But, let's begin with some omissions from yesterday.
In Ulu Cami (the mosque) two things happened that I did not mention.
One thing is that my American friend John met a Turkish man, and a very good photo for the CLS home page was taken by Johanna.
The second is that I met this group of people.
Or rather, I took their picture as they were standing in a group, and afterwards they all wanted to talk to me. They were missionaries, or something like that, and they had wanted to give me a copy of Said Nursi's Gençlik Rehberi (Guide for Youth), which I accepted. Free and interesting reading material. Yay! They were missionaries, and they made sure to let me know that if I didn't understand it, I could write to an address on the inside and then they would mail it to me.
(I probably did a bad job mentioning it, but I was near the supposed site of Said Nursi's grave last year when I was near İsparta with Allison.)
Also, here's a waffle stand.
Right. And now on for Wednesday's actions.
After finally uploading all of the pictures for last night's post, updating my set of digital flashcard thingies, and staying up a bit late intentionally, I went to bed at around 12:30-1:00ish. I've been waking up around 4-5, and I figured that if I stayed up later I'd pop right onto the right schedule. Nope.
Therefore, when I walked into class with one bardak of çay and iki tane kola turka, I was banking on not being dead today. Due to the presence of my soda, our teacher insisted I was overly America. After all, Americans drink quite a lot of soda. (Especially if they happen to be named Spencer.)
Class is going really slowly for me, and I wish there was a higher one. However, during class I worked on writing a poem, and unlike last summer, I can actually write stuff in class that is in Turkish and not English when I'm not paying attention. I've also started learning the Georgian alphabet, but that'll be going a bit slowly. Never the less, any language capable of having a cluster of eight consonants is worth my attention. I'm sure it will also be worth the pain. (Here's an example from wikipedia: /prt͡skvna/ peeling)
Can anyone guess what this is?
(If you're on the front page, you will need to click "Read More" to find out... though the answer should be obvious.)
And indeed, it is coffee! Turkish coffee which is different from regular coffee cause it has grounds in the bottom or is brewed differently or something. You can also have your fortune read if you flip the cup over, wait a few minutes, and see what pictures form out of the grounds in the bottom.
What could my future possibly hold?
After that, we wandered around the Aliş Veriş Merkezi, and I bought a Barış Manço notebook for if I ever want/need to take legit notes in class... (I mispell new Turkish words even though the spelling should be ridiculously simple, so I check them online and dispose of the sheets I use for that.)
At 6:00 Joanna and I again met with our conversation partners, Uğur and Merve, whose fantasticness I would like to stress. They are very good at doing their job... Really, I am amble to understand most of everything in our conversations, and I'm getting better and better at replying since I'm getting more in practice.
In fact, my Turkish is like this:
My knowledge of grammar is very good. I can write some pretty advanced things.
My knowledge of grammar is very good. I can write some pretty advanced things.
It takes a bit for me to become comfortable using newly learned grammatical devices. I'm getting comfortable with a lot of things that I had learned last semester. I'm not just cool throwing in a DIK participle here or there, but I can throw in a "whether or not" ('olup olmadığı'), or some rağmen and olan here and there. And, sometimes I can actually pull it off without waving my hands about like a madman, stuttering, or being ridiculously slow. And when I do that, it feels really good.
Anyway, time for another ommission from yesterday's post. Outside Ulu Cami yesterday, John and I also met Johanna's host mother.
Well, somehow or another, she and John ran into each other and then we were all drinking some tea together in the park. And talking. And I can understand so much more Turkish than I could last year. My gosh. The amount of time I've put into language study over the years is finally starting to pay off! Heck, I can even explain where the heck the /ö/ is in the mouth. Yay.
Anyway, the four of us minus the host mom went and walked up to a restaurant where a type of food I had never eaten before could be found. This is called To_ to_ (I think it's toptop, or toktok, but I cannot remember which at this moment.), and it's kinda like Pide except stuffed. And it is delicious.
Additionally, at some point during the dinner, somehow I said something that rhymed and a rap beat was put on for me to rap on, thanks to the universal human ability to tap on a table in a simple rhythm.
Consequently, I whipped out the (not very good) poetry that I had begun writing in class. And by poetry, I mean rap. A rap about how good Turkish food, directed at someone who 'didn't try turkish food before not coming to Turkey,' though I'm almost completely certain I got that part of it wrong. It's a work-in-progress, though I my write about other topics instead.
Here's a sample:
Künafe
en sevdiğim şey
her gün ye
sorma niye
Mantı
lezzetli
yoğurtlu ve etli
evet güzel ki
Gözleme
bence
çok iyi yemeği
lütfen deneme
Naturally, through all of these actions, I became great friends with our waiter. Naturally, he wanted his picture with me.
One other hilarious thing happened, and that was when I was just making sure I remembered how to use some of the stronger forms for 'need' in Turkish. I decided to use olmak as an example, which can sound quite similar to ölmek. As such, I alarmed the heck out of John who really wanted to know why I thought I absolutely desperately needed to die!!!! Which was definitely unintentionally hilarious.
And that was my day today!
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