Good news: You can still get those. Bad news (perhaps) you will have to come all the way over to Turkey, and ask for a kumpir. It is heaped with all kinds of things — I find the standard issue one to be a bit revolting plus they try to put ketchup and mayonnaise on top of all that, but you can of course customize it.…

Thank you! More reality from someone who is on site.

I was down there taking pictures today, with my foreign self, because I feel it's important to witness an event like this. Also, everybody back home who remembers I'm still here has been e-mailing me asking me if I'm OK, what's going on, etc. and I feel my personal accounts give friends a little bit of perspective on…

She did include an excerpt from someone with a clue, so the article wasn't a total waste of time.

But do they ever ask your opinion, though! People in Turkey really want to know what foreigners are making of this situation. I just make a point of not mentioning any names or parties specifically.

Signing in just to say, it seems no one remembers that that was the premise of the very first Gidget movie, believe it or not. I only saw it once but one thing I remember, she threw herself at an older surfer dude. I don't remember how she didn't succeed and decided it wasn't worth it, but that is what happened b/c…

Those are among my favorite animals. They are cute.

Agreed; I don't like 'hubby' at all, but 'habibi' — now there's a great word. My favorite Arabic word.

I just hope I can still remember what the damn thing is supposed to mean.

I recently had someone try to pick up messaging where he stopped cold two years ago. Unacceptable on so many levels.

Istanbul is not Turkey in much the same way that New York is not the USA.

As a black American woman living abroad, I just get really, really tired of trying to explain this ish to non-native English speakers, many of whom are obsessed with rap and hip-hop.

The cat in the water dish — is really a dog in the manger.

yeah, Mark Spitz, Tom Selleck, Burt Reynolds — in the 70s and 80s chest hair was considered quite hot.

Tell me about it. In my time, though, they went to NYU as a safe and fun place to come out after high school.

I call that flavorless, sugarless stuff "The Worst Gum Ever" — there's a "fruit-flavored" version that seriously tastes like that stale gum one sticks under the table and takes up chewing again after dinner, except it already tastes that bad at the very beginning. The little poems in the wrappers are the best thing…

It's Russian. How did they get from Pushkin and Lermontov to this?

Seriously, this is one of a black woman's first concerns when contemplating living overseas: How will I manage my hair in this new country?

How ironic; I'm changing schools and the only reason I've reactivated is to stay at least tenuously connected to students in the old place. All others who have my phone number/e-mail address and don't use it will have requests ignored.

Neither here nor there but "slimak" in Czech or Slovak means something like "slug" or "snail." Invertebrate, indeed!