Last Day

Sandals

Okay, I’m going to now tell you guys and any eavesdropping shoe manufacturers exactly what I want. Plainish sandals with straps that cross. (The kind of thing they wore in ancient Mesopotamia would be ideal.)

No heels
No flash
No Velcro

Simple? Easy to find in a hot country like Turkey? You would have thought, considering that’s how I bought my last pair of these. No such luck today, when we went to about ten different stores, and I had to act like I understood the shopkeepers when they asked me if I had any particular brand in mind. (Brand? What are these people talking about? I want sandals.) We found nothing. NOTHING. Not even in the men’s section.

And get this: I could not even find a single women’s shoe in my size. In every store, the limit was forty, forty-one…and I generally wear a 42. You think it’s a difference in the diet that gives us bigger feet up in the cold north?

I won’t go into diet right now, because Turkish cuisine is a whole post. But get this: I discovered yesterday that my right foot is actually noticeably bigger than my left. And the same goes for my right pinkie. No wonder I thought my feet were shrinking compared to my mother’s – we were looking at my left foot.

Apricots

Seeing as my grandparents and my family will be leaving the house tomorrow a.m., we decided to round up all the fruit on the trees in the backyard. My great-uncle (five years older than my mother…have I ever told you about how screwed up the ages are in my family? That one is unremarkable by comparison) and I developed a ruse to gather the apricots at the very top of the tree.

Now, this is my great-uncle who once tied some twine onto a wad of money and placed the money on the sidewalk so he could pull it away when someone stooped to pick it up. He is the type oft described as "resourceful."

So what was the ruse? Well, it basically consisted of one person wielding a long pole, and the other running underneath the tree trying to catch the falling 'cots. This latter proved to be quite difficult, for these reasons:

1. It was very windy.
2. Have you ever tried to catch an apricot falling from ten feet up?
3. If they fell and splattered all over the ground, we would eat them. Have you ever seen an apricot splatter? It’s quite impressive…I now have an overwhelming desire to drop a watermelon from the top of Isabelle’s apartment. Anyway. Even splattered, overripe apricot tastes delicious, and it was difficult to resist from allowing them to drop past one’s hand.

Walking

After this, my g.u. and I went walking down the path that leads to the village that leads to the city that leads to the big city where the airport is. We passed ancient olive groves, grapevines, beautiful blue flowers, goats, fig trees, and bizarre vehicles (one of which almost ran me into the ground). And all I could do was stare and bleat, “This is so Mediterranean!”

Occasionally my companion would point interesting things out to me, and would sometimes attempt to explain in my native tongue – but since his knowledge of English is a little less than mine of Turkish, we communicated once or twice through gestures alone.

Then we went down this beautiful alleytypething, and I wished I had my camera, because at the end of it was the beautiful sea, torrent upon torrent of furious wave flying upon the stone steps.

Hosça Kal.

Optimistic? That's an interesting way of putting it. Expectant, perhaps.