A change

Hey so this jetlag addict is on the move over to jetlagaddict.wordpress.com! I know, I know. We're flighty creatures, but this is what suffices for a passport these days.

Why Frommer's isn't beating down the door

A) Do not ever, positively without doubt, try flying back on two international flights, solo, with food poisoning. Even if it means living off pre-packaged potato crisps in bland flavor and energy bars bought at the last newspaper stand selling USA Todays.

B) Oceans rule.

C) My life is better with tempeh and caffe lattes and sunshine and museums.

D) Bookstores should not take credit cards. Instead it should be more like performance art, whereby you earn the right to cart away beautiful, luscious volumes on, say, the influence of Islamic artistic techniques and motifs on the Italian Renaissance through fervant dancing, poetry, improv, etc.

I will in fact finish posting about Turkey (now! with! pictures!) some time when I have not been in three time zones in the last week or so.

headlines

Yup, they shot up the U.S. Consulate in Istanbul. Suddenly all the gun control jokes seem a little shabby, although it is worth remembering that far more people are threatened with guns in good ol' Adams Morgan per week than this....No, I mean, it is scary. Or not really scary, more like, Oh, really, well, that's- not good, my gosh. And then you drink another stiff tea and you sit and you look out the window at the guy hawking sesame rings down below, and the mountains far off in the distance, where seventeen hours will put you in Istanbul, where someone tried to make a statement by killing people. To a certain extent, I almost prefer the shady characters in d.c. alleys: They want money. They want toys. They want, they want, they want.

But it isn't the explosive violence of shooting up three Turkish policemen, near a line of visa seekers, sitting in cafes, probably fanning themselves with a napkin and dropping another sugar cube in on the way down. Those guns back home aren't a political statement (recent court case aside), they're an economic imbalance, they're a sign of the times, whatever. And also a lot of stupid.

Everyone's pretty blase- they're all just worried about timing of picking up their visas to go back to their grad school jobs and fellowships in the fall. More people are worried about whether I can find the right change in pidgen Turkish than what language I actually speak.

But dude. They shot up the consulate.

Crimey

Never say never: mound call at five am sharp tomorrow for the purposes of hand measuring and drawing every significant rock, bone, tile, mudbrick (both pink and tan species), plaster and dip in every single profile in every single trench. And all of it color coded. Magnificantly, we have seven, a whole three more than the usual four sides. Yup. Waking up in the dark again. I love my trench, I love my job, I hate mornings, oh my gosh I hate mornings....

Dort Temmuz

The fourth of July, by the way, was a smash. Ruffles potato chips! Condiments! Lots of mayo! Potato salad! (Okay that last one was with sumac and olive oil but no one's complaining....) And for what it's worth, for all that people sniff at American food, the chips disappeared and everyone had a hotdog and a hamburger, mostly with scary yellow cheese. Which totally still exists in countries with a cheese afficionado mindset. Setting vegetables on fire with garlic had the usual effect of Whoa! What's the secret? The answer, as any American, vegetarian or no, is that fire ALWAYS makes things taste better.

There were no fireworks because the mound spontaneously combusts enough anyway and also, I don't think anyone has quite gotten over the whole gunshots thing.

If only the Weekly World News were still around

The trenches are closed. Well, there's still a fire engine and an airplane to come for photographic purposes, sheet metal and plastic wrap to lay and yet again, more spiffy cleaning manouevers, but for now- no more four am wakeup calls before the iman gets up, no more eating breakfast in the total dark of night. No more being unbelievably unquestionably horrifically dirty!!

Seriously my Chicks Dig It tshirt is in danger of being added to an object pail. Or being seized at Customs.

On the other hand, that meant the end of Crazy Theory Time! Namely because the workers really didn't believe that a) this is a job or that b) we would be measuring rocks if there weren't gold somewhere underneath them. Or, maybe, some of these fine alternatives to rocks, rocks, and more foundation trenches...

"You do know this is where Cleopatra slept with Alexander the Great, right? Have you found the cave?"
Fearless Leader: "Uh...centuries?...We're on top of a mound...What would that even look like?!"

"There are seven jewelery stores under this trench. Seven."

Regarding an unfortunate cow knee: "It's a dinosaur bone!"

Regarding a pile of treasured, cradled Iron Age pottery fragments: "Cok guzel...." (aka Oh, very beautiful, uh hunh, you're all nuts!)

Well: Gold!

Medieval plumbing: Gold!

Rock: Pottery!

Shiny rock: Gold!

good times. gooood times.

Not made in the USA

so also my job title, when not labeling object finds, refilling the water bucket or my favorite, sweeping dust off the dirt, is "accompany serdar on grocery store runs." seriously. on the other hand this means air conditioning which is good as the weather is set to sauna. it also means the chance to appreciate some fine, quality turkish cuisine such as...

KREM SEKER. Comes in a toothpaste tube, labeled with cartoon characters except that it's...PURE FLAVORED SUGAR. IN SQUISHY CREAM FORM. Seriously. Maybe you put it on crackers? Maybe you just squirt it into your mouth?

To be fair, the reason we were at the store was to hastily buy more beyaz peynir, which is most definitely NOT feta although, you know, still cheese that is white, drippy and squishy. So beloved is this that in fact the executive decision was made to cut off funding for all other cheeses (ta ta, slightly hard yellow thing, labneh, the two versions of krem cheese...) in favor of buying the special, top of the line, sealed in a metal box version. Apparently the whole group has been discussing, grousing and dissing the previous quality of white cheese whereas I have got to admit, I didn't even know there was a distinction between forms of the white, squishy stuff.

Still. This is a country that believes in cream sugar in portable form. Duly noted.