Six Years Abroad

At the beginning of January 2013, I sat on my bed in the cozy apartment I was staying in and started a blog.

I was moving to Istanbul in a few weeks and I thought it would be a good way to document my adventure, and maybe be a launching pad to other exciting opportunities.

I don’t know if I’ve ever been more prescient. Today marks six years since I landed in Istanbul, leaving behind snowy Boston and my life there and beginning a new chapter that has lasted much longer than I ever anticipated.

This blog has become quieter over the years, but for the best possible reason: it did launch me to new opportunities, to my current career as a writer, and now I can do professionally what I once mostly did on this blog.

My sixth year in Istanbul continued to be full of miracles and wonder. I can’t believe that I get to live such a rich and fulfilling life in this wild city.

This was a year when I relearned to be comfortable with myself and by myself—a strange thing for someone as independent as I am, but I had lost the thread of that. This year, I came back to myself.

This last year also brought a subtle but intense form of personal growth; during the first six of seven months of the year, I considered everything fairly stable and uneventful, and then the last months were a rush of reckoning, processing, and tying up loose ends. Those months roared like a hurricane. It’s only recently, in the quiet of calm, that I’ve been able to appreciate the gift of it.

As I tread lightly into my seventh year, I’m filled with an overwhelming sense of possibility, of unpredictability, of glorious open-hearted connections. I hope it’s true.

Best Of The Year

Getting published by goal outlets

Every December, when I’m home with my parents in California, I make a series of list. I write out the places I want to travel (both internationally and within Turkey), I jot down story ideas I want to pursue or topics I want to research, and carefully list the places I would like to have my writing published. All these lists are ways to focus my intentions, not set-in-stone decisions for the year ahead.

This year, I did actually get published by some of the major goal outlets on my list (National Geographic! The Guardian!); more importantly, I’m immensely proud of the work I reported and published this year. It is important to me that the pieces I write reflect my interests and fascinations.

I’ve noted the pieces I’ve had published in dribs and drabs over my monthly posts, but here’s some of the work I’m most proud of, for your reading pleasure:

In Ukraine, One Brewery Puts Putin, Politics on its Beer Labels (OCTOBER)

The Albanian Alps Are Spectacular—But Maybe Not For Long (The Daily Beast)

Tourism Pushed Women Out of Zanzibar’s Public Space, But Now They’re Taking Them Back (The Guardian)

The All-Female Band Facing Down Islamic Conservatism in Zanzibar (The Daily Beast)

An exuberant trip to Boston and NYC

Most summers, I take a short trip to Boston. It’s always wonderful returning to the city I left, but sometimes it can be stressful and weird—there’s a specific kind of disorientation in visiting somewhere you know very well but don’t really belong anymore. I often feel a bit out-of-context.

This year, though, was completely different. Mostly that’s because my dear friend Nacho decided to come to Boston and New York in tandem with my trip; with him there, I could hang on to some tangible connection to my daily lived life. And introducing him to my city (and my country!) was fantastic. (Nacho’s first day in the US was July 4^th in Boston, an intense way to start out.) My family was also in town, and we spent time revisiting some of our favorite New England haunts, including an ice cream place in Boxford, MA that might be the greatest ice cream in the world.

Then I spent a whirlwind 48 hours in NYC that were jam-packed with joy, inspiration, and wonder. I don’t think I stopped talking for the whole time I was there, but there were so many invigorating conversations to be had, so much to say! When I returned to Boston I was buzzing and hoarse and wouldn’t have traded in a moment.

Running a 10k

“Why did you decide to run a 10k?”

“Temporary insanity.”

This was the response I gave to a very nice woman in a bar a few hours after I ran my first 10k race, and it’s not inaccurate. In the beginning of August, I saw a notification that the last day to register for any of the Istanbul Marathon races (marathon, 15k, or 10k) was September 30; that day, I texted a few friends to suggest we run the 10k. Laura and Pesha were crazy enough to join me, and over the next three months we trained, running three mornings a week on the Moda seaside. On November 11, we ran across the Bosphorus Bridge from Asia to Europe, flying through Besiktas and Karakoy, across the Galata Bridge to the finish line in Eminonu.

I’m still not sure that I love running, but I loved the feeling after a run. I loved the commitment to a physical goal. I loved realizing that I was capable of sticking to something hard and running ten kilometers (6.2 miles!), if I wanted to. It’s the thing I did this year that left me with the greatest sense of accomplishment.

Two trips to Ukraine

I’ve been going to Ukraine every year since 2016 and it’s always a special time. This year, I went twice the same month—the first time with my friend Dalia to Kiev, and the second time to Lviv to report my beer story.

Kiev is the cooler (weirder, funkier) city and my friends Nate and Phillipa were there, and introducing Dalia to all of it was great fun. And then, venturing to Lviv by myself and hanging out with the Pravda brewers was an exceptional experience. I brought back a dozen bottles of Ukrainian craft beer in my suitcase.

A Mediterranean escape, and a wedding

My friends Natalie and Burak left Turkey in 2016, but I’m lucky that they return frequently. This year, they decided to stay in the Mediterranean city of Kas for a chunk of the summer, so I went down to the coast to hang out for a week.

It was glorious. I am already smitten with Turkey’s Mediterranean coast and Kas is a place I’ve loved hiking in and out of; my time with Natalie and Burak was the perfect mix of work and vacation. Natalie and I would start the morning swimming laps in the clear turquoise sea; then when Natalie went home to work, Burak and I would camp out in cafes resplendent with bougainvillea and chip away at our freelance jobs. By the afternoon, we’d have time to go swim again, before spending the evening feasting on meze at a meyhane or drinking chilled wine over home-cooked dinners on the balcony. I felt so completely rested after that trip.

Then they came to Istanbul to have a wedding, and asked me to officiate. It was truly an honor.

Introducing my family to Georgian, Uzbek, and Russian food in Latvia

In the spring, my family traveled to Stockholm to visit family. In order to maximize their time in Europe, we took a side trip to Riga, Latvia. I had never been, but immediately felt at ease in the city; its Eastern European splendor was very much my jam. We ate very well in Riga, but the best part for me was introducing my family to the various international cuisines that I’ve been lucky to eat a lot of and they had never really experienced. We had shots of horseradish vodka with lunch at a Russian restaurant, devoured plov and lagman noodles at an Uzbek joint, and feasted on Georgian dumplings and khachapuri. My family is now obsessed with Georgian food, as any culinary enthusiast should be.

New lucrative work

I was fortunate to have consistent and well-paying freelance work this year, and the ease and flexibility that’s given me is unbelievable. I went into my sixth year in Istanbul worried about when the next project would come; I go into the seventh with more of a cushion for the dry spells. I’m very grateful.

Sunday supper club

At the end of the year, I decided to start a new project close to home: Sunday Supper Club. Most Sundays, I’d invite four or five people over to my apartment and cook a feast. The goal was to introduce people to new friends, and cook for people I love. I’ve been on a break from supper club, but I’m hoping to start it up again soon.

Photography projects

I continued one major photography project (we call it The Dreamspace) and started another; this was a year where I felt creative and driven. I’ve been pleased with the pictures (especially the double exposures) I’ve produced, and I’m looking forward to shooting even more weird and beautiful images in 2019.

Worst Of The Year

Not getting my Nigerian visa

My dear friend Danielle got married this year in northeastern Nigeria. When she told me her wedding plans, I immediately agreed to come—when else in the world would I have a chance to go to northeastern Nigeria?

I don’t think either of us realized just how difficult it is to get a Nigerian visa. I had to go the Nigerian consulate (in Ankara!) and leave my passport there, which was complicated by the fact that I was traveling almost nonstop in the months leading up to the wedding. I finally managed to get to Ankara for the day and leave all my paperwork at the embassy. When I returned to pick it, first there was a delay and I had to stay in Ankara overnight; then the visa was rejected over a ridiculous technicality. At that point, there wasn’t enough time to apply again.

It was so disappointing to miss that wedding. I truly believe that everything happens for a reason, but still, damn.

Working a little too hard

The flip side of having plenty of work and opportunities this year is that I struggled to take time off from working, or make time for my own projects. I spent too many weeks this year absolutely exhausted. My goal for this year is to achieve a better balance.

Wet feet (and everything else)

My hiking trip in the Kackar Mountains was a splendid, unpredictable adventure—and nothing was more unpredictable than the weather. It was almost always foggy or rainy, and by the second day my boots were soaked through. And then we hiked for a full day in driving rain, and everything else I carried was soaked through too. We laughed through the whole thing, but I really thought my feet might never be dry again.

A friend leaving

One of my closest, dearest friends left Turkey this year under circumstances that no one should have to deal with, and yet millions do. His journey is ongoing and so I’m reluctant to write about it too specifically. I know he made the right decision, but it was a heartache for all of us, and I miss him very much. I hope to write more about this one day, when everything has settled down a bit.

One More Thing

Tying up loose ends from 2016

2016 was a tumultuous year emotionally, politically, spiritually, whatever, and I’ve written about it quite a bit on the blog and in private (you can read a bit here, here, here, here). This year, some of the specters of the year returned; and yet now I am older, (I hope) wiser, and have processed some of that pain. Old wounds were opened but also addressed, and it was all pretty intense and a lot to reckon with, and yet: I am so, SO grateful to learn that I have come so far since that year. I don’t know if this fits in the best or the worst category—I would say it was a net positive, but one of the harder aspects of the last year. So, it can have its own category.

Best Book I Read

My friend Pesha lent me the book Border by Kapka Kassabova and I adored it completely—I knew even before I finished that it would probably be the best thing I’d read all year. Kassabova writes about the border between Bulgaria, Turkey, and Greece, and the magic and heartache and history of that piece of the world. As a child in Bulgaria, the movement across that border was usually Eastern Bloc citizen fleeing to Turkey; as she reported the book, the movement was (and continues to be) in the other direction—refugees fleeing from Turkey into Europe. She paints her pictures with the weight of myths and poetry and folkoric magic; it was non-fiction, but transcendent non-fiction. “I feel like someday you will write a book like that,” Pesha texted me. I wish.

My Year of Podcasts

I listen to a LOT of podcasts. It’s my favorite way to fill the space while I cook or run, and I listened to so many brilliant series and episodes this year (which I always note in my monthly posts).

A friend of a friend recommended the first season of Crimetown to me, and it became the best motivation to go for a run. The half-hour episodes for the perfect length for a quick workout in the morning, and the storytelling was so riveting that I never thought about how much I disliked running. And those wonderful ugly New England accents! It made me nostalgic for Boston.

I loved The Great God Of Depression, a miniseries within the podcast Showcase. It’s only five 30-minute episodes, and yet those two-and-a-half hours completely drew me in—I binged the whole season. The Great God Of Depression is the story of two people: Alice Flaherty, a doctor who dealt with extreme manic depression, and her eventual patient, the author William Styron (the great god of depression himself), who wrote a book called Darkness Visible that aimed to destigmatize the experience of having depression. I knew very little about William Styron before listening to this podcast, but both he and Dr. Flaherty are fascinating people and I enjoyed spending time in their lives.

A last recommendation is for Slow Burn season 2, which delves into the Clinton impeachment. I thought they wouldn’t be able to top the first season, which dealt with the Watergate scandal, but somehow the second season is even better—more relevant, more emotional, more complicated. Listen to this.

My Year of Earworms

Some months I had whole playlists bursting with new and wonderful music, other months there was nothing new that grabbed me. I’ve made a Spotify playlist of some of the songs I’ve recommended throughout my monthly posts. Enjoy.

And now, it’s January 29^th again, another year behind me, another year ahead. Istanbul continues to surprise me… I can’t wait to see what’s to come. I’m ready, with an open heart.

For a review of years past: A Year Abroad, Two Years Abroad, Three Years Abroad, Four Years Abroad, Five Years Abroad.