full-circle or something like it.

so i guess that, since i started with a road trip, it'd be fitting to end with one, too. which is exactly what i did. last week.
a quick one, yes, but certainly high-end quality. it was incredible seeing friends i hadn't seen in a long time (some in over two years!) and, although it felt a bit odd to be sleeping on the sofa in my own apartment, being back in dc felt a bit like being home again. as close to "my city" as ever, i suppose.

some funny tidbits about being back in the us...
-upon arrival, i became one of those traveller loonies so excited to be re-immersed in her native language that i initiated plenty of absurd and unnecessary conversations with total strangers, just because i could really speak again!
-for the first week or so, i kept reaching for the toilet-side trash bin for my t.p. !!
-not knowing what the heck is in most of my food (not funny, really - a fact of life here and something i, clearly, don't enjoy!)
-PRICES!! i, painfully, have become even cheaper than i was upon leaving for turkey. low lira prices spoiled me, i guess... fall-time city-living might just give me a stroke.
-apparently, when reunited with fellow alanya amazons, ALL i can talk about is turkey. pathetic, really. (sorry friends i excluded..)

home now..

Restless

I can hear in your voice
you were born in one country
and will die in another,

and where you live is where you'll be buried,
and when you dream it's where you were born,

and the moon never hangs in both skies
on the same night,

and that's why you think the moon has a sister,
that's why your day is hostage to your nights,

and that's why you can't sleep except by forgetting,
you can't love except by remembering.

And that's why you're divided: yes and no.
I want to die. I want to live.
Never go away. Leave me alone.

I can hear by what you say
your first words must have been mother and father.

Even before your own name, mother.
Long before amen, father.

And you put one word in your left shoe,
one in your right, and you go walking.

And when you lie down you tuck them
under your pillow, where they give rise
to other words: childhood, fate, and rescue.
Heaven, wine, return.

And even god and death are offspring.
Even world is begotten, even summer
a descendant. And the apple tree. Look and see

the entire lineage alive
in every leaf and branching
decision, snug inside each fast bud,

together in the flower, and again
in the pulp, mingling in the fragrance
of the first mouthful and the last.

I can tell by your silence you've seen the petals
immense in their vanishing.

Flying, they build your only dwelling.
Falling, they sow shadows at your feet.

And when you close your eyes
you can hear the ancient fountains
from which they derive,

rock and water ceaselessly declaring
the laws of coming and going.

(by li-young lee)

solo in cyprus

for explanations, musings, and such go here: http://georgetown.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2067053&l=befd5&id=1405730

party in the bahçe!

prof. love to dr. kay and scott bey! downtown alanya twinkles behind us as we party in the bahçe...

So for our final goodbye to the Alanya community, we hosted a garden party at the center. The garden, described by Scott Bey as "too much of an old people's garden" proved quite a fabulous, beautiful, and relaxing dinner party venue! We invited our host families and friends from the community, ate, drank, and chatted the night away. A lovely way to sum things up. The photos are pretty cute ...

this night coincided with the night of a biiig soccer match - fener bahçe versus galata saray... and sarah and s.b. happened to be wearing the f.b.'s colors. what a duo.

cem + emine - my host parents and wonderfully kind and fabulous friends

whitney, leslie, and sabahat, looking lovely!

everybody squish together for a group shot! the night was full of oddly-shaped configurations of us in slanted and uneven photographic evidence (what a fully stocked bar will do to an otherwise innocent function...).