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