I planned to post more frequently than I have been, but Clay and I have been super busy the past two weeks. During this time, I: 

• started work, which entailed attending a six-day, 48-hour seminar, 
• woke up with a full-body rash on the first day of work, 
• was thrown into classrooms to teach multiple grade levels on a morning's notice,
•  got reassigned to teach kindergarten for the school year, 
• moved into a new apartment,
• and lost and recovered my iPhone thanks to a kind cab driver. 

But instead of getting into all that, I just want to talk about food.

I love food. I love to talk about food, write about food, and even make food from time to time. Before we came to Istanbul, a heavy proportion — if not the majority — of the research I did was about food. I was so excited to try everything, and there's still so much more I haven't sampled. As awkward as we may be with our one-item-at-a-time ordering habits (it doesn't work like that here), that hasn't stopped us from frequently eating out and enjoying the local cuisine. 

Check out the slideshow for my made-for-Instagram food photos and experiences. 

As I swiped my hand along the black rubbery hand rail of the Taksim Metro Station's escalator, I ran into some sticky mystery substance, interrupting my normally smooth gesture. I turned to Clay, a step below me, and commented that I'm going to go through a lot of hand sanitizer while living here and utilizing public transportation. The ride ended and we broke into the undisturbed sunlight of Taksim Square, heading toward the trendy, shopping-centric Istiklal Caddesi. To give those reading from home a better idea, Istiklal is to shopping what Bourbon Street is to drinking. Though we have found ourselves ending up on or near Istiklal most days or nights, we were on a mission this time. We were heading to Vodafone to finally get our cell phones working.

We did some research before we arrived in Turkey about the process, so we had an idea of what it would entail. But in situations like this, complications are always bound to arise. I forgot to mention that the particular Vodafone we were headed to was probably our fourth cell phone store of the day. The previous stops were unsuccessful due to our mutual language barrier — neither our Turkish nor their English was adequate enough to do a not-so-simple-in-Turkey transaction. We figured (or better, hoped) the workers in the Istiklal location would have better English than the other stores. We were mostly right, and the most English proficient employee sent us to the other end of the long avenue to a Vergi Dairesi, or Turkish tax office. 

At the tax office, we had to show our passports and phones' ID numbers and shell out 120 lira (about 60 bucks) to get our foreign phones registered with the Turkish government. Pleased with the relative ease of our success with this step, we trekked back to Vodafone in the afternoon heat to hand over our documents. Now we were able to get SIM cards with crazy Turkish numbers we picked out. We paid 100 TL for each, and were hit with another complication: the visa stamps on our passport were not clear enough. In order to prove we legally arrived in Turkey, we would have to go down to the police station, which had already closed for the day (at "four-and-a-half," as we were told). 

Day two of this mission started later in the day, as we spent the morning visiting the apartment we would eventually choose to live in. We followed the guide of a pre-loaded Google map to a slightly obscure area near the tax office and found no police station in sight. Locals affirmed that there were no "polis" around here. This wasn't the first time Google Maps led us astray here, and with our phones unable to get online, we were forced to find our way with our less-than-basic Turkish. 

After lots of walking in the heat, we finally reached our destination. We handed over photocopies of our passports — another unexpected errand — filled out a form in Turkish and were told to return at 1:30 the next day. We weren't told why we had to come back, and when we prodded we were offered one response: "Come back tomorrow at 1:30." Discouraged that this would take yet another day, we did what anyone else in the world would do on a bad day — order pizza and beer.

We started the third day of this ridiculous undertaking by paying the first month's rent on our new apartment. (Yay!) The exchange was pretty awkward/sweet/comical, as our new landlady invited us to sit and chat in her living room though we shared no common language. It mostly consisted of smiles, giggles and charades, and once we left, it was close enough to 1:30 to head to the police station. Of course, when we arrived, the whole station was closed for lunch. Typical.

We finally made it and got a Turkish document we could not read to deliver to Vodafone. I have no idea what exactly the paper was, but it pleased the phone company enough to activate our SIMs, which took about an hour and cost 50 TL each. The bureaucracy of dealing with this seemingly simple task was laughably ridiculous — Clay even considered it "cute." We made it home that day drenched in sweat but carrying functioning cell phones. It's almost disturbing how tremendous the peace of mind I felt was after knowing I carried a device in my pocket that could connect me with the rest of the world. I hope I'll be able to eventually wean myself off of my reliance on it. 

Our host Tulay says the reason for this loophole-laden process is to combat foreign phone theft, which was apparently a big problem here because electronics are very expensive in Turkey. Thieves would snag a tourist's cell phone, pop out his or her SIM, replace it with a Turkish card and call it a day. So, maybe that is why. Or maybe it has to do with the government's increasing desire for control. It's likely both. I honestly don't know what the documents were that I had to sign in order to have a functioning phone, but it certainly seemed worth it.

All in all, the day was surely a victorious one. After a three-day affair, we finally had working phones and a nice apartment we can move into in a week. I guess all the hoop-jumping made the success a little bit sweeter. Oh, and the ordeal resulted in us getting an awesome pizza, so there's that, too.

It's almost 6 a.m. — an hour after the day's first call to prayer — and I'm wide awake, sitting on the firm, white bed of our AirBnB room. We'd been sleeping since about 5 p.m. This is the second day we've had an afternoon nap turn into an accidental full night's sleep, and I'm hoping to stay up all day today to break this cycle we've found ourselves in. 

We got here about 6:30 p.m. Istanbul time on Wednesday after an annoying two-hour delay in London. The past couple days we've just spent walking around the city and taking in our new surroundings. It's definitely not flat like Louisiana, so these long walks of up- and downhills have my embarrassingly outof shape leg muscles in shock. I'm very much looking forward to getting to the point where I've adapted enough to not sweat and be sore after a few hours of walking.

With the exception of stumbling into the Spice Bazaar without knowing at the time that it was, in fact, the Spice Bazaar, the only touristy thing we've done so far is visited the Topkapi Palace. The palace, which housed four centuries of Ottoman sultans, was one of the attractions I was most looking forward to visiting before coming here. But unfortunately, it was a rather disappointing experience. It's not that the palace isn't gorgeous and historical — it was the massive crowds of rude tourists and endless lines that marred our time there. 

You had to wait in a long line to purchase your ticket, then another to enter, and then lines once again to go inside the various rooms of the palace. Then, once inside, you couldn't casually roam and browse as you would any other museum exhibit. You had to explore the palace in yet another slow-moving line. And even though you spent all of this time waiting with everyone, people would still force their way past, around and in front of you, as if they had a great. 

However, the palace was still pretty amazing. The harem was gorgeous (despite all the dirty deeds that happened there), and there were tons of awesome old relics, like the sultans' swords and robes. some others that seemed a bit questionable... David's sword? Okay. That's really Moses' staff? If you say so. Nevertheless, I absolutely cannot wait to return in the off-season to avoid the hordes of obnoxious tourists. 

I could go on forever, but instead I'll just bullet a list of general observations I've found in our time here so far. 

• Istanbul feels very European. The shops, bars and cafes remind me of parts of Spain and France.
• There are tons of stray cats that make horrible sounds at night. There aren't nearly as many dogs, but the pets here appear to all be either cocker spaniels or pit bulls. Weird.
• The food is super cheap. We spend about $7 US on lunch or a cheap dinner. However, as we expected, alcohol is pricey here. A cocktail costs about 10 USD, wine 7-9 USD and beer 5 USD and up. I guess that's not terribly expensive, but it certainly seems that way in comparison to everything else here. 
• Depending on where you're going, taxis are relatively inexpensive too. The drivers are absolutely crazy though. Clay finds it a lot more entertaining than I do.
• I've seen local women wearing tank tops, sleeveless dresses and a few midriff-baring crop tops, but no shorts that fall above the knee. The tourists wear pretty much anything.
• It seems like the majority of women do not wear head scarves, though many do. We've also seen many women in the all-black niqab that covers everything but their eyes. I can't help but feel like something seems a little off when seeing these women walking with their husbands, who are comfortably dressed in modern clothes. I really want to spend some time learning more about women and Islam. 

Check out a few photos from Topkapi Palace. I'll post more soon. 

The car's sold, the party's over and the bags are packed. There's nothing left to do but wait. At 4:30 p.m. Tuesday, Clay and I will be sitting on a plane with a final destination of Istanbul, Turkey. We'll be teaching English to primary schoolchildren at branches of a private bilingual school. Unfortunately, we won't be working on the same campuses, but at least they're on the same continent! The school is awesome, and I'm looking forward to getting my teaching ESL feet wet there. Work starts in a couple weeks, but we're arriving early to enjoy being tourists and to learn our way around before we're thrown into a routine of a 40+ hour workweek. We don't have a place to live yet, but we found a great spot on Airbnb where we can stay while we apartment hunt. 

I can't wait to try the cuisine, cross continents and start my adult life in a place so rich in culture and human history. Though I never planned to work in education (or with kids), I'm so curious to see if I enjoy teaching. I have to admit I find the idea of teaching a group of 5-year-olds a foreign language a thousand times scarier than moving to a new country. But the fear is a fuel and I've been stationary for far too long. Nearly eight months of living at home being underemployed has gotten me more than ready to start this adventure. The goodbyes have been hard, but I find great comfort knowing they just mean "see you later."


Staying in Touch
I plan on regularly updating this blog, so this will probably be the best way to keep up with us. I'll be posting pictures here and on Facebook and Instagram (@emilygherrington). I have an iPhone, so I'll be able to text and FaceTime with other iPhoners through iMessage. If you don't have iMessage, download either Viber or Whatsapp and we can text. My email address is [email protected], and I know I'll be checking that all the time as well. Skype: @emilyherrington. Don't be a stranger!