i'm onto why i feel slightly uncertain about it here. My feet slightly shaky ground, worried to make the next step. Things are well, but they are not spectacular. My Turkish is taking a long time, my other classes are very good; yet things are moving slower, my mind is not willing to dive in, i'm sitting at the edge of the pool, looking in.

Istanbul i find endlessly fascinating,


I've never been so overwhelmed by a city. Not the everyday, not the common walks to class, and dealing with a new university and meeting new people. I'm overwhelmed by the city. it is not just this city, with its sprawling geography slight slopes and un-adulterated growth.



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This is the terrain view of Istanbul form google maps, i live right there a speck along the Bosphorus(İstanbul Boğazı). Each day out my door, i have developed a routine but every day there is somewhere new i end up. Sometimes it is welcome sometimes i just miss New York; I miss Seattle. Both places i know where i'm, i know what are the limitations and know where i can find and be myself.


It is amazing to be taking urban studies as one of my courses while living here. trying to apply what i'm learning about the economic growth of Venice and of Bruges i try to tie it to Istanbul. In asking the professor how Istanbul fits into this growth he looks and me and says, "none of what i'm saying fully applies to Istanbul, the city's ebbs and flows are uncharacteristic of any other city of the world."


Its completely true, this city is its own beast. Possibly why i'm worried to jump in to the pool that is Istanbul and its much larger surrogate Turkey. Turkey, which is its own whirlwind of change, i wrote about it like this in my Journal,

Turkey is in a transition, Istanbul is the beacon of what it wants to be. A city with free market success, on the cutting edge. Shopping malls and western clad youth shopping, mingling, Emulating the west with a Turkish orientation.... however the roots of the past remain. A past different then this ideal, much more conservative orientations, less excited of this complete Free market avalanche(note Free market as a cultural orientation not as just an economic system, to make this easier lets cal it moving to the left as in it is a spectrum,).

AND THEN

There is me Zac, Coming from the even further left ward orientation then that of The final place on this spectrum Turkey has in mind.

We are meeting(Turkey and I) in a strange midway point, where there are more malls then I've seen in a city before, The streets are full of Turkish/western music; but you-tube is baned and a beer is 7ytl.

I find myself in a strange situation feeling like I've been catapulted to the United states in the 1950's. and it is slightly strange.

Maybe this feeling will pass and maybe it will stay, i have no idea. I will become more use to it, I feel i got to stick it out till the end.