Pretty sure my favorite school-related memory will be the two-day Music Festival, which, besides the fact that it was held on the South Campus lawn, truthfully has very little to do with school and has more to do with beer, friends and frisbee. It must’ve cost a pretty penny (pretty kuruş?) to build that stage and get all those bands to perform, but Boğaziçi pulled it off and the students swarmed to show their appreciation for free music in the sunshine (and moonlight). Felt great to throw the frisbee around, barefoot on the grass, with more-than-decent Turkish cover bands playing classic and indie-rock songs that I recognized, from Guns N’ Roses to Interpol. There were people everywhere chilling on the lawn or hitting a volleyball around or dancing in front of the stage, creating the kind of crowd that college campuses highlight on their websites to get students to enroll.
(Note to Boğaziçi: your campus alone makes people want to enroll.)
What’s next is a Turkish test on Wednesday, followed possibly by a party in Taksim. Then there’s Trabzon this weekend. After that I’ll be less than a month away from flying to South Korea. In the in-between I’ll be attending class and completing the required assignments (promise!) and making the most of the time I’ve got left with my friends here, because I know it will fly by and there’s nothing I can do about it.
However I must be honest and admit that I’m very much looking forward to the next stage, to being with Jenny in a new place, to finding work and working off this debt, to trying new food and seeing new faces, to being a part of her life for longer than the two weeks she was part of mine.
And İstanbul… I’ll be back someday.
And if I knew the future tense, I’d promise in Turkish.
