finally!- an afternoon caught by its coattails. am currently at my regular starbucks outlet on campus, where many a study evening has been whiled away not-studying. it feels a little strange to be in new york while it’s all hot and the streets are paved with girls in long legs holding together short summer dresses. sherbert carts have sprung up like daisies overnight, and suddenly, out of nowhere, on the corner of 110th and Broadway, there’s a frail old man playing buttery tunes on a saxophone. it’s my first summer here, and it feels much like a different life.

sophomore year has come and gone, taking with it half of my college career. this year has been very long, and in some segments has been as annoying as a bad itch crawling in a corner of your skin that you can’t seem to locate. i’ve engaged so much in this span of time, and have also been moved around unwittingly (like an indignant chess piece) – but one thing remains a constant: that i am still falling into blessings. sometimes when it becomes overwhelming, i try to guess when it is that my luck will run out, but i find that for the most part i am holding my breath for nothing. surely someone as indolent and unintelligent as i am doesn’t deserve all of this? yet at the same time i’m glad that the school year is leaving. i’m a bit of a packrat, but even i can’t bear the taint from what seemed like a dirty kitchen sink that would never wash itself or go away.

summer classes have been quite fun so far, albeit tedious and entailing very many 8am alarm rings. actually, waking up at 8am is easy peas compared to the string of all-nighters that are/were native to regular school semesters– but there’s just something very inhumane and nature-inconsistent about waking up this early in the summer, this time for nautical skirts and frolicking with books in parks! and so it’s always that much harder to get up. though i swear on my Hedonist Association membership that much debauchery has been going downnnn to make up for my ante meridiem discipline. what debauchery? tales soon!

i was in Istanbul last week for a five-day flee before summer classes started. oh Istanbul: an ethereal city with higgledy-piggledy homes, destroyed so often throughout history but rebuilt and restored with such love, where people are shy and generous with their smiles, where coffee is thick and musky, and the sounds of solat punctuate the skies five times a day just like at home. i was reunited once again with my favourite judgmental friend, Timtam – but we timed our visit to coincide with Mesut’s return to Istanbul. Mesut is my other favourite judgmental friend, a fellow sophomore here at Columbia. we were doing so many of the same things and taking so many of the same classes in freshman year that we felt perhaps we should try to be friends. here, i was going to insert a funny joke about him, but i couldnt bring myself to, because he’s left me to study abroad in Paris for a year, and i miss him muchly already :( so i’ll just put up some pictures from Istanbul:

#1 tourist Timtam striking a pose for an audience of Istanbul cotton candy clouds

#2 conned a group of very excitable kids on a daytrip into taking a picture with me. with the Asian Emblem no less :D

#3 gorgeous view of the Marmara sea from a terrace at the Topkapi Palace, framed by an earnest tourist

#4 whaddup

#5 yummy turkish coffee- folds soooo nicely on the tongue. and effectively rousing, too

#6 a shelf of curios at the Grand Bazaar

#7 copper coffee serving pots

#8 this vendor said he’d give me a free shisha pipe if i went out for a drink with him, haha. i politely declined (upon timtam’s angry furtive glares), and then he offered a discount if i were to take a photo with him. why not! (sorry timtam)

#9 but i ended up not buying a pipe from him :P bought it from another store instead, for the irresistible price of $25! the unfortunate twist is that we smoked so much shisha during our 5 days in Istanbul that i now have a very strong aversion to it…

#10 windy day out in town. this is one of the many streetside ice cream vendors, and me, trying to keep my sticky ice cream upright in the wind

#11 fanning stairs of apartments near Ankara Road, against dusty white air!

#12 a comedian of a sweets vendor at the Spice Market! quite the camwhore too- we took many funny photos with him

#13 steps of a building that looked like a mosque, but surely it was a marketplace in masquerade because there was a man selling alcohol on its foyer…

#14 cerulean eyes of the man running some famous sweet shop timtam ducked into for a box of turkish delight

#15 at the Eminonu ferry docks, where we boarded a ferry that chugged us along the Bosphorus!

#16 onboard the ferry, sipping tea and feeling excited. portrait artfully composed by Timtam

#17 timtam and mesut

#18 us three. gorgeous day out for us and seagulls! portrait artfully composed by me

#19 mesoot gool, kaninabeh?

#20 whispering couple on the ferry! and our empty glasses of turkish apple tea, which is delicious – like apple juice with a round, thick, heavy finish

#21 flags on women on Istiklal Street. not sure who the dude is. Ataturk maybe? it was a public holiday that day, which explained all the flags around the city, much to Mesut’s displeasure

#22 birdhouse