November 10th

For most people, the holiday was over on Wednesday, but for some reason, Mete’s school (private) declared they would take Thursday and Friday off as well, making for a very long holiday for them.  Elif had to work for a while yesterday, but has Friday off as is her regular schedule. 

Yesterday, November 10^th was Attaturk’s Memorial Day – the day he passed away.  Attaturk was the founder of the Republic of Turkey after WWI when they fought their war of independence from the WWI allies.  At 9:05am, for one minute, sirens went off, cars stopped driving and honked their horns, and people on the street stopped and stood still.  Elif was one of a couple of teachers responsible for a program at school to honor Attaturk.  She said their program included students reading quotes and they also sang some songs.

While Elif was at school, I spent some time with Mete, working on his English homework. Reminded me of the days of old!  He is making a poster about a country and needed to list specific things about it and draw pictures to go with it. 

The biggest event of the day was getting two boxes mailed home!  So relieved to have all that stuff out of here.  It was kind of funny how I got the boxes.  Around 11 or so, I took my clothes to the laundry and dropped them off.  When I walked out the door, I put my head down and was thinking how difficult it would be to find two boxes the right size, as stores put out their boxes on the street early and the gypsies come by and collect all the cardboard.  I looked up, and about 30 feet in front of me was a stack of boxes – and it wasn’t even in front of a store, rather in front of an apartment as apparently someone was moving in!  The boxes are full of my summer clothes; some brochures, books etc.; and a few gifts.  We had to take a cab to the post office, although it isn’t very far, and then it took us about 45 minutes there.  But it was well worth the time.  I will now have just my small suitcase and it’s small backpack attached, and then my larger daypack as well.  And, I got it all to fit - finally!  Yea!

Throughout my time here, there have been a few English faux pas that have made us all laugh.  First, it is pomegranate season, and they are everywhere.  We were talking about them and Elif said their name a couple of times and I was listening as it seamed she was miss-pronouncing it.  I asked her what she was saying and it was “pom-a-gre-nade” !  She thought the last part of the word was grenade not granate!  We had a good laugh over that – it made some sense though, as if you threw one on the ground, it would explode and those seeds would go everywhere.

The other one is Mete’s and has to do with a song, Michael Jackson’s “Beat it”.  Mete loves the Pita bread they have here.  He goes around singing “Pi-ta”, like “Beat it” and doesn’t understand that he has the word wrong! 

When I was in Izmir, since the family’s English wasn’t as advanced, there were many times when they could not think of, or just didn’t know the Enlgish word for something, so had to try to explain what they were talking about.  One day we were getting out of the car and my camera was on the seat and Derya said, “Don’t forget your photo machine”!  And then another time she couldn’t think of the word “statue” so described them as, “You know, people made out of marble”.  Hakam’s English was very, very limited, and one time he was trying to explain a turtle, and said, like a VW bus and used his hands to show the pop-up feature of the campertop!  That one was pretty funny – and it took me a bit to get it, but I did figure it out.  It was often like playing charades with him and we laughed a lot over it.

Today will be my last full day with the family.  I feel I have seen so much of Istanbul and that any thing else I see will be a bonus!  I have certainly seen and experienced more than the typical tourist here.  I have gained a much, much better understanding of this culture and their history, and a little of the politics and the religion.  The parts of this country that I have seen are certainly more “westernized” than I thought it would be.  Most of the time, when looking around me at the people, I could have been anywhere in Western Europe – and not just in tourist areas.  In fact, in tourist areas, I see more throwback to the Ottoman Empire in Ottoman type costumes and paraphernalia.   There are definitely the areas where I am taken back in time by the narrow streets, the street sellers, and the people’s dress, but I have seen these same types of things in other European countries and in South America.  Basically, from the parts of Turkey I have seen, I would align its people more with Europe than the Middle East.