The 142...

Today after church, we went to the mall to eat lunch and look for a birthday present. Chris's birthday present to be exact. So, Melissa, Chris (he accompanied us for lunch not to buy his own present), and I headed towards the Real. Don't say it like, 'just keeping it real'...say it like, 'ray-all'...i tend to say it like, 'ray-al (as in meet my friend al--i don't actually have any friends named al...just an example). Any who, you can tell I digress. So, we had to catch a bus and not just any bus, to be specific...we had to catch the 142. If you're gonna head anywhere with the 142, then you should know to get to the mall or the big grocery store from our house takes 45 minutes. It's a scenic route, which honestly I don't mind anymore...but you need to know the background. And they are supposed to run every 15 minutes, this is a lie. Maybe they run every half hour on a good day.(p.s. As I write this, I am eating leftover dolma from our visit yesterday. See the blog from this summer where we stuffed the peppers. That's dolma. Anyways, I throw that in to say, look how Turkish we are!)
So, on these three blessed days of the holiday season, our fair city has bestowed upon it's fine citizens endless free bus rides on city buses. The 142, she is a city bus. I've decided that if the 142 had a gender, (for example if I were learning a language like French, instead of Turkish) it would be feminine because the other day the bus changed route entirely--which general is unheard of despite that fact that, well, this is Turkey--and skipped an entire part of the route...thankfully not mine. She's got a mind of her own. So, today, the whole city, plus those who had come from the village making the most of their last no work holiday day to visit the big city (f.y.i. people in Istanbul call my city a village) decided to go to the mall today and of course everyone rides the bus. I promise you that I think some of the people at the mall today had waited the whole year for free bus day to go because it was SO crowded. But, let me tell you about crowded. I have never in my almost 10 months here been on a bus as crowded as the two I rode today. I was able to sit on one leg of the journey, not so lucky on the second leg home. Everyone is touching and everyone is hot and everyone is sweating and everyone is stinky. It's one of those days, when you just have to embrace the culture and remind yourself that you love living here. But, really, it was hilarious. Every time we'd come to the next bus stop, you just can't imagine how these people just kept packing in. A can of sardines comes to mind. And everyone kept laughing and talking about how crowded it was every time we passed a bursting bus or made a stop when, really, how were those people gonna get on? People sitting on people's laps in the seats. The aisles just bursting with faces and hands reaching out the windows or doors every time they opened just for fresh air. Literally, I thought the bus was going to tip multiple times on the way round hills and curves that normally she handles just fine even with standing room only. Today was different.
We all loaded on at the mall to go home and just as we were leaving, one man who hadn't been able to fit on our bus had realized that another 142 had pulled up right after ours left the station. As we drove by him busting at the seams getting on to his empty 142, he raised his fists triumphantly and actually laughed in our (the bus's) direction. He was a grown man. You have no idea what free bus day does to people around here. I'm laughing now thinking about it. We passed his bus about a half hour later and he was still on it and it was crowded. Tomorrow, I'll actually appreciate paying as I get on the bus.