The Best Weekend Ever

I had a really fantastic and full weekend.

On Thursday, it was my host dad's, Korhan's, 47th birthday. We went to a place called Butcha, a British-English spelling of the word "butcher," obviously. It was a really beautiful, mixed-Victorian and Modern restaurant, with lots of black stone and wooden accents. I had a very good smooth lentil soup (mercimek corbasi, MAR-jeh-mek CHOR-bah-suh, very common, even for school lunch) and a delicious baby shrimp and almond pasta dish with cream sauce of which the large strip of pasta had been hand-made. The rest of the family, of course, got meat dishes, and I know a few of the readers at home will be very pleased to hear that I tried a sizeable hunk of ribs and cannot claim that they were at all unpleasant, even if the psychological sensation was less than comfortable. My brother and I shared a pretty good cheesecake and a raspberry crème-brulee. We cranked up the Turkish pop music on the sleepy ride home, and overall, had a very, very nice Thursday-night birthday dinner.

On Friday, after school, my mom picked me up from the house after she had gotten my brother and sister from their schools and took us all to Panora, this large and very beautiful mall the is on our district's side of Ankara-proper. There, she had a small table set up where she was selling the children's book that she had published about a museum, which she had helped renovate! The reason we all went together was that my brother and sister were both performing in a recital being put on by their piano teacher in the middle of the mall. The recital was really nice! My brother sang and they both played piano. Afterwards, my family and I and some of the other Rotarians who had come to watch all got food from a nice Turkish restaurant in the food court. Also, that day, wandering around the mall, I had bought some pantyhose and a nice, inexpensive, black, button-down shirt-style dress, both of which I changed into at the mall, because straight from Panora, Cinar and I went clubbing! It was so fun. We went over the apartment of one of his friends from school where she and her two other gal pals were getting ready. They were all really nice people. Two of the girls are majoring in architecture and one is majoring in molecular biology. So from there we all to a cab to this really beautiful club, a place called D^BLYU (pronounced as the letter W). It was all gold and black and lit up with black lights and spotlights. There were balconies and tiered trays of food and free energy drinks and free CDs of the DJ from that night, Ozan Dogulu (OH-zahn DOH-loo), who is the most famous DJ in all of Turkey. It was a really big deal that he was playing at the club, so it was packed. But worry not, Sweet Reader, I had a good clean time! My host dad picked up Cinar and me at a reasonable hour and all went safely and smoothly. The music was really fun, a mixture of Turkish and English. This is one of his most famous songs: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SwGGM_3O38c

On Saturday, I had a nice leisurely breakfast and was dropped off at a mall to meet the wonderful Binnur (BIH-nour), a woman whom I was introduced to through a Rotarian from Madison. They had worked together at Sikorsky for many years, alternately in Turkey and America. Binnur's English was nearly perfect and she was very sweet to me. She took me to the Anatolian Civilizations Museum, lunch, and a little shopping in the old city. The museum itself was full of incredible Roman, Hittite, and Phrygian artifacts, among many others, and was easily one of the most beautiful and well-endowed museums I have ever been to. It won the 1996 European Museum of the Year Award, in fact. The grounds were leafy and sprawling, with lots of brick, and a big part of its ceiling had been restored from the original, a six-domed affair commission by Mehmet II, the same man who set up the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul hundreds and hundreds of years ago. The weather was nice and brisk that day, and I felt like I was back in New England. I got a pretty little "gold" pendent that is a reproduction of the original Hittite sculpture we saw that for many years was the emblem of Ankara (it has since been replaced by a very controversial, mosque-involving emblem). Binnur also very sweetly bought me the museum's book, which has great pictures of everything we saw. I've been using it for drawing ideas, especially the Hittite sculpture and pottery, which I loved. After this, we went to the old citadel district (the same place I went with Ilke a few weeks ago). We got a very good meal at a restored 18^th century mansion overlooking the city that has been a restaurant since the 1930s. It was, strangely, called The Washington. After, I bought the GREATEST pair of leather Turkish slippers. They were the equivalent of about $20, and they were handmade by the same guy, apparently, who was commissioned to do the shoes for Harry Potter and Troy, the movie!? Sweet. Binnur dropped me off at Panora, as there was a second recital that night. It also went very well, although this time, Cinar didn't sing. I got a nice, oatmeal colored sweater from Zara while I was waiting for the show to begin. Afterwards, we all went home. Cinar and I cooked up a snack of mushrooms stuffed with cheese, and we watched a few episodes of the show It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia together, one of our favorite activities.

On Sunday, we all got up and had some nice omelets my mom had cooked for breakfast. After breakfast, we all got in the car. The rest of the family was going to help run the Rotary Club kids festival that they were putting on in a local park, and I was dropped off at Ece's (EH-jeh) house, another Rotarian woman from a different club. One of my really good friends here, Nozomi, a Japanese exchange student, had been staying at her house that weekend. So that morning, Nozomi and I hung around their beautiful house (which is also in the Incek district, just like ours, and is therefore about 2 minutes from where I'm living) and chatted and played a little with Ece's adorable twin boys, Can and Efe (JOHN and EH-feh), who are almost seven. It was really nice being around these crazy little guys, even though it made me miss my own seven-year-old brother, Cedar, even more. Ece then dropped Nozomi and I off at a beautiful, rustic little restaurant called Yonca (YON-juh, meaning clover). It was tucked up in a bunch of willow and pine trees and was made of brick and timber. There were little open fireplaces all over the inside eating area and the outside, where they had the incredible buffet spread. The buffet included a man at the bar who would made you omlets and an open grill for making your own kebaps, as well as crepes, sigara boregi, olives, lots of white cheeses, fresh fruit, and many, many other dishes. We were there for the annual multi-club Rotex meeting. Rotex is a branch of Rotary club specifically for people in their twenties. It's not quite as formal as the full Rotary Club, but it's not as informal as the high-school age branch, Rotaract. So, all of these friendly college kids were also at Yonca, and we talked to some of the girls for a while. One of them in particular had great English, as she had been a hospital intern for a few summers in Flagstaff, Arizona. After brunch, Ece picked us up again. She took us back to the house while her husband an the twins were getting ready to go, and together, we all went over to the children's festival. Unfortunately, it was really chilly that day, so not too many kids were there, a shame, as it's our club's biggest fundraiser. But it was still really a fun day, and I got to see my last parents, Fatma and Elcin!!! It was so, so nice seeing them again! They were my first family when I got here, and they feel so much like my grandparents. I could chat with them a little more about school, as my Turkish has improved since I was with them, but it was not a very complex conversation. At one of the booths that was set up in the park, another Rotary club woman was selling second hand clothing and shoes. So, obviously, I bought a sweater. It was 5 TL, or about $3, and is an old United Colors of Benetton deal from the eighties. It's wool, I believe, and is covered all over in this crazy black, brown, tan, red, orange, and yellow geometric pattern. It's great. But when I showed it to my host mom, she was totally shocked. At first, I thought it was her opinion of my taste. BUT, it turns out, that I had bought my host dad's old sweater that she had donated for the festival?! Ahahahah it was just too funny. Korhan was just tickled. It was a very weird coincidence. After the festival, Cinar and Mina and Ege (EH-geh (hard "g")) and I went to a Playstation lounge, the same one we had all gone to a week or so before after the last Rotary function. Mina and Ege are both Cinar's age, and are both children of two of the other Rotary families in our club. We usually all hang out at these types of events. Anyways, we all got in the car, and one of Korhan's drivers took us over to the lounge. It is really fun. We got our own little room and picked out a bunch of different versions of Guitar Hero or Rock Band that we wanted to play. For my older readers, these are games in which you have plastic approximations of various instruments, namely two guitars and a drum set, along with a real microphone. With these, you sort of play along to this video game, which is really just a bunch of virtual music videos of really famous songs. It's all in English, as it's an American game, so I had to be the singer for some of the trickier ballads. If you're not familiar with it, it sounds a little strange, but trust me, it's great. Very popular here and back home. We played for about two and a half hours, and it was only 10 TL a person, or about 7 bucks. Ege then caught a mini-bus home and Mina took a taxi with Cinar and I back to our place, where she was later picked up by her family.

Overall, I had a very full, very fun weekend.

Hopefully I will get back to more frequent blog posts soon!

Love,

Natalie

P.S. I'm sorry that none of the Turkish words are spelled with the real Turkish letters! I wrote this on Word/didn't have access to the website I usually used to fix them. Use your imagination!