Highlights:
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| Ataturk Statue in Taksim, covered in Galata Saray Fans. (my man Rhys's photo) |
- Spring break trip to the black sea region--another exciting bus tour filled with photo stops. Honestly not much to report, but here are some pictures :)
- Went to a feminist festival. check out the website and make your own conclusions.
- Wandered around Istanbul's May Day festival, found some other street art gems and celebrated Galata Saray's soccer victory
Perusing my pictures will give you the best impression of what's up. I'm definitely in the homestretch right now and my workload has snuck up on me-- I have 3 papers 2 presentations and 2 finals in the next 2 weeks. And I'm escaping Istanbul to Berlin for a long weekend starting this Thursday, which isn't helping my workload...
OH
and I promised tales of passover.
Heres what happened the night of the Seder. My dear friend was visiting from Vienna and despite not being Jewish agreed to attend a community Seder at a Sephardi synagogue with me.
Now, generally people have seders in their homes, so community seders, in my experience, attract a motley crew of people who don't have their own seders to attend, and this one was no different. The room was filled with ex-pats, travelers, and various Turkish people who's presence I'm still unclear about.
Most notably, Emma and I were positioned between the Cantor's father and an older Turkish couple who had clearly not been to a seder in a long time. Neither spoke English. My neighbor (from hence forth referred to as my grandpa), the man in the couple, spoke some very antiquated Hebrew. Emma's (grandpa) communicated mostly through physical violence.
The Seder itself consisted mostly of the Cantor, the Rabbi, and the Cantor's father singing through every word in the Haggadah over the--often disruptively loud--din of voices coming from the other tables. Occasionally the Rabbi would call for silence and then continue, but usually he was undeterred.
The Cantor's father was very committed to Emma and my participation in the ritual, so every time Emma's finger left the section of the Hebrew we were singing, she would get a lil' whack on the arm and be pointed in the right direction. This also happened whenever we were meant to turn the page. For clarification, Emma does not speak or read Hebrew. My grandpa (what we began calling our respective older men) found this incredibly amusing. We laughed together at the ridiculousness of the whole show. My favorite moment of the two of our interactions was when he recited a brief poem to me which ended with a declaration that I was the only woman for him. I'm pretty sure we fell in love.
Other mentionable occurrences include:
1. The time the table fell down, nothing spilled, and the rabbi mostly continued singing, only pausing briefly to re-open the table's foldable legs.
2. My grandpa's wife, in cahoots with the entire wait-staff, collecting all of the left over meat in a giant tinfoil pouch she constructed to bring to the street dogs.
3. Sitting in the woman's section during the short service before the seder began and realizing that not one of the 20 people there had any idea what page we were on.
4. Trying to exchange emails with my grandpa. When he got out a pen and paper to write his down, and then got chastised by the rabbi for writing on a holiday. A rule Emma and I are both aware of, but I guess were hoping we wouldn't get caught...
The rest of the holiday was pretty average. I kept sephardic rules and honestly think not eating the excessive white bread presented at the beginning of every meal here was great for me.
Thats all!
Happy Spring to everyone. and Mother's Day. and any other exciting day thats happened lately!
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