Friday, January 21, 2011
CAMERA!!!
Wednesday, December 29, 2010
'Tis One Kind of Season
Sorry to interrupt things, but the İstanbul saga must be put on hold for the next few installments. Santa waits for no one!
So, on Christmas Eve, I attended one of the best Rotary Club dinners yet. It was not held in the usual local hotel, but in a Mediterranean restaurant called "Akdeniz Akdeniz," literally meaning "Mediterranean Sea Mediterranean Sea." It is an old place, with the indoor seating sunk down half a floor so that the diner is greeted with an eye-level view of the charming outdoor seating area, vacant then but for a few smokers huddled in the December chill. For the season, the interior of the restaurant was haphazardly decorated in red and green New Years decorations strung from the rough-hewn beams and tacked to the old plaster walls. The atmosphere was warm and cheerful and the place was packed with many merry Turks, all out for some pre-New Years fun. The table next to ours was even longer and was full of another large and boisterous group. Our table was lavishly and inexplicably decorated with at least fifty floating red balloons (which we took to popping throughout the night), tiny evil eye beads, glitter and confetti, and little, blinking, plastic diamonds. There was a three-piece band playing what seemed to me to be some kind of Cuban or South American jazz.
The food was delicious. There were the standard 12 or 16 small dishes of appetizers, including roasted-eggplant yogurt, mixed-vegetable yogurt, potato salad, seaweed salad, a fish salad I was unfamiliar with, mussels filled with seasoned rice (a Mediterranean favorite available on most street corners, along with roast chestnut stands, cup o' corn stands, at which one can buy a small cup of corn topped with your choice of mayonnaise, ketchup, soy sauce, or any gross combination thereof for only one lira, and, at night, a stand that sells delicious rice mixed with a few chickpeas and topped with shredded chicken and salt and pepper or pickles for only 2.50 TL), and many other tasty salads and yogurt to be eaten with the ample supply of bread provided. After having our fill of these, some nice fresh calamari was brought out with a good pink calamari sauce. I was allowed a glass of red wine or two with dinner, which was a nice treat. Of the four choices of fish, I picked the Norwegian salmon, which was nice with a little lemon and salt. The whole dinner was very merry and the music was beautiful.
About half-way through the dinner, a woman came up with the band to sing. She began with a few big French songs, moving throughout the night to the most familiar Turkish ballads. She was very animated and passionate and had a beautiful voice. Many people got up to dance in the tiny space in front of the band not filled with people. Turkish music is very fun and has a lot of beautiful, catchy, heavy rhythms, and I did my share of shoulder-shaking along with the rest of the group.
I kept checking the time to make sure I knew when the clock struck Christmas. It's my absolute favorite holiday and is the source for my name; my mother's family is Italian, I was born three days after Christmas, and the Italian word for Christmas is Natale. Not only that, but it's the only time in winter or spring that I ever get to see my dad and his family and all of my mom's family in Ohio, so it really is a special time of year for me, and I was worried about how I would handle being so far away for that day in particular. So finally, midnight came, with the festivities still in full swing in Akdeniz Akdeniz. I immediately reached across the table and kissed Aylin on both cheeks and wished her Merry Christmas, then doing the same to Korhan, Fatma, and the others who were sitting around me. I was then urged to go around the whole table to kiss everybody and wish them "Merry Christmas," or, in Turkish, "Mutlu Noeller." People were a little surprised, because in spite of the red and green décor and the ornaments and little fake trees available in some super markets, not many Turkish people that I've talked to know too much about the exact date of Christmas, why it's important, or other bits of general information known to the rest of the Christian world—understandably! Many Christmas traditions like putting up lights and even getting a full tree have been adopted as New Years (Yil Başı) traditions, here. After I'd fully startled the party goers with my kisses and foreign well-wishes, I sat back down next to Fatma and right away I just sort of melted and started crying , which I tried to hide in her shoulder. I couldn't help it! I kept picturing my family back in Ohio. After a minute or two of back patting, when I was still weepy but feeling a little better, the president of our club reached over the table and took my hand and led me around over to the dance floor and just started to do some kind of dance with me! I was still crying and I was just being twirled all over this tiny dance floor and I kept stepping on people and I was laughing and crying and sort of letting out little squeaks about not knowing how to dance but he taught me the step pattern and right there and so, in some restaurant in Turkey, with some forty-something year-old Turkish man, while crying and laughing at the same time, in the wee hours of Christmas, I actually had my first ever formal dance with anybody. It was so strange, but at the same time, it was exactly what I needed to make me feel better and help me forget what I was missing so I could think about what I was, and am, experiencing.
After dinner, a large portion of the group piled into a few cars and went to a 24-hour soup/food place. It was a little too brightly lit for my taste, but I liked the baked pudding that I had ordered and it was comforting after what had been a very tiring night. Most of the men and a few of the women ordered a certain soup that is the after-dinner-and-drinks standard when Turks have a night out on the town. It's made, I believe, out of some portion of the stomach of cows, and is served with vinegar poured right in it, along with heaps of hot pepper flakes, salt, and pepper. If that wasn't enough, the waiter also brought out a little plate with a big long curled up thing on it, which was, I gather, a whole intestine stuffed all the way through with seasoned rice. After THAT, another plate was brought out, and it was even MORE gruesome! Imagine chopping off some animal's head, taking out the brain, and then just taking all of the meat left of the whole thing, cooking it, and putting it on a plate. There were tongues and cheek meat and forehead meat and eyeballs, all in one big brownish heap. I stuck with my pudding.
We finally headed home at about 2:30, picking up my little sister Söğüt from her grandma's on the way home. I fell asleep in the car, woke up long enough to stumble inside, put on some PJs and some Christmas music, and fell right to sleep.
More to come later of Christmas, my birthday, and, this weekend, New Years in Cappadocia!!
I love you all and I hope everyone is having a very merry holiday season!
Natalie
Monday, December 6, 2010
İstanbul Trip Journal Entries
The following are my transcribed journal entries from the end of October, when I took my weekend trip to İstanbul.
October 29, 2010
Bugün was the most amazing day. I flew from Ankara (where I've been staying with the Atillas) to Sabiha Gökcen Airport [named after one of Atatürk's daughters, a very famous Turkish pilot; an Amelia Airhart-type figure] on the Asian side of İstanbul to stay with Temiz and Fusün Üstun [a Rotarian and his wife, who actually was an exchange student to the U.S. in the 1960s when she was my age]. I was picked up at the Airport by their very kind driver (in a very nice BMW!). We went to the house by back roads so that we suddenly came down this shady road and the Boğaz [Bosporus River] was RIGHT THERE! NE KADAR GÜZEL [how beautiful]!! Their house is a big, beautiful, thin mansion. There is a thing spiral wooden staircase winding up the middle of the house and a little frosted glass elavator (!!!) going up the center of that! From every room it looks like you are floating on the Bosporus, it is so close to the house. The water goes right against the front marble patio. When I got to the house, I was greeted by Fusün and Temiz (and the 3-4 "help" people—a cook, butler!? Maid, et al.!!) and I sat down to five DELICIOUS cheeses and some sour cherry preserves and fresh çay [tea] and great honey and wheat bread and olives (black and yellow). We chatted for a long time and got along very well! I ate way too much cheese though and was too full at lunch! I found out that Fusün went to Robert Unversity, i.e. the currect Boğaz içi Universitesi [Bosporus University; it was originally an American school that was founded in the 1800s in İstanbul; sometime in the last 50 years is was given to the Turkish government and was renamed Boğaz içi, due to its stunning location up a steep slope over the huge river], my eventual dream school.
After we ate, we got in the car and went all over. I don't exactly know out route, but the driver took us back and forth over both bridges [there are two giant bridges over the Bosporus River, which divides the city of İstanbul and divides Europe from Asia. İstanbul is actually the only major city in the world that spans two continents!]. We got out of the car to look at a big old castle from the time of Mehmet II (The Conqueror [a very famous and successful Ottoman sultan, Mehmet II was the man who finally, sometime in the 14th century, conquered Constantinople and fully incorporated into the Ottoman empire, changing it over from its once prominent and historic Christian roots to its present situation as a beautiful Muslim city]) and walked around a beautiful little palace on the water. Oh, first we went to a beautiful little restaurant right on the water called The Marina. They had the fish laid out in the entryway on ice and you could just pick out what you wanted and they would make it fresh. We had white wine and salads and fresh calamari and little fresh fried fish and bread [illegible?} and pickled fish on onions and I got a freshly caught Bosporus Bluefish [called Lüfer] which was DELICIOUS. The waiter deboned it for me. The whole lunch, for three people, was 310 TL [~$210] plus tip!!! Ahhh. I guess they really are wealthy. After the other things we toured Boğaz içi U. and it was like a dream. I have never seen a more perfect or beautiful university. I. Will. Go. There.
I had mentioned that I wanted some "handmade" boots, which I guess are unavailable, so they took me to a mall and ended up buying me a great pair of chunky bootie-like shoes! So hip! So definitely the ~140TL the they paid for! Fusün said it was a Cumhuriyet Bayramı [The Holiday of the Republic, kind of like 4th of July. Because Temiz and Fusün are upper class, and, therefore, secular and very loyal to Atatürk, this holiday means more to them than the more religious ones, as Fusün said] present. Oh, and Temiz went and got me film [which surprisingly hard to find in Turkey—the stuff he got me had been imported from Russia and was all in Russian?!]! So cute and thoughtful!!
When we got home, I went straight out and walked around their neighborhood. It was so perfect. I walked up the cobble stone streets and passed by so many little eateries and nice, old places. I stopped into a cool little health food store and this great girl, Ceren [pronounced "jeh-REN", a very common female name in Turkey (a variation of it is also "Cerensu")], who owned it, make me winter tea [ kış çay, a mixture of many different whole chunks of herbs like ginger, cinnamon sticks, dried chamomile blossoms, cloves, and many other leaves and spices I don't know the names of] and I hung out with her and some cool (and adorably gay?!) guy friends of hers. They were so nice and we visited for almost an hour and they gave me bites of the soup she had made! I bought some olive oil soap [tan, pleasant smelling bars of rough soap that is very common in Turkey. Supposedly it is made out of nothing but olive oil, and, rather than greasy, it is very effective and moisturizing, I've found. I've been using mine as shampoo!] and more winter tea (which she made up on the spot for me!).
Walking home, I cam upon a cool little thrift store but didn't but anything. But there was a cute cat sleeping in the clothes bin! On the way back to the house there was a traditional little music troupe (so loud car alarms were going off!) playing and dancing in the street! Just a pipe/horn player, two dancing drummers, and two dancing castanet players. When I got home I met their very sweet family and we had dinner.
Okay, I am tired of typing and we are eating dinner soon, so I think that you will get these entries in installments.
Sorry about the profuse use of exclamation points and the profound lack of tact—I am trying to stay true to the (hand-) written word!
Goodnight, Sweet Reader,
Natalie
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Two Months and Getting Busier...
Thursday, October 21, 2010
Photos from Elmadag!
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
Ne Mutlu Türküm Diyene!
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
My New Address!
Natalie Weaver
Abıdın Daver Sokak
No. 5/10 06550
Çankaya, Ankara
Türkiye
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
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 18th 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!
Monday, October 11, 2010
Differences
Rotary's Youth Exchange motto is "It's not worse, it's not better, it's different." In that spirit, I will now give you all back home an overview of exactly what's different. Get ready.
Sighs and Sounds:
Instead of saying "ugghhh" or groaning, people say "ooooff" and rather than object with a, "hey!" when jostled, it's more of an indignant "yaaahh!" Frequently, they're combined to create "ooof yah!" which I've really picked up.
To say "no," you can just click your tongue and flick your chin up at the same time. This is very common.
When offered a food, people often refuse by hitting their upper chest with their hand, palm down. This is often accompanied by the aforementioned head flick, as well as "yok, sagol, afiyet olsun" which means "no, thanks, enjoy your food." It's very common at school, where kids are always sharing snacks from the cantin.
Instead of saying "pppssst" to get a person's attention, people use more of a "sshhhhhhtt" noise. Also common.
The inflection is a little different when you ask someone if they want something. That is, where we might say "do you WANT some?" going up on "want" and "some" towards the end, in Turkish, you say "isTAR misin?" going up on the "-tar" sound/more in the middle of the word.
In Turkish, U.S.A. is A.B.D., which is interesting for me to hear, as I'm so used to "yoo ess ayy" meaning my country. Now instead, I hear "ahh beh deh." Speaking of which, as you have just seen, the pronunciation of individual letter names is pretty different. So when people ask me to spell my name, instead of saying "ehn, ayy, tee, ayy, ell, eye, eee" I say "neh, ahh, teh, ahh, leh, eee, ehh," both of which would be written as "NATALIE" (in Turkish, dotted "I" is pronounced "eee").
Objects
The power outlets, rather than being two slits shear against the wall, are round wells, about an inch and a half across and recessed about an inch deep, at the bottom of which are two round holes of equal sizes into which the plugs go.
The toilets have a similarly recessed well of water at the bottom, instead of a smooth incline to the bottom, and are operated by two big plastic push-switches mounted on the wall above the toilet, one to flush and the other to stop the flushing (which stops on it's own whether or not you push it, never fear). They seem to be more water-efficient.
Light switches are always on the outside of the room by the door and are also push-switches, not little flick-able appendages like the American ones. I have closed myself in many a dark bathroom, groping around like a fool, before I remember that the switch is outside. This seems a little bit silly, as it also allows for people to accidently turn off the lights on you when you're inside, which has also definitely happened.
Kids in school hate using pens and rarely use regular pencils. Mechanical pencils are the word in old Turkiye. But these are not the screechy and poorly-made scribblers that cause so much consternation to me as an American student. These are utensils of the utmost capability and form. The one I borrowed from my friend today had a lovely, large, twist-up eraser on top and the finest of rubber grips over it fine maroon plastic. It didn't squeal once. Kids like to get really nice mechanical pencils and usually keep them ofr a few years of school. It seems much easier than dealing with noisy pencil sharpeners or leaky pens.
Converse shoes are everywhere. I think at least half, if not two-thirds, of the people under 30 whom I see on a daily basis are wearing Converses. The most popular color is creamy white canvas with one navy and one red stripe on the edge of the rubber sole. Red-white-and-blue shoes, especially in patent leather (if they're not Converses), are extremely common and popular.
There is more on this topic and an almost-finished post about my weekend—they will appear tomorrow! Sorry it's been so long.
Love,
Natalie