(no subject)
Because I suddenly had the afternoon off yesterday (instead of having to plan) I took Kitty off to Sultanahmet. We had lunch first with Simon and Lee, and Simon and Kitty bought phone cards for their mobiles.
Kitty's a very cool, friendly, laid-back type from Minneapolis. She's twenty-nine, did her degree in film studies (she and Stephen hit it off instantly), has been travelling as much as possible ever since, and is just generally comfortable and fun to be around. We went to the Blue Mosque where we sat cross-legged behind the tourist barrier for a good twenty minutes or so drinking it all in and chatting lightly about men's and women's prayer space and respective rights in Islam. Turns out we've both read some works by the Muslim feminist Fatema Mernissi. Then we headed to the Basillica Cistern and wandered around in the red lighting with the eerie music playing in the background and the drip-drip-drip of water, goggled at the giant fish and circled the statues of Medusa and read the myth accompanying them on a plaque. Sadly both places were very crowded. I can't wait for tourist season to be over.
This all took a good couple of hours so we then headed back to Bakırköy and I found a grocery store where she could do some shopping. We took the groceries back to Kitty's new apartment (she's living with Graham and Alex) because Alex had said something earlier about inviting people over for pasta and cards. That fell apart though because everyone kind of backed out. I think Alex was too tired to cook anyway, and Stephen was too tired to leave his house after an airport run at five a.m. and class from nine thirty to one twenty and Graham went off and got dinner by himself and... well, I know by now how these things can unravel. So Kitty, Alex and I went off to a restaurant near our respective houses and then I went home, vegged in front of BBC World, saw Lee and Simon in when they arrived and went to bed.
About half an hour after I turned in I was woken from a very deep sleep by Lee calling tentatively outside my room, "Your phone's ringing!" It was Mum and I don't think I was terribly daughterly enthusiastic to speak to her (sorry, Mum!). The battery on the phone died in the middle of my asking if she could call back today. I didn't even catch (or perhaps don't remember) if they're in Vancouver or at the cottage at the moment. But I do promise to keep an eye out for the plane tickets, OK Mum?
Simon seems nice enough, British, a bit fussy I'd say from what I've seen so far and with a tendency to ask for/complain about things he needs after the fact. (He asked for a top sheet and a pillow -- why Brody didn't leave him a pillow eludes me, I know he has one, perhaps he took it with him??? -- this morning instead of last night, for instance.) I didn't manage to clean the flat yesterday and feel irrationally guilty, considering he's only staying in our flat for four days until Alison moves out of Stephen's and Corina's and he can move in. It's just that he made two comments about cleanliness in the first five minutes after I met him. The first was that the hotel where they put him on Friday night was "clean if he wasn't wearing his glasses." Then Corina came in and they greeted each other warmly (they did the TEFL together in Prague, that's why he applied to Interlang in the first place). Corina commented that they'd be living together again and Simon said "Hope you're tidier now!" Well, I'll have a bit of a sort out this afternoon I guess.
I took my last opportunity for several months (well, five is how long I think my class will last) to go to church this morning. On my way up İstiklal I was randomly approached by a man who did a double-take and double-back to talk to me. He was tall, young and quite good-looking but I don't take well to being randomly approached by men. He asked what I was doing and I said going to church. This, I suppose, was mistake number one, I should have said meeting friends or -- better -- my boyfriend, but I'm not good at this on-the-spot-man-repulsion thing. "OK," he said, "I'll come too." He told me he often goes to Union United Church and asked where I was going. I said the Anglican church and he got brownie points by correctly saying "Ah, Christ Church, right?" Apparently Christ Church was fine by him. "OK, OK, we will go there." Thanks for the approval of my plans, pal. He asked where I was from, and I told him and he told me he was from Nigeria. Then he started asking to give me his phone number/take mine. I resisted. "Is it because I am from Africa?" No, I said, it's because you're a man I don't know. He went off on a genial patter about how he doesn't think it's necessary always to be introduced to people before getting to know them, etc. No dice. My phone was not coming out. After a bit he took a phone call himself (whether for real or not, I don't know, I did see him with a friend when I was walking back from church) and went off to meet his friend, asking when we'd see each other again. "God knows," I replied uncharacteristically. Seemed a sensible response, however, because that got rid of him.
I suppose I was a bit churlish and monosyllabic -- well, no, I was quite polite all things considered, just not giving anything away -- nope, random encounters on the street just aren't my deal and I'm not going to apologise to myself for that. Anyway.
Church was especially good because the preacher was not the normal one and politics were therefore noticably absent from the pulpit. The liturgy and hymnbook they use are still enragingly non-inclusive, but I dealt with that as I normally do: randomly changed "men" to "people," "Lord" to "God," "His" to "God's" (or "Hers" when I got really annoyed at the repetition!) and so forth.
Wandered back up İstiklal and bought The Crescent and the Star, an overview of modern Turkey written by a longtime foreign correspondent which is reasonable, if not overly academic, and which just about everyone else has read. I borrowed it from Brody about a month ago, lost it before I had a chance to read it and promised to replace it.
I am now about to go back to Bakırköy for aforementioned cleaning and possibly cooking.
Yay for a free weekend!
In other news, there are two cinemas in Taksim playing "Fahrenheit 911." Considered going to see it today but am refraining for two reasons. The first is that someone might want to go with me. The second is I wouldn't be able to see clearly.
I put my contacts in with little incident this morning... or so it seemed. After about fifteen minutes the one on the left began to feel like it wanted to peel away from my eyeball and I decided I must have put it in back-to-front, so I pulled it out again, commenting to Simon that I am constantly reinforcing my own theory that poking things in your eyes shouldn't make you see better. Anyway, I put it back in the other way round remarkably easily, blinked a few times and off I went.
I was very early for church and went into a coffee shop to have some tea. As I was sitting there I realised that the blur around me wasn't due merely to early-morning bleary eyes. Something was up with my contacts. I closed my left eye -- perfectly clear vision. I closed my right eye -- a myopic blur. I began to suspect I wasn't wearing my left contact... and I was right. Up in the coffee shop's bathroom I inspected my eye closely, poked at it a bit and realised (or hoped) that it must have fallen out onto my dresser as I tried to put it in instead of -- as I thought -- simply sliding neatly and easily into my eye. I pulled my right contact out, looked at it for a moment thinking, "Well, now what?" and, in an instant of inspiration, procured my chapstick/lip gloss from my bag, opened it up, put the contact on the top of the stick, and closed it again. I just hope there's nothing in lip-gloss style chapstick that will hurt a prescription contact lens! And that I find the other one on my dresser when I get home!!!