Wednesday, November 19 Adventures on Foot

Aeden and I took a cab to a travel agent, walked to the nearby Post Office from there to mail Kaiya's and then spent a bit of time wandering around looking for the Fulbright office. I didn't bring the stroller with me, so Aeden did a lot of walking and he really seemed to enjoy his new freedom. The best was when we turned a corner and I saw the big hill we needed to climb...and climb we did. Just very slowly. I had no urgency to make me pick him up and do the extra work to carry him up too. We meandered and his little legs probably didn't know what hit them.

We found the Fulbright Commission office here, and as I was talking to Ayse (a staffer there), a man came by and whisked Aeden off to go entertain him. When I was ready to go I asked where Aeden had disappeared to, and Ayse calmly said, "He's sitting in the Executive Director's chair". We walked down the hall and there Aeden was...sitting in the director's desk chair flipping through pictures on the computer. Oh my.

We walked to Atakule Mall from the commission office--this is the building you might see in Ankara skylines that somewhat resembles the Space Needle. It was a cloudy foggy day and I didn't bring my camera, so we just browsed the mall's offerings and didn't venture to the top for the view of Ankara. This is the embassy part of town, and I felt very unsettled on the empty streets walking along with Aeden. We passed a park where there were four men all in black with bulletproof vests on and sub-machine guns slung over their shoulders inspecting every nook and cranny at the park and talking into their earpieces. It didn't feel like something I wanted to be around. I was trying to explain it to Brian, and I think a big part of it is that my optimism won't work in a misunderstanding with them; if they were to pull me aside and bark questions at me, I couldn't answer to their satisfaction since I wouldn't even know what they were asking, let alone how to answer. We just walked on, me pretending not to be scared. I do like how I can turn on my, "big city" face and at least pretend to myself that I am not the sitting duck that I really am. I used that face walking in Philadelphia alone in college...pretending that I really hadn't just gotten off of a train from Vermont and walked the completely opposite direction of where I really needed to go.

I felt like such a pro when it was time to go home and I walked to catch a cab that was on the right side of the road and facing toward home already. Aeden and I were tired, and happy to be back to the apartment for some rest.