Just a few more days

I dropped Adam off at the airport today. He'll be in Rotterdam for a few days before Turkey. I get this really excited feeling in my stomach when I think about our rendez-vous in Turkey!

He amazed me this morning. He had one backpack...ok, kinda two, because it's the kind that has the little pack that zips off. Anyway, he was able to fit enough clothes in there for 10 days, plus a laptop, plus a digital SLR, and books and such. What a man. I'm bringing this big old suitcase thing...the plan is to leave extra room to bring back gifts though. ;)

So preparation is still going strong. I contacted the Orient Youth Hostel about belly dancing. They usually have it on Monday, Wednesday and Friday nights. The guy said it was the slow season so they will probably just have in on Monday or Friday. I think we have dinner plans on Friday, so maybe we can go the Monday night before we leave. From the Web site though, it looks like their belly dancer is a bit...hmm...risqué. I am going to try to talk Adam into going to one of the expensive Oriental shows designed for tourists. We'll see.

So I watched a docu-show last night called Globe Trekker: Istanbul. It was pretty cute. The hostess was good and she went to the main attractions plus some. My favorite part was where when she went to watch the "gypsies" dance. She came out in yellow bedlah that was too big for her and I was afraid she was going to pop out the whole time. She was in a small room with some musicians and some really young looking dancers. You could tell they were not quite Roma-style dancers, not Oriental either, something in between. My other favorite part was when she ate sheep brain at dinner. EW!!!

The night before that Adam had me watch a show on Turkey called "The Silk Road". It was from a French television show and he downloaded it from the Internet so it was all grainy. It was also pretty good though. The show explained more of the inner-workings of things in Turkey, as opposed to Globe Trekker that just showed tourist stuff. The Silk Road showed the gold trade and they went into a gold smith. They also went to Cappadoce where they worship pigeons and collect their poop for fertilizer.

The show felt really long because it was in French. I understood a bit of it, but not a lot. Adam started translating for me and it was much better. I didn't want him to at first, but I am glad that he did. Actually, it's not that I didn't want him to, it's that at first he was just translating the easy stuff that I could understand. It is when he was explaining the complicated stuff that I wouldn't be able to understand even if I did speak better French, that I appreciated it. Gosh, I am stubborn!

Anyway, I still need to do laundry, pack and add my tourist schedule to the itinerary. Then I'll be all set. Woo hoo!