As you may have noted on my Facebook:
" Natalie Weaver JUST WATCHED THE MOST MINDBLOWING BASKETBALL GAME OF HER ENTIRE LIFE!!!!! TURKEY WAS DOWN THE WHOLE ENTIRE TIME AND THEN IN THE LAST FOURRRRR SECONNNNDSSS THEY WOOOOOOOOOONNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN
It was incredible. For the WHOLE GAME, we were always down by at least one, usually two shots. We got it tied ONCE, and immediately Serbia scored a three-pointer. But then, RIGHT at the end, in the last five minutes, we were up by two, then one, and THEN, with FOUR SECONDS left to go, SERBIA scored. They basically won. It was horrible. We had been yelling and screaming and then, just when we thought we had pulled off a miracle, it was over. ALL over. BUT IN THE LAST FOUR SECONDS, Kerem Tunceri slammed in a two point shot with one HALF of a second remaining but then they GAVE SERBIA THE BALL but, INCREDIBLY, Semih Erden blocked an amazing last-second three-point shot meaning that TURKEY WON 83-82 OVER SERBIA IN THE SEMI-FINALS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! This happens to mean that they will be playing the U.S. tomorrow. Sorry, homeland, I'm rooting for TÜRKIYYYYYYYYYYE!!!!
This is the ad that they've been playing the whole tournament. The song is AMAZING and everyone always chants it. They are singing "Oniki Dev Adam," (OHN EEKEE DEV AH DAHM, or TWELVE GIANT MEN!). It is really fantastic:
http://vimeo.com/13203982
This is just the song by itself:
http://www.antu.com/taraftar/mp3/12devadam.mp3
GO TÜRKIYE!
For all of you darling daily readers, I'm sorry it's been a while--I've had a very busy Bayram!
The first day, Thursday, I woke up late, again. My anne came in and told me that she was going to see some family. I wished her a good trip and went back to loafing around in my PJs. It turns out that she meant that the family were coming here. I rushed to get dressed (in my great navy and white, thin-striped jersey-knit shirt I recently got for fifteen bucks in Kizilay) and crept sheepishly into our sitting room to join the company. Everyone was very friendly and pleased to meet me, and good wishes were shared all around. I can't remember everyone's names, but I met one of our (distant?) cousins, Selen, who is going to be a sophomore. It was great to meet another girl about my age!
When company arrives for Bayram, everyone is offered a little chocolate. This is because "Bayram" is actually short for Şeker Bayram, or sweet holiday. After, we brought out little plates, each with three delicious sarma (stuffed grape leaves), which I have really grown to love, along with two little potato böreği, one plate per person. These börek were more like little potato puff pastries with a few sesame seeds on top My anne made them, and they were flaky and warm and absolutely delicious. We also served the little hazelnut cookies we had made.
After the waves of neighbors and family stopped arriving and everyone departed, Ilke, Kıvanç, baba, anne, and I had dinner. Anne and Ilke and I prepared the meal, which consisted of mixed vegetables, spaghetti and a light red sauce, breaded and fried chicken, summer salad (cucumbers, tomato, and onion), mushrooms stuffed with cheese, delicious oven-fry potatoes, and bread. It was actually a pretty American-type meal, my anne was surprised to hear, and everything was very good. After dinner, Ilke and I discussed grammar and dialects for an hour or two, and then she and Kıvanç took me out to a nice restaurant district for some dessert. It was a very nice evening!
The next day, we again had a bunch of visitor, same deal, and then we went to see Ilke's parents. Her mom served us really delicious homemade pistachio baklava and another great dessert, also made with honey and pistachios. They were very sweet people. Ilke looks just like her dad! I got picked up from their parents house by Kıvanç and Ilke while anne and baba stayed to visit. We went over to have dinner at the same family's house who had come to see us yesterday (Selen's family and other cousins and aunts and uncles). It was great having met them before, as I felt very comfortable and they were very welcoming. We hung out there for the rest of the afternoon and late into the evening. We had homemade sarma again, as well as the same type of salad, but the guys went out to some restaurant and got a bunch of prepared rice, rotisserie chickens, french fries, and soda. I was given a plate with a full half of a chicken on it. And I ate it! Not quite down to the bare bone, but almost all of it. A lot of you would be pretty proud of me. And while I hate to admit it, this chicken was really good. After dinner, I helped clean up, and I went and hung out with Selen (whose English is pretty good) and her little sister and her cousins. It was very relaxed and fun, and everyone was joking and laughing and having a really good time. I was very much included, and my being there felt totally natural. It was great! I could have just as easily been hanging out with the Weavers or the Antenuccis.
Speaking of which, I got to talk briefly to my brother, Sean, at home, and then to my Grandma Bobby and Grandpa Tom! It was so nice to talk to them, but it made me wish I were out on their boat with them, or hanging out at the lake. I was a little upset afterwards--I really miss seeing everyone, family especially.
OH, in a final close to the Russian tale: after seeing him and trying to work it out over Bayram, Lena the Russian girl was finally and unequivocally rejected by her (soon to be former) husband. It was really sad. She was upset and so was her mother and so was Gulia (whose name is actually spelled "Hulya", I discovered; I'll just keep it was Gulia to avoid confusion). It was a horrible Bayram for all of them. I especially feel bad for baby Asia, as she will probably rarely get to see her dad. In fact, this morning, Lena and her mom and the baby got on a plane to Ukrayna (ooo-KRY-nuh, Ukraine) where they will live with the baby, who will probably never be taught Turkish. I don't know what Gulia is going to do without her granddaughter. I am sorry, readers, to have to deliver such a sad ending to this long and confusing saga.
For the last day of Bayram, we visited my baba's aunt, who was absolutely lovely and a little feisty and must have been about 82, although she didn't look it. Her English is actually pretty good, as she used to be a geography teacher (they often use English in the high school courses). She lived in a great, old little apartment, and was very sweet to me. She doesn't have any kids, and I think she must be pretty lonely, as she teared up a little bit and told my anne in half-Turkish, half-English that she wants to have her own lovely exchange girl to stay with with her next year. It was so nice.
After this visit, we inexplicably took a trip to yet another gigantic and very modern mall. We just walked around a bit, and at the very end, I went back to the first store, Gap, and bought a really great mustard yellow sweater. Actually, my baba bought it for me, as this particular store wouldn't accept my debit card! I tried telling him I would pay him back, but, in a typical Turkish show of hospitality, he totally refused, saying that this is my Bayram present. And it was pretty expensive! Gap in Turkey is weirdly expensive, so it was 80 TL, which is a bit more than $50. So generous!
The one single quality of life thing that I really don't like about Turkey is the number of parking garages that you have to deal with. I know it's a city, but it seems much worse than say, New York. Our apartment has a little one, and it is still awful. Usually we just get out of the car and wait, because the spaces are so tight that it takes five minutes and five inches of backing up and creeping forward to get around all of the stupid cement pillars. And every mall has the biggest underground parking lot you've ever seen, and they are all really crowded and loud and filled with exhaust. Today, after shopping for maybe half an hour, we just lost our car. None of us remembered the the lot letter or number, and we wandered around asking security guards and breathing exhaust until I finally remembered that the first shop we saw coming up the escalator was was TurkCell. So we found it, after like twenty starving minutes. I know, I know, I'm being melodramatic, but I am just really not used to, nor enamored of, these Turkish parking garages. I just want a nice grassy bit of gravel to pull up to!
Other than that, Turkey's being good to me so far. Actually, the malls have these really cool escalators, but instead of stairs, it's just a huge flat ramp on a twenty degree incline. It feels like you're on a conveyor-belt to heaven, and, depending on your sense of materialism, maybe you are.
Lots of Love and Basketball Pride,
Natalie
P.S. Congratulations to my cousins, Liza and Jonathan, for the birth of their third baby! His name is Charles Robert and his birthday is Sept. 10 and he is healthy and amazing!
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