Two Months and Getting Busier...

I need to write more about these subjects, but it's already late. Last time I ended up staying up until something like 2 a.m. furiously writing my every observation, so this time, I am just making a quick list of activities which I will (hopefully) have time to expound upon later.

On last Wednesday, we hosted a woman's engagement party at our house! These are a big deal, and are basically just a big fun ladies' night. There are lots of foods and photos and dancing to wild Turkish music and getting a little saucy on the dance floor for the other ladies. It was great fun. I will write more about the surrounding traditions, music, etc. later!

On Friday, my friend Simden (who was a Rotary exchange student to Minnesota a few years ago, so her English is pretty much perfect) took me to the Efes Pilsen Blues Festival. It was hosted in a great big hotel and we got in for freeee because one of Simden's friends' father worked there. There were a ton of people, more than 2,000, I heard. It was a much more down-to-earth, hip crowd than my club scene experience, which was filled with people with very dyed hair and clothing that was much more risque, to say the least. The bands were all American, mostly all from the south, I believe. It was too funny hearing these guys with thick southern accents revving the crowd up in an English that I could barely understand, let along these Turks. But the crowd was really, really loving it. Everyone was freaking out and singing along with what they could and dancing and shouting and the lead singer of the band said this was the best crowd he had had yet! I met a few of Simden's friends, which was also really cool. It was a wild, blues-filled night!

Then on Saturday, I went to that first woman's wedding. Quick turnover, I know. It was a big beautiful affair and I danced a lot and came away with the most precious picture of my host mom and I, which I will try and find a way to scan into the computer. The interesting difference was that instead of getting up and having a priest do everything and then going and doing the paperwork after or before the wedding, the main ceremony itself WAS the paperwork. Really. They had a person from the ministry who officiates weddings all dressed up and a few witnesses present and a huge, white, feather plume pen that they both signed with while sitting down on these tall white chairs in front of a screen of white christmas lights and feathers. They said their "evet"s and signed the paper and were married, just like that! And in lieu of a big romantic kiss, they went for the old kiss on either cheek. Their first kiss as a married couple was one that could have happened between a little kid and a dad! But I guess this is the very traditional first wedding kiss, and only more modern couples are doing the big, Western smooch. All of these matrimonial aspects are quite the norm, in Turkey, it seems.

After school today I decided to try and lose a little of the major weight I've been gaining on all this Turkish food, so I went for a run. Well mostly, it was a beautiful day and I just wanted some fresh air. So I went and ran out of my little development and down through a few more little streets of mansions and developments and then all of a sudden, I was on a dirt tractor track and looking out over these huge rolling hills and fields. It was such an amazing switch. It all reminded me of my step-grandma Betty's farm from when I was a kid, actually. I ended up just walking all over and exploring, especially this one low, old stucco and corrugated-iron and brick-roofed house, the same kind as are dotted all over where they haven't been torn down for development. There were rusty cans everywhere and the house was full of junk and you could tell no one had lived there for years. There were new padlocks on the old hand-wrought latches and I think it is still a working farm, of sorts, as one of the buildings father down the field had chickens locked up in it. It was built up on one of the hills overlooking all of these fields, so that whichever way you looked from the porch you had an magnificent view, mostly of mountains and fields. I am going to ask to borrow my mom's digital camera and walk out there again to take some pictures of the place.

One of the most amazing parts was that, as I was walking around this amazing old farm and looking out at this rolling Turkish landscape, I was really there. It seems like every time I've had a similar experience, like being in Barrea, Italy or going around the old whaling yards in Mystic Seaport, I've been on a tour, or I've been a tourist, or it's been a recreation or is now just a museum. Most of my other encounters with places so beautiful and historic have been very intentionally presented to me, for a profit, or for education, or for some outside purpose. One of the reasons I really don't like theme-parks is the intensity and high price of what is really just fabricated quaintness and lots of artificially-provincial bad restaurants. My run was the total opposite of Six Flags, in other words. It was quiet, and sort of ugly, but at once stunningly and spaciously beautiful, and just sitting there, fifty yards down the road from my big modern mansion. I just walked up to it and looked around. I think a lot of Turkish people, possessing the preoccupation with modern residences and newness that I've witnessed so much here, would think it was a nothing special, maybe something that is a good part of history but should still be replaced with some nice paved residential site. But I loved it. I found a piece of an old door frame lying and rotting in the ground and took the little key-hole hardware off both sides. They can't be more than fifty years old, but I still really like them and have them up in my room.

Speaking of which, I put up a ton of the pictures I took over the summer! I have a whole wall next to my bed covered in drawings and pictures of my family members and Lake Milton and Buffalo Bay. I also have the Antenucci family calendar up by my door. It's starting to feel more like home...

Then just tonight, we went to see a Chopin chamber music concert at Bilkent University, where my host brother goes. It was sponsored by the Polish Embassy in Ankara, so all three of the musicians, a cellist, a pianist, and a soprano, were Polish. At the end, there were two rather modern compositions performed by the trio that had been composed by a graduate student at Bilkent. I don't know if those last two were up to Chopin's standards, but as a whole, the concert was very beautiful.

There is no school friday, when I'll be off to Istanbul!!!!! and there is really no school Thursday, as it's a half-day and I guess nobody goes. I am sure I am leaving out things from this post and will probably edit it as I have time later this week.

OH, today is my two month mark! WHOA! Maybe more on this mile-stone later.

I have to go to sleep!

I will let you know all about how amazing Istanbul is!

xoxoxoxox

Love,

Natalie