Friends

I have been here four weeks now. I have made very slow progress with my Turkish, but it is the price I pay for having my great friends. All 0f them speak fluent English and they are fun. Haakan is the only other guy in my class and was the only guy last year. He's really cool, and smart, but a condesinding jerk to almost everybody. I find it greatly amusing to listen to him rant about the other kids, the teachers, the principal, the adults, the government, Bush, Obama, Islam, Christianity, God and his dog. We also have a lot of fun together and he's got a really cool mom who told me that I can use thier house as a second home whenever I want, and I had only talked to her for about 5 minutes. Michelle is the resident psycho of the group and has hilarious antics that are never the same twice. Sometimes she'll jump up from the lunch table and run after the cats that live at our school. Others she'll just start singing a random song, or pet a random gradeschool kid during our lunch hour. She's been reported to play the guitar and Im trying to get her to show me how to play the Bass. Dilara is the mother of the group, with a slight twist of drama queen. She's just as likely to be talking about her exboyfriend as what we are going to do this weekend. She gets thing done and she's really funny. These are my core friends. The other people in my class are really cool too, I just haven't gotten to know them as well. Everythings going really well so far. Im planing a solo trip up to Izmir on this comming bayrom (B i rom) which is a 9 day holiday. Im planing to spend the time with the other exchange students and getting to know Izmir better. It will also be a great chance to see if Im truely as far behind in my Turkish as I think I am.

Muslims in Turkey

Now here is a topic I'm sure all of you people are very interested in. Something that you should know is that I have only talked to people from the West coast which is similar to talking to people in Los Angelas in the fact that its probably different in the East here, as religious views in the South are there. Hopefully that makes sense. But so far I have seen great similarities between religious reverence in America and here in Turkey. My family is not particularly religious. They don't observe Rhamadon, and they never go to a mosque. Rhamadon is a couple of religious days, like lent only they give up all food and drink for the daylight hours. The maid and nanny for Emri observe it along with the gardener and the turkish neighbors. But I've been meeting a lot of kids, and non of them give any thought to religion, at least not the ones I've met. Quick note though. I've been noticing a trend in teenage religious views. I have a tendency to talk religion and philosophy when I meet people and so far every single kid my age who I really like, ends up truely interrested in Buddhism. I got really interested in it back in December when I got dissatisfied with Christianity, and now out of the 8 or so people Ive talked religion with over the last couple of months, about 7 of them have turned out to be, while not fully buddhist, following many of the key philosophies that make it a distinct lifestyle. But back to Islam. something that most people dont know is the difference between Islam and Muslim. Islam is the religion, a Muslim is the follower. The religion is not the extreme head scarves on all women and all guys fulfilling the will of the all powerful Allah. Which by the way is just the arabic translation of God, not a completely different all powerful being. I found out on tuesday that last year in school a bunch of kids got together and put on the play Chicago. short skirts, fishnets and everthing. The biggest difference that the religion makes is seeing a lot less cleavage on the streets. Not counting when girls are walking around in bakini's and flabby guys.

Okul (School)

Sorry its been so long since my last post. I wake up at 7:30, get to class by 8:30, try to stay awake until 4:00, then get home and sleep till dinner time. Afterwards I either talk to Vedat about Turkish, talk to the neighbors who are leaving Friday, or go hang out with my new friends. But first, a little info about my school. Its called Marmara college, but its really a k-12th grade and has classes of about 60. Each class is separated into subjects; there's the math and science department, the history and Turkish department, the English department (which I'm in) and a few other's that I haven't heard of yet. There are about 11 of us in my class and we go from teacher to teacher together for different classes. So far my best friend is a kid named Hakaan. He used to live in New York, East Village with his parents as poor artists. But then they moved over here when the Arab hatred got too bad and now he speaks perfect English, perfect Turkish, and is a fun guy. I might add that its a good thing we get along really well because he is the only other guy in my class. The other two friends I've gotten close to are Dilara and Michelle. Michelle is originally from England, but lived in South Africa for so long, that I can only hear the south African accent. She's lived here for a few years and knows Turkish perfectly. Dilara, I haven't completely figured out yet, but somehow she has excellent English and is always helping me with Turkish. They are great people, but they are more than likely to get me in trouble. That's fine with me, Ive never really been in trouble and the 24/7 bus system always promises me a way out. I already love these guys and after only the first day they adopted my into their tight group. I couldn't have picked better people to be stuck with until I learn enough Turkish to go out on my own. School is boring so far. English is mildly interesting, as the teachers like to use me and Hakaan for walking, talking answer sheets. But non of the other teachers speak much English. Geography, some weird Turkish class about the subtle nuances of the language, Philosophy (which is going to get a lot more lively once I can speak Turkish) and Geometry are all taught by teachers with no English skills. It gives me time to learn my Turkish and work on my notebook I'm turning into a Turkish handbook. maybe Ill give it to the next exchange student or something. There's no recess but every 40 minutes we get a 10 minute break, and the cafeteria serves stuff that makes my old school look like a 5 star restaurant. But when I get hungry enough I can eat anything... even melted practically unmixed chocolate pudding. Nothing worse than mass produced Turkish food. The language is still coming along slower than I'd like, I only average about 2 words a day, but, I'm starting to teach myself verb conjugation. Hopefully Ill be putting full sentences together in 2 or three weeks. And if Mr. Francis Mayfield just happens to read this again, tell Mr. Miller that if any of his kids are complaining about how hard or pointless Spanish is, just threaten to drop them into a foreign country. It take ten minutes to explain to my host brother that I will come play with him in five. Plus even in this middle east part of the world I have been meeting Spanish speakers. Hosca kal

Izmir

Izmir is an amazing city. But let me explain why I was there. This weekend was the first exchange student meeting on Saturday. It’s only a 5 hour meeting, but it was great. I’ll talk about the exchange meeting in the next blog. I got a ride from the President of the Rotary club Tugai, in Bodrum and his family. They were really great, Bert and Berfin are their kids and Ayla is his wife. They dropped me off at the rotary office and went shopping. A member of the Bodrum rotaract club, Feti , picked me up. Feti is about 25 and he showed me around Izmir. It’s a city of about 4 million and is jam packed full of people. The bazaars are amazing. He took me to one of the larger ones and we walked around for hours just talking and him explaining what everything was. There was a street for everything, an electronics street, a jewelry street, a clothes street, a meat street and so many more. It would have been easy to get lost in these streets as all of the shops have a few stories of apartments above them. It was almost impossible to see the sky enough to figure out north and south. Then there was the Aegean, the sea between Greece and Turkey. It was beautiful to look at unless you looked up against the shore, then it looked dirtier than the Mississippi. We stopped by one of the Mosques and it was really interesting. We took our shoes off, a religious requirement, and walked in. There was the guy chanting the Islamic prayers in Arabic and about 40 people just sitting and listening. I was shocked when I found not the annoying droning that you hear in the evening and morning prayers, but a very soothing, peaceful, almost hypnotic sound coming from the prayer leader's mouth. I truly want to go back to a mosque sometime soon and just sit for a while. I found them to be very tolerant of Feti and I as we whispered back and forth, and also took pictures. I will write another blog soon about Islam in Turkey. It’s nothing like anybody back home thinks. We continued to walk around and saw the fisherman's area which reeked, but only because I hate the smell of fish. I got to experience haggling, and even more Turkish food. was amazing because the only thing that he let me spend my own money on the entire weekend was a single shirt. He paid for all the food and drinks that he could persuade me to ingest. We slept at Feti's aunts' house; one was from Holland and the other from France, both speaking Turkish. The next day he dropped me off at the Rotary office for the exchange meeting and left to finish the business he was originally there for. Then I got to meet the exchange students in the Izmir and southwest turkey area, but that is for another Blog