It's Been One Month Today

I can't believe I've already been here for a month. Never in my life have I been away from home for a full four weeks. It feels very strange. I have many memories of home, and I'm still having very vivid dreams about America. Almost every morning, I wake up and have to remember that I'm actually in Turkey, and for a whole, entire year. I have a recurring dream in which, having been in Turkey for a week or two, I then find myself back in the U.S. for a pleasant week, after which, I know in the dream, I will return to Turkey. This visit usually includes a spirited reunion with all of my cousins, a jaunt to downtown Madison (where I always go to CVS, for some reason? I think it's because I've been craving a little shopping simplicity after living in this wild urban marketplace), and a trip down to my house in Buffalo Bay. I think that the strange context--being aware of my life in Turkey, but not actually in it--comes from the still-surreal feeling that I will be here for a whole year. Or at least nine more months. It freaks me out sometimes to know that I can't just visit, can't see anyone from home, can't talk to anyone in person or hug them or anything, no matter how much I really want to. I mean, coming back early is option, but not really. Not only would it be hugely expensive, it would be hurtful to my host families, a letdown for both Rotary Clubs, an outrage to my parents, and a major personal failure for me. I want this exchange! I know that the whole thing, the full year, is the real experience, homesickness and all. Even when I wonder what I've done, why I'm not enjoying my simple senior year back home, I remind myself that being here is 100% my deal. I thought it up, made it happen, it was my choice. Obviously, the day-to-day reality of living in Ankara, Turkey is very different than the world-wind montage I have vaguely envisioned. But I'm really appreciating it so far. I think this last train of consideration makes me sounds really homesick and feeling trapped, but I'm not at all. I feel great, most days. I wanted to give you an idea of the bizarre psychological situation that I've found myself in--or rather--that I've chosen.

School is going well. Even though I don't do much real school work, I have a little routine that is pretty productive. For the classes where I can't understand anything (everything besides English and math) I do one of about three things. Sometimes, I read The Ottoman Centuries: The Rise and Fall of the Turkish Empire, a great book by Lord Alfred Kinross, who also wrote a really good biography of Ataturk, of which I read the first third or so. I am reading this pretty carefully, underlining, etc., as it is basically my stand-in for a whole host of actual Turkish history classes. Also, at the request of my teacher, I recently ordered, through my mother back home, a 19th and 20th c. Turkish revolutionary history book, along with a book of conjugated Turkish verbs. Besides read, I write a lot of postcards. I'm sorry I haven't sent any out yet, but it's hard to get a ride to the post office, and I feel weird asking my host-dad to post a huge stack of 35 or so cards! I think I'll work on this tomorrow, as we are going down to get my residency permit. I also sometimes work on translating the two 2nd graders' Turkish workbooks I got, but it's tricky. There are a lot of idioms in the little poems and a second grader really does know a lot of vocabulary. Other than that, I doodle sometimes. It's not to bad really. There are nice little breaks every forty-five minutes, and because I'm not rushing through some huge school to get to my next class, they feel very leisurely. Normally, kids just wander to the canteen or the bathroom or hangout by the window or the hall between the two 11th grade classrooms and the two 12th grade classrooms. It's nice. I have a friendly report going with most of the kids in my grade and I know a few in the grades above and below, too. I've been invited to a barbecue, to the movies, and to generally hangout. I am liked, as far as I can tell, by most of the student body, the teachers, and the administrators. So things are going well!

In both math classes, I really do pay attention, as I am basically learning by watching the examples and doing them myself. At this school, and, I guess, in many schools in Turkey, they don't use calculators. All of the kids, therefore, are frighteningly capable of long-division and instant factoring. It's hard to keep up, even though I have already learned a good portion of the material at some point in high school.

I've realized, especially upon my move, that what I thought life would be like here is really nothing like the reality. Of course. At my last house, it was a little more, hmm, "Turkish-feeling." I was with an older couple, no kids, living in an apartment in a crowded, dusty part of Ankara-proper. They spoke no English, we have tea every night, I cooked a ton of fresh Turkish food, and I went to a lot of bazaars and rode a lot of mini-buses. But now, I'm sort of out in the suburbs, a little, by about twenty minutes. The whole ride in, you can see all the hills, the apartments, and most of the full city, so it doesn't feel as remote as, say, Madison to New Haven. But it's certainly not bustling. I have a housekeeper to do my laundry and make my bed, I don't really cook any of my own food, and I am living in a very modern, large house, certainly newer than my one in Connecticut, although with less of a view. We have a manicured backyard and a hammock in one of the few overhung timber and stone patios, which I had the pleasure of falling asleep in this afternoon, after reading a little Updike (who is really the perfect author to help me escape back into Americana). We have a huge wrought-iron, remote controlled gate with a big iron, cursive "A" on it (for Atilla) and a driver from my host-father's work to take us places. Many days, Çınar and Söğüt (chee-NARR and SO-oot) my brother and sister, have piano lessons, which can be heard though out the house. During Çınar's, especially, it sounds like I am a few rooms down from an opera, as he and his teacher often sing. A few songs I usually here are the theme from Amelie, Moon River, and Strangers in the Night, which is always sung. Beautiful. I'm certainly not "roughing-it." I guess what I'm trying to demonstrate is that, contrary to the wild and antiquated and decidedly Middle Eastern Ankara that a part of me was expecting, I've found myself in the Turkish rendition of the Sound of Music. It's like I'm Julie Andrews in Austria if the holocaust hadn't ruined everything.

It's certainly one sort of Turkish experience. I'll let you know how the rest unfolds.

Love from Afar,

Natalie

Details

So, now I finally have time for a longer post.

Today was the last day of my first week of school! It went really well. The school, like I mentioned, is very small. It goes from kindergarten to 12th grade, and all the kids are in one big sprawling building. It is a nice building, but is not incredibly modern. The walls are all different shades of light green and light blue and light pink. The two rooms I spend most of my time in are a light shade of lime green with lavender shades and I think some kind of pink trim maybe. There are no wall decorations in the classrooms, besides the obligatory three framed Ataturk tributes. This is because, rather than the students rotating classes every hour and going to totally new mixtures and new rooms, we stay together and the teachers rotate among us. So, as no teacher has his or her own room as a "nest," so to speak, they are pretty bare. Just desks and whiteboards. Staying together as a class in one classroom is the norm throughout Turkey, not just in schools as small as mine. For the first five or six years of school, you don't even change classes from year to year! It's the same 20 or so kids, in the same class, all day, for sometimes even seven years. Then, in secondary school, they switch groups once a year. Not until college are there different classes with different kids throughout the day. Actually, college is very different, too. Almost always, kids live at home for their entire college careers, actually taking a school bus to the campus everyday. It's also much cheaper to go to college in Turkey, only about 10,000 TL a year, or something like $6,000. College is also the first time Turkish kids don't have to wear uniforms!

Speaking of which, the uniforms have not been nearly so bad as I feared (of course). They are not very strict about the code, so almost everyone wears some color of Converse sneaker or other non-black, non-dress shoe. I have continued to wear my black leather lace-ups because I think they're snazzy. Also, you can wear different cardigans or sweaters over your white collared shirt, and luckily, I brought a million cardigans. In fact, I have even seen kids in just plain old white t-shirts. It seems that as long as your shirt's white, your pants are black, and you look somewhat tidy, you're fine. I even wore my pair of very dark blue slim-leg jeans today. No problem.

Also, I have noticed that most girls don't use hair bands. They have them, but instead, almost everyone uses those big plastic jaw-type clips to put their hair into some kind of half-up deal. I haven't really seen any girls with buns, ratty or otherwise. My host sister was sort of surprised when she came back into the room a few seconds after I had thrown my hair up into a big bun on top of my head. She was like, "When did you do this to your hair?!" I told her I had done it just then. She was very mildly in awe. I don't know. Buns just aren't a thing.

Note: My apologies to male-type readers for this last dissertation.

Anyways.

I don't know if I mentioned, but I'm actually in 11th grade again here. Ugghhh. In America, 11th grade is the tough year and 12th is really the year to slack off and have fun. It's the total opposite here. Junior year is sort of your last fun year before you have to worry about THE Exam. So that's good. But I'm still sort of missing the sense of seniority. Anyways, at the end of a young Turk's senior year, he or she has to take this HUGE exam, a culmination of everything they've learned in their whole high school career. And it's no SAT--it's really difficult. So, in March, every senior is excused by the government from all of the rest of their classes/school for the rest of that year so that they can go take 7 day per week test prep classes outside of school. Many of them actually start these in their Junior, sometimes even Sophomore years. And if they can manage it, a lot of them get medical excuses so they can get out of school in the January of their Senior year. The reason this test is so important is its impact on college. It's not like in the U.S., where the SATs are just another component in a long, cushy, individualized application. In Turkey, you're exact numerical score on this test will determine with terrifying finality your eligibility to attend entire brackets of schools. If you don't get the score, you can't go. That's it. Apparently kids have breakdown and all of these health issues and stress related problems for whole months before the exam. It's insane. So, to avoid losing my entire set of classmates to mental health issues and test prep classes, I'm put with the Juniors. But it's really fine. They don't feel particularly younger, and everyone is really friendly.

I have been feeling pretty homesick lately, especially today. I keep pining for a somewhat fabricated New England-y autumn experience, especially as it's still incredible hot and somewhat tree-less here, even in late September. At least nights are cold. Oh, I also saw Resident Evil 3D today with my host brother, while my host mom and sister went to see some other movie. It was certainly a form of entertainment, but really not my cup of çai, so to speak. It was gory and intense and super loud and disorienting. Not what I needed when I was feeling like a sleepy, homesick little kid away from home.

Luckily, the shock of this cinematic experience was very much balanced out by a great phone conversation with my mom, Aunt Chris, Grandma Betty, and little cousin Lilah in Cleveland, followed later in the evening with a skype chat with a few of my friends and with my Grandma Bobbie up at Lake Erie, who recently got her first computer! It was really, really unbelievably nice to talk to everyone. I miss everywhere and everything and everyone.

I was going to write more, but, like I said I spent a lot of time skyping.

Even though I sound sort of sad in this post, everything is really okay. Homesickness is normal, as I am acutely aware. I hope it doesn't last too long. We'll see.

Love Always,

Natalie

The Weekend and Monday and Moving

Ah, I'm sorry that this will also be short.

I had an incredible weekend. The other 12 inbound exchange students are very wonderful and we had a great time. More about this later, I hope.

I am now living in my second host family's home. It is huge and beautiful and full of all kinds of art, especially tribal, carved wood. They have a big veggie garden and a lot of nice, green grass! I've missed having a lawn. My newest mom, Aylin, is a great cook too, and we have been having very good dinners. For breakfast, she laid out really good cut-fruit and cereal combos with fresh-squeezed oj for everyone. Normally I don't like breakfast, but it was really good.

Sogut (pronounced SO-oot) is really adorable and sweet and LOVES Harry Potter. She has all the games and is up to the fifth book and has movies 1-4. She likes to chat about which characters are her favorites and can tell you which chapters she liked or didn't based on where we are in the movie. We watched the first one on a little dvd player today after school and she and I ate some fresh fruit with melted hazelnut chocolate for a snack. Cinar (CHEE-narr), my older brother, is really nice. The two of them are both AMAZING piano players, and like to play for fun after school. Cinar has this beautiful sonata I recognized but didn't quite know memorized and they've both been in a ton of recitals all around Ankara. The play bills are framed around the house!

The husband and wife who live here and work for the family are really nice. I came home and all of the clothes from the trip that I had tossed into the cupboard to put away after school today were already hung up and folded, and my bed was fully made back up. It was really nice, but I sort of have mixed feelings about this whole "having help" thing. They are from Uzbekistan, and when I asked, the woman (whose name is hard for me to remember) has FOUR kids, aged from late twenties to only fifteen, along with one grandchild. They're so far from her!

My first day of school went pretty smoothly and my classmates are very nice and helpful. No one speaks very good English, but enough of the students and one teacher have enough knowledge of it to help me get around and tell me what's up. The school is k-12, I believe, and there are only two classes per grade. My own class has only 7 kids, including me, and the other class has about 12. Very small. The buses here are like tiny, individual coach buses, with the nice, upholstered seats. Since Ankara is so crazy and spread out, they can't use the huge yellow ones we have, I guess. It took nearly the whole bus to help the driver find my address, as there are millions of these little gated villa communities on the outskirts of the city.

The school is nice, the lunch was actually good, and I am tired but happy.

I hope that my next posts will be more detailed, but now, I want to read some Updike and go to sleep!

Love,

Natalya

Ch-ch-ch-changes...

I need to go to bed. I wanted to inform you, sweet reader, of the fact that I got all of my school uniform stuff today (details of horrifying fabrics/cuts to follow) and also a pair of school shoes, which I got with anne. Ehhhhh. Aylin took me to the school uniform store to get everything. Aylin and her husband Korhan are the family I'm moving in with next, starting Sunday. They are very nice. We went straight from the really beautiful, modern office of the Ankara Rotary Club president, where a bunch of the wives/female members were having a group birthday party. They had an amazing cake, covered in sugar orchids and flowers and insects. It was vanilla with tropical fruit and cream. Yum.

Tomorrow, I am going to a weekend orientation (a little late) for me and all of the other inbound Rotary Youth Exchange kids. Their visas didn't process as smoothly as mine, so they're all just arriving, as I understand it. It's at a hotel. Hopefully it will be very fun!

I have my first day of school on Monday! I will meet my class (kids in Turkey don't switch classes until college) and my teachers. I am excited and scared.

I had a very fun farewell game of Okey with Nesren and Gulia, our neighbors. They were very sweet. Nesren gave me a really nice pair of earrings and Gulia gave me a really great necklace she had made! It was so sad saying goodbye to everyone. I'm not ready to leave anne and baba, I think!

I need to go finish packing up!

Love,

Natalya

Tourists' Delight

This post will be brief, but hopefully I will write more tomorrow!

Ilke picked anne and me up at home and took us to the tiny old part of the city. It was really what I had imagined all of Turkey was going to look like. There were cobbled streets and steep hills and copper vendors and scarves and rugs and pipes and jewelry. There was a big broken down old citadel at the top made out of even older scraps of Roman ruins. You could see bits and pieces of old carvings in some of the stones. There were shops all over the streets around it, as well as inside the walls. It was beautiful and crazy. But, as is the reality with many historic cities, I think, the parts that I as I tourist found most charming were considered by my Ankara-native companions to be the most out-dated and touristy. Of course. But everything was actually very beautiful and very, very inexpensive. I got a ton of presents for people and also a few nice things for myself! I hope you guys are looking forward to your Christmas mail!

We also went to a beautiful little museum that was the converted house of a very rich, early 20th c. automobile mogul family. It was very nice, pictures to follow.

I am actually hesitant to post the pictures from today (taken with Ilke's astoundingly clear camera phone) as I think it will give everyone the wrong picture of what my life has looked like so far. This trip was beautiful, but visually, it was a very outdated representation of the Ankara I've really been living in. I think I will wait until I have my other rolls of film developed. Sorry!

Tonight, we had Ilke and Kivanc over for dinner. Afterwards, starting at about eleven or eleven thirty, I goaded everyone (but baba, who had gone to bed) into playing a round of Okey. It was SO FUN. Everyone was loud and crazy there was a lot of heavy ribbing going on in a lot of different languages. Ilke and I were on one team, Kivanc and his mom on the other. Anne, of course, won a ton of games, but I am very proud to say that I either matched or beat her record. I think I won about seven rounds. It was great. BUT, at the very end, in a huge last-round tie, Kivanc got a lucky hand and WON. And it was only his second round win! Awful. He was gloating like a maniac.

I tell you all of these game details because it just ended ten minutes ago--at 2:30 a.m.! We take our Okey seriously.

Tomorrow, I am being driven by my current anne to meet my next anne to get my school uniforms. I'll let you know how it goes.

I've had a really nice day.

Love,

Natalie

Okey

Today, we went again to the huge and beautiful outdoor food bazaar. Picture this:http://www.theworldeffect.com/.a/6a00e54fa8abf788330120a6562a5b970b-800wi but on a flat table, and over an area of about 100 x 50 yards. Also, imagine a covering of hundreds of huge, ratty umbrella giving the whole thing a shady, ancient-harem-type look. We got a ton of things, including these funny little clementine things. They are bright green on the outside and bright orange on the inside. They sort of look like the cover of Freakonomics (http://dreallday.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/freakonomics.jpg). Sorry, strange reference.

In other news, dinner was great. We had mushrooms stuffed with cheese, homemade tomato soup, summer salad, fresh cooked yufka squares filled with cheese and a sort of potato mash. Also, baba brought home fresh squeezed o.j. again! He is so thoughtful.

Oh, I also made a strawberry roll up cake! We got some more çilekler (chee-LEHK-ler, strawberries) at the bazaar, and my anne provided all the ingredients. She even dug out her half-missing set of Western-style measuring cups! I had to measure out the 1/4 Cups using the Tablespoon. I wanted to use the recipe we usually do at home, but I couldn't reach anybody, so I got one off of epicurious.com. It came out looking pretty rough at first, so I was disappointed, but it firmed up and actually ended up being a delicious cake! We had the neighbor ladies over for tea and pasta (PAH-stah, cake) afterwards, and everyone loved it. The desserts here are usually filo-dough and honey/nut related, so the fruit and cake thing was a nice change, I think. The whipped cream I used was very strange. Instead of heavy cream, anne just had a box of individual packets of this funny powder stuff, and you just add milk or water and whip. It tastes fine, but was strange, I thought, in a country so filled with fresh foods. Also, instead of vanilla extract, it was the same packet deal: a box filled with a bunch of teaspoon-sized packets of white, vanilla-flavored powder. Somehow, I think the Turks sort of missed the boat on the cake and sweet-baking craze. Every single other food group is homegrown and homemade, from the meats, cheeses, and yogurt to the yufka, the tea, and the soups and veggies. But when it comes to sweet, Western-style baked goods, it's a lot of margerine and vanilla powder. Very peculiar. Not to say that it isn't delicious; it's just a touch less authentic than the very high standard that I've come to expect in a country so rich in culinary character.

I mentioned before that anne just used a tea glass for measuring. I thought this was maybe her own deal. But, from what I understood of the Turkish on the side of the very modern whipped-cream packets (seen here: http://www.ozpak.com.tr/images/urunler/kremSantiSade.jpg), the instructions indicated that either one "chai bardak" (tea glass) of "su" (water) or one-and-a-half "kahve fincanılar" (coffee cups) of "süt" (milk) could be used. But, my most Westernly-exacting culinary side protested, there are so many different sizes and styles of Turkish drinking implements! what if the proportions were wrong! But, of course, the whipped-cream came out fine. If I find out more about this peculiarity, dear reader, I will let you know.

Like I said, the ladies (Gulia and Nesren, the woman who lives across from her) came over for some snacks this evening, and I learned how to play my very first games of the ever-popular "Okey." It's pronounced just like "okay," and was described on an English website (which I sought out after trying to learn the fairly nuanced rules from a bunch of women who spoke only Turkish) as being very similar to Rummy. It is very well-liked in Turkey, and, I imagine, is just as widely known and revered as backgammon, which is so popular with the cafe crowd. It reminded me of the ubiquitous American game of Bridge, but maybe it was just my playing company. It seems that chatty neighborhood women love a good social game no matter what country they call "yuva."

While we were playing, we had the little kitchen T.V. on, as we seem to do during almost all social gatherings (including dinner). We watched a sort of variety equivalent to the classic MTV, called TRT T.V. (Turkish Radio Something? I know it's based in Ankara, though!). It played a lot of classic (I assume, as anne and the other were often singing along) Turkish ballads, sung by a few very blond women filled with lots of collagen and surrounded by lots of cheesy production elements. This is what I was dealing with: http://www.trt.net.tr/televizyon/sayfa/detay.aspx?pid=19696

It also played a few angsty Turkish rock music videos.

Speaking of angst, my deepest apologies, readers, for the brevity of my last post! I was fatigued and saddened by our fine country's losses. It was a bad time in both courts, so to speak!

Tomorrow night is the Rotary Club's weekly banquet again, but this time, anne is coming, as it's family night! This is going to involve menus, I've been informed, so there will be no beautiful banquet spread. It will, however, be a nice time to test out my ordering skills.

Looking forward,

Natalya

Ugh.

We lost the championship game.

We lost the referendum.

I'm going to bed.

-Natalie

WE WOOONNNNNNNNN

As you may have noted on my Facebook:

" Natalie Weaver JUST WATCHED THE MOST MINDBLOWING BASKETBALL GAME OF HER ENTIRE LIFE!!!!! TURKEY WAS DOWN THE WHOLE ENTIRE TIME AND THEN IN THE LAST FOURRRRR SECONNNNDSSS THEY WOOOOOOOOOONNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN

NNNNNNNNNNNNNNN AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH 8 FOR 8 BABY WE'RE GOING TO THE FINALS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

It was incredible. For the WHOLE GAME, we were always down by at least one, usually two shots. We got it tied ONCE, and immediately Serbia scored a three-pointer. But then, RIGHT at the end, in the last five minutes, we were up by two, then one, and THEN, with FOUR SECONDS left to go, SERBIA scored. They basically won. It was horrible. We had been yelling and screaming and then, just when we thought we had pulled off a miracle, it was over. ALL over. BUT IN THE LAST FOUR SECONDS, Kerem Tunceri slammed in a two point shot with one HALF of a second remaining but then they GAVE SERBIA THE BALL but, INCREDIBLY, Semih Erden blocked an amazing last-second three-point shot meaning that TURKEY WON 83-82 OVER SERBIA IN THE SEMI-FINALS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! This happens to mean that they will be playing the U.S. tomorrow. Sorry, homeland, I'm rooting for TÜRKIYYYYYYYYYYE!!!!

This is the ad that they've been playing the whole tournament. The song is AMAZING and everyone always chants it. They are singing "Oniki Dev Adam," (OHN EEKEE DEV AH DAHM, or TWELVE GIANT MEN!). It is really fantastic:

http://vimeo.com/13203982

This is just the song by itself:

http://www.antu.com/taraftar/mp3/12devadam.mp3

GO TÜRKIYE!

And now:

For all of you darling daily readers, I'm sorry it's been a while--I've had a very busy Bayram!

The first day, Thursday, I woke up late, again. My anne came in and told me that she was going to see some family. I wished her a good trip and went back to loafing around in my PJs. It turns out that she meant that the family were coming here. I rushed to get dressed (in my great navy and white, thin-striped jersey-knit shirt I recently got for fifteen bucks in Kizilay) and crept sheepishly into our sitting room to join the company. Everyone was very friendly and pleased to meet me, and good wishes were shared all around. I can't remember everyone's names, but I met one of our (distant?) cousins, Selen, who is going to be a sophomore. It was great to meet another girl about my age!

When company arrives for Bayram, everyone is offered a little chocolate. This is because "Bayram" is actually short for Şeker Bayram, or sweet holiday. After, we brought out little plates, each with three delicious sarma (stuffed grape leaves), which I have really grown to love, along with two little potato böreği, one plate per person. These börek were more like little potato puff pastries with a few sesame seeds on top My anne made them, and they were flaky and warm and absolutely delicious. We also served the little hazelnut cookies we had made.

After the waves of neighbors and family stopped arriving and everyone departed, Ilke, Kıvanç, baba, anne, and I had dinner. Anne and Ilke and I prepared the meal, which consisted of mixed vegetables, spaghetti and a light red sauce, breaded and fried chicken, summer salad (cucumbers, tomato, and onion), mushrooms stuffed with cheese, delicious oven-fry potatoes, and bread. It was actually a pretty American-type meal, my anne was surprised to hear, and everything was very good. After dinner, Ilke and I discussed grammar and dialects for an hour or two, and then she and Kıvanç took me out to a nice restaurant district for some dessert. It was a very nice evening!

The next day, we again had a bunch of visitor, same deal, and then we went to see Ilke's parents. Her mom served us really delicious homemade pistachio baklava and another great dessert, also made with honey and pistachios. They were very sweet people. Ilke looks just like her dad! I got picked up from their parents house by Kıvanç and Ilke while anne and baba stayed to visit. We went over to have dinner at the same family's house who had come to see us yesterday (Selen's family and other cousins and aunts and uncles). It was great having met them before, as I felt very comfortable and they were very welcoming. We hung out there for the rest of the afternoon and late into the evening. We had homemade sarma again, as well as the same type of salad, but the guys went out to some restaurant and got a bunch of prepared rice, rotisserie chickens, french fries, and soda. I was given a plate with a full half of a chicken on it. And I ate it! Not quite down to the bare bone, but almost all of it. A lot of you would be pretty proud of me. And while I hate to admit it, this chicken was really good. After dinner, I helped clean up, and I went and hung out with Selen (whose English is pretty good) and her little sister and her cousins. It was very relaxed and fun, and everyone was joking and laughing and having a really good time. I was very much included, and my being there felt totally natural. It was great! I could have just as easily been hanging out with the Weavers or the Antenuccis.

Speaking of which, I got to talk briefly to my brother, Sean, at home, and then to my Grandma Bobby and Grandpa Tom! It was so nice to talk to them, but it made me wish I were out on their boat with them, or hanging out at the lake. I was a little upset afterwards--I really miss seeing everyone, family especially.

OH, in a final close to the Russian tale: after seeing him and trying to work it out over Bayram, Lena the Russian girl was finally and unequivocally rejected by her (soon to be former) husband. It was really sad. She was upset and so was her mother and so was Gulia (whose name is actually spelled "Hulya", I discovered; I'll just keep it was Gulia to avoid confusion). It was a horrible Bayram for all of them. I especially feel bad for baby Asia, as she will probably rarely get to see her dad. In fact, this morning, Lena and her mom and the baby got on a plane to Ukrayna (ooo-KRY-nuh, Ukraine) where they will live with the baby, who will probably never be taught Turkish. I don't know what Gulia is going to do without her granddaughter. I am sorry, readers, to have to deliver such a sad ending to this long and confusing saga.

For the last day of Bayram, we visited my baba's aunt, who was absolutely lovely and a little feisty and must have been about 82, although she didn't look it. Her English is actually pretty good, as she used to be a geography teacher (they often use English in the high school courses). She lived in a great, old little apartment, and was very sweet to me. She doesn't have any kids, and I think she must be pretty lonely, as she teared up a little bit and told my anne in half-Turkish, half-English that she wants to have her own lovely exchange girl to stay with with her next year. It was so nice.

After this visit, we inexplicably took a trip to yet another gigantic and very modern mall. We just walked around a bit, and at the very end, I went back to the first store, Gap, and bought a really great mustard yellow sweater. Actually, my baba bought it for me, as this particular store wouldn't accept my debit card! I tried telling him I would pay him back, but, in a typical Turkish show of hospitality, he totally refused, saying that this is my Bayram present. And it was pretty expensive! Gap in Turkey is weirdly expensive, so it was 80 TL, which is a bit more than $50. So generous!

The one single quality of life thing that I really don't like about Turkey is the number of parking garages that you have to deal with. I know it's a city, but it seems much worse than say, New York. Our apartment has a little one, and it is still awful. Usually we just get out of the car and wait, because the spaces are so tight that it takes five minutes and five inches of backing up and creeping forward to get around all of the stupid cement pillars. And every mall has the biggest underground parking lot you've ever seen, and they are all really crowded and loud and filled with exhaust. Today, after shopping for maybe half an hour, we just lost our car. None of us remembered the the lot letter or number, and we wandered around asking security guards and breathing exhaust until I finally remembered that the first shop we saw coming up the escalator was was TurkCell. So we found it, after like twenty starving minutes. I know, I know, I'm being melodramatic, but I am just really not used to, nor enamored of, these Turkish parking garages. I just want a nice grassy bit of gravel to pull up to!

Other than that, Turkey's being good to me so far. Actually, the malls have these really cool escalators, but instead of stairs, it's just a huge flat ramp on a twenty degree incline. It feels like you're on a conveyor-belt to heaven, and, depending on your sense of materialism, maybe you are.

Lots of Love and Basketball Pride,

Natalie

P.S. Congratulations to my cousins, Liza and Jonathan, for the birth of their third baby! His name is Charles Robert and his birthday is Sept. 10 and he is healthy and amazing!

A Nice Day

I overslept, as usual. I had taken the ipod dock I use into the bathroom to shower, but when I took it back into my bedroom, the time was wrong, obviously. I figured I'd reset it later. So this morning, after going back to sleep a few times, I was pleased to see that I had woken up at 7:30 a.m.! If only. It was already something like 1:30 p.m. I've been sleeping so late! Too busy writing my blog, I guess.

Today, my anne and I walked to a few different markets and bought food for Bayram cooking. Bayram, as I've mentioned, is the big celebration at the end of Ramazan, the month of fasting. It is comparable to Easter after Lent, but is probably a bigger deal. It is just three or four days of major eating and visiting and partying. Everyone travels to their home towns and goes around to the houses of all their family members and is given candy and food and has a really good time. Or so I hear, and will soon experience, as tomorrow is the first day of the festivities! Tonight was the last time that my anne and baba had to wait until the cami (JAAH-meh, mosque) called for Iftar, or the end of daily fasting, to finally eat. They were not even allowed to drink water during the day, and it's been HOT!

Stores everywhere are advertising Bayram sales and there are all kinds of wrapped hard candies and chocolates laid out in all the stores for Bayram. The usual greetings I get have gone from mostly good day (iyi günler, EE-yee GOON-lair) to iyi Bayramlar (EE-yee BY-rum-lar, which is like saying "happy Bayram").

My anne and I made tatlı kurabiyesi (TUHT-luh KOOR-ah-bee-yeh-see, sweet cookies) with fındık (FUHN-duk, hazelnuts) pressed into them. As soon as they come out of the oven, you pour a sugar water syrup over them. They absorb the syrup and get really sweet and moist. Delicious. I should note that usually, in Turkey, most kurabiye (cookies) are actually not sweet. They are more like little savory/buttery biscuits. My favorite are the little sesame twists my anne makes so well. But for Bayram, everything is fancier, so we made sweet cookies. The recipe we used called for powdered sugar, so anne broke out her little food processor thing and put a few little cups of granulated sugar into it and made her own powdered sugar! Amazing. Also, she doesn't use standard measuring cups. Instead, she used a regular spoon and one of her nice little Turkish kahve (KAH-vey, coffee) serving cups, approximating almost all of the amounts. They came out great! Our neighbor from across the hall brought us some of the same cookie that she had made, only hers were with almonds on top.

I'm having some apple tea right now, a pretty common Turkish drink. It is really just little bits of dried apple that you steep to make a mild, hot tea. My Latin teacher, Ms. Chabot, had brought back some powdered apple tea from her trip around Turkey this summer. It was delicious, but considerably stronger than the real thing. I should bring back some dried apple bits to make it with at home.

My baba brought home a really cute t-shirt for me. It has a logo on the upper-left chest area that says "Turkey," but the "T" is a little kid in swim trunks spreading his arms and grinning. Adorable.

OH, while we were in one of the little grocery stores, my anne was buying some red peppers. I told her in very poor Turkish that my mom and I like to make roasted red peppers. She went right back and grabbed some more, and I used four of them to make roasted red peppers that we had for dinner tonight! I had to look up the Celsius conversion for the Fahrenheit temperature I usually use, and I had to look up the Turkish word for garlic (sarımsak, SAH-rum-sahk), but they came out just like we make them I home! I used fresh parsley that my anne grows on our balcony and I cut them very long and thin and stringy, like I prefer them. I was very proud of my first solo cooking efforts in Turkey. Incidentally, and not surprisingly (as I think roasted red peppers are Mediterranean), anne had some SHE had made in a jar in the fridge. They were cut into square rather than strips, and instead of parsley, she had them marinated in a light vinegar. Also delicious.

Gulia and her Russian daughter-in-law and her Russian daughter-in-law's mother and her half-Russian granddaughter a came to visit at our house tonight. Gulia always sings this really great lullaby to the baby ("deen-deeny deen-deeny deeny-deeny-deen"). I realized after the ninth or tenth rendition that it was the exact same song I had found months ago back home when I was exploring the Turkish music scene. I had no idea that this cute animated traditional lullaby I found was really so widely known and employed. This is the link I looked at originally: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x95dff_turkish-lullaby_music *. The bit at the very end is also a very popular part to sing. Anne and Gulia knew all the words, easily. It was so cute. Asia (the 13 months old girl, not the whole continent) loves it, and jiggles around like crazy every time Gulia sings it.

*All of my links are from dailymotion or some other site because youtube is blocked in Turkey. Very strange.

Also, Turkey handily beat Serbia in the basketball tournament in Istanbul tonight!

I am going to go to sleep now, as it's late, like usual.

Iyi gece!

Natalie

Week Two

Today I went once again to the weekly Rotary Club banquet from my first night! It was just as delicious, and I was a little more selective with my choices, so I was in less pain afterwards (from being too full!). There is a really delicious type of green bean dish that is very common. It is served cold and is basically just green beans cut french style and cooked with garlic, onions, tomato, olive oil, salt, and sugar. I guess the sugar is what really makes the flavor so great. Mmm. My anne is going to teach me how to make them.

It was really pretty cold tonight, and as I had worn only a dress and a cardigan to dinner, my baba ordered a blanket from the waiters for me. Do they ever do this in America? I don't have any idea, but like I said, incredible service.

I found out more about my second host family's home. They live a little bit outside of the family, in a house, not an apartment. It is close to where I will be going to school, and I will be with them for six months. There place was described to me by one of the people at the banquet as "a small palace" and there is a whole separate little house "for the servants to live in." They have drivers. I guess my next father, Korhan, is an engineer, but he also owns some hotel in this extremely lucrative vacation spot in Turkey and invests in things. And my next mom is supposed to be "maybe the nicest woman in the whole world I think." Needless to say, I'm excited. However, while it will be nice not to have to take an elevator up to an apartment, I will really, really miss Fatöş and Elcin. It's only been a week, but I really love them both. They are always going to be my first real family in Turkey, and I hope I feel so at home in my next house as I do here.

We watched Turkey beat Belgium in a really close football match tonight. I have never been so excited about a sports game, especially soccer. I think I am going to start following these games. They play Germany next month. I'm already pumped.

(Interesting fact: in Turkish, Belgium is spelled Belçika, and pronounced "bell-CHICKA", which I thought was pretty cute. Like bell-chicka-chicka-boom-boom. Also, a shower is called düş, which is pronounced "doosh," like düş jeli (shower gel). Do with that what you'd like.)

I found out the true saga of the Russian girl (Lena) and her baby (Asia). So apparently, she took off to Ukraine after her and her husband got in a big fight. But a few months later, she decided she made a mistake, and wanted to move back. But he is still mad, and says he won't take her back. So now she and HER mother (and her baby girl) are living with HIS mother (Gulia) while she waits for him to get back from a business trip so they can talk it out over Bayram (the holiday at the end of Ramazan that is beginning the day after tomorrow). I told Ilke that it was like a giant soap opera. She laughed and agreed.

There is no such thing as a self-service gas pump here. Like having people literally put your shoes on for you at the shoe store, the ONLY kind of petrol service is full service. You just go swipe your card, get back in the car, and the guys fill you up and clean all of your windows. It's amazing. BUT, as I found out, gas is unbelievably expensive. It was listed at 3.64 TL per liter. I did the entire conversion, and that makes it $9.12 PER GALLON. Seriously. Nine dollars and twelve cents per gallon. I am shocked. And unlike Italy or other parts of Europe, the cars aren't that tiny. There aren't any SUVs or anything, and there are a lot of compact cars, but definitely no SmartCars. Most people have at least one car, too. You'd think, with the price of gas, that people would be more interested in fuel efficiency. There are a lot of beat up 1980s Volvos and Volkswagens with really crazy upholstery. A lot of these cars are used as food stalls, in that they pop open the trunk and offer loose hazelnuts or honey or pomegranate syrup or tomatoes. It's wild. There are also a lot of crazy old 1970s Mercedes public transport buses, along with a lot of newer little mini buses. You just flag one down, and they go on their route, to and from Kizilay, usually. You hand the fare to the driver, who, while he's driving, sorts out your change into this little open partitioned wooden box up at the front, makes the correct change, and passes is back for the other passengers to hand to you. While he's shifting gears. It's a little disconcerting, but as they've done it a million times, I guess there's not much to worry about. When you're ready to get off, you just sort of say it to the driver, he pulls over right away, and you quickly step down, and he just drives away. Very quickly. Sometimes I think it's even before my feet are on the pavement. Also, car park everywhere, including the sidewalk.

We went into Kizilay briefly today to pick out an engagement present for Tutku (TOOT-koo), Onur's (Fatöş' younger son's) fiancee. We got her a pretty gold necklace with lots of different stones and a little evil eye embeded in it. Almost all women have a special piece of jewelry with the evil eye that they wear at all times. Some of them get pretty fancy. For instance, I noticed on a younger girl that she just had an evil-eye charm safety-pinned to her. I guess this must be usual for children, as I later spotted a piece of platinum and diamond jewelry that was a gem-encrusted replica of a safety-pin, complete with its own dangling, diamond-covered evil-eye, all on a nice necklace chain. Hmm. Fantastic stuff in the old TK.

I've been skyping with a lot of people, and Fatöş and Elcin have gotten to meet some of them, so that's fun. I miss everyone a lot, but I'm very happy here.

I hope everyone is having a really good time back home.

Love,

Nat

Brief Overview

I woke up late again. My anne had two friends over, sisters, and they were helping her make a huge batch of stuffed grape leaves for bayram. Delicious! I got to help. You have to pluck off the stem of this big floppy leaf, lay it face down, put on a little line of spiced, cooked rice with tomato, and then you just tuck and roll. Later, we walked over to the same friends' house to help them make their stuffed grape leaves. The one sister had a few children, and I got to talk with her daughter, who spoke pretty good English. She is currently working on getting her PhD. in chemical engineering, and she gave me an organization to contact about scholarships for going to college/studying in Turkey. Very good information!

I met Gulia's Russian daughter-in-law and her mother. Very blond, very nice. The mother didn't speak any Turkish or English, and the daughter didn't speak any English, but they were nice company. We had some tea at Gulia's and played with the Russian girl's baby daughter, Asia. She is about one year old and very cute! They had some Russian picture books for her to play with. She is the one who is having all this relationship trouble or something with her husband. I still haven't figured out the exact situation. I find myself often out of the loop or only vaguely in it, but it makes for lots of adventure.

We also went to an open-air food bazaar. Amazing amounts of really good fresh produce, all very cheap. We got a full grocery bag of tiny little delicious strawberries, usually about $5 per pint in the U.S. at farmer's markets, here, 4 1/2 lbs. for about $2! Incredible. Everyone is very willing to let you sample the produce/food you are buying, even in a large grocery store. It's great.

Going to sleep now, as it's late, as usual.

Abbreviated-ly,

Natalie

Progress

I'm starting to be able to form sentences! This is very exciting. I think that at least 1/3 of them are grammatically correct, too!

Today, I woke up late again, about noon. My anne offered me a bunch of food, but I just had some mineral water with fresh-squeezed OJ, which my baba had picked up from a cart on the street because I told him I liked the one my anne had got me the other day. Meyve suyu (may-VEH SOO-yoo, fruit juice) carts are all over the place. Almost as much as the şimit carts.

Remember the yufka I talked about yesterday? The filo-dough circles? Well today, my anne and I made real sigara böreği (seh-GAR-uh boh-RAY-ee, cigar borek), meaning that instead of the big rolled-up one my anne made me for lunch before, these ones are only about 3 inches long and are individually rolled. Like little appetizers. She stacked three huge yufka circles on top of each other, cut them down the middle, then across, then again, to make eighths. She then stacked the piles of paper-thin yufka wedges on top of each other, put two piles next to each other on the table, and got out a little bowl of water. I picked some of her fresh parsley and we put it, along with some black pepper, into some salty white cheese we had mashed up. She showed me how to take a tiny pile of cheese, place it at the thick end of the wedge, tuck in the sides, and roll the dough up into a little "cigar". To seal it, you dip the tip of the pointed end in water and press it against the roll. They look like this: (http://www.kadin-sitesi.com/yemektarifleri/wp-content/uploads/Sigara-Böreği.jpg) ! We used five circles of yufka total, and probably made about sixty little rolls, ten or so of which she briefly fried in some olive oil for me to have for lunch. The rest she put in the freezer. They were a little salty, a little crunchy, and very, very delicious. I ate some with a little cured olive tapenade that anne had in a jar. I told her they were right up there with kaymak. Gulia came over to chat while we cooked, and she shared some of the borek with me, as she is not fasting.

Gulia is very loud and funny and always chides me on my eating habits. There is a Turkish saying that says something about whatever you leave on your plate will haunt you or something. I don't know the full phrase. So Gulia always very wildly tells me to eat every single crumb!!!! Just now, we were out on her balcony having tea and this crumbly şimit, and she told me to quickquickquick, drink all of your tea! in a semi-joking tone of urgency. I always appease her with corresponding alacrity, crazily gulping down the rest of my çay (chai, tea), only half kidding. It is very fun.

I forgot to mention that yesterday, we met Gulia's daughter Dilek (DEE-leck) and grandsons, Efe (EH-feh, age 6, very blue eyes) and Ege (EH-geh, age 4, gorgeous shoulder length hair). They were incredibly hoş (hosh, cute!), and reminded me a lot of my little brother, Cedar, who is also 6. (I just showed my anne a picture of Cedar grinning and looking crazy on the beach, and she said "cin, cin!" which is pronounced like the English word "gin." I looked it up and it means, like, gnome or elf or something. Ahahahahahha. She's so right.) Anyways, they were bouncing all over the sidewalks while all of the women shopped around. Efe would count up in Turkish sort of nonsensically ("alti, yedi, sekiz, dokuz, OM!," six, seven, eight, nine, TEN!) and he and Ege would leap of the steps together. It was just heartbreakingly adorable. They were really sweet kids.

While we were out with the kids yesterday, Dilek bought them a snack, which turned out to be Turkish, Twilight-themed Cheetos. SO weird. I look over and Ege is clutching a little sticker of a guy's face that came in the bag and Dilek leans over and goes, "Jacob." Ahahahah.

Also, it turns out that Frito-Lay makes a chip called A La Turca that is supposedly Turkish-themed corn chips, involving poppy seed and tomato. They were sort of good? Also, very weird.

We went again to a huge super market, that was again underneath a mall. In the meat section, my anne had them cut up a couple of some kind of leg and grind up some meat. There were whole livers and whole stomach linings. Ahhhh. They were totally white and in little piles and looked sort of wooly/furry. Ew. We bought a giant bag of these mild, long little green peppers. A whole grocery bag full was only about fifty cents. Clothing and perfume and things are very expensive here, but food is very cheap and very good.

Back at the house, we picked up a pot full of milk from the doorman's apartment (anne had brought down an empty pot to be filled) along with a bunch of grocery bags of fresh tomatoes and more pepper and some other veggies. I was freaking out. So much produce! All the time! I guess it isn't all ours though? I think anne explained we were picking some of it up for friends.

Bayram is coming up this week. It is the end of Ramazan, the month of fasting, and there is a big, three or four day-long celebration, like a souped-up Halloween. There are all of these TV ads of kids screaming and being showered in candy and lots of print ads to the same effect.

Dinner tonight was a really good red-lentil pureed soup, a white bean and tomato dish, a fresh cucumber/tomato/mint/pepper salad, white rice with little, half inch-long pasta strands, black olives, and helva. Helva is some kind of very finely ground grain, cooked with water, sugar, and nuts, so it makes kind of a less soupy, less creamy Cream of Wheat. Anne made it today. It is very good.

This song (http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6s55c_zulfu-livaneli-ozgurluk_music) is the slower song that was sung at the concert last night. Everyone raised their hands into peace signs and held lighters and cell phones and sang and swayed.

I am really beginning to love Ankara. The apartment we are in has a beautiful view and Gulia's is even better. She has almost a complete 180 degree view of the city from her balcony. The lights stretch out for miles and miles. They glitter in the summer-night haze and look as if someone has spilled a huge box of jewelry and loose gems out over a black dip of velvet and hills. There are strands of gold that mark bridges and roads and giant swaths of glittering orange interspersed with flecks of green and red and blue and purple. This night is especially lovely, and the air is cool an fresh and smells of city and Florida. Everywhere there is the sound of cars and humming and a breeze floats in an out of my balcony. Our place is atop a hill plastered with new apartments, and they slide away from us, transforming with little transition from looming blocks to distance sparkle down the steep slope and out into the rest of the city. The light pollution erases the horizon, and it looks as if the last light on the farthest hill is being swallowed in the fog at the end of the world. There are very few stars to be seen, but instead of lessening the sight, it seems as if all of the stars in the whole sky have fallen softly onto our valley and collected into an infinite, glistening pool. I have never seen a place so beautifully transformed by the night.

Just as the sun set, the imams called for evening prayers. The sound of their song is so foreign to me and it seems to emanate from everywhere at once, filling up the hills with a muted warbling of faith. The loudspeakers they use from the minarets distort their voices and the hazy lights over the city seem a liquid, filtering and mutating the prayers so they sound as if they were being delivered to us from above as we float weightlessly beneath a deep and calming sea. It is beautiful and haunting and makes all of the tiny city lights seem to come together as one, an undulating mass of sound and prayer.

In Awe,

Natalie

P.S. This one is from the Blue Mosque in Istanbul, but it sounds similar: http://www.flickr.com/photos/alaskapine/2402178742/

Hayır!

Today, I again woke up at about one p.m., although I thought I had asked anne to wake me at ten?Either way, I got up. Then, as I was eating a breakfast of a mozzarella-type cheese cooked in between some cut open pitte and the usual olives, cheeses, etc. Our neighbor, Gulia (GHYU-lee-uh), came over. She is probably in her late sixties. She was again wearing her t-shirt that says "Love Time," which none of them realized was very suggestive in English. When I explained this, they all thought it was very funny. It took me a while to realize, however, that today, Gulia was not very happy. It turns out (I think?) that Gulia's Russian daughter-in-law is taking her son back to Russia with her. She was very upset. I think Gulia's son and this Russian girl broke up or something. Very bad. She's worried about her grandson. I looked up Turkish phrases of condolence. They were well-received.

Today was the first day that I was very homesick, and I cried a little bit while my anne comforted me in Turkish. I got over it pretty quickly, as I had a very busy day.

After I ate, Gulia and my anne and I went for a walk down Dikkmen street, where the apartment is. Anne had to pick up some pants from the tailor and Gulia was looking for a bathroom set. This street is very busy and is huge and loud and dusty and filled with shops. Most of the shops are on the first floor of apartment buildings, and are either raised up on foot-high stone platforms or sunk down a foot or two. The very modern and commercial mixes very freely with the broken down old buildings and junk on the street. The cars obey few if any laws, and there are technically only two lanes, although people drive like there are six. There are no crosswalks and you sort of just wait for a gap in the traffic. The shops are filled with delicious pastries and meats and dried and fresh fruits, as well as lots of cheap cloth and clothes. The Turks have a preference for very flashy, modern furniture. The set in my family's living room is bright sherbet orange velour with orange and green and white striped pillows, for instance.

We stopped into a bakery-type place to get the yufka (YOOF-kah) used to make the börek (BOO-reyk),the quesadilla-like food I had the other day. It is basically filo dough, although the Turks hate it when I refer to anything by its Greek name. It's really Turkish!, they claim. Anyways, I look down into the second level of the bakery, and I see two women in head-kerchiefs using big wooden rolling pins to hand-roll little balls of dough into HUGE, two foot-diameter circles of filo that had to be less than 1/16 of an inch thick. It is so thin it's translucent. They then peeled them off the marble slabs and briefly cook them on a huge stack over this slightly-domed skillet. And this is normal! The women making the dough really enjoyed how shocked I looked at their work. To sell it, they fold six, two-foot diameter leaves (about 1 kilo) up into a big square, wrap it in some paper, and price it at 5 TL, which is only about $3.30. The amount of work that goes into making these! And they are so cheap! In this big, loud, modern city, the widespread level of authenticity that the food has so easily maintained continues to shock me. It is so impressive.

Right now I am snacking on some fresh peeled fig, pear, and nectarine that my anne cut up for me, along with some Turkish tea.

From talking with Ilke, I learned that Turkey is about to have a referendum regarding whether Turkey will become more pro-Islamic or more secular. My family, as it turns out, is very liberal, and wants Turkey to become more secular. It turns out that Erdoğan (AIR-doh-an), the prime minister, is very pro-Islam, and thinks all women need to have at least three children and should all wear the head-scarf. Things like that. My family hates Erdoğan. So people who are liberal are all voting "hayır" (HAH-yur, meaning "no") and people who are conservative and pro-Erdoğan are all voting "evet" (EH-vet, meaning "yes"). There are big HAYIR and EVET signs all over the city.

Anyways, tonight, my anne and baba and I went to pick up the jacket I had left at the cinema. I thought it was kind of weird we were all going together, but I assumed they just always ran errands together or something. Hah. After we got the jacket, we went downstairs in the mall to this gigantic supermarket. It was like Wal-mart or Sam's Club, but completely in Turkish and with bigger aisles. It was unbelievable. Anne and Baba kept offering to buy me all these American foods, like cereal or frozen pizza. They thought it was very funny when I kept turning them down and telling them I like Turkish food better. We got more figs and more kaymak and some Turkish delight, called "lokum" (LO-koom). We also got TONS of cured olives and a bunch of seltzer and sodas. I got some peach nectar and little bits of dried apples used to make apple tea. Even in this huge, modern supermarket, they still had big open baskets of every kind of spice and tea imaginable, including saffron, which was going for a mere 100 TL per kilogram. Çok pahalı (chalk pah-HAW-luh, very expensive). There were also all different kinds of whole fish on ice. Gah.

After the market, which itself was a surprise, we headed home. But instead of turning down our street, we went straight past it. Using every ounce of my Turkish prowess, I asked "where?" (nerede, NEH-reh-deh). They got across that we were going to listen to some music at some concert. Oh my god. We drive all the way across the city and out of nowhere there are hundreds of cars and, seriously, thousands and thousands of people singing along to this gigantic concert. It was insane. I mean, adults, grown adults, were jumping up and whistling and down and everyone was clapping and yelling. And the clapping was REALLY enthusiastic. People were dancing and jumping all around and singing along. There were televisions broadcasting what was happening on stage and camera crews and banners and police and ambulances. We got there towards the end, so there was all this screaming for an encore after the last song. I realized after a while that none of the women in the crowd were wearing a head-scarf, which is sort of unusual (about 1/4 or 1/3 of the women in the streets wear it). Then I noticed that all around there were HAYIR signs. It was a political rally! A huge, super-Turkish, liberal rally. Ahahah. I was just shellshocked. Incredible. It was very moving, even to me. I think they played the Turkish anthem at the end, and everyone was singing along and was so happy. Wow.

Now I am home, and we are watching all about the referendum on the news.

In the Greatest Surprise,

Natalie