Macit Quote of the Day: If you drink something with ice in it, you will get sick.
Sorry for the brief hiatus. I was re-acclimating to the good ol’ United States for the past couple weeks. Not really, I've just been ultra lazy and am trying to rectify that now.
This may be one of my last posts regarding Turkey for the following reasons. One, I’m not entirely sure how many posts I have to do, so if 8 becomes the Macit number (see what I did there) then I’m going to be a bum and do the minimum. That probably won’t bode well for getting selected in future NEH stints, but hey, Congress is trying to slash their budget in half anyway, so it will become even more selective in the future. Secondly, its getting closer and closer to the school year and I need to start focusing more of my energies on creating stuff for the kiddos. I know, you’re all thinking, “but Pat, your Macit quotes are the only thing that get me through my miserable day” and to that I say be better at living. But I do appreciate the 4 or 5 of you who have read my articles. I hope I’m not exaggerating that number too much. There’s a chance that I would like to start a new blog about my adventures at my new school, Bedford High, focusing on my teaching style, ideas, and general rants. If that happens, I’ll let you know.
But on to the good stuff.
So towards the end of the trip we had to do a scavenger hunt in Taksim, the area in Istanbul that has been the fulcrum of the unrest directed towards the government. The neighborhood was really nice, I had already been there a few times unofficially, and it was similar to many downtown areas in major cities, full of restaurants and shopping centers. Our scavenger team consisted of myself, Eric, Clara, Deb, and Ron. It was basically a dreamteam. Ron had the most knowledge of Turkish and Middle Eastern history among the teachers so he was an invaluable resource in many of the trickier items to find; Eric, Clara, and I found a ton of items in Burger King and a bookstore (it was actually kind of cheap and we stretched some definitions of what counted); and Deb ran away, I wasn't too sure what happened to her.
We ended up winning the hunt, I’m pretty confident that we crushed all competition. This gave me ample opportunity to explore some of the side streets in Taksim which consisted of a lot of bars. I found the best place ever, a place that I wish I found early on in the trip, not on the third to last day. This amazing place was known as the Pacific Cafe (maybe bar or some other word, it’s a little hazy). In any event, they had a seven hour long happy hour from noon to seven where you could pay 10 TL for two beers and a shot of tequila. What!?! Are you being serious, that’s like only $5 US. I was elated once I found it, but had no one to share my joy with. I scuttled back to the group (when I’m excited I do a crab walk) and found Luke and Brent. We jumped at the thought of being drunk for cheap and made our way back to the bar. After a couple of rounds, Luke unfortunately had to leave on account that he had made dinner plans with Richard, but we all knew he wanted to stay.
This led to Brent and I hanging at this place for about 4 or 5 hours. They always say a picture is worth a thousand words and I don’t feel like writing much else, so here is what the Pacific Cafe led to.
Brent leaping off the Galata Bridge into the Golden Horn. |