For most of us, ISH-life means being thousands of miles and hours away from our family and friends. You feel that more severely on special days such as the independence day of your country, a national football game and Olympic games, or when you miss one of the important events that you would never otherwise; your cousins wedding for example. But there is this one day that you just want to be at home no matter what, want to be surrounded by a package composed from love, close friends, parents and everything that is familiar, even the smell. It is your birthday. All in all, you are one year closer to the final curtain, aren’t you? (Please insert overly dramatic music here, Enya would do the job.)

That’s when ISH does its magic (again) and proves its difference. The difference, which stems from diversity and the pure luck of living in a multi cultural home. Hence I have had one of the best birthday’s of my life.

We started celebrating from Friday night (my birthday was on the 20th of June, so we had to consider the job schedule as well) and I received two great surprises from people whose heart is bigger than the flat screen in the TV room. On Saturday, I wanted to kill two birds with one stone – I could take ISH’ers to a nice Turkish Restaurant. By doing so, I would eliminate the risk of dissatisfaction from food (because Turkish food is no fail) and I could get in the home atmosphere even for a short period of time. It happened exactly as I predicted, we enjoyed Pide’s (Turkish Pizza), kebabs and meze’s, which are accompanied by Raki, the national alcohol of Turkey. We had terrific time which passed too quickly.

Friday night was, of course, not a night to be home. Old bars of Adam’s Morgan and a couple of new ones on U Street, a wide selection from live rock music to salsa bars, were visited.

My excitement doubled when I received packages from my parents around Monday. On Monday, we also went out with a couple of ISH’ers who couldn’t be at the celebration for different reasons (a series of celebrations are always preferable anyway). A great escape against Monday depression – Georgetown Waterfront it is.

All in all, I have enjoyed leaving a quarter of a century behind – with a big smile of my face, thanks to every soul that was with me to celebrate (if not physically). I want to thank each one of you, again and again, never letting me get any blues caused by being on the other side of planet. And lastly, thank you for reminding me frequently that ‘home is where the heart is.’

Wishing you a beachy, sunny and air conditioned July everyone! Sevgilerimle…

It has been almost a month since I presented “Diversity in Unity: Reflections from Turkey” at our ISH-DC resident salon, with my other fellow Turkish residents. One of the main topics that we discussed were conditions of Syrian Refugees in Turkey and the new agreement between the EU and Turkey on funding Syrian refugees in the country . Since it is a really hot topic and many people from ISH, especially my European friends, were extremely curious, I decided to dig deeper and share more about this crisis. Hence, on April 27, I attended the Boren Forum’s Panel about the current refugee crisis. I learned  so many key facts about the crisis happening right now, but am ashamed how little I still know about it.

The first panelist was Mrs. Alina Haddad, of Doctor without a Border, a brave young women who accomplished so much such in women’s economic empowerment and humanitarian issues in Yemen. Alina took attention of the audience by explaining the problems that they encountered in Jordan, such as the difficulty of having access to fresh clean water. Jordan has one of the largest Syrian refugee population in the world. Nevertheless, they are world’s third drought country. Water is expensive. ‘If you cannot fill the water tank at your garden, you have to pay more to fill,’ said Alina. ‘And what happens if you just don’t have any money to fill that?’

Mrs. Burcu Erdogdu-Tuncer,  our second panelist, was a diplomat  from the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs who currently serves as a Political Counselor at the Turkish Embassy in Washington DC. Mrs. Erdogdu-Tuncer provided a lot of up-to-date information about the TPC’s  (Temporary Protection Center) of Turkey, or generally known as ‘refugee camps’. Perhaps the most important fact about the camps was the number of refugees that live in there – only 270,000 people. The number of refugees that Turkey hosts alone are over 3 million, and everyday 3,000 people flee from Syria.

Turkey has provided $10 billion in assistance since the breakout of the crisis. This incredible amount of money not only makes the country the biggest donor, but it also puts an incredible economic burden on the government. Given the fact that the Turkish Lira has experienced the worst devaluation of all times in 2015 against the US dollar, and the biggest loser among other currencies, the large current account deficit and the large inflation rate, Turkey alone could not face the problem anymore. Hence the EU promised to provide  $3 billion  Turkey for assistance, and for what in turn, we will all see with time.

Most of this money, said Mrs. Erdogdu-Tuncer, is going to be used for the education of the refugee children in camps, and in overall Turkey to ensure that we are not creating a ‘lost generation’. Those children of today will be the adults of tomorrow who will rebuild their country, and their education is utterly important.

Mr. Omar Hossino, director of public Relations of Syrian American Council, is one of the most prominent activists in the US who is working with Syrian refugees on daily basis. Building bridges with congress and policy makers with refugees is a hard task but a must do. Mr. Omar discussed their work in the last couple of years, such as obtaining every Rabbi in the US (yes, every one of them) to persuade the decision makers to open borders for more refugees. Nevertheless, it is getting harder to persuade the leaders of society to have mercy with Syrian Refugees. For example, the mayor of Maryland has refused to talked with the SAC about the settlement of the immigrants.

However, the climax of the panel for me was when Mr. Mohammed Harba,  a Syrian refugee from Damascus whose family was resettled in Washington by International Rescue Committee, arrived and talked about his recent ‘survival’ from the war with his family. Mr. Harba started his talk with a warm ‘Shukran’ and his happiness could be read from his face. Nevertheless, he was feeling ‘guilty and ashamed’ being in the comfortable environment of DC while his friends and some of his family were still living in hard conditions back in Jordan. He continued with his story while touching each person’s heart in the hall. He talked about how he lost his 27 year old son in front of his eyes while they were crossing the border, how they were smuggled by one of those ‘death boats’. But he was trying to take our attention to one fact that Syrian refugees are ‘good’, ‘thankful’, and ready to provide economic assistance to the society if a chance is given. The ‘opportunity’ part of the panel was this fact.

I respect Mr. Harba from the bottom of my heart, and all other fathers that are living for their children, I gave him a big warm smile as I was applauding and he responded  with a big smile that I will never forget. Let’s hope that people like Mrs. Alina, Mrs. Burcu, Mr. Omar, Mr.Sushil, Mr. Yenal and Sinem will increase in number and we will learn more about the conditions of Syrian refugees from the Boren Forum and many others in order to understand and assist them better in the future.

Hello my dear friends who lately are becoming more and more like a family. This month I decided to write about something which I thought might be practical and useful. I will talk about some of the outdoor activities that I have a lot of fun doing and fits very well with Spring. So here we go…

Once a wise friend told  me that one of the best ways to increase your self -esteem as a young person is to go a bit extreme in what you normally do in your daily routine; but before drinking 17 cups of coffee per day, let me finish! This should be an activity that requires you to be outdoors and a lot of energy. So go ahead and run 10 miles at once, play volleyball, basketball etc… for four hours. I know, sounds bit crazy, but apparently it works and your 50 year old self will be grateful that you have done this when you had a chance. Here are some hidden beauties where you can do that.

National Mall: A place where you can enjoy the beautiful scenery of cherry blossoms and Make a power play and start a game of Frisbee on the National Mall or a game of volleyball at one of the pits at Potomac Park.

C&O Canal Twopath: It’s funny how close it is to home yet very few people are actually aware of its existence. But this beautiful canal path offers more than a  Sunday walk, but an mesmerizing journey to 18^th century. So grab your hiking boots to trek your way down the C&O Canal Towpath, which traces the Potomac from Georgetown to Cumberland, Md.

Good Old ‘Rock Creek’ Park:  Do you know that we are living near by one of the most well preserved city parks in the whole world? Rock Creek park is an escape route for Washingtonians in any hour of the day because of its location. There are more than 5 walking and running routes that are waiting for curious city explorers. Watch out for the Sunday crowd at the ‘Rock Creek Road’ though!

Another place within Rock Creek park is Montrose park, located between Dumbarton Oaks Park and Rock Creek Park (R Street NW, between 28th and 32nd Streets). Make sure to stroll along Lovers’ Lane – a beautiful 18th-century cobblestone path.

 National Arboretum: Another lesser known DC beauty, National Arboretum is shockingly beautiful during spring with a boom of blossoms. While you’re there, take in the beautiful colors and see the pillars from the original U.S. Capitol, which was burned during the War of 1812.

Spring is the princess of all seasons and promises a fresh beginning. There is no other season where nature and the whole world is celebrating the undeniable lightness of being alive and well. Maybe it’s today for you to close the screen and open your door, get outside and take your part of that beauty that is reserved for you by the nature itself. Happy beginnings!

The night of February 5 at ISH was covered with many shades of red. That night I had a chicken dish in neon-orange color; that night was another perk of being at ISH: being exposed to a culture the most fun way possible from first hand, and most of the time, from your friends.

I will talk about the things that we did the whole evening shortly, but first I want to give a background of Chinese New Year (and how different it is from western style New Year celebrations). Chinese New Year is celebrated at the end of the Chinese lunisolar calendar, and the literal translation from the Chinese is ‘spring festival’. Although, during those days DC encountered one of the worst snowstorms of the year, maybe things are different on the other side of the world; no spring was here, not yet.  It is a major holiday in China and for its neighbors. Mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, Singapore, Thailand, Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mauritius, and the Philippines are countries that celebrate the New Year. Traditionally, the festival lasts for 15 days, but today, celebrations are usually concentrated in the first three days. Chinese people believe that a good start to the year within those three days will lead to a lucky year. Sounds familiar, any new year resolutions included?

I have already given you a hint about the delicious dinner, special for the new year.  The dining hall was decorated with flags of different animals from different years. However, laughter and beautiful music was calling from the upper floor. I was very surprised for the variety of events that our fellow Asian residents had prepared for us. Of course, the first stop was the beverages, and the Chinese beer which I grabbed was slightly stronger and bitter than US beer. Next stop was the ‘write your name (but please without making a mess!) in Chinese with Ink’ workshop.

I want to express my sincere thanks to Maggie for not turning me down when I asked her to write names for more than a few people.

Another tasty beverage, Tea, the greatest present of China to the rest of the world, was also served by our beautiful residents, who were in their national clothes. I can still taste the smoothly prepared Oolong tea made by Jessie (I may or may not have drunk more than 6 of those tiny shot glasses.)

It was a great night and surely has its place as one of the greatest memories at ISH. I want to convey my sincere thanks to everyone who gave time and energy for the night. 你太棒了!  非常感谢你! Have a great Spring, everyone!