Izmir, Ephesus, and Pergamum

During the weekend that bridged March and April, J and took a trip to the city of Izmir to visit some of Turkey’s most popular historic sites and excavations: Ephesus, Pergamum, and Asklepion.

We flew into Izmir on a Friday morning and had a day to explore the city. We spent the time ducking into shops and walking up and down the modern waterfront lined with fish restaurant after fish restaurant. A friend of mine from Izmir had given us a recommendation before we left and we kept and eye out for the place so that we could return easily in the evening.

Our excellent fish dinner at the famous Deniz Restaurant was by far the best food of the trip. Over the next couple of days we quickly learned that guided tours and good food do not go hand in hand…

This particular weekend was the first and only trip we booked through the travel office on base. That office is operated by a commercial tourism company in Turkey and when you book a tour package with them you are then combined with any other individuals or small groups who booked the same tour for the weekend. This meant that on Saturday morning our guide made stops with his mini bus a several different hotels, gathering up the nine (including ourselves) people taking part in the day’s excursion. Overall, while it was handy and interesting to have a knowledgeable guide, J and I quickly remembered why group tours generally don’t appeal to us. Quite a bit of waiting, interrupting, and chattering over the guide’s efforts to explain came with this particular group of individuals. The bus also made several “complimentary” (but, really, sponsored and mandatory) stops at “authentic” shopping destinations. No, we don’t want to buy that same onyx bowl that we’ve seen in Adana for a fraction of the price, thanks…

But, irritations aside, I’m certainly glad that we paid these sites a visit. My recommendation to other travelers, though, would be to simply rent a car and skip the tours, bad food, and pushy shopping stops.

We made this trip at the absolute perfect time of year. Spring was in full bloom with hills covered in daisies and the cherry blossoms out. Not too hot, not too cold–just right.

Pergamum ruins. Remains of the Greek temple.

The road to Asklepion, an ancient Greek psychological hospital.

The next day (Sunday) we went to Ephesus, one of the largest, or perhaps the largest Greek/Roman excavated city in Turkey.

First things first: 2,000 year old public toilets. For some reason, I find it completely fascinating to think that people sat themselves right down on this same piece of stone for so many centuries, so long ago…

The library. Now, our guide informed us that 70% of this structure has actually been reconstructed. I’m not quite sure how reconstructed is defined in this case, but I’d be curious to find out. Did they simply re-stack the stones as they found them? Have they cut new stone?

The day concluded with a visit to a carpet co-op (or so they said–I say tourist trap considering the prices…) and a ridiculous-beyond-belief leather store complete with a “fashion show” that was so bizarre the words escape me at the moment. Let’s just say that now we know exactly where many of the knock-off designer leather goods you might find on any street corner get produced.

This trip left me with a jumble of mixed feelings. On the one hand, I felt fortunate, as I always do whenever we travel in Turkey, for the opportunity to see and touch history in a way that I had never imagined. At the same time, I simply felt so done with many of the things that our fellow tour-goers, visiting Turkey for a short time, found charming and exotic. I’m sick of people expecting that I will want to shop. I’m sick of street cats roaming around my feet while I’m eating a nice dinner. I’m sick of the facade of “high end-ness” that so many businesses attempt to impress upon you when, in reality, little attention gets paid to the foundation of things. (For a silly example, our room had only hand towels. We inquired about them in the shiny, sleek lobby as soon as we first dropped our bags in the room. They never showed up. At all. And for all the faux-finishing and smartly dressed employees, the single elevator in the entire hotel rarely worked. Our room was on the seventh floor.)

I get the impression that new things, even if they’re just shoddily propped on top of old things, perhaps appeal to many Turks because of all of those crumbling ruins I posted above. Old, massive stone fortresses are far from rare here. Anyone can drive to Anavarsa and roll a chunk of Byzantine pillar on the bed of a pick-up truck and cart it home. Not everyone can have wood laminate pasted down over their old marble countertops…

I am glad we made this trip. But, lesson learned: we guide our own tours and we pick our own hotels.

In other news, today is June 1st. We leave on June 30th. I am ready. I have a feeling that Germans like to pay attention to the foundations of things. I’m pretty sure that I’ll appreciate that–at least for a while.

Anavarza revisted

Last month we made a return to the ruins of Anavarza castle, but we got to experience that unique landscape from an entirely different angle.

Instead of scrambling around this…

October, 2010. The castle on the edge of the cliff as we approached it from the side.

…and this…

…we started at the bottom:

The castle sits at the top of this cliff which rises straight up out of the ground. Shepherds now graze their cows, goats, and sheep through this flat stretch of pasture, but underneath lies an entire Roman city. From high above you can see outlines of structures and tops of pillars scattered about. Villagers living along the road have commandeered many bits and pieces of ancient structures, working them into their own walls, fences, and yards. Some attribute the sheared cliff to a massive earthquake, and the city underwent several rebuilds after being severely damaged by a couple of large quakes in the 4th Century.

Whatever the cause, Anavarza’s unique geography apparently brought it to the attention of rock climbers quite a while ago. We learned from our climber friends Ali and Rahime that these cliffs are littered with climbing courses established by Americans in the 50′s and 60′s. Ali, a pilot for the Turkish Air Force, and Rahime, a graduate student and instructor at an Adana university, began taking my yoga classes with the intent to improve their strength and flexibility for climbing. On a sunny Sunday in March they invited us to join them–offering to show us the ropes (pun intended).

J showing that yoga really does pay off...

Secured with belts and ropes pulled through bolts driven deep into the cliff face, we both felt entirely stable and secure. However, we soon learned the difference between climbing gyms and outdoor courses. By the end of the day, our legs and forearms felt deliciously noodly and we each sported our fair share of scrapes and bruised knees (sometimes, the only available handhold was in the middle of a thorny plant…). Throughout the afternoon we chatted about the parallels between climbing and yoga. Ali pointed out that, just like in a yoga practice, to reach the top of a course you must be entirely in the present–letting your mind rest only on the space you occupy in the moment in order to determine your next move. Another moving meditation.

Three little girls came wandering by while I was high up near the top of our second course. They asked Rahime to tell me to pick a flower from the cliff on my way down.

As the sun began to angle down we started one more course, but the air and stone grew chillier and J and I were both finding it difficult to maintain our grip with our hands. We decided pack up without finishing that third round. Hopefully, though, Rahime and Ali will have us tag along again and we’ll get another chance to tackle that route in the next couple of months.

Although the waning sun left the cliff face shaded in the early evening, it did leave us with this lovely view.

Some ruins from the Roman city. Just a few minutes before, some farmers encouraged their flocks along accompanied by a white Anatolian shepherd who looked, from a distance, like an oversized sheep with a slightly loping gait.

A couple of weekends later, we finally arranged a visit to the famous ruins of Ephesus and Pergamum outside the city of Izmir. Despite the extensiveness of those sites and the excavation, I found them sterile compared to Anavarza. Here, there are no reconstructed walls or structures. The city rests below ground giving visitors only a hint of its former size and vitality. And yet, I find that I appreciate this evidence of the passage of time. On our first visit, we walked among tombs and sarcophagi that had been tumbled and scattered by earthquakes that now seem as deeply embedded into the side of the hill as the boulders around them. Nature (as well as generations of villagers) has clearly made its presence known since the city was first built nearly 2000 years ago, allowing visitors to feel, if not see, the age and permanence of what does remain.

Five Things… Turkey style

Lately, I’ve been obsessed with listening to itunes podcasts. The sorting and decluttering process has begun in earnest in preparation for our move to Germany, and I’ve determined that listening to other people talk about fun and interesting things greatly improves my motivation to revamp our filing system and clean the junk out of desk drawers. One podcast that has caught my attention is the Joy the Baker podcast–two successful food bloggers discussing the most “totally important unimportant things.” It very rarely has to do with either food or with blogging, but, lately, Joy and Tracy have begun to assign “homework” to any listener looking for a bit of blogging structure or inspiration. Their assignment from a couple of weeks ago was to share five things that you’re loving right now. In the grand tradition of my own little corner of the internets, I’m a bit late to get on this bandwagon, but, now that I can see the end of our time in Turkey drawing tangibly closer, I’ve decided to use this little task to share a few of the things that I will miss when we leave.

So, without further ado… Five Things I Love… Turkey Style:

1. A profusion of produce. Vegetables accompany most every meal–including breakfast. Handfuls of parsley get tucked into doner kebaps served from street carts, plates of varied salads arrive at tables before any ordering of main courses even takes place, and lines form at the salad bars of mall fast food joints while customers wait to order their hot dishes. And these salads are not the sad baby greens-from-a-plastic-box paired with flashy garnishes that one might find and many U.S. establishments. Rarely is there a wilty leaf or pale tomato in sight, and instead of dressing each table is equipped with bottles of olive oil, lemon juice, and nar (a pomegranate molasses). Eat that with some cacik (thick yogurt mixed cucumber and parsley), mashed roasted eggplant, salty white cheese, some of the bread (if you can…), and chunks of grilled chicken or lamb shish and try to tell me that you’re still jonesin’ for Chick-fil-a.

A sample of one of my early farmer's market hauls. Probably cost less than 20TL total, making it no more than around $12. Turkey is one of the few countries that is entirely agriculturally self-sufficient. Just imagine what our country could do with more small and medium-sized farms?

2. My assertive driving skills. Lanes? What lanes? Forget crowded freeways, bumper-to-bumper traffic, or even driving on the left side of the road. When you regularly get blasted with multiple horns because you’ve stopped at a red light, then we’ll talk.

3. “My” parking guy. A particular parking attendant mans the block where I teach yoga twice a week downtown. We regularly have conversations where I talk to him in English and he talks to me in Turkish. We don’t understand each other (beyond the basic number of hours parked and lira owed, of course), and yet we continue to smile and nod and chat as though we do. And why is he a favorite? Allow me to set the stage: 6:30pm on Thursday nights in downtown Adana is a crazy time for parking. Crazy. The streets are clogged with drivers and pedestrians leaving work while the available spaces simultaneously fill with shoppers and diners for the evening hours. Cars zip in and out of the diagonal street parking as well as clog the already-narrow the road lanes as they double park like sardines. The parking attendants, in their florescent yellow vests, oversee this mayhem as best they can.

J and I leave the house early Thursday nights on the way to my 7pm class to give ourselves plenty of time to make multiple passes up and down the street searching for a legitimate parking space that doesn’t require either a mini cooper or cojones the size of Alaska. This past Thursday, on our second pass down the street we caught a glimpse of a spot partially blocked by a giant trash bag as well as my parking guy waving enthusiastically as he recognized our car. He flagged us down a little way off and gestured that we wait there as he ran back to the spot. J was incredulous, watching in the review mirror, as keys got tossed from person to person, traffic stopped, cars moved up on sidewalks. He then had us back up down the street–quite far–to find the spot he created for us, and we were also asked to pull up on the sidewalk (a hair’s breadth from a pristine cream Mercedes, mind you). And after all that–two lira to park for the evening. I’m definitely bringing him cookies before we leave.

4. Carpets. I have learned quite a lot about Turkish and Middle Eastern carpets during our time here. Whether or not we’re actually shopping, going to dinners at the carpet shops or even just popping in on the weekends, visiting these carpet shops is such a fun thing to do. It’s like going to a gallery opening except that the art gets unrolled on the floor rather than hung on the walls. I also love that I’ve learned so much about a craft that I’ve never truly taken the time to appreciate in the past. Now, when I see carpets in photographs, whether they’re machine made or not, I challenge myself to see if I can identify the design and remember the region and materials typically associated with it.

5. Yoga.  My yoga practice and my teaching have evolved and deepened during my time here. Living and teaching on a military base as well as working at a Turkish studio and attending trainings and workshops with alongside the Turkish yoga community has given me a very unique perspective on yoga as both a practice and an industry. Essentially, I have jumped into the water as a yoga teacher in not one but two unusual settings, and I think that I just might like yoga more through these unexpected angles than I might have had I begun my teaching career in a more conventionally yoga-ish setting. I’m curious to see where this perspective takes me.

Namaste, Turkey. The light in me sees the light in you.

Gluten Free Italy

Back in the very beginning of February, J called me from work one morning and asked how I’d feel about possibly going to Italy in a couple of weeks. An unexpected opportunity came up for someone from J’s office to help out at Aviano Air Base in Italy, about an hour north of Venice. If J volunteered to go, all we would have to for me to join him would be to buy my ticket. My answer: “Um, yes?”

So, in mid-February we set off from Adana to Venice with no preconceptions, hoping to simply get as much as we could out of this little unexpected trip. With J busy with work for the first few days, I was thinking that I would keep myself entertained by bopping around the base and seeing what I could see of the local area during the day. Just the prospect of a change of scenery, dinners out in the evenings, and the opportunity to explore Venice over the weekend made the whole venture more than worthwhile. J, on the other hand, was beginning to grow a bit apprehensive towards the whole experience. (The job that he was supposed to do was growing increasingly time-consuming and convoluted the more he looked into it.) On the plane ride from Istanbul to Venice, as he shuffled through paperwork, he kept muttering that he only wished we were taking this trip as a “real” vacation.

Well… I still hardly believe what happened next. We landed at the airport, found the woman sent to pick us up, got in her car and set off for the base. In the midst of pointing out some of her favorite local vineyards she got a call on her cell. To my ears, the conversation went something like this: “Hi….On the way back to base from the airport, why?….Oh, really? No way! Wow, I’m surprised–after all this? Ok, then, I guess I’ll let him know….” Then she informed us that J’s project got cancelled. And just like that, we were on vacation! The base hotel room and the rental car they booked for us was now on our dime, but the five full days ahead of us suddenly became ours. We were stunned!

Needless to say, we scrambled a bit to figure out how best to use our time to explore and sight see since we did very little research and made no preset plans for any longer excursions. Because of that, our adventures didn’t end up taking us very far afield on this visit, but we still managed to get quite an enjoyable taste of the area (literally!). We have plenty of pictures to share, and I’ll probably do an entire post on Venice and Carnivale (which just so happened to be gearing into full swing while we were there!), but first I want to take a moment to tell you about the food. I am certainly not a food blogger by any stretch of the imagination, but we definitely felt like food tourists during this trip–thinking long and hard about where we wanted to eat and building up plenty of anticipation for each meal.

As someone who has lived gluten-free for nearly ten years, I’ve heard my share of the buzz about the ease of eating gluten free in Italy. And, for the most part, much of it seemed true. While we didn’t find any pizza during this visit (a celiac’s holy grail, in my opinion), we greatly appreciated the ease with which we could communicate our need for gluten free food and the general sense of awareness and overall understanding that emanated from everyone we spoke with. They efficiently guided us to safe items on the menu or they’d offer to make appropriate modifications to certain dishes. Not once did I need to explain “gluten” or field questions like, “but can you eat potatoes??” My only uncertain moments occurred while eating a pasta dish that was so good I worried that perhaps the chef accidentally gave me the regular wheat pasta instead. (But, we quickly learned that Italian brands of gf pasta are just, somehow, *better* than anything I have bought previously–despite nearly identical ingredients…) In any case, we ate a lot of good food and drank a lot of good wine, but we did have one stand-out experience that gave us a meal that we will likely dream about for years to come. (A meal so good, in fact, that we went back to the same restaurant our last night there.)

Before exploring the nearby town of Sacile on our first full day in Italy, I did a bit of research on tripadvisor to come up with a couple of dinner options. A place called Le Contrade came up first on the list. The reviews were excellent, so we wrote down the address and went on our way. We stumbled upon it on accident while driving around looking for a place to park. And, glancing at the menu posted on the wall outside the entrance, we noticed a second plaque mentioned something about accommodating gluten free diners. Jackpot! We spent the afternoon wandering through Sacile’s cute town center, popping in and out of shops to stay warm. At 6pm, when the restaurants open, we went back. We knew it was inordinately early for dinner by Italian standards, but we were hungry (and excited to see what the meal would be like) and ready to get out of the cold. We walked into the bar area–the first customers there, of course–and we were greeted by the server/bartender. She suggested that we sit in the bar for a drink and that they’d seat us at a table in the next room once the kitchen was prepared for dinner service. We had prosecco while munching on homemade potato chips from a little bowl she set in front of us. When she came back again with a couple of bruschetta we mentioned that we were gluten free. “Oh, ok, I will tell Roberto [the owner]. We take care of it” she said. When Roberto came out to the bar area he had his little daughter with him–waiting for her mom to get home from work, he said. She followed him around for much of the evening, hanging onto his leg as he greeted other customers and took orders.

When the server said that they would take care of us as gluten free diners, she was correct and then some. Upon seating us at our table, she brought out gluten free rolls and crisp bread. Roberto then came to explain the menu to us in detail. All of their pastas they could make with gluten free pasta that they prepare in a separate pot of water. Most of the appetizers and main courses were also inherently safe, and he simply steered us away from the few that were not. And to drink he simply said, “I will suggest something.” And that was that.

Here are a few pictures of what we ate. They definitely don’t do the experience justice, and I felt a bit funny snapping these in such a small and intimate space. But, we wanted to remember this meal.

Our gluten free bread. I know this wasn't something that they made there, but, wherever they got it, it was far superior to nearly all packaged gf breads you can find in the States.

delicious pino grigio

My appetizer: king crab over fennel. It was served on a piece of slate.

J's calamari. "Wow," I think, was really the only word he could manage after tasting this...

My pasta--with octopus and broccolini. After this dish and the grilled octopus from the fish restaurant in Bodrum, I can safely say that this particular sea creature has become a favorite of mine.

J's pasta with beef cooked in red wine. It nearly melted apart.

Grass-fed beef with fennel and potatoes. Only seasoned with salt and pepper, and it was perfect.

Duck. And I can't remember what the side was--I think the duck itself was too distracting.

We split a semifreddo–a layered frozen custard–for dessert. And at the end of our meal we were presented with little glasses of the restaurant’s homemade limoncello.

Why we did not buy a bottle of this stuff somewhere to carry back in our suitcase I do not know. Oh well, I guess we'll just have to go back someday!

Ah, memories! We’ve already begun brainstorming ways to replicate some of these dishes at home even though we know that nothing we can make can top that experience. I know that many have said it time and time again, but now I I’ve seen for myself the effortless and yet attentive way that Italians approach food. Just as much as people seemed to value cooking in the home, it seemed as though there was a restaurant and cafe culture all it’s own, characterized by long lunches, post-work glasses of wine, and weekly return visits to a favorite restaurant on a given evening. Sounds good to me!

Istanbul, Take II

<<Note: This post was started sometime in January. Thus the talk of the of the rainy season getting underway. Well, it’s still raining quite a bit. I’m sure, though, that by the end of March I’ll be wondering where spring went.>>

I believe it’s officially the rainy season here in Adana. Over the last couple of weeks, we’ve had more rainy days than not (and by rain I mean that it’s pouring). We did get one of these on Monday morning, though…

This picture doesn't do it justice. This was a full rainbow--and *very* bright...

While this is what passes for winter in Adana, we did get to experience some more wintery temperatures over Thanksgiving weekend when we took a quick trip to Istanbul. Istanbul wasn’t our initial plan for the weekend. We had originally booked ourselves on a group tour of the city of Izmir and Ephesus and other surrounding sights, but that got canceled at the last minute. However, after some time on Tripadvisor and the Turkish Airlines website, we were booked in for a 3-day weekend in Istanbul. As it turned out, I think our adjusted itinerary gave us a bit more of a get-away than we would have experienced on a bus tour with 30 other people (and who knows how many young children!) from base.

We flew in on the Friday morning after Thanksgiving, and, despite the long and congested route from the airport to the hotel, we arrived at our little hotel by lunchtime. Our hotel was perfect for our short trip. It was a small place with a bed-and-breakfast feel tucked in the crook of a windy, cobbled back alley street just behind the Blue Mosque. It was in the center of the touristic Sultanahmet district, yet it felt completely out-of-the-way of crowds and tour groups. As soon as we arrived, the owner(?) offered us tea and gave us a map where he oriented us to the main sites as well as to a few restaurants that he particularly recommended.

Here is something I’ve learned: business interactions and quality of service in Turkey depend so much on relationships and on building a of sense of loyalty or consistency. Shops give you better prices the more often you return–especially if you bring friends. Go somewhere that a good friend patronizes often, mention their name, and the shop-keeper will likely give you different prices or a different level of attentiveness than if you just walked in off the street. It’s like going to a Chinese restaurant and knowing how to ask for the Chinese menu–it’s a game changer. This is all to say that when the manager of a small b&b tells you to show his card to the host at a particular restaurant, you go try that restaurant. The restaurant wants you to be happy so that the hotel continues to send its guests and the hotel wants you to be happy so that you will have a good stay and return or recommend the establishment to your friends. The Sultanahmet section of Istanbul gets flooded with European and American tourists, and many establishments bank on the fact that these visitors will eat whatever is labeled “authentic” or “traditional,” while paying twice as much. We followed our hotel’s advice, and we ate very well–no kebaps all weekend!

So, after a fabulous lunch we bundled up and braved the crowds of school children roaming the Basilica Cistern. The Cistern was one of my favorites sites from my last visit with its lit up columns growing out of koy-filled water. J took the pictures down there with his fancy camera and, of course, I haven’t figured out how to get them on my computer yet. Sorry for the tease!  Moving on… Literally across the street from the cisterns is the Hagia Sophia. First a church and then a mosque and now an architectural treasure, the current version of the Hagia Sophia was built in the 530′s (the 530′s!!!). These pictures absolutely do it no justice. The day was cloudy and it was getting later in the afternoon, so our light was waning. Just believe me when I say that it is stunning.

That night we had dinner at another lovely recommendation from our hotel. The next day we explored the Blue Mosque, Topkapi Palace and the spice market. (It was a Saturday, and if any of you ever find yourselves in Istanbul, I’d suggest finding a different day to visit. It was mobbed. The exits were quite literally presses of people all squirming to get to their particular direction.)

Here are a few more pictures:

The Blue Mosque

The other side of the Blue Mosque at night

A view across the Bosphorus from one of the balconies of Topkapi Palace

That night we made plans to meet up with my friend Izlem (whom I had visited by myself last winter) for dinner. I wanted J to experience the fish restaurants for himself, and we went to one that one of Izlem’s friends had suggested. This time we actually made it to the fish course. Yet another memorable experience. The food was excellent, but the people-watching was the best part. There were several large parties there, and we got to watch as the servers presented them with giant fresh fish to inspect before bringing them back to the kitchen. Later the fish came out on big platters decorated with greens and flowers. (Our meals were not so decorative, for the record.) Some dancing on tables also took place. The raki and wine was apparently flowing quite freely at those tables.

On Sunday, we still had some time to explore since our flight didn’t leave until mid-afternoon. We decided to walk to Galata tower and then wander up Istiklal street. Although it was a hazy, misty day, J definitely got a sense of the vastness of the city from the view at the top of the tower.

Salep from the cafe in Galata tower. It tastes like liquid rice puding and is made from powdered orchid root.

Galata bridge

After grabbing a quick lunch near Taksim square, we hoofed it back as quickly as we could to catch a cab to the airport.

It was a short visit, but we managed to see quite a few of the major tourist attractions. A perfect first introduction to the city for J, and a nice follow-up visit for me. Hopefully we will be able to make one more trip before we leave here in June. At the time, it was a perfect get-away to give us a much-needed change of pace from base life.

Since my last post, we also learned that our next assignment will be in western Germany. Not really what we had intended, but it means, at least, that we’ll have more opportunities to spend long weekends visiting famous cities. Not exactly something to sneeze at.

 

 

Hanging back

First of all, to that small handful of you out there who read this on occasion, yes, I’ve certainly been hanging back on the blogging front. No new Turkish adventures or major incidences of military culture shock to report over the summer so I felt like I had little material to share with you all. Through June and July, my thoughts were mostly filled with anticipating our August visit to the States, and I gave myself permission to mentally detach a bit from base life.

Our time in both Virginia and Maine was lovely and most definitely refreshing but I was too busy enjoying our brief return to want to spend much time in front of a computer. I returned to the States again (by myself, this time) to attend an additional yoga teacher training out in San Francisco, spending some time in C-ville on either end before heading back to Turkey. I left Turkey at the very end of September and only just returned a few days ago. So, that left the month of September where, again, my mind was mostly in the clouds with the airplanes anticipating this most-recent trip. I suppose I could tell you all about the Air Force gala (eh, just o.k.) and shopping for dresses in Old Adana (quite the experience) but those should probably have a post of their own. (And, yeah, I know that whenever I say I’m going to write another post shortly, something else on a new tangent appears a few months later. I’m just trying to keep you all guessing, I suppose. )

And the point of all of these excuses, you may be wondering? Well, they’re not so much excuses as they are explanations for my lack of engagement with base life. It’s mid-October already. We’re on the down-slope, and I’m finding that my desire to hang back is even stronger than before my two visits to the States. I’m just not that interested in much of the goings-on here, and that’s ok. In particular, I’m trying to give myself space from the swirling soup of military spouse-isms and military rhetoric that permeates a place like this. They make me mad and frustrated (and sad, too, if I’m being honest), and my extensive time back in civilian land has left my radar for such things on high alert.

Here are a few examples:

1. Blind support for the war. Maybe it’s just me, but I tend to think that *all* spouses of military members might want to question the legitimacy of a long and seemingly-endless conflict. Instead of being complicit in creating a culture that normalizes deployments, how about we just end the need for them? That’s how *I’d* support my troops…

2. Prioritizing career over family. Yes, I know this happens everywhere, but in the civilian world it’s seen as a problem that needs fixing. In the military world this dynamic gets cloaked in words like “supportive” or “patriotic.” For example, J finds that he has explain to actually explain to some other (mostly married) colleagues why certain of the more exotic assignment locations don’t interest him. “There would be no career opportunities for my wife,” he tells them, “so those places just wouldn’t be right for us.” Damn right! Now, if a civilian couple announced at a dinner party that they were moving to a small island in the Pacific for one half’s job, they’d be peppered with questions: “And how do *you* (directed to the other half) feel about this?”, “How did you finally decide what to do?”, “How are you going to make it work for both of you?” Such questions don’t get asked nearly enough around here…

3. A spouse-ism: “We’ve just made ________ (fill in the rank)!” We? Sigh…

4. An anecdotal story was recently told at a party about some guy (not from this base or anyone that I’d even remotely know, for the record) who volunteered for a job that regularly sends him on unplanned “secret” missions that take him far from his wife and baby for undisclosed amounts of time. This is a multi-year job. The wife is apparently not the kind of person who appreciates so much alone time, and she’s having a hard time. Amid all of the murmurs of “poor thing,” I’m thinking that she’s a poor thing because she’s married to an ass-hole. He clearly cares more about playing G.I. Joe than he does about his wife’s well-being or his marriage. Being military does not make such a dynamic ok, and it’s just so surreal to hear stories like this all of the time. I mean, where do we think we are–an episode of Mad Men? Jeez!

Anyhow, that’s plenty of examples. I’m sure there are more where those came from, but they’re more than enough to demonstrate why I’m choosing to spend a bit more time working on my own pursuits these days and why I’m no longer giving myself grief over not “putting myself out there” as much as I did earlier on in our time here. So, I’m hanging back a bit and also hanging on for as long as I can to that mental breath of fresh air I received in the States. Knowing that we’ll soon be able to begin anticipating and making plans for our next assignment will also help. We have clues but nothing yet set in stone. I’ll let you all know when I know!

May

In May we went to Ireland. And then we came back to base. Bummer, right?

I feel as though I have so much that I want to write about, but I struggle with how to capture the odd ways that living in this fishbowl shape our (because J feels it too…) travels, and vice versa. Basically, I find myself coasting from excursion to excursion (as you can probably tell from the long gaps between blog posts…) and crashing hard when each one ends. I’m still in quite a dip after this last one in particular, because it was both a such a long time in the making and because it was Ireland.

For now, I will share some pictures and try to remind myself that just a few short weeks ago we were standing in sideways rain followed by brilliant sun and cruising confidently up and down the Irish west coast on the left side of the road in our little-bitty rental car. I played some tunes, caught up with old friends, and ate amazing gluten-free pizza.

The Cliffs of Moher--just before sideways rain...

A rainbow we caught while driving to dinner on my birthday. (J was driving--nobody worry!)

Lovely West Clare

Look closely at the sign and you'll see my new moto. Pretty much sums it up!

And, on THAT note, I’m wrapping this up. More thoughts and pictures to come!