For Cassandra

Here's a regular weekend breakfast at my house. Very Turkish.

This is "reçel". Yes it translates to jam. No I don't consider them the same thing.

Orange Reçel (My Favorite!)
I ate this entire thing with breakfast this morning.

Peach Reçel
(supposedly...)

Er.. That Fruit.. That's Freakish-Looking?
I don't know what this one is. It's almost spicy, and the fruit is queer.

Nothing

Yup, updating you that I did nothing today.
Have a good weekend!
Love from Turkey

-Maeghan

PS. Check out Carly's blog
-------------->>>>
Her descriptions of the trip are hillarious and her photos are way better than mine.
Also? I'm mentioned enough that it's worth reading. (to anyone saying "but I don't even know her...")

Guilt and Taiwan

Wednesday schedules this semester are waaay lame. I went to first period then hung out all day in the Foreign Language Department, with the intent of going to the last two classes (okay.. I know that that's less than half of my classes.. but come on! Math? Literature? Ugh. I almost hung out with Jimena's class for a lesson, but they wanted me to dance x_x)

In predictable FLD style, I was more or less doing nothing all day.. up until about 5 minutes before the class I wanted to go to. So I missed philosophy. Which had me sort of sad, because I like that class.

But anyways. I finish what I'm doing in philosophy and have half an hour left before my last class. Nothing to do. About ten minutes before THAT bell, one of the teachers approaches me asking if I can go do the photocopying (The Photocopy Man wasn't there today- I got to work the stupid machine by myself. Saved me time AND I didn't have to wait for thirty other assignments to be copied first!). It needed to be done before four today. Except that I said no. I have never said no before. I always accept their jobs. So I felt really, really guilty.

But the thing was, my class was seeing a presentation by a girl from Taiwan and I really wanted to go. And I did! And it was lots of fun. By the end I no longer felt bad about not doing the photocopying. It isn't my job anyways... (but still.. I feel obligated to help)

This girl (Vikki? I don't know how she spells her name..) is part of a program through AIESAC called "Meet My Friends" and she and a bunch of other university students go around the world presenting about their countries. She is absolutely adorable! And she talks about typhoons the way we talk about "big snow" (blizzards? hehe). It was hillarious! There are two more days of presentation from her and then maybe we'll also get to see the girl from Poland or the guy from Italy?! One can hope.

-Maeghan

No! Say Something Logical!

English today was.. near unbearable. We played a game. Boys against girls.
How do I explain to you the way the boys behaved? Hmm.. think 7 Kyles on one team, and a girl (who would probably be me back home) insisting they shut up and play the game correctly... Needless to say this ended with me (only understanding parts of what was being said, in English and in Turkish.. some of their accents!) hitting my head against the desk repeatedly, silently begging "shut up shut up shut up".

The rest of the day was extremely boring. Not even worth mentioning. (and yet I do anyways?) I hung out in the English Department since the library was locked. No reading National Geographic in Turkish today.

Actually! At one point (hehehe) Sean got up from his crossword to look something up on the computer, and I randomly filled in letters while he wasn't looking. As far as I can tell he hadn't realized and was still working on it by the time I left..
It's just that he gets so serious about them! And he does one every day. I've been fantasizing about it doing this for a couple months now. Rather unsatisfying, actually.

-Maeghan

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button Not Playing at Decent Times

Well.. okay, it isn't that curious. But it was slightly disappointing. So I make it all the way over to Asia to catch a movie that isn't playing at the time we thought it was. BOO. So what is the obvious line of action for a Brazilian, an American, and this Canadian? Try on fancy clothes in all the stores in the mall. Really really fun until you fall in love with something way out of your price range. (60 YTL for a shirt? I think not.. 400 YTL for a dress? I was too afraid to touch that one.)

We tried on fun stuff (the Ryan Gosling dress- looked like it could have been worn in The Notebook), crazy stuff (silver leggings that screamed.. well, I'm not sure what exactly they were screaming, I couldn't hear them over our hysterical laughter, but think superhero wannabe meets bad sci-fi movie budget), gorgeous stuff (formal dresses! need I say more?), and the most dangerous- regular everyday stuff.

The last led to me buying a black t-shirt that says:

All

Your
Basic

Us

Belong

To

Which I know makes no sense, but I love it anyways. I'm resisting the urge to skip school tomorrow just to wear that shirt.

OH! While in the mall I ran into my future host sister. Never met before. Which was fabulous and exciting, except that after the last store I had decided I needed to wear my hair in a side ponytail until the next store.. Nice.

Today overall was really good. I felt so much like me. I don't know if that makes sense, but being here I'm not quite focusing on myself or.. I don't know how to describe it. It's like I just remembered a part of who I am that was missing? I can't explain. But it felt great. I was happy and full and really good. I'll end the nonsense.

Love you all!
-Maeghan

Skating

We went skating today! Yes, I skipped school. For the first time this year. For the first time ever, actually. It was rather liberating.
It was a going-away party for Jessica. She's a short-term so she's going home to Brazil (just in time for Carnival). We went skating in Bakırköy (closer to my house, yay!) and ate icecream and tried on really expensive clothes.
I was the one dragging people around the rink.. hooray for still being able to stand on skates. But it felt like just as I had finally remembered how and actually started to skate skate, time was up and they kicked us off the rink. Boo.

-Maeghan

Er.. Memory Loss

I had something to say, I swear!
Okay... um.. the school wants Emily and Jimena and I to make a video of ourselves to send to the school board. This'll be interresting. I'm going to start filming my part tomorrow-
"Hi, I'm Maeghan Jerry from Canada. This year I'm attending İstek Bilge Kağan as an exchange student with Rotary. I love my school and my classmates are really great. That's why I'm here in Bakırköy on a Friday afternoon skating (yup, SKIPPED), while they're all writing another öss practice exam."
Okay.. maybe not the last bit.

Anyways, I recieved a package today from Janine and I was ridiculously happy. At first I was like "what is this thing blocking my door?" but then when I realized what it was I couldn't help but jump up and down with excitement.

Oh! I've started talking.. differently. Like, instead of saying "I don't get it" I say "I don't understand." (which happens to be the english translation of what I would say in turkish). Little things like that.

Television

So I've been thinking about telling you all about the TV for a while now, but I just haven't gotten around to it until now.

The television is on ALL THE TIME, which was really weird for me at first since I don't watch TV. We watch like, every soap opera there is (Turkish soap operas, mind you) and news over supper. After school my host grandmother watches this match-making show.. mildly entertaining when they dance. But anyways. The thing that really makes it good is the fact that my grandmother also talks to the television.

Oh! And so there is this TV show that we catch weekends over breakfast (and by breakfast I mean 10- 11 am) and it recaps EVERYTHING we watched the night before on TV. Seriously? Waste of my life. Why not just watch the recap? Or why not replace the recap with like.. infomercials- at least you'd make money.

The news station we watch "Star Haber" uses the Pirates of the Caribbean theme sometimes in the background of their news clips (I guess it's epic-sounding or something...) I've learned lots of important words like "earthquake", "marine", and "riot" by watching the news. And I've noticed that I see some sort of riot on tv almost every night. I sort of re-realized this tonight. I've become desensitized apparently.

Tonight while watching the news there was this clip on the "Sea Soldiers" who are off to Sumaria to go and fight pirates (?). Anyways, it's a touching families-saying-goodbye-to-their-sons/husbands/fathers thing, and as the young men board the boat and it leaves the docks it's in slow-motion. And my host grandmother comments that gee, "the boat isn't moving very fast is it?" ROFL. Melek and I cracked up.

Sorry for the kind of helter-skelter lack of format. I'm kind of distracted by my sadness at Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog. Even though I've seen it before. I just feel so bad for him!

Oh goodness! Look at my wrist- time to go!
Maeghan

More Photos

http://www.flickr.com/photos/24758538@N04/
My photo stream.
Check it out if you're bored.

Paper Flowers and German Class

I spent all but last period working for the English Department. It was nice because I definitely didn't wake up until around 4th period and had I been sitting in class I would have fallen asleep. All day I made paper flowers! We're decorating the stage for Spring Festival (which is like.. still a month away) which means we'll need a lot. Of course, being OCD I only got 13 flowers done today, but they're also really big and I wasn't working as hard as I could have been (numerous air guitar solos interrupted my cutting... that's what you get for sticking an exchange student in a room alone with her iPod..).

BUT. By the end of the day I was done with cutting out petals for a while and so I went to 8th period. Which happened to be German. Sefa was handing out the worksheet and he gave me one. Then he got to the back of the room and I thought he said something like "we don't have enough!" I don't know. So I tried to give mine back, but he told me I should work and the teacher (she's so cute!) came up to me and was like (in English, even cuter!) "You should learn German, your last test was not very good!" Hehehehe. So I wrote down what everyone else wrote down and sort of followed along. Kind of.

Our first activity was to choose which "Adjektive" didn't fit with the others.
Number five was: chic, modern, elegant, French
My immediate reaction (since all of these words are almost identical in German, I understood it!) was "Uh... they all go together." But of course, they think French does not go with chic, elegant, and modern. Whatever!

So I'm off to google language tool to figure out what the heck my homework says.
Love you!
-Maeghan

Nobody Loves Canada (Cold Feet)

Today was the last day of outbound orientation and here that means they were choosing their countries. Which means that Rotary wanted all of us to try and advertise. Which is a great idea, except that everyone comes with a country already in mind.

Sooo. I was all alone, every other table having at least 5 inbounds and half a dozen outbounds. AND I was freakishly red. And let's face it- Canada is not seen as a party country.

We introduced ourselves to the parents after we hung out with the inbounds over lunch and then the outbounds introduced themselves and said what country they wanted to go to.
America
Brazil
Mexico
Italy
Australia
Germany
Thailand
We didn't even have anyone there from the last four... Ouch. So after that bitter disappointment (I feel like a bad Canadian!) and a bus full of Canadian jokes back to İstanbul, 8 of us went paintballing!

Done laughing yet? Because I definitely DID manage to hit one person, and capture the flag! SO THERE. Also? I only got hit once. Hahaha. Actually? I had more fun picking up the paintballs that hadn't burst and throwing them at people.. but whatever.

Fun as it was, this left me wet, cold, and on a different continent from the one I live on by the time it got dark. My shoes won't be dry in time for school tomorrow. So going home pretty much sucked. AND I couldn't find a dolmuş ("pirate taxi" as they're known in English?) to Taksim so I decided to walk. AND when I got on my bus there were no more seats. AND I was carrying a whole bunch of books on Canada. But the thought of the döner I had bought before boarding the bus kept me happy, and it was well worth the wait. I won't start on my love for döner... maybe another blog.

However, there was a group of like.. 8 boys on the bus, and they were talking about me. (YES, I DO UNDERSTAND YOU.) Me in my red blazer and Canada shirt and carrying a Canada bag and (I had forgotten..) a temporary "I <3 Canada" tattoo on my cheek. Talk about subtle. Everyone else is in like.. dark blues, blacks, browns- then there's "Canadia" as I have been nicknamed.

Speaking of this nickname, the person who gave it to me called me while I was walking to Taksim because he wanted to make sure I'd made it back to Europe okay. Aw.

Sooo, there ya go! And happy belated Valentine's Day. I love you all!
-Maeghan

Friday the Thirteenth

It's the weekend- you have permission to do a happy dance.

M

Oof Yaa!

My brain is like, so fried. I was reading a book in Turkish today in the library. By the end of the first page I was thinking at about half my normal speed, and half way through the second I gave up and read more Sherlock Holmes. Those two pages took me two classes. How slow is that?! Over an hour to read a page and a half. After reading a story in English I went back to the Turkish books. I found one with lots of pictures and read the captions (short, sweet, and to the point!). The worst is when you see a word and you know you know what it means but cannot for the life of you remember. It kills.

Maeghan

Today Was Good

School was school, a little boring, but fairly bearable. I read a collection of murder mysteries while my friends slaved away in math class. Then in philosophy I read "The Hounds of Baskerville" rewritten for people with a 2000 word vocabulary. Well... it is a foreign language here. But gosh are books funny. Yesterday I read a science fiction that had me giggling like a maniac (actually, planning out my Valentine's Day story did too..).

On the bus home from school I really noticed things. My glasses were cleaner or I was more awake or something, but I just observed things. I don't know. It was neat.

-Maeghan

Benim Turk Peri Masalım!

(Translation can be found at the bottom)

Bir varmış bir yokmuş, çok uzak bir krallıkta, güzel bir genç kız yaşardı. Bu kızın adı Kathleen'de.

Kathleen'in doğru ve iyi bir kalbı vardı. Ama on yaşından sonra talıhsizlikle uğraştı. Tipik bir peri masalının içindeki gibi, Kathleen'in babası öldü ve Kathleen günahkar üvey aile ile yaşmalıydı.

Yıllar sonra, Kathleen hala üvey aileyle yaşmaktaydı. Onlar Kathleen'e karşı zalimdi. Kathleen'in üvey kız kardeşleri Kathleen'den nefret etti çünkü o onların en güzeliydi. O zaman Kathleen onsekiz yaşındaydı Kralın balosu vardı. Krallıktaki tüm kızlar davetliydı. Kathleen'in üvey annesi prensin Kathleen'e aşık olmasını istemedi yani balo günü Kathleen'i bodruma kilitledi. Kathleen çok üzgündü çünkü güzel elbiseler görmek istedi. Ağladı, ve onun gözyaşları Peri Tanrı Anne Janine'i çağırdı!

Janine sihirbazlıkla at arabası ve sevimli elbise yaptı. En güzel armağanı bir çift cam ayakkabıydı.
"Dikkat!" dedi Janine. "Gece yarıs her şey gözden kaybolacak!"
"Tamam. Gece yarıs eve döneceğim" dedi Kathleen.
"Unutma."
Balo başladiltan sonra, Kathleen geldi. Prens Kathleen'in geldiğini gördü ve ansızın ona sırılsızlam aşık oldu. Prens ve Kathleen tüm gece dans etti. Kathleen birdenbire Janine'nin uyarısını anımsadı. Sat onikiyi vurduğunda.

"Of yaa!" dedi Kathleen. "Gitmeliyim!" dedi prense.
"Bekle! Lütfen. Senin adın ne?" diye bağırdı ama Kathleen çoktan gitmişti.
Kathleen yiderken ayakkabısının tekini kaybetti.

"Tatlı Nektar!" dedi prens ve kathleen'in ayakkabısını kaldırdı. "Ben bu ayakkabının sahibini bulacağım! Bulmalıyım!"

Böylece prens krallık araştırmaya başladı. Her evde kızlar ayakkabıyı denedi ama hiç kimseye uymuyordu. Ne zaman prens Kathleen'in üvey ailesinin evi, üvey annesi Kathleen'i bodruma kilitledi. Ama prens gördü ve birkerede bildi- bu kız onun aşkın!

Ayakkabı Kathleen denedi, ve onlar (Kathleen ve onun prensi) evlendı. Tabii, onlar mutlulukla ozamandan sonra yaşardılar. BITTI!

My Turkish Fairytale

Once upon a time, in a far away kingdom, lived a beautiful maiden. This girl's name was Kathleen. Kathleen had a good and true heart. But from when she was ten years old, misfortune plagued her. In typical fairytale fashion, (Yes, I actually wrote that) her father died and Kathleen had to live with her evil step family. Years later, Kathleen still lived with her step family. They were cruel to Kathleen. Kathleen's step-sisters hated her because she was more beautiful than they were. When Kathleen was 18 years old, the King hosted a ball. All the girls in the kingdom were invited. Kathleen's step mother did not want the prince to fall in love with Kathleen. So, on the day of the ball, she locked Kathleen in the cellar. Kathleen was very sad because she wanted to see the beautiful dresses. Kathleen cried, and her tears called Fairy Godmother Janine. With magic Janine created a carriage (litterally horse-car in Turkish) and a lovely dress. The best gift of all was a pair of glass shoes.
"I warn you!" said Janine, "At midnight everything will disappear."
"Okay, at midnight I will return home," said Kathleen.
"Do not forget."

Kathleen arrived after the ball had started. The prince saw Kathleen enter. (This is where I put "The prince got on Kathleen as a third party watched" Idil corrected that... I'm still learning, obviously) And he fell head-over-heels in love with her right away. The prince and Kathleen danced all night. Suddenly Kathleen remembered Janine's warning as the clock chimed 12. "Oof ya!" said Kathleen.
"I have to go!" she said to the prince.
"Wait! Please, what is your name?" cried the prince, but Kathleen was already gone.
Kathleen dropped a shoe as she left.
"Sweet Nectar!" said the prince and he picked up Kathleen's shoe. "I will find the owner of this shoe! I must!"

Thus the prince searched the kingdom. At every house girls tried on the shoe but none of them fit. When the prince arrived at Kathleen's step family's house, her step mother locked her in the cellar again. But the prince saw and knew right away- This was the girl he loved! The shoe fit Kathleen and they (Kathleen and the prince) got married. Of course, they lived happily from then on. THE END!

So, what do you think? It took me literally all afternoon, but it gave me something to do. So, what I would like from all you readers are characters. Give me a character and I will write a grand Valentine's Day story that I shall title "Spectacular Spectacular!" and post in Turkish and English on my blog to celebrate that excellent day (since all of us exchange students are grounded this weekend). So, any character. You could say yourself, or a fairytale character, or even just a name or small discription of something/someone. I don't care. I promise I'll work as many of them in as I can, and this will be my project for the week.

Seninim,
Yours,
Maeghan

15 Photos Because I Love You

I'm not quite bored enough to start blogging yet. So enjoy the photos!
(How The Other Half Lives just came on in shuffle.. I miss theatre!)

Me and Tinkerbell (aka Jael from Mexico) in the Temple of Apollo. It was HUGE. Like, ridiculously. You kind of just stood there with your mouth open for like a full minute without taking anything in. To be able to build something like that. *phew* I'm tired just thinking about it!

"OUR MUSEUM IS NOT UNDER THE WATER"
Well thanks, Tips! One of those bursting into hysterical laughter for no obvious reason moments. I mean.. one tends to notice when they find themselves underwater... lack of oxygen and all.

Me in the city of Troy. Hooray for the Les Mis shirt! Soon after this we made a video of us running through the city crying "The Greeks are coming, the Greeks are coming!"

Hooray for off-season and an empty tourist site.

No.. I don't know what they are. Or what they're for. But they sure are pretty, aren't they?

Me attempting artsy photography..

Well anyways! Evil eyes. Its amazing I haven't bought a hundred already. I absolutely love them. And they come in so many different styles. I myself own.. a pair of earrings, two necklaces, two bracelets, and a plain glass one that I plan to do something with some day. Some were gifts, okay? (Although I'll admit- I'm addicted. ) Oh! And two pins for my blazer.

I suppose you may want to see some ruins or something.. This is the library at Ephesus. It is HUGE. This is one of the best-preserved things I saw. Quite humbling, really.

Lego needs to check it's copyrights. This stone is older than plastic. No one else understood why I was laughing so hard.. I seem to get that a lot here.

A beautiful sunset in Bodrum. It was beautiful, I swear! Some of us just don't know how to work our cameras. Anyways. The whole sky looked like it was on fire and that made the water look like it was on fire. Plus there's a law there that you have to paint your house white. Which means all the houses looked orange and pink in the light.. Anyways. It was really cool.

Well.. you gotta admire the honesty. And the oxymoron. (I always think of Charlie Brown- Good Grief!)

A peacock and a chicken.. interesting pair. And you can't tell, but they're standing under a tree that I think was a cherry tree.. with the pretty sakura blossoms or whatever they're called. It was a very funny sight. I decided they were in love.

Not a clear photo (bus window!).. but they're gathering olives. You put the sheet down and then just shake the tree. When you're done you fold up the sheet with the olives inside and ta-da!

Me at Troy. Obviously this is not the original horse, but still entertaining. Actually, Troy was one of the coolest sets of ruins we visited. It still had walls and stuff. Not just random pillars. Although it had some of those too.

From the gift stall at The House of Mary. This one had me cracking up. And getting strange looks from Asian tourists.. Really, am I the only one who finds it funny? I almost bought some just for fun, but it was expensive.

The sweet dog who reminded me of my own. It was the spots on the nose I think. This dog like, followed us around after that.. Turks don't really touch the animals. "They're dirty."

One of the many engraved stones randomly skewed across this country. I don't remember which site this one is from. But flowers seemed to be a common theme.

I love you!

-Maeghan

Frustration

I will not miss trying to cook in someone else's kitchen using ingredients that aren't the same as the ones I'm used to.

-M

After the Trip

So the trip went well. The night we stayed in Izmir we got to hang out with the exchange students there, which was really cool. Bodrum was really pretty. There's a law there that you have to paint your house white. I'm sure you can imagine.

By the end of the trip all the ruins looked the same. I feel bad because at the beginning I was sooo excited and snapping photos of everything, carefully figuring out exactly what angle I wanted and zooming and stuff... by the end I didn't even look at my screen for most of the photos. I just sort of held the camera in the right direction and pressed the button. I did really like Troy, but mostly since we went around making videos of ourselves running through the city crying "The Greeks are coming!"
Oh the joys of not traveling during tourist season. One of my favorite visits was to the Church of St. John, which wasn't actually part of the trip. Over lunch the day we were in that town I just asked the tour guide if I could go and half a dozen of us went and took photos.

Mattie stayed with my host family until she left. So the last three days have been us running around like crazy trying to tie up all the loose ends. On Tuesday I discovered that the airline office that I'm supposed to go to to book my ticket does not exist. This left me very stressed for a couple of days, but last night (or really very early this morning) I picked up a card at the airport so I know what number to call. It's all good. We went to a hamam that was really nice, but sort of expensive. It was neat, and also kind of gross. They scrub off soo much dead skin it's disgusting to look at. But then afterwards you feel so good. I've never been that clean in my life!

Wednesday Mattie and I met a friend of hers and we went to the Grand Bazaar. The woman we went with knew some of the shop keepers, so that made it more fun. One of the best parts though, was walking through the entrance to The Old Bazaar (it's expanded over the years) and seeing the date. People were walking through that exact doorway before the Americas had been 'discovered'. Wow.

Yesterday all the exchange students got together in Ortaköy to say goodbye to Mattie. We ended up in a Mado, taking up the entire top floor and ordering nothing but icecream, fondu, and waffles. Last night was a mad repacking of Mattie's suitcases because her travel agent booked her only one piece of checked luggage. That was interresting. But we did it and got to the airport by 3am and said our goodbyes.

So now with only three days left of holiday my grand plan is to sleep.
Sweet Dreams,
Maeghan