Day 13-- Back to Istanbul

Hagia Sofia from the Golden Horn, Istanbul via Flickr

I have to apologize for not blogging lately. You'd think with my being in a foreign country that I'd have more than usual to share. Unfortunately, I've also been just too busy to have any time to write.

The day usually goes like this: I wake up around 7 to take a shower and to ensure there is hot water before the rest of my 13 housemates stir. I move extra slow in the morning, showering and doing my makeup, and then checking my email before piling into a large van around 9:00am. Once in the van, our driver, Koray, drives us girls (and two boys) all over Istanbul to castings. Castings, for those of you who don't know, are the modeling world's job interviews. We do multiple "job interviews" a day-- meeting a catalogue companies, magazine editors, photographers, etc. They're each looking for models for their job (or shoot), and we meet with them and show them our portfolio. The actual interview process only takes about five minutes a person, but getting from casting to casting in the sprawling city of Istanbul (which traverses both Europe and Asia) takes all day. I haven't been home before 10pm since I arrived, which means that I pass a whole day in a hot car with 10 or so other models. It's quite draining, believe it or not. (Think if you had to go to ten job interviews a day, every day).

I did end up booking two jobs last week which meant that I was excused a bit from the tedium of sitting in that van every day and going to castings. What's more, the jobs were in Izmir, a lovely town in Turkey that sits on the Aegean Sea. I spent five days there, shooting two different pajama catalogues.

I'd love to tell you more about it, and post pictures, but right now I am too tired. I'm hoping that I will have a bit of free time in the morning as our castings are starting a bit later tomorrow.

I do have several new roommates (I swear they keep coming in droves); here they are:

From Top Left to Right:
Sigrid from Estonia, Anne Mai from Estonia,
Gerli from Estonia, Laura from Germany
Junita from Lithuania, Viktoria from Russia
Dene from South Africa, Williams from Argentina

XOXO,