Istanbul, Day 6 (August 13th): Toilet Troubles

[parasitegirl]

Regret: Not going to Princes Island when I could have.

I had called Sema the evening before and said I was too tired to come out (when I’d called she told me about having computer problems and needing to wait for the guy to fix it) I planned to see Sema on the 13^th and we agreed on 6:00.

I had thought about going to the islands, because I’d mostly figured out how to do so and could have benefited from walking around on a quiet island with no cars…but the travel books that made getting there look easy didn’t make it very clear as to what time I could get back and I didn’t want to stand Sema up.

Instead of the islands, I woke up and tried my luck with the busses by myself. I wanted to see Kariye Muzesi (Chora Church) and more indulge my love of Byzantine iconography.

My book said I needed to take bus Nos 28 or 36KE from Eminonu and stop at Edirnekapi. Those bus numbers mean as little to me as they do to you. I went to Eminonu and walked over to the bus area…and found around 18 bus stands and many busses. I walked around and figured out where the numbers where on the busstops…and just missed 36KE. While waiting for the next one (29 mins? I couldn’t understand the sign) I kept seeing many other busses with Edirnekapi listed as one of the stops…I eventually screwed up my courage to hop on a random bus with Edernekapi listed as one of the stops on it. I suspect that Nos 28 or 36KE may have Edernikapi as their LAST stop and thus are mostly foolproof.

We passed the aquaducts and I wondered how far they were from the Grand Bazzar, as they had been one of the things I’d seen while utterly lost after my first trip to the Bazzar.

Busses only stop at stations if you ring buttons or if someone is waiting and there were no announcements about what the next station is, which is why busses are usually not a transportation method I bother with in foreign countries. I desperately hoped I would know Edirnikapi when I was coming up on it, not when I was passing it. I had a travel map of the area around Chora Church and when I passed an old

stadium that was on the map…I rung the buzzer and scurried out.

I found the church. I hadn’t beaten the crowds but the beauty of the artwork made up for that.

You can’t use your flash in Chora Church, to minimize ever so slightly the damage to the mosaics and frescos…but as the Dervish show had proved to me, travelers don’t know how to disable flashes or they don’t care. In Chora Church, unlike the Dervish Ceremony, when someone uses a flash in the church the guards yell “NO FLASH!”..which I am glad about, but it does impact the calmness of the place.

I had planned to walk to the Fenner ferry dock after the church and to see a few mosques along the way, but I was worn out. I realized that none of the streets I’d be walking on where major ones and that my chances of getting horribly lost were high. I took a bus back to Eminonu.

Well, I might not be getting out of the city…but that didn’t mean I couldn’t ride on boats! I had an Akbil! Ferries!!

At Eminonu I hopped on a ferry for the Asian side of Istanbul!

I enjoyed the short ride, taking pictures of my feet above the water and of the other passengers riding on in the seats ringing the ferry. There were indoor seats available, but they weren’t as scenic.

I am happy to report that this was a positive boating experience, like the boat tour in Cambodia (with Dean Mommy), or the one up the Mekong delta (traveling solo), and the many birding trips in Puerto Escondito (Dean again) and NOT like the negative boating experiences the Dean and I had in Okinawa or the river ride from Phenom Phen to Seam Reap.

On the Asian side I didn’t do much. It reminded me of how Warning-san and I walked too many places in Japan. Towards the end of our trip we ended up sitting on our asses, eating softserve, and watching a Samurai Vs. Ninja show in a Samurai theme park…because we just couldn’t walk to one more historic site. While writing this I talked to Dave Merrill, who is in Japan with his wife right now. He said that they have walked themselves into exhaustion seeing everything…they’ve reached that point. I’ll meet them tonight for dinner.

It was here that I finally went into my first mosque. Don’t ask me why I waited so long. I’d never been in a mosque (and I don’t come from a church-going family) I was apprehensive that I would do something offensive and wrong somehow. But I wrapped my headscarf on, took of my shoes, and walked into the quiet.

All mosques in Istanbul have the same red patterned carpet. Most of them have LED clocks displaying the various times for prayer (I think) and look out of place.

After I saw a few more mosques I went to a restaurant and gorged myself on some tasty menemen and fanta.

Then I caught a ferry to Kabatas…all the while listening to an exhausted American family bicker.

I walked to the palace near Kabatas and went through security. I passed through a metal detector as my bag was x-rayed 

“Where is the knife?” the guard asked.

“Uhhh…there is no knife?”

And he let me through.

 

I could only walk around the outside of the palace, because it’s closed on Wednesdays. Nothing to see here…move on.

And I did, up to Bella’s 

The lady herself was out (out of the country?) but I tried on my items and took a few pictures of the cats. This was when I asked one of the assistants how many cats were at Bella (as one cat in particular was loving up on me. She held up both hands and asked in a rising inflection. “10? Maybe 10? Maybe more?”

I had to pay in a mixture of Euros and Lira…as Princess had robbed me of some of the Euros set aside for Bella and the other Euros were for the hotel. It was a hassle, as they had to call for the most recent rates, but they obliged. They brought out one of those adhesive lint rolls and rolled and rolled me to pull all the cat hairs off before I exited. 

I carried my large Bella bag out. A woman on the street looked down at it, saw all the bling inside (or the logo and print that explains “dance costumes” and looked up at me and smiled.

I went back to my hotel to survey my riches and take a shower and nap so I’d be ready for Sema. I’d been told that the place would be sprayed for bugs around 2-3. I got back at 3 only to find that we had to wait until 4 to get in. I professed my inability to walk another step and Hussein and Suleyman got me a chair to sit in. We waited out front and joked

You can’t continue to pretend not to be a belly dancer when you have a bag full of bling. Jokes were exchanged, I was treated to the usual men making clumsy bellydancing gestures. I gave as good as I got. I just wanted to sleep. The cleaning guy went in to crack the windows.

“If I go in, will I die?”

“Nope! But not yet.”

(whiiiine)

“We guarantee you a long life, you will not die.”

“You’re just saying that…”

“No, we mean it! Long life! We want you to live because…”

“because I haven’t paid for my room yet?”

“YES!”

 

At 4:00 I went in, put my bling on the bed. I went to the lobby (ok, desk in front room) and asked Suleyman to dial a number for me, one Sema had texted me as her home phone (I couldn’t call mobiles from my hotel)...but he tried it and told me it was not a home, it was a taxsım (bar). Oh, well. I took a shower, put out clean clothing, set my alarm for 5:30 and slipped under the cover for a nap.

At 4:30 Suleyman knocked on my door and said my friend was on the phone. I pulled on clothing and went into the lobby.

“You said 6! 6!”

“Second house! Beyazit!”

“What?”

“You meet in 15 minutes, Beyazit. Grand Bazzar. I on bus. “

“Wait! I don’t understand you!”

“ask hotel man, byebye.”

International charges be damned…I used my iPhone to call her.

“Sema, I don’t understand”

“Yes, sweetie.”

(click)

 

Further calls were not answered. I would later be told that she’d been on a bus and the driver had been yelling at her for using the phone, so she just hung-up.

I ran to my room. I threw my allergy meds and things into a bag and husseled out to the tramway station…dashing over the obstacle of pick-up artists, restaurant owners, and carpet men.

…by the way, men and women talked to me as if carpet men were low on the totem pole:“I promise I am not a carpet man” “I will not sell you carpets” “Watch out for the carpetmen.

I was confused and frustrated by the time I got to Beyazit.At this point the exhaustion, the slight culture shock, the worries about how much cash I had left, and more was hitting me.

I let a lot of that fade away when Sema showed up at the station and took my arm…but not all of it. We started to walk. We stopped near a university where there’d been a terrorist bombing a few years back, there was a small police presence there.

I assume terrorist fears are why the Istanbul metro stations have very shallow trash…you can’t really call them bins, they are more like deep trays. You can see everything in them and they are cleaned very regularly. Japan dealt with fears that someone would put a bomb in a station trash by putting large windows on the side of the bins and using clear bags (I remember the change-over after 9/11, and during the G8 summit the trashbins were removed altogether) In Istanbul, there was always a security guard near the entrance ticket gates in the below-ground metro.

At the university Sema insisted on taking my picture with her camera. All pictures of me on vacation alone are taken by people I can’t say no to. I don’t like being photographed. She bought me corn and took a series of pictures and then made the police officer take pictures of the two of us. With our corn we walked some more.

It was hard to support Sema (she told me that the light was back on in apartment 1, but that when she’s put in her contacts they’d hurt too much, so…) shoulder my bag and eat my corn. At one point I managed a disgusting corn-filled sneeze, but Sema didn’t notice.

Sema told me how the neighborhood had changed and used to be dangerous. She pointed to a building and told me she’d gotten married there, her first time, when it was a new and exciting building.

We walked through a park and she told me her father used to bring her here as a child…and how they’d been poor and that a trip to a park was great point of joy, but that she now gets nervous in parks…how men call to her (I think she implied they call to her as one would to a prostitute, because of her long hair?) and she doesn’t like to walk through them alone. Then she laughed and wondered what those men think of her right now, as we hold hands. They probably think you are my girlfriend, she giggled.

We walked under the arches of the aquaducts.

She was taking me to the inexpensive stores for buying music/instruments and the store she likes to buy zills from. Every time she brings zills to Japan they sell out quickly. As I have become a zilldork, I was interested, but warned her I didn’t have much money left. She thought the zills would be 20-25 lira.

I always feel slightly at home in instrument stores…although I also know I don’t belong. The world of instruments is not mine, it is my father’s.

Which is why I found myself wondering “What the hell? Banjos?” and “Eh? Dulcimer?” but a quick look-over told me these weren’t the banjos and dulcimers of my youth. These were cumbus and kemenche.

Sema started asking questions at the front counter. It turned out that they had the zills she uses, but not the size. There were some smaller “Tinkerzill” sized zills ( but heavier that minizills/tinker zills) and some large ones…but she kept asking about the middle size. All out. She lit a cigarette and made them call their other store. I tried the big zills, but they were larger and heavier than my two-holled Zildijans. They gave Sema the phone and she gave it back because the line was dead. They called again.

“For you and for Japan. I bring gifts with zills. Japan girls always buy…if I can’t bring zills? What? Scarf. Scarf light and small.” (Sema was given too many bottles of sake and champagne last time in Japan and was charged a heafty fee for an over-weight bag on the plane…so she thinks about packing weight a great deal. We talked about weight and Bella prices earlier because she’ll be teaching in Sweden soon and wants to sell some used costumes. She knew Japan would be the wrong place to try, due to size issues).

In case you are wondering, the store is Zeynel Abdin Cumbus and one location (which I later went to) is on Prof. Kzim Ismail Gurkan Cad., Ortaklar han, 12  34110 Cagaloglu. The website on their card (www.cumbusmusic.com ) has expired but they are still around. My impression of being overwhelmed by banjos has turned out not to be a mental exaggeration. The shop is owned by the family that invented the cumbus and they are the only people who make cumbus(es?)

This is the store Sema took me to (the other store)

http://tribes.tribe.net/cumbus/photos/7164454c-7b9d-4cf9-ba7f-2a67688d176d

No medium sized zills, couldn’t reach the other store…next shipment in September.

Damn.

We then went to catch a bus to Sema’s other place. She said that the Japanese girl who would be doing homestay with her would come tomorrow at 1 or 2am and that she planned to clean all tomorrow to get ready. I wasn’t sure if we’d go out to hear music, do more dance lessons, or what…but she did point at a tree and say “those, how you say?” “Maple?” “We wrap food in, for the Japanese.”

Sema had to look at each bus that stopped to find one that said Edernikapi because she couldn’t read without contacts.

Edernikapi! I could do this! I went to Edernikapi in the morning! And thank goodness, because otherwise I think I would have been trying to pronounce things on the busses and Sema would have kept saying “No! You no understand me! We don’t want!”

I pressed my Akbil for her, I now knew what I was doing! AKBIL AKBIL!

Her second apartment is across the way from the old stadium from the morning.

I KNEW WHERE I WAS!

Sema was impressed, it seems that much of her providing home stay for Japanese and Asian girls involves finding them when they get lost and can’t find their way home.

We stopped at another cellphone store. They didn’t have what Sema needed. It seems that part of the problem is that the replace model she wanted for her phone wasn’t in stock and they kept making her take a pink version of the phone. Sema was having none of the pink. She asked me if I would settle for pink and I agreed, no. This was a lie. I would probably take the pink, but that’s because I’m more of an ironic hipster than Sema. She’s not about ironic statements.

We stopped at a street cart with fish. There were two choices of fish. I know nothing about fish species and even less when presented with Turkish fish names. Sema chose four of one kind and paid…I watched the fish being scaled.

“You want head?” Sema asked me “I don’t like head. Some people eat head.” she added.

“No head!” I emphatically replied.

I watched the fishes get beheaded. I watched those heads dropping into a Styrofoam box of heads and guts and scales. I eat fish and seafood nowadays, I’m not as vegetarian as I used to be, but it’s still an infrequent thing for me…I don’t usually watch the process. I took a picture of a cat watching the scene with keen interest.

We stopped at a small store for fresh dough, yogurt, and cheese. My kind of place.

And then we stopped at a small grocery store around the corner from her apartment. It was clear she was well-known and liked here…the men asked her if I was doing homestay with her, was I a student, what my name was.

She introduced me as Okshan and they smiled actively at me and gave me olives as she shopped.

“Everybody like you, Okshan.” Sema said. “You remember the man at fish sandwich shop? After you go home he call and ask if you with me and if he can come.”

Men outside the tourist areas eyed me, but didn’t talk to me. When I was with Sema, men gave me big, goofy smiles. I'm down with goofy smiles.

We walked into her apartment.

My instinct is to take my shoes off when I enter and apartment…but this was the apartment before cleaning. Sema made me put on sturdy shoes, for fear I’d step on something.  She gave me the tour and kept asking if I thought it was worth what she charges Japanese girls to stay with her. I am not sure I remember what she charges.

Would I do homestay with Sema?

I don’t know. Homestay is always a risk. It involves giving up control over what you can and can’t do sometimes. I think doing a homestay with Sema is a good option if you are female (or females) traveling alone in Istanbul for the first time and don’t have a lot of experience traveling. For all my confusion about how I feel about Sema and the fact that she can be mercurial and hard to understand, I think she tries very hard to talk care of the girls who stay with her. When I met her Japanese homestay girls on my last evening, she made me translate a lot about where was safe, what things you have to watch out for, things that have happened to girls who were not careful, and info on ramadam. Sema can bring solo females to events/places/areas in Istanbul you couldn’t/wouldn’t go to alone, need Turkish for or wouldn’t know about. Sema fights to make sure you are getting the low prices you deserve when it comes to what you want to buy and see. I know Miho in Japan does a yearly homestay with Sema because she can also bring her husband and daughter along and know that her lack of English won’t mean that she’ll get taken advantage of.

I want to travel with someone next time I go to Istanbul, but if that is not possible I know I can stay with Sema. She’s also indicated that I’m the sort of girl she wouldn’t worry about too much. Because Sema smokes, doing a homestay might not be a good option for me and my sensitive lungs and allergies. Also, because I think I am treated to a more casual version of Sema than someone who is purely her student or homestay ward, I think I would have to set boundries and be very firm about pursuing time with other teachers and people sometimes.

But, on that evening I wasn’t feeling so generous. I was worn out, in some pain, and starting to worry about my cash reserves (because I can’t use my bank card in Istanbul)…I was at her place in the “before” stages and couldn’t imagine it after a day of cleaning (although I’ve since seen pictures on blogs. It isn’t grand but it is homey and clean in those pictures) but I’m getting ahead of my meltdown.

 Sema sat down in a chair, took off her shirt and pants…and sighed and smoked. She then pulled on more casual clothing. She stood up and said “Internet Café” and we walked to the living room where she set up her laptop and told me to catch up on emails and things while she cooked.

“Thıs computer, ın the ınternet cafe that ıs Sema's lıvıngroom ın her second house, ıs tempermental. It's also very smoky ın here. She ıs cookıng for me. Some Japanese gırl ıs comeıng ın late tomorrow nıght and stayıng here...I wıll meet up wıth them on Saturday nıght and maybe, just maybe, go see some bellydance whıle I help that poor gırl wıth the language ıssues. I thınk after dınner tonıght comes a mıxture of lessons, drınkıng, and bars. Tomorrow my lessons wıth Ahmet starts.”

I then checked my Facebook and found a message in my Inbox from Karim Nagi. He wrote because he wants to order two monster bags and because he needed some lowdown on the Tokyo scene. I’d given him the contact info for a possible sponsor to bring him over to Japan around the time he’ll be in Hong Kong. I reassured him on a few points.

I also caught him up briefly on my travels:

“Istanbul ıs teh wrong place for a sıngle female traveler...Men act lıke they are wolves and I'm wearıng mutton dresses.”

Sema’s brother came home. Sema is the younger of the two and I have no idea what he does, but I sense Sema is the one who takes care of him. I’d met him at the first apartment. He seems unfazed by me, I am just one of the many girls in and out of here I guess. He will stay in the Bestikas apartment while Sema hosts a homestay in this one.

On the wall there is a picture of the whole family when Sema was just a little girl. I comment on it at some point and Sema pointed out her pose. It’s a coy pose, with one finger near her mouth. It shows, she says, how much she wanted to be a dancer. How she used to watch films of Indian dancers as a kid and imitate it. Here did put one finger up near her mouth (her pinkie also outstretched) and does a little headslide to illustrate the dancers in the films she watched.

I sat down, with her brother, to be fed. There was fried fish, a Turkish salad, and bread to mop up any juices left over. It was good. When I thought I was full, Sema made me eat more. She was right. I drank copious amounts of lemonade. Japan doesn’t have real lemonade, it has lemon drinks.

After this I briefly excused myself to use the bathroom.

When I pulled the knob on top of the toilet…nothing. No water flowing. I tried again…nothing.

Oh, the stresses of toilet issues and how they impact your vacation. We never forget those moments.

I tried. I went to the sink room and got some water to pour in the bowl to flush things down a bit. At least it was just urine and the toilet isn’t white, I thought. I went back to the table in the living room.

“Oh, Sema…the toilet”

“Don’t work. Tomorrow get fixed.”

These are the things I would have liked knowing earlier. Sema told me it would be fixed before the homestay girl. She might be at greater risk of toilet issues than the average Turk, because it turns out that many of her homestay girls are unaware, or forget, you are not supposed to flush toilet paper down Turkish toilets. She told me about the first time Akiko stayed with her and she had to confront her because when Akiko asked for more toilet paper, Sema same the trash bin in the bathroom was empty…and a story which involved so much violent overflowing that towels had to be sacrificed.

Her brother headed out to the other apartment.

We ate more. Sema said I looked sleepy. I was. She told me to relax on the couch because she has cleaning to do…and later we cook. Relax time.

I fell asleep almost the moment I laydown on the couch. I heard Sema tiptoe in and I felt her cover me with a sheet. Sweet. I don’t know where we would go later. I was asleep.

About an hour later I woke up, groggy. I used the toilet…with trepidation as someone had defecated in it. I tried to flush it by pouring water. The water level didn’t rise, so it was flushing a little, but the turds remained.

Shit. Literally.

I looked into one of the narrow bedrooms. Sema was also tired. She lay sprawled out on a full slip. I knew she had things she wanted to get done that night, so I say on the end of her bed and whispered, “Sema?”

She fluttered awake and sat up beside me. “I was tired” she admitted.

“Me too.”

She smiled, kindly, and kissed my shoulder as a mother might.

“Okshan, We make the dolma” she said.

“ Yes, we make the dolma now.”

We stumbled to the kitchen. She unpacked the canned leaves, explaining that it takes a long time to marinate fresh leaves. She rinsed and rinsed the leaves. She showed me the pot full of rice, oils, and spices, explaining that anything that didn’t go into a leaf would be used to stuff peppers with tomorrow. She also mixed up eggs, yogurt, and cheese, careful not to ash into the bowl. She brought it all out to the table, which I assumed had been washed between mealtime and dolma-making.

Over the next hour she showed me how to stuff the leaves and roll them, which we did while watching tv and talking. After a few corrections, I was rolling well. We piled the stuffed leaves into a pot. Then she brought out the pastry dough. We’d be filling that with the cheese, yogurt, and egg mixture and she’d fry it later. I brushed off ash from my pastry and we rolled and talked about the music on tv and things.

Making these two items is part of the homestay experience. Sema feeds you. She stocks up before you come, pre-makes a few staples because she knows her ability to cook will depend on that day (or night’s schedule) and towards the end of your stay you learn to do what I was doing, as she stocks up for the next girl. In the NHK documentary of her, there will be a scene of her teaching a Japanese idol singer how to do this.

I noticed I’d gotten some oils on my skirt while rolling food. Sema insisted on washing my skirt and tanktop. She brought out a cotton skirt (that some unnamed homestay girl had left behind) The cotton was a little on the sheer side, but good enough for Sema’s. I started to realize we weren’t going out. I was reluctant to part with my tanktop but she gave me a large shirt.

It was getting late. Sema said it was too late for me to go back to my hotel. I didn’t think so, because the busses where still running. At the time I thought she just wanted to keep me around because she was lonely. In retrospect, who is to say she wasn’t just more aware of how safe neighborhoods are (and aren’t) and at what time a girl shouldn’t be headed home alone.

She gave me a pair of sleep shorts to go with my shirt. I looked pretty foolish by this point. “Do you think this is ok for homestay?” she asked, gesturing to her place. I couldn’t imagine it clean and I didn’t know what to say “…the toilet is a problem, I think….” She once more said it would be fixed tomorrow. Her brother had called someone. She tucked me into one of the beds and said she’d be up for a while cleaning.

Sema has very clear ideas about how people should sleep. She turned me on my side and shoved a large, square pillow between my knees to reduce the risk of spider veins/bloodclots/something. When she left, I rearranged myself and my pillows.

I felt very alone and helpless. I wasn’t sure if my cash would hold up, I still had this nagging feeling like I wasn’t seeing enough dance and music…I hurt from the private lesson and all the walking…I fell into a fitful sleep.

Then the phone rang. 2am? 3? It was a call from a girl at the airport. Indeed. 2am on the 14^th…NOW. Sema called to me and explained the mix up…and ran out to catch a cab.

I thought about how I feel after a 12 hour flight after airport waiting and pick-up confusion in a foreign country…and how much worse that would be if I was taken to an uncleaned apartment with floating toilet turds. My worst travel toilet story features 22 hours on planes, confusion pick-up in Paris (least favorite Airport ever), feeling ill, relieving my (by then) very troubled bowels into a toilet…that turned out not to flush.

As soon as Sema was gone I flew out of bed and started filling up BUCKETS with water.

I will flush that turd. I will!

The toilet didn’t overflow…but the water just seemed to partly dissolve the feces.

A girl from the outskirts of Japan, of my current country, should not have to deal with this. FLUSH, TURKISH TURD, FLUSH!

After 4 buckets it seemed to be getting better…and suddenly the bowl was clean.

Wide awake, I opened the tank to see if I could fix the toilet. A toilet brush had been jammed under the floater. I wondered if Sema’s brother might have…somehow…accidently shoved it in the tank and forgotten.AHA! I thought, and pulled the brush out. The tank filled with water…all was good….and it kept fillinf and flushing the tank. I realized that the stopped wasn’t stopping the water…so the tank never filled up enough to float the floater and stop the water…thus the brush. Defeated, I jammed the toilet brush back in.

The floater popped off the floater arm…I shoved it back on. and put the lid back over everything.

All was quiet.

Exhausted and on the verge of cracking up, I logged on my journal and posted a private post about my shit-related stress. I checked my Facebook and found a reply mail from Karim. In his reply there was a warning about Turkish men

”Be carefull, please. They even tried to famboozle me. But dont let it ruin your time there. Its a great country.”

And suddenly my fingers were typing about the turd and the toilet…and the fact Turkish men couldn’t be much worse than the Turkish restaurant owner I’d had a bad encounter with in Tokyo (which resulted in us pulling all the dancers out for safety reasons.)

I fell back asleep until I heard voices. Once more I jumped from bed. The good news was that the “Japanese Girl” turned out to be two Japanese girls. Travel stresses are better shared. I popped out of the room and started speaking in quick Japanese.

”Welcome,
You're gonna want some warning about the toilet. It is broken and should be fixed today. To make it flush pour lots of water into it. You can't flush toilet paper down it, but that's normal for Istanbul. Put toilet paper the trash...I'm Ozma, but she will call me Okşan, I am staying in a hotel. I can help you a little.”

They were, needless to say, surprised by the sleepy white girl Japanese.

Sema then saıd 'Toilet ok. I fixed it!' but I knew she was taking the lack of turds to be a sign of toilet healing. As I went to sleep I could hear her pee…I could hear her open the tank and do what she thought would fix it. So she, like me, removed the scrub brush and heard the water filling and thought she'd fixed it. I heard the water running for about half and hour before I heard her open the tank and jam the brush back in...as I had. As I fell asleep I wondered if the floater broke off in her hand as well...