I swear I wrote this Feb 2009 (Turkey Still)

Really I did, but I'm just publishing this now!

One thing that I’ve really enjoyed about living in Turkey is drinking the fresh squeezed juice and eating the freshly baked bread. I’ve become partial to the “nar suyu” or pomegranate juice but the portakal (orange) and havuc (carrot) are also good. If you know where to go, you can score the nar suyu for 2 liras ($1.20) and orange for about 1 lira ($0.60), not bad for a refreshing drink. In fact, we’ve started squeezing our own orange and grapefruit juice at the flat here. Oh yeah, this is a good segueway about my living situation. As you may recall, I was living with a lively bunch of folks (5 in all) in a flat that didn’t actually have any real bedrooms. It was an ok flat, but since people were sleeping on couches (not me, thankfully) scattered throughout the house, it made moving around the flat a pain. You couldn’t really use the kitchen in the morning because you’d wake the people sleeping downstairs and you had to creep to the bathroom, ugh. It was just a pain. Another annoying thing was since I was on the third floor any cigarette smoke (the model would not be without one for more than a few minutes) would rise up and just sit in my makeshift bedroom. My German roommate Matthias also became sick of the setup, so he decided to move into another apartment. He asked if I wanted to join him, which at first I hesitated but after a while I just couldn’t take it either, so I did! The new flat was literally a 2-3 minute walk from the old one and very near the Galata Tower. The best part of the new flat was: it was completely newly constructed, the bathroom and shower kicked ass, we each had bedrooms (with doors), and the view was absolutely stunning. The flat sat on the sixth floor and overlooked the Bosphorus River. I could see Aya Sofia, the Blue Mosque, Topkapi Palace, the Asian side, and the Princes Islands to name a few of the amazing sites.