An American Life in Istanbul

Vacation is over! I am finally back from vacation and ready to get back to regular blogging. First order of business is to give a quick overview of my vacation. To see the pictures I have posted click here!

Mother’s Birthday (2 days): I arrived at home on my mother’s birthday. My aunt - her sister - was there so we had a nice family weekend together: my brother, my mother, my aunt Candace, my father, the two dogs, and myself. Weather was a bit muggy, but it was so nice to see green! Turkey is so dry and parched during the summer. It’s very brown and full of earth tones. Here is a picture from the front of my house. Since my computer got erased, I don’t have any of my old pictures from Turkey that I could put as a contrast. It was very nice and relaxing to have clean air, lots of green, and be right on the water.

Family Visits (3 days): I went up to Hazleton, Pennsylvania (my father’s home town) to visit my family that still lives there. I saw my grand parents, my aunt Debbie, my aunt Beth and her two young daughters Miranda and Olivia. I saw my cousins from my aunt Debbie; John, Grant and Dawn (including dawns husband Brian and two kids Zack and Nicholas). I would post pictures, but, my computer got erased a month ago and I didn’t take any pictures while I was there. Sorry :-(. It was an excellent visit! I really wish I could have stayed longer, but my brother had a flight to catch.

Boston (6 days): I am not a fan of Boston so I will keep this short. I visited some friends there which was nice. I got dragged to a 6am rowing practice which started out badly because I was really tired. However, once I woke up, being out on the river early in the morning was really nice and relaxing. It was really enjoyable (even though I was in the trainer’s power boat). I later went kayaking on the river which was also nice and against the doctor’s orders, I went climbing twice at an amazing indoor rock climbing. My wrist was killing me afterwards but it was worth it. I have since decided that I am not doing any sports until my wrist is better (which is driving me crazy).

NYC (2 days): After dropping by home to pick up two guests staying at our house from France, Laurent, Emmanuel, Graham and I headed into NYC. I planned to show Laurent and Emmanuel around, meeting David (another guest of ours from England) the following day in the city. I also had the chance to see a bunch of old friends. Unfortunately, since my time was short, I didn’t have the time to do everything I wanted to and see everyone that I wanted to. So I took one evening to see friends, and one day to act as tour guide before returning to Long Island.

HuskyCon V (4 days): For those of you that don’t know, one of my main hobbies is playing the boardgame Diplomacy. In my opinion it is by far the best game ever made. I am not going to get into any serious details. If you are curious you can contact me directly, or read wikipedia’s inadequate diplomacy page. Every August, my family hosts at our house a small diplomacy tournament with free room and board all weekend. This year was our fifth year hosting the event and was in my mind the best year we have had so far. Here are some pictures from the event:

Our driveway was rather full

As was our house. We had 35 people sleep in my house over the weekend (that’s not exactly true. Emmanuel and I didn’t sleep the whole weekend, and Jeremiah slept outside). Here are two of the sunrises I watched. I hardly slept in five days! I was so exhausted on my way back that I slept with all my free time when I got back to Turkey.

My brother’s Nintendo Wii was immensely popular. Emmanuel liked it so much, he decided to smash the ceiling light while trying to do what looked like an overhead tennis smash, during a game of baseball (he was hitting at the time, not pitching.

One of the highlights of the weekend was the game of double gunboat on the giant board that my father made. According people who know about these things, this may be the biggest Diplomacy board in the world! If you look closely you can see small pieces and big pieces on the board. There were 14 people playing two seperate games on the same board at the same time! Most people were drunk so it got pretty silly.

Of course, there is always lots of room for other gaming at HuskyCon. After all, the best part about these tournaments is socializing and having fun!

Lastly, my favorite picture from the whole weekend. My father put out this bucket with this sign. At the end of the weekend, when the bucket was full of money, my father complained that he had enough money and that we were out of beer. He asked if people could read properly.

In summary, HuskyCon was a huge success. Everyone enjoyed themselves especially me. I am really excited for HuskyCon VI which will be next August. This was the first year that I took an active role in the tournament. Until this year it was my brother doing most of the work. This year, I did all the pre-con work and he managed the tournament. This worked out very well, and it made it more fun for me when I got to see my hard work pay off. Thank you to all of you that came to support us, and hopefully we will see you again next year.

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