This was the first weekend to ourselves this month. Two weeks ago we went to Boston to pick up my car, last weekend my boyfriend’s sister visited us – this weekend was free of any plans. I couldn’t wait to come home on Friday and go to bed early. I know it’s not very exciting. But finding back into my routines takes its toll. Then I woke up all refreshed on Saturday morning and after cleaning and working a bit, I did what I love most on a quiet weekend: I took the newspaper with me and sat in Simit Sarayi on Fifth Avenue for a few hours. My idea of bliss. Sitting in a Turkish cafe, sipping on very sweet, almost light tea, hearing bits and pieces of Turkish around me and reading the newspaper. I am sitting in the middle of a metropolis, but create my own standstill at the same time. It feels almost like being back in Istanbul where I spent parts of my weekends just like this in cafes. It makes me realize that, for the last four years, I mainly missed this feeling of living in a really big city, that maybe even all cities of a certain size can evoke this feeling. And having a Turkish cafe chain within a seven minute walking distance from home is the cherry on the cake. There, two of my worlds combine. I read the New York Times in English, I order my “açık çay” (light tea) in Turkish. I can imagine doing this a lot more from now on. Like maybe even next Saturday morning.

|Watched| Gilmore Girls, Carnival Row
|Read| Short Stories from Hogwarts of Heroism, Hardship and Dangerous Hobbies*, Short Stories from Hogwarts of Power, Politics and Pesky Poltergeists*, Hogwarts: An Incomplete and Unreliable Guide*, The One Hour Content Plan: The Solopreneur’s Guide to a Year’s Worth of Blog Post Ideas in 60 Minutes and Creating Content That Hooks and Sells*
|Listened to| Manga (back to listening to CDs in my car)
|Done| worked, went out for dinner with colleagues
|Eaten| sushi, pizza, mac’n’cheese, black bean burger, turkey tacos, salad, baked brie
|Drunk| water, coffee, white tea, rosé, Turkish tea
|Thought| Can we stay here and just like this forever, please?!
|Been happy| everything went so well (again)
|Laughed| about Canavar just always being very close to us
|Desired| that I could sleep little longer in the mornings (6.10 a.m. feels too early for my alarm to go off)
|Bought| tickets to “La Bohème”, first Christmas presents
|Clicked| I found this article about what it means (and costs) to be a full-time blogger extremely interesting: What Goes Into Running a Blog!; this New York Times article about coming from a poorer part of society: I Was a Low-Income College Student. Classes Weren’t the Hard Part.

© janavar

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