers and just enough differences), so I’m continually surprised that I want to be around people who also want to be around me. I even have some lunchtime regulars and a coworker in the biology department, Murat, who’s going to train me up in tavla. Watch out, Erich Wolf! Your girl’s gonna be a tavla shark when she gets home.

Saturday morning, we head to Akçakoca, a Black Sea coastal town, to meet Kristin’s coworker Hatice and play tourists. It’s only twenty minutes or so by bus from Düzce, so we take our sweet time.  We toss our bags in the bus and sit down, but suddenly Karl’s getting off it. “Where are you going?” queries Kristin rather plaintively. “I’m going to get some simit,” Karl handles his words as though with a pair of tweezers. (And I laugh.)

I’ve actually not had simit before this moment. I know, I know—“you’ve been in Turkey a month and you haven’t had simit?!” I can’t explain it—some things I’m desperate to get to, and some things I’ve given their good time.

Simit is delicious. A lot of people here it eat for breakfast. Basically, it’s a seed-covered bread (a lot like a bagel to me) that’s occasionally stuffed with cheese. Typically you’ll see it wrapped in the shape of a ring, but sometimes it looks like a fat little bread lump. Keep this in mind when you come to visit!

So: Karadeniz, the Black Sea. When I dived in, I was overcome with the sense of having achieved a life’s dream that I hadn’t realized was inside me. People have been telling me for weeks that the Black Sea is much colder than the Aegean or the Mediterranean and that only expert swimmers should risk enjoying it. I’ve not swum in any other sea, but Karadeniz is much warmer than the Pacific Ocean and much less rough. I loved it. I loved it. I loved it.

We had to run to catch the last bus back from Akçakoca to Düzce.

While we waited in the park for John Choi to arrive, we drank kahve, and I taught Karl tavla. He’s a quick study.

John is diligent and confident in his study of Turkish language and culture, he’s got an incredible set of ethics paired with a great sense of humor, and he’s the kind of man who notices when a girl’s lost weight. I’ll just say we were elated when he got off his bus from Uşak.

We ate a late (second, for some of us) dinner and returned to Düzce University’s campus. We nicked two couches from the misafirhane lounge and squashed them into Kristin’s little guestroom. We talked until the small hours of the morning and slept in late.

Hatice joined us again on Sunday in Akçakoca and took us out to a delicious lunch and a tour of Kale, the local castle ruins. The place is like a small state park—ruins, a barbecue area, a European-standard beach, and a wishing well.

We play volleyball until our sweat smells like sunscreen, and then we swim. And then we nap.

At some point, John and Kristin are bobbing around in the sea while Karl, Hatice and I are snacking—Hatice is the queen of feeding us snack food. We are looking out to the horizon, and it’s peaceful.

Just then, this roly-poly boy (think: a nine-year-old, sillier version of J.K. Rowling’s Neville Longbottom) charges out of the water toward his parents, who are sitting a few meters closer to shore than we are.

He has an incredible grin on his face, and instead of sitting down on the towel near his parents, he plops himself onto a sandy spot, lies down, and begins to roll in the sand.

Karl: “What…?”

Me: “I’m not going to be able to get a picture of this, am I?”

The boy keeps rolling. At one point, he sits up on his knees and looks like a puppy at the woman I can only assume is his mother, has a brief and incomprehensible (to me) exchange with her in which both are laughing and smiling a lot, and then he returns to rolling around in the sand, arms stretched daintily above his head.

We are watching, barely able to control our laughter.

When the boy finally stands up again, more triumphant than even I am this weekend, all Karl can manage to say is, “he looks like a simit.”