Progress

I'm starting to be able to form sentences! This is very exciting. I think that at least 1/3 of them are grammatically correct, too!

Today, I woke up late again, about noon. My anne offered me a bunch of food, but I just had some mineral water with fresh-squeezed OJ, which my baba had picked up from a cart on the street because I told him I liked the one my anne had got me the other day. Meyve suyu (may-VEH SOO-yoo, fruit juice) carts are all over the place. Almost as much as the şimit carts.

Remember the yufka I talked about yesterday? The filo-dough circles? Well today, my anne and I made real sigara böreği (seh-GAR-uh boh-RAY-ee, cigar borek), meaning that instead of the big rolled-up one my anne made me for lunch before, these ones are only about 3 inches long and are individually rolled. Like little appetizers. She stacked three huge yufka circles on top of each other, cut them down the middle, then across, then again, to make eighths. She then stacked the piles of paper-thin yufka wedges on top of each other, put two piles next to each other on the table, and got out a little bowl of water. I picked some of her fresh parsley and we put it, along with some black pepper, into some salty white cheese we had mashed up. She showed me how to take a tiny pile of cheese, place it at the thick end of the wedge, tuck in the sides, and roll the dough up into a little "cigar". To seal it, you dip the tip of the pointed end in water and press it against the roll. They look like this: (http://www.kadin-sitesi.com/yemektarifleri/wp-content/uploads/Sigara-Böreği.jpg) ! We used five circles of yufka total, and probably made about sixty little rolls, ten or so of which she briefly fried in some olive oil for me to have for lunch. The rest she put in the freezer. They were a little salty, a little crunchy, and very, very delicious. I ate some with a little cured olive tapenade that anne had in a jar. I told her they were right up there with kaymak. Gulia came over to chat while we cooked, and she shared some of the borek with me, as she is not fasting.

Gulia is very loud and funny and always chides me on my eating habits. There is a Turkish saying that says something about whatever you leave on your plate will haunt you or something. I don't know the full phrase. So Gulia always very wildly tells me to eat every single crumb!!!! Just now, we were out on her balcony having tea and this crumbly şimit, and she told me to quickquickquick, drink all of your tea! in a semi-joking tone of urgency. I always appease her with corresponding alacrity, crazily gulping down the rest of my çay (chai, tea), only half kidding. It is very fun.

I forgot to mention that yesterday, we met Gulia's daughter Dilek (DEE-leck) and grandsons, Efe (EH-feh, age 6, very blue eyes) and Ege (EH-geh, age 4, gorgeous shoulder length hair). They were incredibly hoş (hosh, cute!), and reminded me a lot of my little brother, Cedar, who is also 6. (I just showed my anne a picture of Cedar grinning and looking crazy on the beach, and she said "cin, cin!" which is pronounced like the English word "gin." I looked it up and it means, like, gnome or elf or something. Ahahahahahha. She's so right.) Anyways, they were bouncing all over the sidewalks while all of the women shopped around. Efe would count up in Turkish sort of nonsensically ("alti, yedi, sekiz, dokuz, OM!," six, seven, eight, nine, TEN!) and he and Ege would leap of the steps together. It was just heartbreakingly adorable. They were really sweet kids.

While we were out with the kids yesterday, Dilek bought them a snack, which turned out to be Turkish, Twilight-themed Cheetos. SO weird. I look over and Ege is clutching a little sticker of a guy's face that came in the bag and Dilek leans over and goes, "Jacob." Ahahahah.

Also, it turns out that Frito-Lay makes a chip called A La Turca that is supposedly Turkish-themed corn chips, involving poppy seed and tomato. They were sort of good? Also, very weird.

We went again to a huge super market, that was again underneath a mall. In the meat section, my anne had them cut up a couple of some kind of leg and grind up some meat. There were whole livers and whole stomach linings. Ahhhh. They were totally white and in little piles and looked sort of wooly/furry. Ew. We bought a giant bag of these mild, long little green peppers. A whole grocery bag full was only about fifty cents. Clothing and perfume and things are very expensive here, but food is very cheap and very good.

Back at the house, we picked up a pot full of milk from the doorman's apartment (anne had brought down an empty pot to be filled) along with a bunch of grocery bags of fresh tomatoes and more pepper and some other veggies. I was freaking out. So much produce! All the time! I guess it isn't all ours though? I think anne explained we were picking some of it up for friends.

Bayram is coming up this week. It is the end of Ramazan, the month of fasting, and there is a big, three or four day-long celebration, like a souped-up Halloween. There are all of these TV ads of kids screaming and being showered in candy and lots of print ads to the same effect.

Dinner tonight was a really good red-lentil pureed soup, a white bean and tomato dish, a fresh cucumber/tomato/mint/pepper salad, white rice with little, half inch-long pasta strands, black olives, and helva. Helva is some kind of very finely ground grain, cooked with water, sugar, and nuts, so it makes kind of a less soupy, less creamy Cream of Wheat. Anne made it today. It is very good.

This song (http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6s55c_zulfu-livaneli-ozgurluk_music) is the slower song that was sung at the concert last night. Everyone raised their hands into peace signs and held lighters and cell phones and sang and swayed.

I am really beginning to love Ankara. The apartment we are in has a beautiful view and Gulia's is even better. She has almost a complete 180 degree view of the city from her balcony. The lights stretch out for miles and miles. They glitter in the summer-night haze and look as if someone has spilled a huge box of jewelry and loose gems out over a black dip of velvet and hills. There are strands of gold that mark bridges and roads and giant swaths of glittering orange interspersed with flecks of green and red and blue and purple. This night is especially lovely, and the air is cool an fresh and smells of city and Florida. Everywhere there is the sound of cars and humming and a breeze floats in an out of my balcony. Our place is atop a hill plastered with new apartments, and they slide away from us, transforming with little transition from looming blocks to distance sparkle down the steep slope and out into the rest of the city. The light pollution erases the horizon, and it looks as if the last light on the farthest hill is being swallowed in the fog at the end of the world. There are very few stars to be seen, but instead of lessening the sight, it seems as if all of the stars in the whole sky have fallen softly onto our valley and collected into an infinite, glistening pool. I have never seen a place so beautifully transformed by the night.

Just as the sun set, the imams called for evening prayers. The sound of their song is so foreign to me and it seems to emanate from everywhere at once, filling up the hills with a muted warbling of faith. The loudspeakers they use from the minarets distort their voices and the hazy lights over the city seem a liquid, filtering and mutating the prayers so they sound as if they were being delivered to us from above as we float weightlessly beneath a deep and calming sea. It is beautiful and haunting and makes all of the tiny city lights seem to come together as one, an undulating mass of sound and prayer.

In Awe,

Natalie

P.S. This one is from the Blue Mosque in Istanbul, but it sounds similar: http://www.flickr.com/photos/alaskapine/2402178742/