I have seemed only to have good luck in visiting the Black Sea. I suspect the sea may be trying to seduce me-- whenever I go, the weather's beautiful and the sea's not too choppy. Karadeniz, I hope to see a different side of you this winter.
(By the way-- this dog is yawning, not snarling. She followed us most of the way through our tour of campus.)
Karl and Shannon teach at Bulent Ecevit University, and this is us looking back at the entrance. It's lit at night and quite stunning.
I'll probably say this many more times throughout the year, but I'm sure I owe a great deal of my sanity to my friendship with Karl. But! I might be too naive for his brand of humor. Kristin and I have experienced a similar thing-- one time, as she was about to sit on a stoop (exhausted, she was!), Karl cried, "that's illegal!" You should have seen the girl jump. And of course sitting on the stoop wasn't illegal, but he said it with such conviction that even I was momentarily sure that was true. It's a very sly, surprising humor, and I'm glad to be getting the hang of it. You need to, unless you want to be the butt.
So Jeremy's telling Karl about the lessons he visited in Bolu before we bussed up together to Zonguldak. Jeremy actually saw conversation clubs with me, Stephanie, and Claire. In Claire's club, she was passing pictures around to small groups and apparently the students really enjoyed it. "I got really into it," Jeremy says, "I felt like I was second teacher." So Karl, in true form, replies, "Did you make Claire pay you money?"
Views of and from Okyanus Bar. We thought we might have tea here Saturday morning, but it didn't happen. We delayed gratification and broke our fast at 13:00 (or some crazy hour) for pide and lahmacun.
The camii in Zonguldak city centre.
Adana kebap (w/ yogurt), lahmacun, chickensomething, and pide.
Oh, and my glass-bottled Coca-Cola. A very satisfying lunch.
I don't really know what this is about, but I'd really like to see it lit up. Especially that anchor. So far, the pier here is not too smelly.
There's not really a good path out to this lighthouse-- it's really just rocks. I'm wearing my black leather Dansko clogs with the heel straps-- Carly Lane, whenever I look at these shoes I think of you-- and I realize that they've broken at some point in the morning's walk around campus (just right on the seam, easy enough to repair). When Jeremy realizes this, he says we can turn around. But I let him know we're going to get to the lighthouse. We're going to complete this quest.
And we do complete the quest.
Betul, a coworker and close friend of Shannon and Karl.
We stay up pretty late.
The next morning, Jeremy, Liz and I get up early (relative to Karl and John, who are excellent at sleeping in) to walk down to the beach near Kozlu (the neighborhood/suburb just on the Zonguldak outskirts where the apartment is). I just want to look at the sea, but I think Jeremy plans to get in it.
Liz and shadows.
She's got these incredible eyes. By the way, the legs in the picture belong to Shannon. After a little while, she and Chance join us at the beach (John and Karl are still asleep!), and we continue to collect rocks. The boys skip rocks.
I think everyone knows how to skip rocks except me.
Oh, breakfast! I think the name of this place is Ulixir (but for the life of me, I can't spell anything properly here). The first course consists of these dumplings for dipping in the four various sauces-- butter, honey, tahini, and cranberry.
After the breakfast plates and tea cups are cleared away...
Maybe I won't know these people forever, but they are my friends here and now.
No comments:
Post a Comment