Ben Annem Bir Melek

Last night my class got together at Sefa’s family’s restaurant. It was sooo much fun. And the food? Delicious. Amazing. Possibly the best food I’ve had since I got to Turkey. (Although Mattie and I did make really good fajitas…) Plus, the simple equation of life here:
Turks + Music = Dance Party

Seriously, how often have you gone to a restaurant and had people stop in the middle of a meal to get up and dance? And yet here it has happened almost every time I’ve gone out to eat. What ridiculous good fun. Everyone sang along to the music all night as we dined on

Pictured: rice, chicken, kofte (Turkish meatball), funky pull-apart bread with assorted dips layed out on the table
Plus: dolma (a green pepper stuffed with rice and meat), fruit, and Turkish pizza (It’s a tortilla with ground meat essentially and I put lettuce, tomatoes, and lemon juice on mine)

Afterwards, most of us took a servis bus back to the school. We didn’t leave until well past midnight, and I planned to take a taxi from the school to my house. My host mom texted me around 11 asking me to text her when I was on my way home so when we left I told her we were on our way to the school. When we arrived she was there to pick me up! At 1 am. I couldn’t stop thanking her. I did not expect her to do that, and had told her earlier that I would take a taxi. When I thanked her for, like, the 100th time, telling her she didn’t need to do it (this was coming into the apartment at quarter to two in the morning) she replied “Of course, I love you.” Awe! So, ben annem bir melek. My mother is an angel. It’s the name of a TV show here, and I always think of her when I see the name because

a) she is one, and
b) Melek is her name

It is very weird because I do not feel like I know my family very well, what with the language barrier (trust me, I may speak some Turkish, but nowhere near enough to really get to know someone) and yet I know that of all the things I will miss coming home, Melek and Güner will be #1 on the list.

Today we had a meeting with Ishil at her office, so this morning Mattie and I went to a shadow puppet show(!) in Taksim (pictured above). It was brilliant. The puppets were so detailed and colourful (even though it was a shadow puppet show!) and it was very well done. One of the puppets was a city person and the other was a town person. The city one kept saying things and the town puppet wouldn’t understand. Conversations were continually like this-

“Do you like music?”

“Pardon me?”
“Do you like music?”
“I don’t understand.”
“Music- do ra me fa so la ti do”
“barosofaleenati?”
Then half of it was puppets dancing to different kinds of music. There was this well-known fiddle piece (you’d recognize it if you heard it but I don't know the name), Swan Lake, some tango, classic Turkish, etc. It was super cute. And the little kids in the audience would get up and dance all the time. Which was adorable.

Tomorrow I may go see Twilight (since it just came out here!) and I’m crossing my fingers that I’ll like it, although I like most movies (much to Laura’s chagrin) so chances are I won’t be wasting my money, and besides! I’m going to see it with one of my favorite Brazilians.

Adios!
-Maeghan