"Sefa knows but he is shy" "My saliva is sacred" and "No, we're not on fire"

Warning: This will be a long one.. like the title.
Sorry- I've decided I have more catching up to do. Last week was good. The hilights include a little boy on my bus sitting beside me on Tuesday aand talking to me despite the fact that "Türkçe Bilmiyorum". Then he pointed me out to his friends when our classes passed each other. İdil said to me on Thursday, "Is that the boy who talked to you on your bus?" "Yes! How did you know?" "He just told his friend he knows you." Aww. Then on Friday he sat beside me again and started naming things. "Hello means merhaba. Lion means aslan..." when he ran out of words he knew in english he started pointing at things.

On Friday İdil and I decided to count the number of times our english teacher said the word 'now' in one class. This turned out to be 121 times. She also says 'okay', 'class', and 'actually' quite a bit. The best part was, however, when she said "Okay class, now actually..." We killed ourselves laughing.

Lastly (as far as the school week is concerned), whenever no one has the answer for a teacher's question, Serbay pipes up and says "Sefa knows but he is shy!" Sefa is as outgoing as Dallas. Shy is one of the last words I'd associate with him.

As for the weekend- Saturday was one of the best nights of my life and Sunday was a day of accomplishments.
Turkish classes started this weekend. They're in Levent (nowhere near my house) and run from 10-3 on Saturday and Sunday. On Saturday Güner rode the bus with me to Taksim (the center of everything) where I ment up with Con. My 8:00 bus took an hour and fourty-five minutes to get there so I was late meeting everyone else. Then we took the metro to Levent and walked about six blocks to where the lessons are held. We're divided into 2 classes. Mine includes Mattie, myself, Eve, Jimenna, John, Juliana, Derek, and Jimmer. Saturday is mostly conversational turkish, while Sunday is grammatical. We have two teachers- one for each day.
So I didn't mention that Blase got us tickets to se the Turkey-Bosnia game. He is my hero. Not only did we get to see a national football match, but we WON.
Because most of us were going to the game, everyone decided to hang out in Taksim until it was time to go. First we all headed to a café and ate waffles and nachos. This is where Jimmer said, and I'm not quite sure why, "My saliva is sacred." Insanely funny. This is also where a girl approached Mattie and said, "You're Mattie Johnson? Do you remember me? Fae- from Thailand?" That's right everyone, Mattie ran into a girl she'd been friends with while she lived in Thailand in a caf" in İstanbul. Talk about chance!
After waffles we split up into smaller groups and wandered around for a while. Those not going to the game eventually headed home. I bought myself a Türkiye shirt. It turned out that Eve had bought the same one in reverse colours! Lol.
Twelve of us went to the game, and we walked to Beşiktaş Stadium from Taksim. In the door we were handed free flags! Two of us also got t-shirts. Yay free Turkish stuff!! The game was great. Some Bosnian fans set off flares and one landed on the feild behind the goal, creating a lot of smoke. Işıl knew we were all at the came, and called Eve in a panic. "Efandım... Merhaba Işıl...No, flares... It was...The Bosnians, they... No, we're not on fire!... The Bosnian fans set off some flares... yes..."
The best part of the match was the fans cheers. I found myself watching them almost as much as I was watching the game. There weren't many Bosnian fans, especially compared to the Türkiye ones, who looked fabulous in all the red and white. After the game (THAT WE WON!!) we all headed to the busses, but mine stops running at 10 pm, and it was well after 11, so I took a 'taksi' home. (As for the picture- yes that is a marching band!)

It was killer having to get up for class on Sunday, and because the 8:00 bus had been so slow, I opted to take the earlier one- at 7:15. Dang. So I had to get up at 6. But that bus only took 50 minutes. This made me über early. I decided to take the metro right away and waste time in Levent. I got to Levent at 8:15- we were all meeting at 9:30. Having loads of time, I decided to examine the giant shoe outside Metrocity- a huge mall that's directly attached to the metro station. (I later revisited this shoe with Mattie and Emily.) That's when Blase came out of the metro. We decided to find ourselves some food- I wanted an apple, so we wandered into Levent. While eatting our apples, we found the way to the turkish class before heading back to the entrance to the metro to meet everyone. While we were waiting, we ended up riding the escalators up and down. Quite amusing- I advise everyone try it sometime, though it's highly addicting so beware.
After class we all headed to Metrocity to take a look around. I called my host mother to tell her I'd be home later than expected. That's right. Phone call, host mom, TURKISH. Go me! I told her I was at Metrocity and I would be back before 7.
Emily, Mattie, and I decided that the mall was basically just a mall, and left. Emily headed home, and we stopped at a stationary store before also going home around 5:30. I took the metro back to Taksim where I waited for an hour for my bus to come. I got home 15 minutes before 7 o'clock. Then I slept.
So, a quick recap for Sunday- I got to and from my class all by myself AND called my host mom and successfully conversed in Turkish. These may not sound amazing, but I am so proud of myself. These are milestones. They shall go down in history! Okay. I'm done.

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone in Canada, and to all my fellow exchange students all around the world. I'm thinking of you all.

-Maeghan, in Turkey on Thanksgiving. Hehe.

PS. That news station is playing the Pirates of the Caribbean theme in the background again. What did they play before those movies came out?