Bir çay, lütfen!

When I first named my blog, I was in the midst of learning Turkish and thought it would be cute to call it "On, iki, üç," or "One, Two, Three" in Turkish. Alas, it appears my Turkish is worse than I thought. Apparently, I named it "Ten, Two, Three." Oops. Let's try "Bir, iki, üç" this time.

Although many people in Istanbul speak English, it is helpful to know a few words of Turkish. The people are very friendly to begin with, but they love it when we try Turkish. Granted, my Turkish extends only to what I need to order food and buy postal stamps, but still. I always get a friendly smile whenever I order tea in Turkish (see title of this post). I've even gotten a few corrections on pronunciation, and though it is embarrassing to know I'm completely slaughtering a word, it is good to know for the next time I use it!

Okay, I have a ton of reading to do so I will go study for now, but I am definitely not done posting! It is 7:45 pm here and the night is young....I'm feeling a multiple study break, multiple blog post evening coming on. I will leave you a picture of the new friend I made when we visited the Greek Patriarchate.


He literally jumped up on the wall next to me, then sauntered on into my lap and proceeded to fall asleep. Don't worry...I used up a whole bottle of hand sanitizer after that. Annd I washed my clothes with the hottest water possible. The little guy was cute, but not exactly the cleanest cat I've seen. After this encounter, I decided that if rats were this cute and cuddly, the Bubonic Plague would have been a whoooleeee lot worse.