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

Photos from Elmadag!

Unfortunately, I didn't get any pictures of the scenery, as my film camera is out of batteries! I will try and get new batteries soon, definitely before Istanbul!

These are ones my mother took at the school. Enjoy!

The picture above is my host mom, Aylin, with one of the kids!

I hope you liked them! I will have more of my actual house/school soon!

Goodnight!

xoxox

Natalie

Ne Mutlu Türküm Diyene!

I offer either condolences or congratulations, Dear Reader, on the length of the following post that you are about to tackle. Please accept whichever you require.

On Saturday, my anne took me and my little sister to a really nice art opening. It was held in the upper floors of a really nice rug-dealership, the owner of which had made his fortune selling very expensive, very beautiful hand-made carpets. They prices of the good ones ranged from over $1000 for the smallest, 3x5 ft. ones to one huge, 30x25 ft. one that was going for $35,000! It takes many weeks and many people to make such large intricate rugs, I guess. Anyways, this guy and his sons had taken an interest in the arts and open a very beautiful modern gallery above their shop. The artist in question was an old Turkish man, over 80, who had spent his life studying and showing all over the world and had many beautiful paintings to display. He worked mostly in oil, I believe, and his subjects were basically women, women with violins, women with other instruments, and women passionately embracing men. All of these were done in a very beautiful modern, skewed style, and his use of color was wonderful. There was a live flautist and a violinist playing music, and there were appetizers of walnuts, grapes and yellow-cheese, and crackers, as well as plates of fruit juice and wine being brought around. It was a really beautiful show, and straight afterwards, anne was so kind as to take me over to the mall. There, in my inspiration, I got about ten different colors of nice gouache paint, a few nice pads of sketch and watercolor paper, some brushes, and a pallet! I've been have a great time supplementing my drawing habit with a little color, and, like I said, it's nice having more to do with my afternoons.

Today, I got up early. Instead of going to school, I accompanied my anne to a Rotary Club (but mainly just the wives went) trip out to Elmadağ (EL-mah-dah), which is a small village just outside of Ankara-proper. It took about forty minutes to get there. We had to wind through the most beautiful hills and mountains. It was rainy today, so all of the colors took on a muted, but somehow intensified hue, everything glistening in grays and foggy blue-greens and browns. The road we traveled to get down to the village was recently paved, but without a guard-rail or stripes. It looks like someone has slicked a thin trail of tar over a raised ridge in the valley of a huge, undulating sea of gulfs and gullies of rocks and smoothed down cliffs, all scattered with scrub brush and twisted olive trees. Up close, the soil and plants are sandy-brown and green, but as you look into the distance, the bluffs fade off in layered tiers of colors, the farthest peaks blending into the misty clouds in a wash of soft blue-gray. And way out here, the view is not sullied by the endless prick of balconied cement apartments. Instead, there are only tiny stucco houses, roofed in red brick tiles and tucked into the alcoves of the slopes or clinging to their sides. Even these were few, were far between. Instead the windows of our minibus were filled full with the rolling, rolling hillocks and valleys, rises and dips of the brilliant, saturated, Anatolian plateau. This ride out into maze of topography in which Ankara is nestled is the second time in my exchange where I have felt this much love and awe of the land in my new and beautiful Türkiye.

These pictures of the land around Ankara are close to what it looked like, but today, it was more colorful and even more grand.

http://goodandlost.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/Canyon-to-Vardzia-2.jpg

http://peacelikeariverblog.com/images/2010/274843.bmp

The reason we went out to this school is to bring them supplies. Elmadağ, like most villages in Turkey, is very poor and very rural. It was a complete change from the huge, modern city which I have become accustomed to. It was comprised of the same hand-built, stucco and brick houses planted all over the hillsides. There were chickens and old women and children wandering everywhere in the school yard. The school itself was a three-story affair with a fence and gate around it, and it was clearly the center of the town. The old women who were helping run the school were both wearing flower-patterned şalvar (SHAL-var), traditional Turkish peasant pants. I asked Binnur about them last week when I saw a man at a taxi station wearing a black pair. She told me that they are very traditional in certain regions of Turkey, especially in the villages, as they are very practical. The big, loose billows of material mean you can climb up steep places and move around very easily. I am going to try and get a pair, as they are also very comfortable, and, incidentally, rather vogue these days, as a similar look has now been popularized as "harem pants." The link below shows younger girls in a Turkish village wearing şalvarlar (the -lar suffix makes it plural!):

http://www.turkishjournal.com/images/turkish_village_soccer_salvar.jpg

This picture shows women similar to the sort you see all over Turkey:

http://www.danheller.com/images/Europe/Turkey/Kalkan/turkish-women-1.jpg. They are all very sweet and withered and maternal, all of them wear bulky sweaters and big socks and headscarfs, and all of them are five feet tall or less. Today, actually, when we got back to Ankara, I saw a woman on the street who could not have been over three feet tall, if that. It was amazing. There was a similar woman in Elmadağ. I think the weathered look had something to do with generational differences. Women, especially ones living in villages like many, many Turks still do, had to work very hard to grow their own food, make clothes, take care of the family, etc. So much physical labor over a lifetime! These women all really remind me of my step-grandma Betty, actually. She died when she was 100 and was a doctor and a farmer and loved the outdoors, and her hands and face clothes were just the same way when I knew her. It's interesting what's the same to me around here, what makes me think of people I miss.

Anyways, it was a very poor area, so we were bringing them new sturdy table cloths and plastic glasses and shoes and cardigans and salt and pepper shakers and water bottles and lot of other things. We had brought along a whole separate flat-bed truck to carry all of the boxes, and the kids at the school helped us unload them. The school itself, especially the certain way the kitchen smelled and the houses looked, reminded me a lot of the Dominican Republic when I went to build houses there with my church two summers ago. Both were vibrant and thinly-furnished and surrounded by refuse and children and tiled-roofs. We went into one of the classes, kindergarten, I think, and took lots of pictures and went around to each of the cute little kids and fitted them out with new shoes and passed out the cardigans. In the teachers' lounge, which was really just a very sparse "kitchen" and a room with a table and chairs and a few old couches, we were served cookies and tea and cheese crescents. The people were very welcoming and nice and very receptive and happy to have the new things.

After this, we headed home. On the way, we stopped at a road-side restaurant where we apparently had reservations, as everything was already laid out. There was delicious summer salad, fresh pide bread, kaymak and honey, and fresh white cheese. They served beef-sprinkled herb pide and also big iron, shallow, wok-like pans of nice sauteed beef strips, some of which I tried. There was also fresh yogurt, of course. For dessert, we all had cones of ice cream, lemon with vanilla. Here the ice cream is thicker and creamier and sort of sticky, and instead of round scoops they kind of just wipe flat slabs of it on top of the cone or cup. The lemon and vanilla were delicious together. OH, the strangest thing about the restaurant was its very traditional toilets. I went with both of my annes (Fatoş and Aylin were both on the trip. So nice to see my first anne again!) to the bathroom next door. It was normal and modern and had the normal white porcelain sinks and tiles and everything else. But I went and opened the stall. This is what I saw: http://lh6.ggpht.com/_s3raaZ8KWNg/RldSrYTlMDI/AAAAAAAAA0I/jGEzdPFrKI0/DSC01318.JPG

Inside, instead of the normal raised bowl, flusher, seat, etc., there was a hole in the ground, covered by a treaded porcelain cover. There was no way to flush, that I could find, and I didn't see toilet paper either. There was a spigot and a pitcher available, but I did not venture to utilize either. It was crazy. When I first saw them, I said with not a little surprise "BU NE?!," meaning, rightly, "WHAT'S THIS?!" and both of my mothers collapsed into laughter at my dismay. Apparently, this is a very normal toilet in all but the largest, newest cities. They used to build apartments that had both the squatting kind and the sitting kind, to fit your preference. Amazing! According to Aylin, and corroborated by Wikipedia, these squatting toilets are actually healthier and more sanitary. Something about body position and what part of you on which type is touching where on the apparatus. Well regardless, it worked just fine for me.

We finally got back to town and anne (Aylin) and I went over to Korhan's office where we had left her car (which is, by the way, a very yellow, very sporty, '90s Peugot convertible, one of only two of its kind in Ankara). We visited for a while and then anne took the car home and left me at Korhan's office, as we were both to go out to the weekly Rotary dinner later in the evening. Oh, speaking of which, today marks my SEVENTH week in Turkey! My goodness, how time is flying.

Anyways, it was only about 2:30 or 3 p.m. and the dinner wasn't until 7:30, so i had time to kill. I read some of the really nice coffee table books about Ankara that he had. I napped for a while, and had a very, very vivid dream in which my mother (Peggy), and later my grandma (her mom, Betty), came to visit me in Turkey. It was so real that in the dream, I thought I had been woken up from my office nap already and found my mom and gram were sitting by me, chatting. I dreamt I took them all over the city, showed them where I live, where I go to school, Elmadağ, and everywhere. It was sort of awful when I actually woke up and realized how far away they still were.

After, I went around and saw more of the office, which takes up almost the whole top floor of the building (and a few floors below, which I didn't explore). I got to meet Korhan's staff, also. They were all really nice, and none of them really spoke English, so I had a good time making small-talk about my life and theirs while practicing my Turkish. I am really getting to be pretty capable of conversation, I am pleased to report. Also, Turkish doesn't sound nearly so foreign any more; even when I don't understand what's being said, I recognize common words, can tell verbs apart from nouns and adjectives, and can almost always get a basic grasp of the subject. This is coming at the expense of my already very meager Spanish. While I was in the Dominican Republic, as I mentioned, my Spanish really improved and I was getting a basic hold on the language. Now, any time I try and think of any word in other any language (even my English is going downhill!), I immediately come up with its Turkish. This is really a good thing, but it's worrisome if I plan on ever trying for a third real language.

After hanging around the office, I asked Korhan if I could go for a walk outside. He said sure, so I put on my jacket and grabbed my purse. It wasn't raining just then and the weather was nice and it was already evening. The city was breezy and loud and bustling, and it felt like I was striding around New York on an October night, instead of Ankara. I stopped at the bank (thanks, Mom!), as I've been out of cash recently. After, I just picked a direction and walked down the street. I bought some freshly roasted chestnuts for 5TL from a man selling them on the sidewalk by the large intersection. They were small and delicious, and I ate them while I walked. I stopped into a little cosmetic/toiletries shop and bought some light-tan nail polish for 1.50TL. I curbed my spending there and had a really nice stroll down the big, crazy streets. I am getting really good at crossing the traffic. I stopped into a pretty little park and called my Japanese friend, Nozomi, another exchange student living in Ankara. We decided to go out to dinner and hangout on Saturday. It should be very fun, as she is just the sweetest.

I got back to the office with time to spare and hung out outside talking to one of the drivers in Turkish for a little bit. He was the one who took me to get my residency permit, so we're old pals. After, I went up and waited around some more for Korhan to get ready. We went together to the dinner at about eight, and it was good as usual but was smaller and just served to us, without the buffet. They had a slide show going of the pictures from the trip out to the school that day! Quick turnaround, it seems. They were also showing pictures that the club had taken out to a vineyard at some point this year.

In other, very exciting news, I'm going to be learning how to play the kanun!!!!!!! Pronounced KAH-noon, it is like a big, flat harp from your lap. It is a Turkish instrument, is very beautiful and is very, very difficult. But as I'm not distracted by sports, a job, or a social life, I have plenty of time to learn! No, but really, I'm extremely excited. I've been bugging Korhan to talk to Nozomi's host dad for weeks, as he is a very renowned and skilled kanun player. So this Thursay, along with Nozomi and maybe Emily, the other Rotary exchange girl in Ankara, I'm starting lessons!! This is a really good video of what it looks and sounds like, taken in Istanbul:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFY30X4C0Uw

I almost forgot, I'm going to Istanbul next weekend!

I'll talk about my upcoming trip later--it's really late!

Lots of love,

Natalie

P.S. The title of this post is a very famous quotation from a speech by Atatürk, and it means roughly,"Happy is the Man Who Can Call Himself A Turk!" Incidentally, it was stenciled in gold letters in the entryway of the school in Elmadağ...

My New Address!

Write me! Write me back!

Natalie Weaver
Abıdın Daver Sokak
No. 5/10 06550
Çankaya, Ankara
Türkiye

xoxoxo

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 18^th 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!

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

It's Been One Month Today

I can't believe I've already been here for a month. Never in my life have I been away from home for a full four weeks. It feels very strange. I have many memories of home, and I'm still having very vivid dreams about America. Almost every morning, I wake up and have to remember that I'm actually in Turkey, and for a whole, entire year. I have a recurring dream in which, having been in Turkey for a week or two, I then find myself back in the U.S. for a pleasant week, after which, I know in the dream, I will return to Turkey. This visit usually includes a spirited reunion with all of my cousins, a jaunt to downtown Madison (where I always go to CVS, for some reason? I think it's because I've been craving a little shopping simplicity after living in this wild urban marketplace), and a trip down to my house in Buffalo Bay. I think that the strange context--being aware of my life in Turkey, but not actually in it--comes from the still-surreal feeling that I will be here for a whole year. Or at least nine more months. It freaks me out sometimes to know that I can't just visit, can't see anyone from home, can't talk to anyone in person or hug them or anything, no matter how much I really want to. I mean, coming back early is option, but not really. Not only would it be hugely expensive, it would be hurtful to my host families, a letdown for both Rotary Clubs, an outrage to my parents, and a major personal failure for me. I want this exchange! I know that the whole thing, the full year, is the real experience, homesickness and all. Even when I wonder what I've done, why I'm not enjoying my simple senior year back home, I remind myself that being here is 100% my deal. I thought it up, made it happen, it was my choice. Obviously, the day-to-day reality of living in Ankara, Turkey is very different than the world-wind montage I have vaguely envisioned. But I'm really appreciating it so far. I think this last train of consideration makes me sounds really homesick and feeling trapped, but I'm not at all. I feel great, most days. I wanted to give you an idea of the bizarre psychological situation that I've found myself in--or rather--that I've chosen.

School is going well. Even though I don't do much real school work, I have a little routine that is pretty productive. For the classes where I can't understand anything (everything besides English and math) I do one of about three things. Sometimes, I read The Ottoman Centuries: The Rise and Fall of the Turkish Empire, a great book by Lord Alfred Kinross, who also wrote a really good biography of Ataturk, of which I read the first third or so. I am reading this pretty carefully, underlining, etc., as it is basically my stand-in for a whole host of actual Turkish history classes. Also, at the request of my teacher, I recently ordered, through my mother back home, a 19th and 20th c. Turkish revolutionary history book, along with a book of conjugated Turkish verbs. Besides read, I write a lot of postcards. I'm sorry I haven't sent any out yet, but it's hard to get a ride to the post office, and I feel weird asking my host-dad to post a huge stack of 35 or so cards! I think I'll work on this tomorrow, as we are going down to get my residency permit. I also sometimes work on translating the two 2nd graders' Turkish workbooks I got, but it's tricky. There are a lot of idioms in the little poems and a second grader really does know a lot of vocabulary. Other than that, I doodle sometimes. It's not to bad really. There are nice little breaks every forty-five minutes, and because I'm not rushing through some huge school to get to my next class, they feel very leisurely. Normally, kids just wander to the canteen or the bathroom or hangout by the window or the hall between the two 11th grade classrooms and the two 12th grade classrooms. It's nice. I have a friendly report going with most of the kids in my grade and I know a few in the grades above and below, too. I've been invited to a barbecue, to the movies, and to generally hangout. I am liked, as far as I can tell, by most of the student body, the teachers, and the administrators. So things are going well!

In both math classes, I really do pay attention, as I am basically learning by watching the examples and doing them myself. At this school, and, I guess, in many schools in Turkey, they don't use calculators. All of the kids, therefore, are frighteningly capable of long-division and instant factoring. It's hard to keep up, even though I have already learned a good portion of the material at some point in high school.

I've realized, especially upon my move, that what I thought life would be like here is really nothing like the reality. Of course. At my last house, it was a little more, hmm, "Turkish-feeling." I was with an older couple, no kids, living in an apartment in a crowded, dusty part of Ankara-proper. They spoke no English, we have tea every night, I cooked a ton of fresh Turkish food, and I went to a lot of bazaars and rode a lot of mini-buses. But now, I'm sort of out in the suburbs, a little, by about twenty minutes. The whole ride in, you can see all the hills, the apartments, and most of the full city, so it doesn't feel as remote as, say, Madison to New Haven. But it's certainly not bustling. I have a housekeeper to do my laundry and make my bed, I don't really cook any of my own food, and I am living in a very modern, large house, certainly newer than my one in Connecticut, although with less of a view. We have a manicured backyard and a hammock in one of the few overhung timber and stone patios, which I had the pleasure of falling asleep in this afternoon, after reading a little Updike (who is really the perfect author to help me escape back into Americana). We have a huge wrought-iron, remote controlled gate with a big iron, cursive "A" on it (for Atilla) and a driver from my host-father's work to take us places. Many days, Çınar and Söğüt (chee-NARR and SO-oot) my brother and sister, have piano lessons, which can be heard though out the house. During Çınar's, especially, it sounds like I am a few rooms down from an opera, as he and his teacher often sing. A few songs I usually here are the theme from Amelie, Moon River, and Strangers in the Night, which is always sung. Beautiful. I'm certainly not "roughing-it." I guess what I'm trying to demonstrate is that, contrary to the wild and antiquated and decidedly Middle Eastern Ankara that a part of me was expecting, I've found myself in the Turkish rendition of the Sound of Music. It's like I'm Julie Andrews in Austria if the holocaust hadn't ruined everything.

It's certainly one sort of Turkish experience. I'll let you know how the rest unfolds.

Love from Afar,

Natalie

Details

So, now I finally have time for a longer post.

Today was the last day of my first week of school! It went really well. The school, like I mentioned, is very small. It goes from kindergarten to 12th grade, and all the kids are in one big sprawling building. It is a nice building, but is not incredibly modern. The walls are all different shades of light green and light blue and light pink. The two rooms I spend most of my time in are a light shade of lime green with lavender shades and I think some kind of pink trim maybe. There are no wall decorations in the classrooms, besides the obligatory three framed Ataturk tributes. This is because, rather than the students rotating classes every hour and going to totally new mixtures and new rooms, we stay together and the teachers rotate among us. So, as no teacher has his or her own room as a "nest," so to speak, they are pretty bare. Just desks and whiteboards. Staying together as a class in one classroom is the norm throughout Turkey, not just in schools as small as mine. For the first five or six years of school, you don't even change classes from year to year! It's the same 20 or so kids, in the same class, all day, for sometimes even seven years. Then, in secondary school, they switch groups once a year. Not until college are there different classes with different kids throughout the day. Actually, college is very different, too. Almost always, kids live at home for their entire college careers, actually taking a school bus to the campus everyday. It's also much cheaper to go to college in Turkey, only about 10,000 TL a year, or something like $6,000. College is also the first time Turkish kids don't have to wear uniforms!

Speaking of which, the uniforms have not been nearly so bad as I feared (of course). They are not very strict about the code, so almost everyone wears some color of Converse sneaker or other non-black, non-dress shoe. I have continued to wear my black leather lace-ups because I think they're snazzy. Also, you can wear different cardigans or sweaters over your white collared shirt, and luckily, I brought a million cardigans. In fact, I have even seen kids in just plain old white t-shirts. It seems that as long as your shirt's white, your pants are black, and you look somewhat tidy, you're fine. I even wore my pair of very dark blue slim-leg jeans today. No problem.

Also, I have noticed that most girls don't use hair bands. They have them, but instead, almost everyone uses those big plastic jaw-type clips to put their hair into some kind of half-up deal. I haven't really seen any girls with buns, ratty or otherwise. My host sister was sort of surprised when she came back into the room a few seconds after I had thrown my hair up into a big bun on top of my head. She was like, "When did you do this to your hair?!" I told her I had done it just then. She was very mildly in awe. I don't know. Buns just aren't a thing.

Note: My apologies to male-type readers for this last dissertation.

Anyways.

I don't know if I mentioned, but I'm actually in 11th grade again here. Ugghhh. In America, 11th grade is the tough year and 12th is really the year to slack off and have fun. It's the total opposite here. Junior year is sort of your last fun year before you have to worry about THE Exam. So that's good. But I'm still sort of missing the sense of seniority. Anyways, at the end of a young Turk's senior year, he or she has to take this HUGE exam, a culmination of everything they've learned in their whole high school career. And it's no SAT--it's really difficult. So, in March, every senior is excused by the government from all of the rest of their classes/school for the rest of that year so that they can go take 7 day per week test prep classes outside of school. Many of them actually start these in their Junior, sometimes even Sophomore years. And if they can manage it, a lot of them get medical excuses so they can get out of school in the January of their Senior year. The reason this test is so important is its impact on college. It's not like in the U.S., where the SATs are just another component in a long, cushy, individualized application. In Turkey, you're exact numerical score on this test will determine with terrifying finality your eligibility to attend entire brackets of schools. If you don't get the score, you can't go. That's it. Apparently kids have breakdown and all of these health issues and stress related problems for whole months before the exam. It's insane. So, to avoid losing my entire set of classmates to mental health issues and test prep classes, I'm put with the Juniors. But it's really fine. They don't feel particularly younger, and everyone is really friendly.

I have been feeling pretty homesick lately, especially today. I keep pining for a somewhat fabricated New England-y autumn experience, especially as it's still incredible hot and somewhat tree-less here, even in late September. At least nights are cold. Oh, I also saw Resident Evil 3D today with my host brother, while my host mom and sister went to see some other movie. It was certainly a form of entertainment, but really not my cup of çai, so to speak. It was gory and intense and super loud and disorienting. Not what I needed when I was feeling like a sleepy, homesick little kid away from home.

Luckily, the shock of this cinematic experience was very much balanced out by a great phone conversation with my mom, Aunt Chris, Grandma Betty, and little cousin Lilah in Cleveland, followed later in the evening with a skype chat with a few of my friends and with my Grandma Bobbie up at Lake Erie, who recently got her first computer! It was really, really unbelievably nice to talk to everyone. I miss everywhere and everything and everyone.

I was going to write more, but, like I said I spent a lot of time skyping.

Even though I sound sort of sad in this post, everything is really okay. Homesickness is normal, as I am acutely aware. I hope it doesn't last too long. We'll see.

Love Always,

Natalie

The Weekend and Monday and Moving

Ah, I'm sorry that this will also be short.

I had an incredible weekend. The other 12 inbound exchange students are very wonderful and we had a great time. More about this later, I hope.

I am now living in my second host family's home. It is huge and beautiful and full of all kinds of art, especially tribal, carved wood. They have a big veggie garden and a lot of nice, green grass! I've missed having a lawn. My newest mom, Aylin, is a great cook too, and we have been having very good dinners. For breakfast, she laid out really good cut-fruit and cereal combos with fresh-squeezed oj for everyone. Normally I don't like breakfast, but it was really good.

Sogut (pronounced SO-oot) is really adorable and sweet and LOVES Harry Potter. She has all the games and is up to the fifth book and has movies 1-4. She likes to chat about which characters are her favorites and can tell you which chapters she liked or didn't based on where we are in the movie. We watched the first one on a little dvd player today after school and she and I ate some fresh fruit with melted hazelnut chocolate for a snack. Cinar (CHEE-narr), my older brother, is really nice. The two of them are both AMAZING piano players, and like to play for fun after school. Cinar has this beautiful sonata I recognized but didn't quite know memorized and they've both been in a ton of recitals all around Ankara. The play bills are framed around the house!

The husband and wife who live here and work for the family are really nice. I came home and all of the clothes from the trip that I had tossed into the cupboard to put away after school today were already hung up and folded, and my bed was fully made back up. It was really nice, but I sort of have mixed feelings about this whole "having help" thing. They are from Uzbekistan, and when I asked, the woman (whose name is hard for me to remember) has FOUR kids, aged from late twenties to only fifteen, along with one grandchild. They're so far from her!

My first day of school went pretty smoothly and my classmates are very nice and helpful. No one speaks very good English, but enough of the students and one teacher have enough knowledge of it to help me get around and tell me what's up. The school is k-12, I believe, and there are only two classes per grade. My own class has only 7 kids, including me, and the other class has about 12. Very small. The buses here are like tiny, individual coach buses, with the nice, upholstered seats. Since Ankara is so crazy and spread out, they can't use the huge yellow ones we have, I guess. It took nearly the whole bus to help the driver find my address, as there are millions of these little gated villa communities on the outskirts of the city.

The school is nice, the lunch was actually good, and I am tired but happy.

I hope that my next posts will be more detailed, but now, I want to read some Updike and go to sleep!

Love,

Natalya

Ch-ch-ch-changes...

I need to go to bed. I wanted to inform you, sweet reader, of the fact that I got all of my school uniform stuff today (details of horrifying fabrics/cuts to follow) and also a pair of school shoes, which I got with anne. Ehhhhh. Aylin took me to the school uniform store to get everything. Aylin and her husband Korhan are the family I'm moving in with next, starting Sunday. They are very nice. We went straight from the really beautiful, modern office of the Ankara Rotary Club president, where a bunch of the wives/female members were having a group birthday party. They had an amazing cake, covered in sugar orchids and flowers and insects. It was vanilla with tropical fruit and cream. Yum.

Tomorrow, I am going to a weekend orientation (a little late) for me and all of the other inbound Rotary Youth Exchange kids. Their visas didn't process as smoothly as mine, so they're all just arriving, as I understand it. It's at a hotel. Hopefully it will be very fun!

I have my first day of school on Monday! I will meet my class (kids in Turkey don't switch classes until college) and my teachers. I am excited and scared.

I had a very fun farewell game of Okey with Nesren and Gulia, our neighbors. They were very sweet. Nesren gave me a really nice pair of earrings and Gulia gave me a really great necklace she had made! It was so sad saying goodbye to everyone. I'm not ready to leave anne and baba, I think!

I need to go finish packing up!

Love,

Natalya

Tourists' Delight

This post will be brief, but hopefully I will write more tomorrow!

Ilke picked anne and me up at home and took us to the tiny old part of the city. It was really what I had imagined all of Turkey was going to look like. There were cobbled streets and steep hills and copper vendors and scarves and rugs and pipes and jewelry. There was a big broken down old citadel at the top made out of even older scraps of Roman ruins. You could see bits and pieces of old carvings in some of the stones. There were shops all over the streets around it, as well as inside the walls. It was beautiful and crazy. But, as is the reality with many historic cities, I think, the parts that I as I tourist found most charming were considered by my Ankara-native companions to be the most out-dated and touristy. Of course. But everything was actually very beautiful and very, very inexpensive. I got a ton of presents for people and also a few nice things for myself! I hope you guys are looking forward to your Christmas mail!

We also went to a beautiful little museum that was the converted house of a very rich, early 20th c. automobile mogul family. It was very nice, pictures to follow.

I am actually hesitant to post the pictures from today (taken with Ilke's astoundingly clear camera phone) as I think it will give everyone the wrong picture of what my life has looked like so far. This trip was beautiful, but visually, it was a very outdated representation of the Ankara I've really been living in. I think I will wait until I have my other rolls of film developed. Sorry!

Tonight, we had Ilke and Kivanc over for dinner. Afterwards, starting at about eleven or eleven thirty, I goaded everyone (but baba, who had gone to bed) into playing a round of Okey. It was SO FUN. Everyone was loud and crazy there was a lot of heavy ribbing going on in a lot of different languages. Ilke and I were on one team, Kivanc and his mom on the other. Anne, of course, won a ton of games, but I am very proud to say that I either matched or beat her record. I think I won about seven rounds. It was great. BUT, at the very end, in a huge last-round tie, Kivanc got a lucky hand and WON. And it was only his second round win! Awful. He was gloating like a maniac.

I tell you all of these game details because it just ended ten minutes ago--at 2:30 a.m.! We take our Okey seriously.

Tomorrow, I am being driven by my current anne to meet my next anne to get my school uniforms. I'll let you know how it goes.

I've had a really nice day.

Love,

Natalie

Okey

Today, we went again to the huge and beautiful outdoor food bazaar. Picture this:http://www.theworldeffect.com/.a/6a00e54fa8abf788330120a6562a5b970b-800wi but on a flat table, and over an area of about 100 x 50 yards. Also, imagine a covering of hundreds of huge, ratty umbrella giving the whole thing a shady, ancient-harem-type look. We got a ton of things, including these funny little clementine things. They are bright green on the outside and bright orange on the inside. They sort of look like the cover of Freakonomics (http://dreallday.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/freakonomics.jpg). Sorry, strange reference.

In other news, dinner was great. We had mushrooms stuffed with cheese, homemade tomato soup, summer salad, fresh cooked yufka squares filled with cheese and a sort of potato mash. Also, baba brought home fresh squeezed o.j. again! He is so thoughtful.

Oh, I also made a strawberry roll up cake! We got some more çilekler (chee-LEHK-ler, strawberries) at the bazaar, and my anne provided all the ingredients. She even dug out her half-missing set of Western-style measuring cups! I had to measure out the 1/4 Cups using the Tablespoon. I wanted to use the recipe we usually do at home, but I couldn't reach anybody, so I got one off of epicurious.com. It came out looking pretty rough at first, so I was disappointed, but it firmed up and actually ended up being a delicious cake! We had the neighbor ladies over for tea and pasta (PAH-stah, cake) afterwards, and everyone loved it. The desserts here are usually filo-dough and honey/nut related, so the fruit and cake thing was a nice change, I think. The whipped cream I used was very strange. Instead of heavy cream, anne just had a box of individual packets of this funny powder stuff, and you just add milk or water and whip. It tastes fine, but was strange, I thought, in a country so filled with fresh foods. Also, instead of vanilla extract, it was the same packet deal: a box filled with a bunch of teaspoon-sized packets of white, vanilla-flavored powder. Somehow, I think the Turks sort of missed the boat on the cake and sweet-baking craze. Every single other food group is homegrown and homemade, from the meats, cheeses, and yogurt to the yufka, the tea, and the soups and veggies. But when it comes to sweet, Western-style baked goods, it's a lot of margerine and vanilla powder. Very peculiar. Not to say that it isn't delicious; it's just a touch less authentic than the very high standard that I've come to expect in a country so rich in culinary character.

I mentioned before that anne just used a tea glass for measuring. I thought this was maybe her own deal. But, from what I understood of the Turkish on the side of the very modern whipped-cream packets (seen here: http://www.ozpak.com.tr/images/urunler/kremSantiSade.jpg), the instructions indicated that either one "chai bardak" (tea glass) of "su" (water) or one-and-a-half "kahve fincanılar" (coffee cups) of "süt" (milk) could be used. But, my most Westernly-exacting culinary side protested, there are so many different sizes and styles of Turkish drinking implements! what if the proportions were wrong! But, of course, the whipped-cream came out fine. If I find out more about this peculiarity, dear reader, I will let you know.

Like I said, the ladies (Gulia and Nesren, the woman who lives across from her) came over for some snacks this evening, and I learned how to play my very first games of the ever-popular "Okey." It's pronounced just like "okay," and was described on an English website (which I sought out after trying to learn the fairly nuanced rules from a bunch of women who spoke only Turkish) as being very similar to Rummy. It is very well-liked in Turkey, and, I imagine, is just as widely known and revered as backgammon, which is so popular with the cafe crowd. It reminded me of the ubiquitous American game of Bridge, but maybe it was just my playing company. It seems that chatty neighborhood women love a good social game no matter what country they call "yuva."

While we were playing, we had the little kitchen T.V. on, as we seem to do during almost all social gatherings (including dinner). We watched a sort of variety equivalent to the classic MTV, called TRT T.V. (Turkish Radio Something? I know it's based in Ankara, though!). It played a lot of classic (I assume, as anne and the other were often singing along) Turkish ballads, sung by a few very blond women filled with lots of collagen and surrounded by lots of cheesy production elements. This is what I was dealing with: http://www.trt.net.tr/televizyon/sayfa/detay.aspx?pid=19696

It also played a few angsty Turkish rock music videos.

Speaking of angst, my deepest apologies, readers, for the brevity of my last post! I was fatigued and saddened by our fine country's losses. It was a bad time in both courts, so to speak!

Tomorrow night is the Rotary Club's weekly banquet again, but this time, anne is coming, as it's family night! This is going to involve menus, I've been informed, so there will be no beautiful banquet spread. It will, however, be a nice time to test out my ordering skills.

Looking forward,

Natalya

Ugh.

We lost the championship game.

We lost the referendum.

I'm going to bed.

-Natalie

WE WOOONNNNNNNNN

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

NNNNNNNNNNNNNNN AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH 8 FOR 8 BABY WE'RE GOING TO THE FINALS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

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!

And now:

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!