victory in a sandwich

The weather has been miserable in Istanbul, and having been spoiled by San Francisco's glorious climate, I am having a tough time adjusting. I desperately want to go out for a walk, but the biting wind and icy rain is not exactly enticing. To avoid cabin fever, I went out to walk around Istinye Park mall and have a quiet lunch.

I am at the point where I can read and understand 90% of a menu in Turkish, so when I saw the words for "fig" and "cheese"— two of my favourite things on this planet— I knew I would be happy. I learned from the tartine I ordered that the word for goat is keçi, as the cheese was of course, goat cheese. Discovering a new word in a language is a victory, I get so excited that I want to use it immediately and tell everyone I know about my new word. Which is of course, what I am doing now. Oddly enough I learned the word for water buffalo yesterday: manda. There are these yoghurt vendors on the side of the road by the forest that sell terracotta and plastic jars of manda yoğurdu, yoghurt made from the milk of water buffalo. I cannot wait to try it— I've been told the yoghurt is so thick, you can scape it with a knife! It seems the key to my learning a language is through my stomach.

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