Ok so I lied. I thought I would use my last post to sum up the trip and all the things I learned. So essentially, this was going to be a post of lists. However, I started writing my lists, realized they were very long (typical), so I am splitting them up into multiple posts.

It probably won’t interest you that much, but it’s just some things I wish to remember. Feel free to skip to more interesting posts.

And if you’re really lucky, I might even add a sentimental reflection post after I finish these.

·         Turks are either the best or the worst drivers I have ever seen

·         A lot of smoking – though not overwhelming – people are pretty polite about it

·         [Women] Unnatural hair colors are in

o   Youth: blond with dark roots

o   Middle-aged: Red or purple-ish. And I don’t mean ginger red. I mean candy apple red.

o   Old ladies: blond or gingerish

·         Nose jobs have become a status symbol

·         Shopkeepers are all male – which personally, I see as a mark of intelligence on the female’s part

·         Head-scarves, when worn, are pinned in a kerchief style

·         No beards. At all. Some of the youth have scruffy “oh I just forgot to shave” type beards. But that is it.

·         Ladies, wide-leg pant legs are in. I give it 2-3 more years and then that fashion will be here, too.

·         In all honesty, (and to steal this term from Nate), the PQ [prettiness quotient] is not very high here

·         Stereotypical village grandmother: short, overweight, wearing poofy colored pants with the crotch around calf-level and the waist band sitting right below boob-level (which admittedly is like mid-waist level). Head scarf is usually tied pretty tightly around face.

·         Stereotypical pious pilgrim: generally female, travelling in flocks, long skirts, long trench coat jackets (they must’ve been stifling), and vibrant headscarves. Also: don’t stand in their way.

·         Stereotypical Turkish man: dark hair, clean shaven, short sleeve collared shirt, and more often than not, crooked teeth

o   Exception: rural, middle to older-aged, middle-class more traditional men have big bushy mustaches

·         Stereotypical child: very friendly, look and act just like children everywhere

·         Family-oriented: people take their families to the numerous parks to picnic and whatnot

·         Time is appreciated more: one can distinguish the tourists from the natives by the pace of life at which they travel

·         Headscarves: Uncommon in cities, more common in rural areas

·         Evil Eye Pendants: designed to distract those who wish you evil. Seen/worn everywhere.

·         Food:

o   Tea or coffee is served after a meal – gives everyone a chance to sit, talk, and digest

o   A lot of meat and bread based meals, a lot of yogurt too

o   The fruit is to DIE for

o   From what I gathered, meals are more or less at the same time as they are here

·         *Very Intense devotion to Ataturk and extremely nationalistic*

·         Very involved in their politics – love to talk about it

·         Café culture: people spend their nights with friends at cafés, chatting and smoking nargila

·         Lot of visits to the shrines of famous saints, prophets, poets, etc.

o   Or until some shrines were decimated by Ataturk

·         Europe: business and historical sections, Asia: residential sections

·         Old and new combos everywhere

o   1000 year old building right next to a 20 year old building

·         Marble and tile work is very popular (it helps that Istanbul borders the Marble Sea)

·         Stone streets: beautiful but very slippery

·         The Byzantines were sloppy with their dome construction in the Ayasofia

·         Egyptians apparently knew how to construct bulletproof obelisks

·         Turks are colorblind when it comes to naming monuments

·         A cool array of foliage: tall skinny trees and short squat ones (very similar to the gardens in the Alhambra and the Generalife in Granada, Spain)

·         Cave homes look like termite mounds

·         Landscape spotted with small towns each about 20 min apart

·         Very modern city, quite prettily laid out

·         Statues of Ataturk everywhere

·         Unfortunately, didn’t get to see the coast or much of Eastern Turkey. Next time.

All in all, I’m sure I observed a lot more things. I was just trying to sum up what I noticed while in Turkey. You know, in addition to the pages and pages of things I posted prior to this.

Next post: Fun Facts.