home

i'm back home in Istanbul from my North American vacation. There was a lot of flying involved, but it was so nice to be able to eat Thai food, stock up on mac and cheese and spend 2 weeks with my pup Lola! Got lots of work done, but still lots to do! I came back to Turkey on Sunday (one of my bags got held up in airport security...apparently the Trader Joe's instant Indian food packets caused some alarm) just in time for Seker Bayram (Sugar Festival). We went for a couple of days to see Samet's family and my friend Rose and her cute new baby, I celebrated my 29th birthday, and in between tried to catch up on as much work as possible. Looks like for the next few weeks I'll be pretty busy, but tomorrow I get to take a break and attend a Turkish futbol (soccer) game. I'm so excited and picked out all my team colored clothes to wear. Go Galatasaray! I'm happy to be back.

taking off

i'm waiting around now for a couple more hours before i've got to head out to the airport to catch my flight. although i'm usually a night bird, i hate flying at night...something about not being able to see anything outside and forget about sleeping...especially if you're flying into different time zones...airlines always try to trick you into forcing you to be in the mindset of the time zone you are flying into...so it will be like eternally 6AM for 14 hours until we land. i usually takes about 10 hours direct, but i've got a layover in milan (which has the strangest airport ever! so easy to get lost that no wonder my baggage got lost when i was headed here!).

i've got a weird adrenaline rush now while i wait, so thought i'd blog a little before i get on the plane. yesterday samet and i headed out to taksim to snap some pics of street fashion to be featured on Elle.com. after taking a few minutes to get used to being a paparazzi and snapping quick candid pics, we opted to ask the girls if we could snap their photos instead. i made samet go ask them first, but he got brushed off as a sapik (pervert). so i had to ask them in my limited turkish if they could speak english. and then pushed samet in to explain that i didn't want them to take my pic, but for me to take their picture. in the first pic (of the couple) the dude on the right is actually a Turkish reality TV star, Yigit, from a show called Danse Eder Misin?" (Do You Want to Dance)...which I watched all last summer. he was the audience favorite after doing some Michael Jackson moves. I was too shy to tell him I saw him on TV but excited nonetheless. samet thought he was shorter in real life.

this was the cutest couple ever...they were only like four feet tall, but so sweet and cute and so in love with each other! they were snacking and walking hand in hand down the street when we spotted them and samet insisted we chase them down to snap their pic...i hope when i grow old i can be like them. you can check out more istanbul street fashion pics on my flickr account!

i'll be back to posting when i get to the states! we should be getting in the beginning of the holiday stock for CUT+PASTE while i'm there, it will be nice to go through it all and see it in person! there is so much cute stuff out there to order, i'm starting to get overwhelmed with it all! see you all soon!