Birds and Boats

One of the many joys of being here in Istanbul is living without a vehicle, as I've mentioned before. Some people love to drive - and I am not one of them. Though even if I did, the thought of driving in any European city would be enough to turn me off. Too much traffic, narrow roads, unfamiliar rules and signage, crazy taxi drivers, and just too much plain chaos - all would make for a rather stressful experience I would imagine.

In the act of not driving, a whole new world opens up to us between our apartment and our destination - in-between spaces like metro stations, docks, bus depots, as well as the conveyances themselves, trams, funiculars, buses, ferries and underground subways. Our kids are at an age where getting somewhere is a new way is still entertaining to them and since our route and means of transport varies, they never get bored.

Hands down, the favourite way for us to get anywhere in Istanbul is by boat. There are bridges over the Bosphorus and the Golden Horn, and an underground metro line too - presumably, I have never used it. Why would you, when you can be on the water instead?

This past week we took a ferry to the Asian side of the city, and saw dolphins in the water, and threw bread to the trailing gulls who would snap the pieces right out of the air.

All in a day's meandering around the city! Here are some other great photos from that ride across the Bosphorus:

The Democracy of Family Travel

A shift occurs when we leave the United States, and I think it affects me the most profoundly of all.

The pervading dynamic at home is one that is centered, for the most part, around the children. Parents spend a lot of their lives driving their kids to playdates, practices, and birthday parties. Every meal is geared towards their tastes and their nutritional needs. This is just sort of the expected norm, and it exists whether you work, stay at home with your kids, homeschool, or whatever. It is pretty much the way of things that our adorable progeny always comes first. When the narrative arises among mothers about "me-time," someone will inevitably say it's because it makes us "better parents" (not because we'd actually enjoy it!). I mean, it DOES make us better parents, but it is a valid need that needs no justification.

If this idea intrigues you, listen to this TED talk by Jennifer Senior. She discusses the modern notion that our children are our life's work, and that parents are responsible for their children's happiness. She asks if that is really a fair burden to place on a parent... Does your child need to be happy all the time, first of all, and is that really my job? Well, like the speaker, I don't believe so. In fact, my job often runs in complete contradiction to what they would say makes them happy. Sometimes "healthy" takes precedence over happy. Sometimes "safe" is more important than happy. Jennifer Senior suggests that we should focus instead on things that, as an secondary effect, might result in happiness, like feeling loved, or having a sense of purpose.

I feel pressure as a mom in the United States towards making sure that my child is content day-to-day, and confident and well socialized, with perfect manners, and eating habits etc. The level of judgment in some spheres is palpable. Sometimes I feel my identity and job in the world there feels largely defined by how well my kids behave in Target. ;-)

So this is where it shifts - we leave that world.

Three things happen almost immediately. First, the radical change in the environment becomes a massive learning experience that doesn't need to be planned by me, orchestrated or scheduled. This is a generation of kids who have not had the experience of spontaneous neighbourhood play, as much as organized meetings of parents and children in a protected, contrived, "enriching" environment.

Second, we begin to live in an in-between world in which we are not really part of (or judged by) North American society or Turkish society. Wear what you want, eat what you want. Awesome.

Third, each of us, Ozayr, Maymuna, Hafsa and myself, we are equal participants in this adventure. This experience is not geared to any particular one of us. We are all here to learn and grow and enjoy ourselves, and through this each of our experience here becomes equally valid. For myself, where at home, I am often in a support staff role in the movie of my kids' childhoods, now I am an equal participant in our adventure, where if I want to see something or do something, it is not second priority, but accepted immediately as completely on par with everyone else's needs. We all take turns accommodating each other's indulgences.

This is profound for me, as it resonates through our time here and affects our decisions and choices, it even changes our family dynamic somewhat. I spend less time cooking formal meals, and we get help cleaning the apartment, so I have to spend less time on household responsibilities. It offsets some of the difficulties of travel, and it makes life on the road very different for me than it is at home.

Here are some pictures over the years, of us doing.. well, what I wanted to do.

Listening to an opera singer in a piazza in Florence

Sitting in a cafe in Paris

Chasing tulips, spring in Istanbul

Private seminar on sacred geometry

Bought this carpet in the Grand Bazaar, Turkey - oops!

Rahmi Koç Transport Museum

Foregoing a second trip to Ephesus to hang out HERE

Deniz (Sea)

Albert Einstein used an analogy to express his idea of relativity. "Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. THAT'S relativity."  I'm not sure that brings me much closer to understanding Einstein, but I have a similar concept regarding traveling. Condensed time. Back in my old office job, months could pass before I looked up at a calendar and thought, "Where did the time go?" When I travel for a week or two it seems that every minute is alive and vibrant, as if all the excitement from six months of my regular routine occurs in a matter of days. So much can happen in an afternoon on a bus through the unfamiliar that, after a week of it, it feels as if I have lived a month.  

- The Yogurt Man Cometh, by Kevin Revolinski

The above quote does a lot to explain why our time in Turkey ends up feeling like years instead of months. With so many new experiences, sights, sounds and people to take in, each moment is enhanced and a day will go on for what always seems like more than its allotted 24 hours. Part of this is that our lifestyle slows as well - without a car, we walk or use public transportation to get everywhere. This is not so much of a burden as it seems, since we are living in a much more urban and tightly packed environment. The added bonus is that all the things we see along the way are almost always as interesting as the final destination to which we are headed. An example of such symmetry is our excursion last week to the Naval Museum in Besiktas - to which we took a boat :-)

The museum is devoted to the boats of the Turkish Navy from the Ottoman era, in particular, caiques, gondola shaped boats that transferred people around the Bosphorus in that time.

Sometimes manned by 13 or more men, the most ornate ones were reserved for the Sultan and his family. These are fun to look at with all their golden decorations - if you look closely at these you can tell which type of people used each boat - the Sultan's boat would have the coat of arms, his family would have fruit or flowers.

Other rooms in the museum featured artwork with caiques in them, and naval uniforms.

Afterwards, we ran around the courtyard with our friends, climbing the different anchors and being silly. Because that's what we do :-)

All in all, a very pleasant way to wander our afternoon away...

Back in the saddle

To tell you the truth, I can barely believe that we are back in Turkey, once again. The last 6 weeks or so the girls and I have been on our own while Ozayr began the study abroad program in Rome, and I've been so focused on getting us ready to leave, getting the house ready and all those lists (and more lists!), that once I found myself careening through the streets of Istanbul in a 'taksi' from the airport, I was pretty stunned - we are back in this crazy, crazy city again.

We've spent the last 48 hours or so getting acclimatized, unpacking, and sleeping at odd times. One girl can't get off to sleep at the end of the day, and the other wakes up obscenely early (3 a.m. this morning). We've been eating too - in fact, our first night we just dropped our bags off at the apartment and went out to eat. The next morning we couldn't resist a classic Turkish breakfast on our way to the center to meet Ozayr's students. Our legs and feet are getting back into Istanbul shape, where you can break 15,000 steps on your pedometer on any given day.

This morning as I type, the children are playing and in the background I can hear all the regular Istanbul hustle and bustle outside the window - traffic, seagulls, the shout of a wandering seller, a car alarm somewhere in the distance. Oh wait, the car alarm has stopped - now there is an accordion player. My goal today is to get near the Bosphorus and spend a bit of time in the sun that is finally shining.

Meanwhile, feel free to peruse the student blog - it's really great this year. There aren't any Istanbul posts yet, but I am anticipating some fun entries, most of the students really love it here.

http://umnistanbulstudyabroad.com/

See you soon!