Catching up

Well, as I say, we've been appallingly busy lately. Which isn't to say things aren't going well – they're just jam-packed. I've been particularly pressed by the confluence of midterms at Boğaziçi and the impending May SAT. Thank heavens that both spring break and the aforementioned SAT are coming up, because I could really use the breather.

In addition to work, our free time for the past month or two has been taken up with searching for a place to live after our free ride in university housing ends next February. We're discovering that we have essentially two choices:

(a) Live around here, i.e. close to our jobs, and pay through the nose for a crappy old apartment.
(b) Pay a reasonable price for a more modern pad, and suffer the Istanbul commute.

We were resigning ourselves to (a), but today we ventured over to the Asian side and saw a couple of places that looked nice enough to make (b) worth it. There's a new thing called Metrobüs which zips you across the Bosphorus in less than fifteen minutes, and it has a stop right near a nice neighborhood with decent prices. So stay tuned, we may be moving to Asia.

Fun in the park

To make up for lost time, here's a couple of videos from a recent outing in the park (Emirgan, which you may remember). First, Ozan shows what a swingin' guy he is:



And second, bask in the look on his face as he reaches the bottom of the slide:

More pix posted

Sorry for the long silence – it's been hellishly busy around here, what with working multiple jobs, apartment-hunting (don't get me started), and basking in the greatness of Ozan. Speaking of this last, I've put more pictures up on the Picasa page, including shots from cousin Melek's birthday party. More soon, God willing...