Part of my brain really thinks I wasn't in class on Monday when I was. So, suffice to say it's difficult to explain exactly what I was doing then. Well, for starters we levelled up our Turkish books, so I will never be able to comprehend this artwork from the Yeni Hitit vol 1.
I'm pretty sure he is crying in every frame
After class, we returned to the Iraqi restaurant where I had somehow become famous. Zabe and Sherri had gone there on Friday and told me that the waiter was asking where I was. I had made a name for myself, apparently by volunteering to name all the fish on the side of the restaurant wall.
Pictured: Zep, Zep, ɬax, and ɬax
Yeah. So, I was given a handshake and pat on the back, and all such wonderful treatment as I once again enjoyed free salad, bread, peppers, dip, and tea, in addition to my soslu sarma beyti. Mmmm.
The waiter also just gave me this bread and said "this is for you, Steve".
Upon Erin's request I attempted to photograph just how massive the amounts of food on the table were:
Undoubtably a difficult task.
After lunch, I went to another movie with Sherri, now accompanied also by Allison and Abigail. It was quite possibly one of the worst things I've seen in a long time, and not in a good way. It was The Lone Ranger. It included suprisingly high amounts of on-screen violence while also being a film that expected you to believe in a man riding a horse on top of a train.
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Tuesday was perhaps less interesting. Had a lousy lunch. Planned a trip to Istanbul. Then I hit up office hours where 5/6 of my classmates were present and got some extra grammar lessons in. Went to the cafe with Eli to do homework and drank a minty drink. Good stuff. I also slept a really long time.
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Wednesday, though, was an absolutely spectacular day. It began with a blast of cold air in my face in our new (airconditioning-less) classroom, for I had brought a small desk fan to class and plugged it in. Class whizzed by like four hour intensive Turkish lessons tend to, and the next thing I knew I was once again eating at the Iraqi restaurant. Things were slightly different, but still excellent.
After lunch, I successfully wandered into a ridiculous number of music stores. Usually, after I wandered in, I would pick a musical instrument, ask if I could play it, and then attempt to. Then I wouldn't buy anything. It was a good time. One of the store owners offered me free lunch. Another had a ukulele so he could actually hear my playing.
Then I met up with Eli, Rebecca, Sherry, and Allison at the Kitabevi (aka Guido's cafe), and I arrived just in time to not order anything. I also hung around long enough that we all got free mint drinks for no reason. The book store had some stellar recognizable titles that I love on its shelves, incidentally. See if you can figure out what these are:
The Kızılay Alışveriş looked surprisingly ominous.
After the cafe, I returned to the one particular music store where I had purchased my Cümbüş, and picked up a ukulele and played a short three-song set for Allison and Rebecca. The middle song was an improvised song about how my girlfriend wants to leave me because I love waffles more than her, and how I don't understand why there would be any problem with that. I managed to sing partially in Turkish off the top of my head, which is very hard for me. After I finished, the shop owner asked, "Kim waffles?" assuming I was singing it about a person as opposed to the greatest food in existence. (I need to stop thinking about waffles for a bit now. It's getting to be a problem.)
Playtime over, we met up with Rebecca's conversation partner, and hit up a museum that used to be Turkey's parlimentary meeting place. It was really cool! They even had Atatürk's hat!!! (I want one.)
Turkish alphabet readers pre and post reform
Atatürk and I
What a snazzy dresser.
Seal for letters.
Portable chess set of Turkey's second başbakan İsmet İnönü
Offıcıal seal.
Incidentally, the neighborhood of Ulus is also super cool and filled with old buildings, statues, and the like.
Returning to Kizilay, I ate dinner at an establishment named after Don Quixhote. I knew that I would have to order their donki-burger...
Mmmm.
Shortly thereafter, it was the time we had all been waiting for. Free movie in Gençlik Park time! The film was Devir (Cycle), and it's easily the best movie I've watched in Turkey. It was a slow-moving film about some shepards who had a contest every year in which they painted some sheep red and had them run into the river to be washed while villagers fired their machine guns in the air. The film showcased the way that people invest so much of their time, energy, and emotions into essentially meaningless pursuits, to the extent that one of the characters wants to leave sheparding behind as a profession at least because of the way that he is unable to ever win the contest. Solid. And Free.
Walking back from the metro station with Rebecca, we had a lengthy sleep deprived conversation about just how amazing Turkey is. If you read between the lines of what I'm writing even slightly, I think it's clear that I really love being here. 90% of the people are friendly, the food is amazing, the language is difficult but also super cool, and I don't look forward to returning to the United States.
When I actually did get home, I told my host parents about my awesome day, and it turns out my host dad owns one of the exact hats I really liked. Fotoğraf time? Yeah!
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Thursday was another day of wonderful fanning in class, and it got even better when Eli convinced me to spend 3 TL on a milkshake from burger king. The ridiculously cheap price was worth it, and I definitely stayed cool in class, even if my focus was waning. At some point, I came up with the concept for a music video, which I might try to film.
A typical battle between Steve'in Wafflei ve Eli'nin Kalesi
Lunch was a trip to the pide place, and I had some fantastic pide. Sucuk is my jam. After lunch, I returned home for a relaxing afternoon that included writing this sentence right now. Then, it was time to go to another movie in the park.... Tonight's film was billed as a comedy.
Its name was Mutlu Aile Defteri, and it was definitely a very funny movie. In fact, before the mola (intermission), I was sure that it was going to rank as one of the funniest films I've seen. The movie is about a dysfunctional family. It's headed by an old, extremely grumpy military man who orders everyone around. He doesn't understand how to love his kids, but he sure knows how to discipline them. The first half of the movie sets up outlandish characters really well, and does an excellent job showing them trying to humor their father while hiding particular details of life from one another. Unfortunately, it all goes awry, both for the characters and the film itself, and after the mola things take a turn for the serious. The film loses its coherence both in terms of plot and theme. It loses track of what was making it so good. :( Still, it is funny.
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