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