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Turkey/Bulgaria: Christmas without Christmas; a year of gifts

Someone graciously reminded me the other day that it’s been almost 3 months since my last post to this blog. So much has happened since the end of my return to Istanbul this summer, since my ponderings about Papua New Guinea, since my 30^th (!) birthday, since the car crash.

Art Light Show (Light and Matter) in Istanbul

Brace yourselves, this one may be epic.

Art Light Show (Light and Matter) in Istanbul

Art Light Show (Light and Matter) in Istanbul

Art Light Show (Light and Matter) in Istanbul

So here I am, one week before Christmas overtakes Christian countries, dragging myself out of bed after a late night of eating, drinking and dancing at a friend’s birthday to write a new blog post.

At the end of each year one ponders where they are, how they got there and where they might be going in the future. It’s now been two years since my last Christmas in the states. Two years ago I had quit my job, sold all my possessions and was packing my bags in preparation to work my way around the world.

I was scared shitless, a state in which I typically tend to exhibit type A personality traits: packing and re-packing, making lists, re-formatting my resume… you get the idea. If you ever see me exhibit all three of these behaviors at once, back out of the room… very carefully.

The trip around the world lasted about 9 months – from January 1^st, 2009 to September 2009, draining the entirety of the ½ of my income that I had saved from the year before. Along the way I made it through New Zealand and Australia for 3 months, Cambodia for 4 months and various other countries such as Thailand, Malaysia, India, Nepal and Italy.

At the end of the 9 months, I showed up in Istanbul on a 2 a.m. flight, with just enough time to sleep, shit and shower before tumbling in to work at 9 a.m. the following morning.

My beginnings in Istanbul were rocky, to put it mildly. I had no friends, no place to live and no idea how overwhelming a city of 16 million could be. It soon turned out that although the job I had secured was one of the better paid in Istanbul, it would be the most stressful and mentally unhealthy places I would ever work. In fact, a mix of culture shock, stress at work and general ennui kept me ill for most of last year – a cough that I picked up when I went home for Thanksgiving basically never left until April, and I would hack the night away, just waiting for dawn and the Muslim call to prayer to wake up and go in to the stress of my office. Depressing… but wait, it got better.

Last April, right around the time that Carol and Dad came to visit, I started my job search in earnest, interviewing at 4 universities, 5 high schools, 2 language schools and even a preschool (“don’t do it, Jennie!” my friends said, “they’ll poop on you.”)

Luckily, I got the job that I really wanted in a university and then had 8 weeks during the summer to mentally recover from the last work place. Friends came to visit, I traveled home, I saw family, I did weddings, I turned 30, and I crashed my car, narrowly escaping multiple collisions, as other cars sped past my spinning vehicle.

Halloween 2010

Coming back from the summer, I basically locked myself down in my neighborhood for a few weeks, providing time for reflection, guitar practice, working out regularly and generally allowing myself enough time to get bored; a true gift.

The new job started in September, my co-workers are great and the students are so much better than last year. On top of that, I work my own schedule, which means that although I have to design and create 16 hours of curriculum each week from scratch, I get to do it on my own time.

This alleviates the pain I had always felt from the curse of over-productive, organized people everywhere: you sit in an office 9 hours a day, while really only doing about 3 hours of work and spend the rest of the time watching office mates dick off, gossip, google surf or just be painfully slow at everything either said or done.

Dressed for a friend's "Turkification" Party - she had just gotten citizenship

Now I can honestly say that whatever time I spend in the office, I am doing work. I’m also making friends and interacting with colleagues and students, but because I am not forced to be there, I tend to have much higher work output.

Since August, I have created, week by week, a working curriculum that teaches, provides practice for, and tests all sorts of academic skills such as research, writing, listening, speaking, note-taking, presenting and debating, to name a few. I’ve gotten positive feedback from students, co-workers and managers and any issues I’ve had, I felt as though I was in a safe enough environment to work through them without being afraid of being thrown under the proverbial bus. And I had almost started to forget what a healthy workplace felt like.

In addition to working and teaching, I’ve also been singing with my choir(s) and made my way to Bulgaria for a trip during the Fall break. My friend Chad came to visit Istanbul from Oregon for a few weeks in November and we wandered around town, and out to the Princes Islands (see pics below) and headed north to Bulgaria, promised land of good beer, pork and fresh air. Chad is a glassblower by trade, but thanks to Obama’s extension of unemployment funds is currently allowed much more free time and actually more income as a laid-off glassblower. Time to travel.

Sunset, Princes Islands, Istanbul

Windy, Princes Islands, Istanbul

Princes Islands, Istanbul

Princes Islands, Istanbul

Monastery View, Princes Islands, Istanbul

Princes Islands, Istanbul

On the ferry, Istanbul

After flying in to Bulgaria from Turkey - a quick 1 hour flight - we started in Sofia, capital of the country, and city of 1.3 million, which seemed like a small backwater suburb after the 16 million-person mania of Istanbul. With town walls that date back to the Thracian settlements of the 7^th century B.C., Sofia is, like many Balkan and Eastern European cities, just recovering from Soviet rule and yet rich in the history of thousands upon thousands of years of conquerors.

Turkey/Bulgaria Map

Soviet Monument, Sofia, Bulgaria

Putin's Visit, Bulgaria, Sofia

We then headed south in our tiny rent-a-car to Blagoevgrad, a little town in the mountains where the American University of Bulgaria is tucked neatly into the former Soviet Headquarters. We walked around the university and grabbed some Bulgarian food (salad, soup, pork and beer). Around the town we took pictures and marveled at the ubiquitous “death notices” that are hung up after someone dies – wall after wall were covered with death flyers announcing townspeople that had passed away.

Death Announcement Flyers

From there, we drove up into the green trees, fresh air and mountains in search of the Rila Monastery, where Eastern Orthodox monks wandered past ancient painted murals waxing philosophical on all matters of the soul. Along the way we got lost a good few times, as most of the signs were in Cyrillic script. This, however, provoked countless interactions with the local folk, as we would pull up at each intersection, say the name of the city we were looking for, point left, point right and shrug. Once they pointed left or right, we would head off in that direction, usually or almost always actually heading in the right direction. In this way, we passed small, abandoned towns, roadside chapels, honey and pottery roadside stalls, goats, cows and crumbling soviet block housing.

Eastern Orthodox Monks, Bulgaria, Rila Monastery

Bulgaria, Rila Monastery

Bulgaria, Rila Monastery

Roadside Chapel, Bulgaria

Roadside Chapel, Bulgaria

After visiting the monastery, we went to Plovdiv, home of the ancient Greek city of Philippopolis, then a major roman city, later an ottoman center of power, finally a soviet capital and now complete with ruins from all four, including a beautiful Roman amphitheater overlooking one of its main hills and a huge communist statue atop another. We stayed in the old town and managed to catch a concert with a Bulgarian open-throated chorus group.

Bulgarian Traditional Choir, Plovdiv, Bulgaria

At night we wandered into town to sample the nightlife with some of the other hostel goers and ended up in a trendy disco in town where everything was made of shiny plastic and mirrors and go-go dancers. Nothing says classy like eastern European discos.

WTF!?, Plovdiv, Bulgaria

Signs, Plovdiv, Bulgaria

Hilltop, Plovdiv, Bulgaria

Hilltop, Plovdiv, Bulgaria

Soviet Monument, Plovdiv, Bulgaria

Plovdiv, Bulgaria

Roman Amphiteater, Plovdiv, Bulgaria

After Plovidiv, we packed up the little car once again and drove north through flat farming fields and small, deserted little villages, finally arriving at the base of the Balkan Mountains that cut the country in two and the Shipka pass at 3900 feet – a steep, winding road over the mountains that marks the site of a famous battle of the Russo-Turkish war in the late 1800’s. This battle marked a defeat of the Ottoman forces that had ruled Bulgaria so cruelly during that period.

Our next stop was Veliko Tarnovo, an ancient city on a hill with a history of more than 5 millennia. Apparently, the oldest traces of human life there are dated from the 3^rd millennia B.C.! With lovely restored castles, picturesque views, art museums and statues of the four horsemen, this was my favorite Bulgarian city so far.

Sofia Graffiti, Bulgaria

Statue, Veliko Tarnovo, Bulgaria

Veliko Tarnovo, Bulgaria

To add to the fun, the dude who ran our hostel was a true Bulgarian hippy. He and his young girlfriend sprouted seeds in the living room, grew peyote around the hostel in bunches (we came to find out) and waxed philosophical for hours about the energy of such living creatures as humans, dogs and ducks. Needless to say, this man fell in love with Chad right away and they proceeded to have a bromance of epic proportions until I had to play the evil friend and rip us away from the comfy town to return the car in Sofia.

Veliko Tarnovo, Bulgaria

Art, Veliko Tarnovo, Bulgaria

Veliko Tarnovo, Bulgaria

Veliko Tarnovo, Bulgaria

Veliko Tarnovo, Bulgaria

Veliko Tarnovo, Bulgaria

One of the 4 horsemen, Veliko Tarnovo, Bulgaria

We made it back to Sofia, had a nice dinner out with some new friends and flew out in the morning for our return to Istanbul, where we vegged for a few days, I returned to work, and Chad prepared for a return to the U.S.

Chapel at the base of the Shipka Pass, Veliko Tarnovo, Bulgaria

These days I am steadying for Christmas next weekend, or lack thereof, then New Years the weekend after. I’ve bought a flight to Brussels to see Ioanna, who is working in the embassy there, and also to stock up on chocolate, cheese, good wine and all things Belgian.

At the end of January I’ll be in New York for a week seeing my brother John, and catching up with friends and family. Also going to stop by and check out some of the PhD programs for Educational Technology and Psychology in NYC – a new potential direction for 2011-2012….

After that, I am going to Ecuador! A friend I used to work with here has a friend in Quito who is working in the rainforest to create sustainable logging techniques, so we’re heading down for a few weeks to see him and to travel around.

It’s been 10 years since I left Ecuador. I was 20 when I went there to study at La Universided de San Franscisco. I was young, romantic, and a bit lost, not unlike myself now, but at a markedly different point in my life. It was my first experience living outside the U.S. and I am interested to see how it has changed, and also how I have changed.

More soon. XOXOXOXO

Papua New Guinea to Turkey: The depths and the heights

Where is the line

That defines present time?

Still, there is twine, ‘tween that life and mine

But it’s thinner and it’s thinning

It’s beginning, it’s beginning…

Six years ago, while living in Japan, I took a trip to Papua New Guinea with a group of Japanese and foreign ex-pats. In the in-flight magazine, Papua New Guinea’s leading, and as far as I could tell only author had written an essay about Papua New Guinea.

In it, he criticized the changes that have taken place over the last half-century. When his grandfather was young and got hungry, the writer praised, he would simply go over to the neighboring tribe and eat one of the tribesmen.

The author had great respect for this strength, and expressed his disappointment with the current situation – violence translated into a hedonistic and bedraggled society within the cities, rather than pointedly used between tribes for greater good – and apparently cannibalistic food production.

Whether the editor of the online magazine had pointedly included this section of the article in order to warn or prepare weak westerners who thought they were taking a typical beach vacation, or, as the typos and abrasive grammar choices would indicate, no one had actually read the article before it was published, having been written by the premier author of the entire island, I will never know.

We disembarked in Port Moresby, hopped a flight to Lae and were led past trash heaps and armed guards down to the northern coast and a small motor boat, which was to become our only mode of transport for the next ten days due to lack of roads and electricity in the villages, whilst staying with the tribes.

One night well after dark, there was a knock on the cabin door. My room mate and I glanced nervously at one another from beneath our mosquito netting, both having apparently read the same in-flight magazine article, and feeling a bit like white meat the past few days under the ever watchful gaze of the tribesmen, who sharpened their machetes and spit out beetle nut juice, thick and red as hour-old blood, into the sand at their feet.

The tribesmen led us down to the water and into a small rowboat. “Well, I suppose this could be it.” I only half joked with my friend. We managed a few coughed laughs, muffled by our curiosity and the general discomfort of the situation.

The moon that night was as bright as the sun and shone a light so white and strong that we could see across the bay that there was a group of people who seemed to be standing around some sort of large creature on the beach.

As we got closer, we could see some of the men trying to ride the creature, which, we soon realized upon closer inspection, was a leatherback sea turtle, 2-3 meters (6-10 feet) long and easily almost 700 kg (1500 pounds).

After the men were chastised by an elder sharply enough, they left off jumping on her back and amused themselves by shining a flash light up her neither regions so we could all see how she laid her eggs. After a while, however, even that got old, and we all stood under the sun-like moon and undulating stars while she scratched against the sand with her giant flippers to finish the laying and cover over the hole.

We must have stood there with her almost an hour. At some point, I began to cry quite silently and the un-tethered feeling I had been carrying for so long became almost unbearable. I rubbed my palms against my cheeks, feigning sleepiness, because the wet streaks of my tears would undoubtedly have shone in the moonlight, and I did not want the men to see.

Finally, when she had finished covering her eggs, she began to lumber slowly, excruciatingly, down the beach and back towards the water. Her huge body dragged itself across the sand as though she was carrying the weight of ten men on her back.

Until at last, she reached the water. Suddenly, the movement that had been haggard and rough became fluid. With an instantaneous and lightning stroke, she shot herself out into the ocean, and was gone.

I learned later that she had probably followed the jet stream from the California coast – almost 16,000 km (10,000 miles) just to lay her eggs there on that bright beach.

We made it back to the cabins, back to Japan, and back to our version of civilization safe and sound, with nary a bite mark (except for the odd sand fly) to prove our journey among the former cannibals.

And yet, I often think of her, catching the currents under the ocean and propelling herself forward through the deep.

This summer I took advantage of an extended summer holiday to return to the US for five weeks.

During my return flight to Istanbul, I watched an in-flight special about two Papua New Guinea tribesmen who were taken by a British biologist friend to the U.K. to document their perspective on the culture there.

The biologist brought the two men to dinner at his family’s somewhat posh home, led them through the fanciest neighborhoods and the crumbling projects, where teenage children, glossy-eyed and wielding sticks, practiced tribal dances with the two men.

In the follow-up interviews after each section, the Papua New Guinean chieftains politely extol the virtues of the luxuries that U.K. society enjoys, and express their bewilderment at the strangeness within the society.

Chuckling with one another they observe:

“It’s not easy to eat with the white man. They use as many tools to eat as you use to fix a car!”

“We thought all white men had beautiful houses, but it’s not true. There are some who have terrible houses, where it is dirty and everything is broken.”

“In the morning, white men say “Good Morning!” But at night, after they work all day they go home in a hurry and don’t talk to anyone.”

Later on, while visiting a farm in the countryside built over a old battlefield, they advise the farmer on why he has had such a prosperous year:

“I think the spirits of the dead who died here are still here, and they help you to grow your potatoes.”

As I watched the TV special, I wondered how much has really changed in those six years since I stood with the turtle in the moonlight while she laid her eggs. The same exuberant joy still jostles against loneliness and isolation in me, giving me flashes of great sorrow, but also moments of complete contentment.

I often wonder why the spirit is so inclined to experience the world with such sharp precision.

On a cellular level, six years is long enough for a body to have reproduced each of its cells at least once, or so the old wives tale goes, leaving me technically a completely new person compared with my 24-year-old self.

And yet, I remain the same. Better, perhaps, less lost, more confident, more understanding, less judgmental. But still, as each blog entry testifies, actively engaged in navel-gazing in order to reach a higher level of understanding.

Who the fuck knows the answers. I don’t.

But I know I thought of her as I flew over the Atlantic in my buckled seat, with my wine and soda water. I thought of her below the depths, carrying her eggs to safety; catching the swift current across the oceans.