the accidental girl

Ha ha ha maybe the answer to my questions!

To help time fly during my exile, I have decided to take art back up in a major way. So, I contacted the local art college and they do, apparently, do evening classes. These classes are only on a tuesday night and are tailored to the 'needs' of the class. Which doesn't sound promising.

They're also 85 euros each- is that a lot? It's for 2.5 hours.. so I guess about 35 euros per hour. But if I'm in a class with total 'tards who want to do fingerpainting then it's not worth it!

Whilst agonising over this decision, I have bought some cypriot 'petit fours' which are basically floury biscuits stuck together with jam and a few hundreds and thousands on top for fun.

Not quite a jammie dodger. Sigh.

I've decided to chum up with the student shere who are part of the drinking club international association I was sheperding in Edinburgh. So, yesterday they invited me to tag along with them to a team bonding session paintballing. Alright, so far, so clichèd.

Anyway, it was great fun. I spoke to about 5 of the 20 people there which is good for an unnecessarily shy idiot like me. They were alreayd chummy you see, and it's always hard to break into a new group. So! Nothing a bit of pretend killing couldn't overcome. There we were at the end of a 45 degree day, in clothes, outer-camu wear, mask, gloves, neck protector, gun. I began sweating immediately. My mini-sauna suit making my hair tickle with moisture... gross!

So, we played 4 games, I enjoyed pretending to be G.I. Joe Joan Jane, belly crawling and sniper shots galore! I got shot twice very painfully in the course of the action. I have MASSIVE bruises- one on my bicep and one on the hip bone, thankfully it didn't go 3 inches to the center or it may have been a more sterilising injury. Overnight, these bruises have become angry red welt-like halos on my skin.
The stigmata of friendship.

I was invited to party tonight and thursday though so perhaps it was all worth it...

1. Women aren't allowed to park cars.
We (me, Mufasa and my GBF and host) were driven around Turkey, very generously, by my host's aunt. Who is a very good driver, confident and swiftly efficient but in the face of every single male in Turkey, is reduced to merely a set of tits behind a potential collision. In any occasion, be it a tight corner requiring meticulous navigation or a very specific and small parking place, the men, previously hiding behind bollards or traffic lights, swarm around the car, making her get out as they flex their forumla 1 muscles and zip at 100mph into the space/street/corner and come out looking self satisfied at their own macho bollocky moment in the day. And then preen themselves as the girls (rather irritatingly) generously thank them.

2. Turkey is the land of the cherry.
Stuck in a traffic jam over the Bosphorus? No problem! Just wind down your window, smile sweetly at the neighbouring car and they'll pop out a hand crammed full with cherries into your open window!
Peckish on a long journey outside Istanbul? No shortage of little old crones selling their cherry shaped wares at the side of the road. Trays and trays of delicious deep red fruit with firm green stems.

3. Chay (Tea) is drunk from glass fluted cups
And normally with sugar, arabic-style. The tea is brewed using about half the box of teabags, but the idea being that you use it like diluting juice and top it up with hot water. A good household and hosting skills depends on a pot of tea being kept happily brewing/stewing away on the stove all day in case of guests.

4. Istanbul is a traffic locked city.
To get from one side (we were on the European side) to the other for a simple dinner by the harbour one night took 3.5 hours. We were all sat, dressed to the nines, in a sweltering car on one of the bridges which had suddenly become an impasse and some impatient twat had decided to undertake across 3 lanes into the fast lane using the hard shoulder to get ahead of us and dented the front corner of our car.

5. The Hagia Sofia is nice and all but..
Here I was, after years of study and being told of the structural wonders of the Hagia Sofia, finally at the site, enjoying for myself the sheer scale and grandeur when, what's this? After having paid full whack to get in, the piece de resistance the central dome is obscured, HIDDEN, behind sheeting and scaffolding. At the height of tourist season! Surely they could find some other time to clean/restore it, or at least, much like edinburgh's trams, cease work when there'll be tourists about.

6. ..the cisterns are the real place to be.
Underground, the cistern contains water all teh way from Eastern Europe which has trickled down the Danube and through porous rock to find itself, eventually, under Istanbul. As as the medusa's head. She's now holding up a column underground and enjoying fishies nibbling at her serpentine hair.

7. Assos, past Troy, is fucking beautiful.
Wow. Forget Istanbul with its Peacock youth and European fantasies. The winding cobbled road down the side of a sheer cliff face, dotted with old greek ruins, tempes of Athenea, colosseums and churches, with the Isle of Lesbos to your right and an unbeliveably blue sea below just makes you know how this could be the cradle of modern European philosophy. It's awe-inspiring and deliciously frozen in time. The hotel we stayed in was calm and faced the sea. The old man who took me and Mufasa on a night-time boat trip to see the stars was terribly cliched but necessary, as it let me fall in love again with Mufasa despite my suspicions that it was too perfect an idea and too close to what's special to my secret core to be his.

8. Cats. everywhere.
..Which I like, so no worries but seriously- the Isle of Junda, ruled by cats.

9. You're no-one if..
You don't dress properly for clubs. I mean- borderline WAG wear. Black tie, hair done, manicured everything, perfect make-up, chaffeur etc.. no woman should pay for her drinks in the company of a man.
You must also be very rich. You're either rich or you're poor. No in-between. I'm neither but I felt very frumpy in my friend's favourite cafes as I wore clothes to be comfortable in the heat and in my thesis-expanded body.

10. The grand isle..
Always take teh sea bus. Never ever take the ferry. Suffer the 3 extra lira and please take the bus. It's faster, cleaner, more comfortable and you don't die of sunstroke as it's air conditioned.
Also, don't buy an ice-cream for the ascent to the monastery on the island. The island stinks of horse shit being that that's the only allowed form of transport. Horse siht and piss in the hot noon sun gives a special smell which reallllly does nothing for the berry and mango sorbet in your hand.

11. If someone throws water in front of you as you leave for a journey:
It's a symbol for 'bon voyage' or a wish that your journey is as easy as the flow of the water.

12. Everyone is crazy but with good intent. The television repair man, strode into the house, repaired the telly, then gave, presumably unqualified, advice to my generously proportioned host about her diet and what she should do. How inappropriate?!?!

13. It's a nice city: my favourite was the bohemian art quarter where we smoked rose and mint shisha and gave ourselves headaches and played backgammon until my head swam with dice....

14. Public transport is a no-no.

15. But do fly Easyjet!

Ah, the economic recession. An apt and well timed excuse for Monkeypie to return to Cyprus. I've not really thrown myself into the job application thing after my few rejections many months ago, so when the offer of reinstating my post as architectural technician/general dogsbody came back up in Cyprus I went for it.

Here I am. 6 hours in to my first day after arriving at 4:05am this morning. T'was an interesting flight, the cliche screaming toddler in the row just behind, the old boy who needs to wrestle with my seat back to get up and down (frequently takes advantage of this power) and the emergency aisle seat next to the toilet, so I get queues of bladderly-challenged folk practically sitting on my lap to access the loo. At least I got to see Monsters v Aliens, which was surprisingly good.

So, there we go.. despite getting a first for my thesis, it just wasn't enough to bump me up overall so I am a 2:1, MEng, employed. My tasks today included filtering the tap water and disposing of cockroach carcasses. I have swine flu Laryngitis so answering the phone in Greek is off. The advantages of ill fortune again. Must make the most of it all!

Oh, 3rd prize in the bridge design thing- 250 pounds, job done. Bish Bash Bosh.

Since I last wrote: I have been to Istanbul. I have graduated. I have moved copius amounts of shite and belongings back to London. I have moved 25kg of this shite to Cyprus for the foreseeable future. I have waved off many friends. I have promised many things and not started them yet (I've been away for a while but my tendency to procrastination is still alive and well). I've spent an evening drinking free wine, the next day throwing up.

I've decided to apply for jobs worldwide.

In all the above were mini adventures that I had thought I ought to write about but it's never as good when you've had too much time to reflect on the event and have mentally ironed out the creases in the details.

Hopefully I'll have more adventures to share during my exile stay in Cyprus...