view from the waterfront near where we live
inside the blue mosque
basilica cistern
hagia sophia
(this is a mosaic!)
peter takes really great photos.
my uncle was in istanbul on a business trip last weekend. it was great to see someone we know and love. we finally got around to a few more touristy sites when he was here. and we had someone who could take a photo of us!
hello from istanbul!
we have been here for almost a week and are starting to feel comfortable. it’s a big (and tough) change. but a good one, i think.
so far, we’ve visited the sultanahmet mosque (above) and taksim square, encountered two demonstrations, watched the ferries and container ships, and tried lots of delicious food. and we have learned a few more words in turkish.
aya sofia
here’s to a good second week.
annie
hair like this (and dark eyebrows and subtle makeup/freckles/frizz) will never die.
good music will also never die.
olga
For the past while, we’ve been trying to work out what we should do after graduation in April.
Grad school? Move to a big city? etc. etc.
Both of us are thinking about going to graduate school, but we don’t want to launch right in, and we’re both unsure of what programs we want to do. We’re also not sure what we want to do for our careers. As such, we’ve decided to do something somewhat temporary to give us a little time to figure things out.
Our decision: we’ll be moving to Istanbul in June to teach English for a year or two. We’re quite excited — doesn’t it look beautiful?
I’m just getting worse and worse at this blogging thing. But now it’s Saturday and after having had quite possibly the laziest morning I have ever had, I figure I ought to at least do one thing today.
At any rate, you two faithful readers haven’t been missing out on much. Mainly school. Which is excellent but also distressing. Approximately 50% of the time, I finish an hour of class and think to myself something along the lines of, “There is ABSOLUTELY no hope for the world.” Luckily, I have a handful of fantastic professors who then help me to acknowledge that yes, there is hope, and x, y, and z are some things that we can do about it. Thank you, professors.
Another thing you probably haven’t been very sad about missing out on is our undying love of Top Gear, or our recent infatuation with Bertolli’s Meals for Two (they are so quick! and easy! maybe this is a sign that I should take a cooking class… don’t worry, I did make banana bread last night), or that we’ve been drinking a lot of apple cider, or that we already bought ourselves a Christmas present and it’s sitting in our hall closet waiting for Christmas to roll around so we can use it.
Anyway, nothing else too exciting as of now. So here’s a photo of Peter standing at the end of the breakwater in Rockland, Maine.
And, although we didn’t take any photos there, we did visit Marshall Point Lighthouse, as seen here.
Now I’m just wishing for more vacation.
Just for fun: http://manetas.com/pollock/ move mouse to paint, space to erase, click for new color.
And the very easy banana bread recipe, courtesy of Marae:
3 large bananas, mashed
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 cups whole wheat flour
3/4 cups sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Spray the bottom of a loaf pan with nonstick cooking spray. Mix the mashed bananas and olive oil in a large bowl. Stir in the flour, sugar, salt, and baking soda. Pour the batter into the sprayed loaf pan. Bake for 55-60 minutes. Remove and let cool for at least 15 minutes.
we’ve been married for a whole month already. maybe the first month of marriage goes by quickly or something, because that seemed fast.
we have a nice basement apartment together. it has its quirks (my favorite is the sparkly sink), but we like it.
we’re both in school again, so things have gotten busier. but we’ve been eating lots of peaches and that helps us feel better.
i love this guy a lot.
(!)
It’s been a long time since I’ve been this excited about something.
Peter and I are engaged to be married! Our wedding will be on 14 August. We are very happy.
remixes are sometimes lame. however, sometimes they are fantastic. the perfect mix of what is familiar and what is new. the comfort of a song you love mixed with the novelty of something you’ve never heard before.
Once, Peter and I stopped at a grocery store in Highland. We looked for some pomade that grocery stores in Provo apparently don’t stock anymore. It is the best pomade for your dollar. It is cheap and effective. So we’d been running low and were desperately in need of this pomade. When we looked in the grocery store in Highland, we were elated to find that they had eight (!) of these pomades in stock. So we bought all of them.
This is my half of our purchase.
Today, Julia and I (we’re roommates now) made something fantastic: an egg baked in a tomato. It was super delicious. (The recipe we figured out was to cut off the end of a roma tomato (the opposite end of an end it can stand on by itself) and empty out the insides (which you can then eat on buttered toast), put a tiny bit of olive oil inside and sprinkle some salt and pepper inside and swirl it around so it gets all over the inside, crack an egg into the tomato, salt and pepper the top, bake at 425°F for 15 minutes, remove and put grated cheese on the top, bake for 5 more minutes. Then eat.)
Yesterday, Peter and I went stand-up paddle-boarding, which was extremely fun, and we both got terrifically sunburned. This aloe stuff has been saving me. But it’s still painful. Here’s hoping it is over soon.
I’m just working these days (since school ended a few weeks ago) and it’s great. I’m very happy about the no homework thing. Also, I will be done with school in a year. What? Weird.
I’ve been very obsessed with leggings lately. Especially patterned leggings. Those of you who see me regularly know about this. It’s quite fun.
Anyway, there are lots of fun things I hope to do this summer. I’m pretty excited about it all. I guess that’s the simple summary of my life: I’m doing well, Peter’s doing well, it’s super fun being roommates with Julia, work is good (despite Stacy leaving) and summer is good.
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