The End

The time has come to close this blog. I hope you enjoyed what you have read here. Please visit me at my new blog. It's a joint blog with my husband.

Yay, we're married!

Wedding less than two weeks away

Oi, veh. With less than 2 weeks until my single life is over, I'm feeling a little overwhelmed with the things I have to do.

Acutally, that's a lie. Last weekend I rode 180 miles for the AIDS ACT III ride and now I'm feeling very calm about everything. No problem, folks. Everything will work itself out.

The AIDS ride was pretty fun. My boss told me that she saw me on the television news twice! I just found one of the videos online, but not the ones that I'm in. So when I find them, I'll post the links here.

Summer evenings can be so humid. How do you cool down without air conditioning? Go for a bike ride, of course!

It's summer!

Well, almost. The weather feels summer-like. I feel I should change the title of my blog, seeing as I'm not in Turkey anymore, and haven't been for quite some time.

Here is a picture of some dried poppy plants my friend gave me back in Trabzon. She said they grow like crazy in the Izmir region, but people who grow them can only have so many due to government restrictions. Gotta keep away from the opium dealers or something.



I love the sound they make. If you shake them, they make the softest sound, similar to those plastic eggs with beads in them. You can eat them for breakfast if you like. Break open the shell and inside are the little black seeds that make their appearance on bagels here in the States. I can't remember exactly what she said to do with them next, but you cook them somehow and put them on toast with butter. Mmmmm, it sounded delicious.

The Germans use poppy seeds for sweets. My mother makes the best poppy seed cake in the whole wide world.

Perhpas one of my Turkish friends can help me remember what to do with poppy seeds in the morning.

It's been a while

Hi folks!

I've been meaning to post my last entry for a long time, but have been postponing it. I started an article about the call to prayer, and even got close to finishing it, buy with the move back to the States, applying for school in a rush, and starting back at work, I misplaced it and possibly even lost it.

"No big deal," I hear you saying. "Just start over." I've meant to do that at least five times, but life has just gotten too busy, which is unfortunate, because the call to prayer is really awesome and you call should hear it. By that, I mean you should really consider going to Turkey and hanging around Istanbul, Antalya, and Erzurum, and hear the call wafting overhead, mingling with other calls in the city. It grounded me at a time when I didn't feel very grounded. I wish mosques here in the States would sound their calls. I'm not sure if they aren't allowed, or if they choose not to. At least in Detroit, Michigan one can hear the call. There isn't a law prohibiting the call to prayer, nor is there a noise ordinance against it. In neighboring Hamtramck there is a bit of a debate whether the local mosque can sound its call. There is no law against it there either, but mosque officials wanted to be neighborly and get permission anyway. As it stands right now, the issue is going up for a vote in July or August to be determined by the city residents. Hopefully, it will pass.

Here's the beginning of the article I started a few moons ago.


I am generally a heavy sleeper. Sometimes I wake up enough just before sunrise to hear the day's first call to prayer. I try to stay awake to listen to the whole thing because it is quite beautiful, but it usually lulls me back into my slumber.

At prayer time, there is a call from the minaret of the mosques, the ezan. In olden days, a man would climb to the top and sing in a beautiful and loud voice for the people in the surrounding area. Nowadays it is sung through loud speakers postioned at the top of the minarettes. In Trabzon, there is one voice for all the mosques. His voice bounces off the surrounding mountains so that during the pauses one can here him three times over. In Istanbul one can here several men singing at different intervals, floating together in a sea of beautiful singing above the city. I once had the pleasure of being on top of one of the seven hills Istanbul rests on when the call to prayer went off. I felt like I was being wrapped in a melodious blanket of peace.

The first call to prayer is sounded around 5:30 am, although it varies because the times are in sync with the moon. This one is the longest and low in tone. As the day progresses, they speed up little by little so that the last call is maybe half as long as the first.

The words of the call are sung in Arabic and are translated like this:

Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar .
Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar ,
Allah is the Greatest, Allah is the Greatest,
Allah is the Greatest, Allah is the Greatest.

Ash-hadu alla ilaha illa-llah
Ash-hadu alla ilaha illa-llah
I bear witness that there is none worthy of worship but Allah.
I bear witness that there is none worthy of worship but Allah.

Ash-hadu anna Muhammadar-Rasulullah.
Ash-hadu anna Muhammadar-Rasulullah.
I bear witness that Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah
I bear witness that Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah

Hayya ‘ala-s-Salah, hayya ‘ala-s-Salah.
Hasten to the Prayer, hasten to the Prayer.

Hayya ‘ala-l-falah, hayya ‘ala-l-falah.
Hasten to real success, hasten to real success

Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar.
Allah is the Greatest, Allah is the Greatest.

La ilaha illa-llah.
There is none worthy of worship but Allah.

As-Salatu khairun min an-naum
As-Salatu khairun min an-naum. .
Prayer is better than sleep.
Prayer is better than sleep.

Not to fall behind in these technological times, a cell phone company in the United Arab Emirates has made the call to prayer cell phone friendly.

Want to hear it? Check these out. (The Arabic word is Azan. The Turkish word is ezan.)

Turkish Restaurant Menu

ロカンタ-Istanbul, Turkey
Originally uploaded by nao.

You can walk into just about any restaurant and tell the cook what you want. Then you sit down and wait for them to serve you bread, ayran (a mixture of yogurt, salt, and water), and maybe they'll offer you some soup. In the photo here you can see various types of kebaps.

More cart sellers!

manav
Originally uploaded by Zyama.

This photo was taken in Kadidoy, my old neighborhood in Istanbul. I thought I would post it here cuz it's a cool image and goes along so nicely with my other cart photos.

Upcoming--more on Turkish food!

The New American Landscape

They say that the culture shock is hardest when coming back to your own country. Reentry shock, they call it.

For some reason, I found myself wandering around the old mall I used to work at back in college. It was early in the day, so there weren't the throngs of crowds around. In fact, there weren't very many people at all, which gave the whole a place an eerie atmosphere. Some of the old stores I used to shop at had changed dramatically while the place I worked had disappeared entirely. Bigger stores are replacing smaller ones at an alarming rate. Did you ever think that such a thing was possible? Malls are already full of bigger stores than you would find downtown, but these places are just huge. For example, I went to Dick's Sporting Goods, and was amazed at the size of it. There were three other customers in the store, but I didn't know it for a whole 20 minutes. I walked along the vast aisles of fully stocked, neatly organized rows of shirts, bikes, shorts, steel coffee mugs, and golf bags, wondering if it was possible for these racks to be empty. Then I noticed there was a second level.



Upstairs was more of the same: tents, fishing vests, rods, nalgene bottles, camping chairs, pavilions, and sleeping mats. As I floated down the escalator, I thought that since this store obviously has everything, maybe I could find a pair of winter biking gloves which is why I came to the mall in the first place.

I perused their bike section, but apparently the rest of America doesn't ride their bike in winter or for very long in the summer. These bikes looked like they were waiting to be bought so they could sit in the garage to wait there again for a sunny day. There were no panniers, no bike fenders, no rain gear, and certainly no winter gear. Just helmets, bikes, and locks. And almost all the bikes had front shocks on them. Call me a biker snob, but I really don't see the point of front shocks on bikes. They weigh the bike down so much that if you are going long distances, they slow you down. Save the weight and carry more food! At least you can eat that weight off. Sure they may save the wrists if you don't ride around very much, but if that's the case, are they saving your wrists all that much? I would venture to say that anyone who has front shocks on their bikes probably spends more time on the computer than they do on their bike. Carpal tunnel is more likely at the keyboard then, than on the bike. But I digress.

I have to give the designers of this store a little credit. People like to be able to identify with things, so on some of the columns holding up the store were blown up images of an area map with "Madison" in bold print. Way to give some hometown feel! I'm sure the store in St. Louis has the same thing but with "St. Louis" in bold.

The thing that upset me the most is that I walked around in that place for a good 20 minutes before I saw anyone. What has happened to human interaction? In Turkey, there is so much human interaction that it is sometimes annoying, but even so, I miss it. I miss being able to bargain with the shop keeper or merchant. I miss the smells of the market place, the feel of the outdoor air in my nostrils. None of this artificial air freshener that makes me nauseous. I also miss the sounds of human activity, the laughter, various shop keepers singing their selling song, and the clomp of human feet on the cobblestone ground.

One more gripe about mall shopping America and I'll stop.

My quest to find mittens to replace the glove I lost went unfulfilled. Can you believe that it's still 20 degrees (Fahrenheit) outside and the entire mall is selling spring clothing? The only hand coverings I found where on the 77 cent rack in JCPenny's, and they would have been utterly useless in fighting the wind chill I feel on my hands as I ride to work. Pure polyester pink pansies of gloves.

My next post will be about something happy. Promise.