I Have No Pictures Because I Didn't Do Anything

This past week was Kurban Bayram, which celebrates the non-sacrifice of Ishmael by his father Abraham, and the provision by God of a substitute ram. In all my conversation classes leading up to this, I've had multiple students tell me this story, and then ask me to tell the Christian version. Usually the only change I make is to turn Ishmael into Isaac, and the ram into a majestic unicorn with a sixteen foot wingspan. Then my students will poke their neighbors and whisper in Turkish, "See, I told you it was the same."

But more importantly, Kurban Bayrm means a week off. I went to Istanbul for the week to meet up with most of the other fifty Fulbrighters in Turkey. I was estatic to finally see other Americans again. I soon found out that everyone else had been traveling every weekend to see each other. This is the first time I've left Van, I'd tell them, and they'd always ask why, because, I agree, it didn't make much sense to remain in such a quiet place for seven straight weeks. So I'd say, Thousands of years ago God built a wall around Van to make sure that nothing would ever get out. That wall is nothingness, and it stretches out from Van in a circle with an eight hour radius.

That's a bit harsh. Since this was the first time in seven weeks that the Fulbrighters were reuniting, How is BLANK was a question each man or woman had to answer fifty times. So I'd say: It's great. It's quiet and beautiful and no one will ever let me read in peace because they think I'm lonely.

I'd love to post pictures of myself in the Sultan's old bedchambers or looting the Hagai Sophia for gold mosaics like my ancestors, but the truth is we didn't do a lot of Istanbul-ish stuff. In traveling to Istanbul, I had one goal - to not have to try. I didn't want to try to understand people, I didn't want to help people with their English, I didn't want to translate anymore. I wanted to sit with people and not have to try in order to be friends. And it worked beautifully.

We did a lot of America-ish stuff. We saw Harry Potter. We ate at an Italian chain restaurant. We bought a lot of English language books. We talked about video games. A lot, actually. If there was one benefit from Kurban Bayram, it's that I learned that at least three other Fulbrighters own a copy of Age of Empires II and are eager to play online together. We spent a good deal of time on strategy, in between arguments about Pokemon (which I did NOT participate in - talk about a bunch of dweebs).

The whole experience is probably best summed up in the Princes Islands. These are islands maybe an hour from Istanbul by ferry. These islands are pretty hilly, and there are no cars - it's all foot traffic. At the highest point on the largest island there's a monastary that was there before the islands got there, or something like that. Really old. We rented tandem bikes and tried to pedal the whole way. My bike was obviously broken (why wouldn't it be - oh yeah, because that's a crappy thing to rent to someone), and I ended up pushing while my partner Lucien steered. It was a lot like the relationship between the guy pushing the Corolla and the guy on the steering wheel shouting commands out of the open door.

When we finished pushing the bike up the hill (which was one of those hills where you ask for its birth certificate because there is no way it should be pitching in thirteen and under little league), instead of checking out the monastery we decided to rest for a while on these cliff rocks that were probably out of bounds. Someone brought a couple of bottles of wine, and we drank these and talked about mechanics of Dungeons and Dragons for a few hours (we're planning to meet before Christmas for a game). As the sun was setting, we picked up our bikes and our trash and started walking down the hill.

We didn't even pose for this. It was that resplendent.

At this point, you'd think we'd realize that we hadn't even been inside this older-than-Pangea building, but no - instead, we realized that we were almost late for the bike rental return. So with Lucien steering and me literally running full speed behind him, we made it all the way back without hitting more than one person and damaging forever more than one of Lucien's fingers.

This aptly describes the whole week. There were monuments, but we forgot about them, and the vacation was that much better because of it.