Girl Meets Turkey

It’s a been a busy time living that expat life…

OK. Cue Britney Spears “Oops I did it again…”… I cannot believe it’s been more than a year since my last post.

And yet… I CAN believe it at the same time. 

Fall 2023 into 2024 was a blur.

How did it become 2025?

Those months(years) were beautiful. They were hard. They were fulfilling. They were also punctuated with loss and reflection.

In a year full of major changes… I rarely had time for quiet moments to myself, let alone to come here and share.

I began a new teaching chapter in Fall 2023; I changed schools. I am so fortunate for all of the opportunities that it has brought me; however, it’s not always easy.

Teaching teenagers is not for the weak. When I say I am strong, I mean it.

I truly love “my kids”, and each year they teach me more than I teach them.

During all of these changes, I said goodbye to some important figures of my life, and their loss is felt deeply. I carry them in my heart but also just count myself fortunate to have had them in my life in the first place.

Throughout it all, one theme remained constant: That of an overwhelming sense of gratitude.

I am so lucky to be living this life that I created for myself. I wanted to live in a foreign country and to see the world. I wanted to have a job that allowed me the freedom of travel and yet also fulfilled me. I have done exactly that.  This year may not have been the easiest, but it was absolutely filled with adventure and beauty. 

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Moments I’m especially grateful for:

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During 2023-2025 I traveled to Sicily, Spain and Southeast Asia with my best friend of over 20 years and her husband, who is also like a family member. It was the three of us along with one of my best friends here in Istanbul. That friend is a travel companion who I’ve been fortunate to wander cities with for more than the last ten years. Together we have all formed a little travel group that has become a very vital part of my year… I spend months looking forward to these moments. Traveling with four people has its challenges for sure. We all have varying travel styles, needs, and wants.  There are days when some of us are tired. There are harrowing moments where some of us have to recover from food poisoning (yes). There can also be moments of the general discomfort of being away from home for weeks on end, not having the comforts of home. No matter what adventure we are traversing (food, missed flights, reading metro maps), we make it work and generally find a way to laugh about those moments in the end. Those memories will last a lifetime and are moments to be held close.

Even better than the trips, in the fall of 2023 I was especially thankful that my friend and her husband extended their trip to stay in Istanbul with me through Thanksgiving. I cannot put into words how meaningful that was, to be able to share the holiday with my friends here in Istanbul, my ‘Istanbul family’, and my ‘family from home’.

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In the Spring of 2024, Mom and I spent a week in Northern Italy. It was a week of food markets, trains and prosecco. It was honestly a perfect week. And how beautiful is that? To have memories of yourself and your mom wandering Milan’s Brera neighborhood and eating lemon ravioli and laughing over espresso? I can still feel that moment, I can see the sunshine reflecting on the cobblestones outside, and I can hear my mom talking and being so excited over the pasta. I have to say, Mom and I travel very much ‘in sync’. We loooove a good people watching cafe moment with some bubbles. We looooove a good museum wander. I often think that I get my travel lust from Mom. After all, Geminis and Aquarians are reportedly soulmates. Mom was even more adventurous than me, she wanted to climb the Milan Duomo and championed our spur of the moment day-trip to Rome. Memories like these are worth more than any of the money you can ever spend on the trip itself. 

Last May, I also took a small group of my students to an International Tournament in Kansas City. Of course, my students were more concerned about a potential sighting of Taylor Swift’s boyfriend than they were about the competition once we made it to the states. It was a big responsibility- we flew into NYC, then to Kansas City, and ended with a celebration at Universal Studios in LA.  It was wild. But I am so proud of my students and proud that we all made it through that trip. There were minimal tears and nobody lost their passports or phones… semi victorious!

When the school year ended I again flew back stateside to spend time with my family. Mom and I flew down to Mississippi to see my grandmother, a very necessary and beloved week of time spent together. The older I get, the more I realize that time is the biggest enemy and to cherish each moment as if it’s the last. Southern food at Big Mama’s house is still better than anything I’ve had in any other place in the world. Also we took a day trip to NOLA, and that’s never not a good time.

Once back to Istanbul in the fall of ‘24, as a treat to myself for maneuvering to get a new passport via the Turkish mail system (an endeavor that cost me many nights without sleep waiting for it to arrive), I went to Paris for a weekend.  I know.  This sounds insane.  That was my treat, a weekend to Paris.  But it’s a 4 hour flight and there was a sale on tickets. I am constantly grateful for this life. 

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Fall Break 2024 saw me on yet another plane to Puglia, one of the only regions of Italy that I hadn’t ever explored.  I love Italy.  Italy is truly a form of medicine. No matter how much I might be feeling stressed or sad, Italy solves it all. I feel comfortable there as I speak the language and I really just love every second of wandering through cobblestone streets with a pizza in hand.

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Christmas was supposed to be in Athens, but prices turned upside down, so for only the 3rd time since moving to Istanbul, I stayed ‘home’ for the holidays. Another moment of deep gratitude. As soon as my friends realized I would be in town, I was invited to their family home just outside of the city. We had a traditional Polish Christmas Eve dinner and it was beautiful. There is a Polish tradition that before eating, everyone takes a piece of holy wafer. You then go to each person in the room and you hold each end of the wafer and you tell that person your wishes for them in the New Year. It was so touching and it meant so much to be a part of that tradition.

New Years brought the arrival of another best friend of over 20 years, my friend who also used to be my roommate here in Istanbul. I joked that she was my Christmas present… but it wasn’t a joke, it was true. It’s always like no time has passed when we are together, and even if we might argue over emptying the dishwasher, giggles can be heard non-stop wherever we are.

January 2025, the Year of the Snake, ushered in the big Southeast Asia Trip that I mentioned above, two weeks of traveling: one week in Vietnam and one week in Thailand.  That trip deserves its own separate post(s) as… what a trip.  So many things to report on: the food… the flowers… the adventures… the rooftops in Bangkok. I don’t even know where to begin. There were honestly some ‘low lows’ but also some very ‘high highs’ and it was the kind of trip that makes you excited to be somewhere that is so different to anything you have ever experienced before.

All of this is to say that yes, I am so thankful to whatever out there is responsible for granting me these moments. I have experienced so much of the world and every day that I wake up in Istanbul is another blessing to be able to live in a place where I am fueled with adventure that I love each and every day.

So without any further explanation, these pictures are a visual diary of the most beautiful moments over the course of this time period.

I am beyond grateful for it all.