chess games

hey everyone!!! i write to you from a little internet cafe in kas, in southern turkey on the aegean coast.

i left istanbul on saturday night by hopping on a bus to fethiye. i'm all by myself, and this trip is definitely a leap of faith on my part, having no experience truly traveling alone. i was determined, though, as previous blogposts have expounded on, to get to this coast before summer weather expired. SOOO i got to fethiye on sunday morning with the plan of sort of lazing around for a few days and then taking one of these "blue cruises" to olympos on tuesday. however, once i got to my hostel in fethiye (which was an adventure in itself), tuna (the owner of the hostel) made some calls and discovered that the "company of choice" was booked until thursday...UNLESS i got on a cruise THAT DAY. since i was totally planless, i was just like, ok sure whaever, hahaha. so in 10 minutes there was someone there to pick me up for this cruise. got onto the boat and i've been "cruisin" (hahaha) ever since! *note: i'm not talking about like a cruiseline princess/celebrity cruise or wahtever - this is a nice little boat that fits about 15 ppl.

some shots of my uber surreal life from the boat:

near oludeniz:

where we docked for night one:

today's first stop with a turtle sighting (that i couldnt get a picture of)!

a rare picture of me in the pristine waters of the southern aegean:

and to, perhaps belatedly, get to the title of this post. somehow chess has come back into my life over the past week. my friend from tomer, a saudi named mohammed, has been urging me to play chess with him for a while and despite my incredible insecurities i caved on thursday evening. we sat at haciagolu, ate lahmacun and pulled out his chess board. the reason i've been SOOO hesitant to play chess is because, well, i dont have any moves! i dont remember any of the strategies, playing styles or anything that my dad taught me years ago...and without a long-term plan or any kind of idea about how to tackle the game, i dont even want to start.

my life is sort of like this. i'm pretty obsessed with long-term plans, big picture life maps, etc. but this game of chess reminded me that long term plans are crap. things evolve, change, and half our lives we dont really have control over. how my opponent moved shaped what my choices needed to be, what life gives me is what i need to fumble or deal with the best i can. turned out that i could hold my own against mohammed (and my latest chess partner stanislas - a russian/kazak/german on my cruise). just need to trust myself, take a leap of faith even when i dont have a long term plan. just take things one step at a time. having realized that this is basically the theme of my little vacation to the turquoise coast, i thought i just had to share it with you. so yeap there it is! learning life lessons while floating around on the gorgeous southwestern coast in turkey, missing all of you and hoping to hear from you soon.