"Buraya Bakarlar" (They pay attention to this.)

Can I write about two days of Turkey in one blog post? No. This is just Wednesday.
It starts with class and includes a lot of pictures, so if you're accessing this from the blog's front page, I'm going to make you click a link to continue reading...

Wednesday morning I walked to the metro station, got off at my stop, and walked to my first day of classes at Tömer. Almost immediately, I thought there was a problem. The class I was in seemed far too easy. But, it was review time. So we went over possessives and stuff, and I resolved to try to switch classes.

At around 10:40 (I think) demonstrators marched down the street but it was peaceful, and the police did not come. It was a good distraction from class.

These guys are lawyers.

There were a lot of them

 After class, some friends and I went to Ulus for lunch. On the walk to wherever we eventually had lunch. I tried mantı for the first time, which I'd describe as somewhere in between dumplings and ravioli. Filled with meat and delicious. Served with yogurt . I also had stuffed grape leaves beforehand and they were AMAZING.

An amusement park across the way, somewhere near Ulus.

Taking the metro back home, we encounter the title of this blog post.

1984-esque dystopia, or ploy to sell advertising space. You decide! 

The "they pay attention to this" is in reference to people in the metro paying attention to the empty adverting space. The giant eye and caption definitely makes it seem a bit creepy though.

One of the things that I love about being in Turkey is that every day I never know what exactly I'm going to be doing. There hasn't been a single day without a surprise. Wednesday's surprise was a trip to the grand opening of a park for weddings, which my host-cousin works at. 

This was the place.

People on stilts are cultural.

There was free food, and lots of family members. All of them were very nice, and I'm glad to have met them. Interestingly enough, the park also included a some exotic wildlife--the deer.

Really lousy picture, but you get the point, right?

The grand opening had formal dress (by my standards), but was not actually a formal event.
Note also the lamps that double as heat sources and garbage cans. They are cool!

The next thing I knew, some blonde girls showed up. Why? Well, there was also a fashion show. Here are some not-blurry pictures of the models:

A bunch at once for the grand finale

I don't know much about fashion, but I know what I like, and it is not this dress. Not at all.

There was also salsa dancing.

Here some chinese stirfry is being cooked oh yeah.

And, after a little bit, there was a concert. The famous Turkish pop star Petek Dinçöz

She used a different technique than the typical American one of autotune to disguise a lack of vocal talent. Instead, back-up singers were mixed more loudly than her. 

The backing band played stuff.

You know how sometimes you go to a concert and the tallest guy in the place goes and gets in front of you? Yeah. Me too.

Petek's dancing was definitely entertaining. (More so than the music.)

During the concert, there was a lot of dancing, and I decided I wanted to join in. Though I am a lousy dancer, my host-extended-family didn't think so and highfived me for dancing for an extended period. The dancing was nice, because I was able to lose myself in the process a little bit. Perhaps I should try to dance more often.

After that, I got home at 11:30, and still needed to shower and do my homework. Hence no blog post.