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So, I forgot to mention that I also went to an art exhibition sponsered by a bank in my last post. The art was nice, and I snagged one of the free booklets, so I successfully have a copy of every painting in my room. The most interesting thing about the exhibition was arguably the music. I don't know about your feelings, but I really don't think the theme songs to Rocky and The Godfather scream art appreciation time!
On Thursday of last weeks, us CLSers had one of our planned cultural activities--a cooking class. This was something I was really looking forward to. Would I learn how to make köfte and sütlaç? Well, sütlaç fo sho. I volunteered to do that one, so I was put in charge of following the recipe, and combining a bardak of sugar with a litre of süt. My kitchen prowess was documented, and
(EDIT: Photos now exist.)
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| Just look at that pouring ability. Photo courtesy of Duygu Hanım (aka my Turkish professor) |
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| Turkish rice pudding is fantastic! |
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| CLS students are not serious 100% of the time. CLS students are definitely not serious when cooking.
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Other students worked on salad, soup, and the main course, İzmir köfte, which was absolutely fantastic, and which I will definitely attempt to make for myself in Pittsburgh. So that was a great time.
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| Post-food nap. Photo courtesy of Duygu Hanım |
Speaking of food, on Friday I finally got around to sampling another of Ankara's delicacies.
That's Nartakal Suyu. Pomegranate-Orange Juice. Unfortunately I deemed it not as awesome as its name. I agree with my classmate Eli, who explained that Nartakal sounds like a really cool word because in English it is a combination of Gnarly and Radical. Gnartical, man!
For lunch I had another waffle, this time from a place called Best Waffle's. As you can see, I delight in healthy, vegetarian lunches:
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| If you can tell, TOO MUCH CHOCOLATE |
But enough about food. After lunch, I hit up the Sıhhiye Pazar with some friends of mine and I ended up buying some ties that I really liked. They were 3 for 10 TL, which is a wonderful price. After I bought them, the owner of the stand with ties bought me a bottle of water, my friend a çay bardağı (glass of tea), and offered another friend of mine who didn't buy anything çay if she wanted it. This was entirely because we are foreigners studying Turkish, and because the guy was nice. Yay, Turkey!
After that, I returned home on the single crowded, unpleasant metro experience I've had here.
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Saturday was a day for more pleasant metro rides, and a trip to the Atatürk Cultural Market, where there was much in the way of food availible for purchase, stands with various goods, and a huge (mostly empty when I was there) festival celebrating the city of Ankara and its public works. The festival was full of exhibits on the city's public works. For instance, the first one I looked at was on how Ankara salts its roads. It consisted of a very hot tent with about two inches of rock salt covering the ground for no reason and some posters. Okay, laame.
The ones for metros and busses were better, but the one for the city's water supply was an exhibit that I found genuinely interesting. It combined factual information about where the water comes from and how it is cleaned with displays that were entirely an excuse to waste water or be kooky. Allow me to explain through the magic of fotoğraflar (note that the g is silent.)
Water comes from somewhere and goes through these exciting filters. I think the words for carbon and osmosis were somewhere around here.
Then this machine puts it in cups.
Staff stand behind a glass window ensure that the water is properly packaged into cups.
Table and chairs made from water pipes. How kooky!
Background: a water wheel. Why? Why not!
One of many fountains in the exhibit, showing that water is pretty.
A television reminds visitors that water is fun, by showing people dressed as water droplets partying at the exhibit.
Note the man with a mustache pointing at a reservoir on the poster to the right of the TV. I think he's in charge of something water related. I picked up a free pamphlet with a lot of pictures of him posing like that. I dig his stache.
This exhibit tries to show the viewer what water pipes are like under a street.
You may not be able to see it, but there are bunnies living in here, clearly accountable for any water quality problems that Ankara could have.
A large picture of the whole exhibit. Oooh.
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On Sunday I went on a very long walk. Here are some of the things that I saw:
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| Dolphin fountain near my home |
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| National library gives Club Hillman a run for its money in the attractive dept. |
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| Aşık Veysel park, named after my favorite Turkish folk singer. |
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| I probably failed to explain this, but Turkish parks have interesting exercise equipment in them. See? |
Today was not the most interesting of days, though it did contain the quote that is the title of this blogpost. It's part of a matching exercise mismatched. I only mismatched quite a few of the answers, since they seemed okay to me in my ignorance as a language learner. Whoops.
We had class lunch in order to make up for time that will be missed when our teacher is gone on 4 Hazıran (July 4th). The restaurant happened to have the most interesting diploma I have ever seen hanging up.
(From Ulaan Baatar, Mongolia)
Huh?
After lunch, my friend Sherri and I went to see a movie. We settled on Hızlı ve Öfkeli Altı, or Fast & Furious 6 which was a suitably mindless action movie. Very mindless. Very action. I think it was a bit much action for me. Might have to go watch another arty film one of these days.
And that's my life.
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