A mini catchup...

Hello all!

I write this from my apartment feeling a little worse for wear. We have been loving the nightlife in Istanbul and spent last night at two of our favourite rooftop bars in Taksim on the European side of town. We have to get a Dolmus (like a mix between a bus and a taxi) which costs 6 lira to get there and it takes about 40 minutes from our street, we met some friends who we got to know over the weekend at an erasmus event...a boat party that set sail from Beskitas and sailed down the Bosphorus, great fun! The night life here is very good, it seems for clubs you go to Taksim and you can find more chilled out bars pretty much anywhere. We have some nice looking places on our street that we're going to try over the weekend, I really enjoy the laid back bar culture as well as the clubs. They play some really great music out and about, it's normally latin and world music based which I'd not listen to on my own but it's great to dance to! Everybody here can salsa dance, we're going to have to learn!

Workwise I know what I want to start doing but at the moment it's critical to get my dissertation in so that has overtaken things once again, it's almost finished and I hope to get it sent back over the weekend then I can really focus on my studio work. I'm going to revisit some screen prints that I produced in first year that used light and landscape and produce some centred on Istanbul, and perhaps mosque interiors. I'm also going to continue with making fabric sail sculptures, I'm going to learn how to weave my own fabrics and my colour palette will be based on hues I feel reflect the city, I then want to install these sails around the coast line near our flat and other locations and photograph them. I also want to use found objects in these sculptures so have been scavenging for materials to incorporate.

I feel like I know certain parts of the city very well but there are so many areas that I've not been to, I just finished reading Orhan Pamuk's 'Istanbul Memories and the City' and he speaks a lot about the districts he grew up in and used to frequent as an artist and writer, I'd like to visit these areas having read about them. He writes a lot about what he calls 'huzun' or the melancholy of Istanbul relating to the fall of the Ottoman empire and how parts of the city became very dilapidated and run down, this melancholy isn't as apparent in tourist areas like Taksim and Sultahnamet so I'm intrigued to visit these more run down areas of the city to compare the atmosphere and photograph the more physical differences.

My first three weeks...

Merhaba!

I feel it's about time to update everyone on what's been happening here in Istanbul, I'll have been here 3 weeks tomorrow, which in some ways feels like a long time and in other ways feels like no time at all. For the first two weeks I hostelled in the European side of the city and stayed on both sides of the Golden Horn, in Karakoy for four nights then in Sultanahmet. In the first hostel we met some great people from all over the world and for my birthday a big group of us went for a meal in a gorgeous restaurant under the Galata bridge which crosses the Golden Horn, the views were fantastic and we ate fish that had been freshly caught off the bridge that day. It was our first experience of haggling too and we managed to wangle two free bottles of wine and thanks to my blonde haired blue eyed friend also managed to get free tea, coffee and dessert! We followed that with silly games and a few too many Raki's at the hostel..It was a great evening and the first night that we started to feel really at home here, definitely a birthday to remember!

My expectations of what the European and Asian sides of the city would be like are actually reversed in reality. The European side is much more bustly and has all of the sights that make you think of Istanbul, the impressive mosques, grand bazaar, spice bazaar and hundreds of kebab vendors! We get a lot of attention as a group of girls, especially with Lucy being blond but it's not threatening, more tongue in cheek...we get called Spice Girls a lot...and Charlie's Angels..they really need some more up to date references! We decided to live on the Asian side of the city which is a lot more laid back, we hardly get any attention here so it's a much more relaxed place to live. We have an apartment in Suadiye (near Fenerbache) and are 5 minutes one way from a massive street of shops, cafes and bars which has a very European feel to it, its like a big tree lined boulevard and many of the shops are recognisable brands from home. With the yellow taxi's it also has a very American aesthetic. 5 minutes in the other direction we have the sea which is beautiful, there are a lot of little harbours and a big promenade which is great for walking/running or biking along. Practically opposite where we are on the coast are the Princes islands which are apparently great for beaches and watersports in summer and are easily accessible by boat. From here it's easy to get to the other side of the city so I feel like we have a good balance of somewhere homey and safe to live but still being able to experience 'real' Istanbul.

I start university properly next week and have enrolled in 3 main classes, glass work, applied arts and painting which give me good scope to continues with my current projects as well as learning to use materials not easily accessible at home. Our tutors speak very good English so the language barrier shouldn't be too much of a problem, although I am trying very hard to learn as much Turkish as possible...I'm loads better than I was three weeks ago!

My favourite discoveries since being here have been the friendliness of the locals, who really will go out of their way to help you in any way they can and Salep a hot milk drink made with sugar and cinammon and nutmeg..yum.

The food is lovely, we have had our fair share of kebabs (which are miles better than the you'll find at 3 in the morning in Newcastle) and also a lot of hummus, tsatsiki, kofte and olives! The sweet delicacies here are baklava, small pastries stuffed with pistachios and soaked in syrup, they're beyond sweet!

I'll try and keep this updated much more often now, both to document my art work and keep track of my movements but for now...hosca kalin..