Ensevdiğim zaman waffle zamanı!

So.. waffles in Turkey.

That's where this post is going, but before it gets there, there's a few other things to get out of the way. Like what I've done this week.

I've explored Kızılay a bit more, particularly the used bookstores next to Tömer. There's legitimately about six floors of them. It's ridiculous. I wanted to pick up something I had read in English in Turkish, and the best thing I could find was İmparatorluk by Isaac Asimov. Zero points for guessing what that is in English, sorry.

I also met up with Ata again on Monday night for some conversation partnering. It was an interesting and surreal experience. I asked if he wanted to meet at a coffee shop, and when I got there he explained that two female friends of his were at a nearby bar and he would much prefer to go there. I had a lemonade. It wasn't as good as the other lemonade I had on 7^th st.

Myself and Ebru. She wanted her picture taken with me so I figured I might as well  have one.

The CLS group had its first film showing, and we screened Kader. This was a fairly dark, arty film which I enjoyed but found slightly disappointing due to it's repetitive nature. It's about a man named Bekir who more or less falls in love with a woman named Uğur and leaves his wife and child so he can stalk her repeatedly. For me, the heart of the film was definitely the scene where Bekir's brothers are sitting with him, and one of them says that his story is way better than Romeo and Juliet. It's an apt comparison, in part because I think the filmmakers and Shakespeare had a few goals in common. But, Bekir's reaction and response to this provides such an insight into the character's psyche. I should add that every character in this film is unlikeable. The snacks were great. Hooray!

Today in class we had a guest instructor, Hocam's nephew. He read his book until our first break and then disappeared. But, he came back for hangman. Good stuff.

Also I successfully found the citibank atm.

Lastly, the waffle. Today's title comes from my own poor speech. It translates to “My favorite time is waffle time!” and is what I said before leaving home to eat some waffle! The waffle itself came from Mado, a chain, and is one of four stores selling waffles that I passed. It was as good as it looks:

Rebecca is entertained by my waffle eating.

Forgot to mention: that ice cream was made with goat's milk.

More to come when interesting things happen!

Erin, İngilizce ve Türkçe farklı! (“Erin, English and Turkish are different!”)

The title is apparently something that gets said a lot in the class below mine. We joked about it.
 This post is about Kapadokya. Here's the short version:

Friday

• Got on the bus at Aşti
• Wrong Perron on the board.
• Finger Time
• Steve had a broken screen
• Water, Tea, Water.
• Stop at Tuz Gölü
• Eventual arrival in Ürgüp
• Amazing food.
• Lounge chilling.
• Sleep. In Fake cave.

Saturday

• Tour 9 AM.
• Make that 9:30
• Breakfast was good.
• Lots of nice places.
• Tour guide slightly annoying.
• Pottery failure.
• Göreme open air museum. (25 minutes)
• Random tourist traps.
• Steve takes off because he can. (Hey big waters were like 2L.)
• Back at hotel.
• Walk into town.
• Küçük arabayı çok seviyorum
• Dinner
• Cats
• Picture Telephone
• ZZZZ.

Sunday

• Hiking vs Underground City.
• Rock climbing (biraz)
• Gift shops....
• Apple tea & Japanese tourists
• Town
• Relaxing
• Missing the Servis because it was not announced and then having random dude give us a ride.
• Bus w/ Ice Cream and Cartoons
• Arrival in Ankara. Super easy for me to get home.

More after the jump (including a lot of pictures.)

Keçileri kaçırmak (To Go Nuts!) [Literally: To miss the goats]

It is important to remind the reader that I spend a lot of my time in class. Four hours a day, five days a week. You can bet that I am learning important things. Sometimes we talk about Turkish grammar, though I have awesome classmates, so I also get to learn about screaming goats, Taylor Swift, and the space needle. A summation of my class experience is offered in the following video, which I hope will be educational:

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Wednesday was the day allotted for "Trip to Ankara Castle and Other City Sites." This meant the ethnography museum, the art museum, and Ankara castle, a castle that is in the area, and which is so old that when the Romans entered the area they found it standing and took over.

The ethnography museum contained lots of mannequins and artifacts displaying age old traditions of Turkish daily life. It was a nice museum, but a bit small.

(Lots of pictures are impending, so if you're on the front page, once again you will need to click "Read More")

Geçen haftaya göre (Compared to last week...)

I've been critiqued for not updating enough. Well, here comes the backlog of updates.
 This weekend, I went back to mavi göl park, which is not the most exciting place on the planet. My host parents definitely agree, because apparently they picnic there every week and are rather tired of it themselves. But, this weekend I was at the other side of the lake, and I was there with my classmates, our peer tutors, and our teachers, so the experience was definitely different. Suffice to say, I wasn't wrapped in a table cloth, and I was there for only two meals.

This is the sort of empty space I try to talk about when describing Ankara.

The bus had to stop in the road when headed to Mavi Göl, because someone
had to lift this low hanging electrical wire off its roof. Fun!

Mavi göl her haftasonu giderler!

This is the instructor for the beginning students, who is also a linguist. In her spare time she gets up from the table to climb cherry trees for fun. Definitely a linguist. Main interests: Syntax & Semantics. (Yes, this is important.)

At Mavi Göl, some of my classmates went on horse rides, we walked around, ate lots of food, and I even tried out some of the exercise equipment common in public parks in Turkey. I was a big fan of the Turkish Potato Salad, which was pretty much baked potato, olive oil, chives, and basil. I was less a fan of the swingy thing that simulated skiing. It was super sunny, and I was definitely baking in the heat, so to speak.I need to get better at thermal regulation.

Besides a return trip to Mavi Göl, other exciting things that happened included my first dondurma, Turkish ice cream. It's gummy. I'm a fan. It's not the best thing ever, but I know I am going to miss the stuff. It's fun! I also leveled up classwise, which was a good thing because I am no longer bored to tears in class, and am instead able to learn things (like -DIr, the suffix for facts or educated guesses.)

Finally, on Monday, meandering around the backstreets of Kızılay after eating my first Gözleme (savory crepe-ish thing with filling.), I found a music store and successfully knocked something important off of my list of stuff to do in Turkey. I bought a Cümbüş, and it has a great sound to it. The instrument also has a mad cool history. Just read these two paragraphs off wikipedia (the repository for all dubious human knowledge... lots of -DIr suffixes to go around.) It's worth it.

It's a fretless banjo with ten strings in five courses, tuned like the oud (a middle eastern instrument from the same origin as the lute.) It has a rich sound to it, it resonates nicely, and its lack of frets means it can glide really well. I'm not very good at playing it, and will hopefully be able to get lessons while I am here.

This is a lousy picture, but it was easy to take. If I were actually playing it, I'd use a pick.

More to come later. I promise next post will open with Taylor Swift and screaming goats, and will close with sexism.

(EDIT: Only interesting thing I forgot to mention is that the bus drivers were protesting in Kızılay 'round early afternoon on Friday, so when Jack and I went to office hours, they were pretty much honking their horns the whole time. Good times.)

Ankara güzel mi? (Ankara, beautiful?)

Generally when I talk to someone in Ankara, they ask me if I like their city. I will always respond by saying that I do, and that it is a very beautiful city. Often, I'll get the reaction, "Ankara güzel mi?" Though it's true Ankara isn't the most beautiful city in Turkey, or the world, I do find it a very beautiful place. In the following photographs, I will attempt to explain why....
(If you're on the front page, you have to click to keep reading.)