greetings once again!

Hello faithful readers, I'm back in Istanbul, and have been for almost two weeks. I know I haven't written, but you haven't missed anything, believe me. I have spent almost my entire time here searching for an apartment, a task I knew would be difficult but had no idea exactly how frustrating. BUT, after hitting the pavement and seeing everything from hovels to extravagant palaces, I finally found a truly lovely spot, plopped in the center of the expat and generally funky neighborhood of Cihangir. I'm writing you from it now (via pilfered internet of course), sweaty but happy. We're going to be paying through the nose, but it's worth it, compared to dry-as-dust Bakırköy (where my last apartment was located).

The apartment has been completely renovated, and so far everything works and is quite pristine (this is kind of unusual here). There is one bedroom and one large living room/dining area, as well as the best kitchen and bathroom I've seen on a teacher's budget. There are giant bay windows that go all the way around the main room, which, after spending most of the day unpacking and poking around, I learned get full sun from about 11 to 6. This is a sweltering thought now, but it should be quite lovely once the weather cools down a bit. You don't need any artificial lighting at all during the day. There is even an a/c unit, which I turned on for about 45 minutes but then turned off again after I was consumed with guilt. It is now torturing me silently. Best of all, because we're lazy Americans, there's an elevator (this is totally posh for such an ordinary building! no sweaty, grocery-laden walk-ups!) and a TV with two channels in English plus some English-language programming on the other channels. Bliss!

Will write more, but have to do 4th load of laundry of the day.

This weekend's plan: buy an electric fan, go to school to check out schedule, poke around the neighborhood.