An American Life in Istanbul

Current Mood: Bored

This is the post that many of you have been waiting for. I hope you all appreciate how much time it took me to do this entry. I admit, the photomerges are not very well done, but there were a lot of them and I had to resize everything! In other words, it took a lot of time. Anyway, here it is, enjoy!

Let’s start with a simple map. Here you can see the basic layout of our apartment. I drew this quickly in photoshop so the scales aren’t exactly right. The bathroom across from my room has as a jacuzzi tub that we have never used. In the living room is the weight set. The 3rd bedroom is where Baris used to stay and is now empty (anyone want to visit?). Let’s start the tour with that room.

All three bedrooms face east, so we all get woken up in the morning by the sunrise. It’s actually quite nice. If I am in the apartment on Saturday mornings, I open the curtains and lay on my bed in the sun.

As you can see, we are now using Baris’ room for our laundry. You’ll have to excuse the bad photomerge. I did not feel like putting in any effort into making them good photomerges. It would have taken way too long considering how many I did.

This is Murat’s room. Murat’s is the biggest, then mine, then Baris’, but they are all pretty much the same size. The door at the back there leads to the bathroom. The door on the left to the hallway.

Not that much different than Baris’ room.

My room is the only room with any character to it. It has a nice big flag to add some color, my bed has the quilt my mother made for me when I graduated high school, and there is usually crap all over the floor. The cleaning lady had just come the day before so my room is uncharacteristicly clean in this picture. She comes and cleans the apartment, washes the dishes, and does our laundry. Murat and have ahd our clothes mixed up pretty much every week and have been thinking about how to remedy this problem without having to do the laundry ourselves.

My closet, or at least half of it. You can see it’s full of lots of good stuff! The shirt on the right isn’t blocking anything secret, so don’t worry. Just some wine and scotch bottles.

America! Yeah!

This is a picture taken from the entrance to Baris’ room. It’s a photomerge showing the hallway. From the right, you have the third bathroom (just a toilet and sink), the entrance to the apartment, the kitchen, and further off to the left is the living room.

This picture is also taken from infront of Baris’ room. To the right is my room, then Murat’s room, then the second bathroom.

…keep going down…

…keep going down…

Now we arrive in the living room! Wooo. This is where Murat sleeps most of the time. On the table there you can see a game of Axis and Allies. There is also the weight set, which only I use for the most part. I think Baris and Murat have used it three times each. This room is very well lit and is in general a very comfortable and soothing room to be in.

Of course, here we have our kitchen. It is extremely understocked! We have one proper knife, one frying pan, two pots… you get the picture. I live a very hard and difficult life, don’t I? In general, we never use this room.

The view from our porch. There are always lots of kids playing here. It’s difficult to grow grass in Turkey (at least that’s what I am told), so there isn’t a whole lot. It’s always dusty in Istanbul, the kids playground is no exception.

And the view from the east face of the apartment (my room). There is a nice bay there which is supposed to be the second best place in Turkey to windsurf (the best place in Turkey is one of the top 5 places in the world). Murat is going to join the windsurfing club there and I may as well. The sport doesn’t seem intense enough to satisfy me so I am hesitant to make the investment.

That’s my ride yo. Pretty pimp isn’t it?

Here’s a bunch of pictures of the flower boxes I have set up. I only have four or five boxes and two small plants. Every pay check I spend a bit of money on new plant stuff, so next week I will be adding some new plants.

The flowers are doing really well, but some other plant got in the other box that started to take over. Because I didn’t remember what I planted there, it took me a while to realize it was a weed. But now everything is ok, I think.

Snap dragons. They do well in the climate.

So I bought some peas, put them in the firdge and forgot about them. They started growing in there so I figured it wouldn’t hurt to plant them. They grew really fast.

Some random red flowers I planted from seeds. They also grew fairly quickly.

Basil, slow to start, but it came in quite nicely.

The one on the left is my favorite plant. The one on the right is really lame and I don’t like it. The one on the left though is great. I have on in my office also.

And that’s it. I hope you enjoyed these pictures and my little virtual tour of my apartment.

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