500 YEARS!

I am soon headed to Turkey to rendezvous with my good friend Tamar from graduate school. Tamar is from the Republic of Georgia (Tbilisi, not Atlanta) and works for a Soros project there. I have a significant amount of vacation days left and I found out she will be there for a work conference, but with two days and every evening free, so we will be able to spend some quality time hanging out.

When she is stuck in meetings I will be free to scamper about the city investigating the sites on my own. I hear this may be better than if I were with additional people because I may blend in more, enduring less harassment from carpet salesmen etc. I don’t think I look particularly Turkish, but my time here in Macedonia has proven to me that my ethnicity is not an open and shut case. Everyone thinks I am from somewhere else, and the US is rarely a guess. Most commonly I am asked if I am Slovenian (in fact the men at the bus station all call me “Slovenka” which means Slovenian girl) but I have also been asked if I am Polish, Russian, German, French and many months ago a taxi driver in Skopje asked me if I was Turkish.

I will take many pictures and remember stories to delight you all upon my return.