Christmas in a Muslim Country

For Christmas Eve, I went to Izmir to spend it with my foreign exchange friends. Izmir is a 3 to 4 hour bus ride north of Bodrum, but I don’t mind it. I loved my host family because on Wednesday, instead of sending me to school for half a day and then to Izmir, they let me sleep in till 11, then go get on the bus so that I would have an extra few hours to spend with my friends. I almost missed the bus, and the ride was completely uneventful, so I’ll skip to being in Izmir. For the 4th time now, I was able to find my way directly to my destination without taking a single wrong turn. This is a huge miracle for me, as I am terrible at finding my way around new places. Once, I was lost for 2 hours on a short trip that should have only taken 5 minutes. But I found my way directly to my host for the night, Ayhan’s house. I really like her because she is incredibly generous, insisting on buying me breakfast, and even agreeing to host me and my older brother Forrest for 6 nights when he comes to visit. But she was unfortunately not home when I got there, so I instead went to the nearby mall to meet up with the two Brazilians in our group, Luana and Victor. We joked around, talked about how broke we all are, and what we plans we have for the rest of the year. Basically just passed the time laughing and joking until it was time to go to the Rotary Christmas party. At 8 we got to a little tea café where about half the exchange students were already getting together. Keeping in Turkish tradition, kisses on each cheek were given to everybody, guys to guys included, but it’s more of bumping both sides of the head together for us. We waited for everybody to get there, and because there are about 8 students in Izmir and 3 of us out-of-towners, when Chris, Alex, or I arrived, there was a loud “Hazza!” or similar cheer from the group. The party was basically started by the Brazilians. Apparently inhibition and self-consciousness is not heard of in Brazillia because Luana is always the loudest and usually the most fun. Madison had found a really funny Mrs. Claus suit and about 4 santa hats were passed around, everybody got their little time with the hats. Rotary knew we would be loud, so they put us in a small corner, coincidentally the same corner where the servers had to walk through with all of the food for the rest of the customers. It was alright at first, but as we got more comfortable we got in this tea shop, the more we moved around. This was bad news for the servers and customers, because after about an hour, we were up and dancing. It was great fun because while the employees hated us at first, we first won over the DJ and got him to play a few favorites and eventually had him playing whatever song we wanted. Then we began slowly winning over the servers and by the end of the night, the waitresses were showing Carrie and Geena how to dance Turkish style. It was an amazing party. We had pizza, salad, something else I didn’t eat and even a birthday cake because Adriana and Alexis’s birthdays were a few days before and a few days after. Rotary gave out gifts to each one of us and I got slippers; but not just any slippers. These were high-light green fluffy slippers with bright pink tinkerbells on each slipper. I thought about keeping them, until Adriana asked me to trade for her much more manly basketball slippers. I agreed pretty quickly.
We all went home really happy, though a little homesick. It was a fantastic party, and as exchange students we all share a special bond and we are all great friends, but it’s nearly impossible to make up for a lack of snow, a real Chrismas tree, and the whole Christmas attitude. See, Turkey is an Islamic country, and believes in Jesus the way Christians believe In Abraham. Great guy, but not the son of god. So there are no presents, no carols, and a total lack of any difference from any other day. A few exchange students couldn’t even get out of school for Christmas day. Most of us did, and we spent it shivering and walking around from café to café until I went home at 6. All in all, a great time, a great party, and a fair attempt to imitate Christmas.

What have I been doing lately

Hey guys. I know it has been way too long sense I wrote my blog, and its pretty much taken a certain relative mentioning in no uncertain terms that I need to let people know whats going on.
I haven't been writing mostly because of 2 reasons. A friend of mine from Istanbul recently wrote a terrific summery of whats going on with his life and had the central theme of what it means to go out and get the most out of an experience. I was stirred up by this and decided to fix my monotone life here in Bodrum, but the more I looked for things to do, the more I noticed the total lack of anything to do here. Bodrum is honestly a very boring place to live during the winter. I took a walk down to the Bazzar with a friend after working out at the gym and there are only about 1 in 8 shops actually open and almost all are restaurants. Ive traveled through the mall a few times and there is a very big movie theator and a really small bowling alley, but both are rarely visited by anybody. I asked around to see what people do for fun here, and every single time, the answer was go to a cafe and talk. Seeing as there are about 10 people at school whom I can talk to, thats not going to open up many social avenues with anybody. The list of potental activities go on, but despite my best efforts I get a unanomous "wait till summer, thats when Bodrum gets fun!" Thrilling possibilities, but what do I do until then?
So Ive joined the Interact club, I started seriously working out, and chess and soccer have become huge for me at lunch time everyday. Interact is really cool here, every friday night we meet and have tea, coffie, and I guess you could call them... crumpets? Yes, like the english do. Little wierd cookies that seem to be made in varieties for variety's sake. People talk about thinking about doing fundraisers or having fun get togethers. I listen quietly and drink my tea, which is actually really good and free, because I have about as much understanding of the spoken turkish language as when I got here 3 and a half months ago. Afterwards, I find my friend Mert, who along with one other person who's name I always forget, are the only english speakers in the club. Which is great, because it forces me to listen to turkish and try to understand it. They tell me what happened, which isn't much, but afterwards a good 10 people usually head off together and I tag along. By the time we walk from the meeting place to the Bazaar where we find a cafe to hang out at, there are usually just about 5 people. Here they talk about the typical who likes who, what a dork some kids at our school is, who hates who, and I pitch in whenever it gets too quite with a nonsensical turkish phrase which while meaningless, makes sense to me. My one and only ace in the hole whenever I'm tired of feeling left out. And when it gets too cold (around 50 degrees farenhyte) we go our seperate ways home. Thats usually my social expirience for the week.
Working out has been a bigger success than I could have hoped for. It gives me something to do after school. I get out of school at 4 and get home at about 6. I started on september 11, wierd coincedince but the funny part about it is I paid for my membership and then forgot to renew it even though I remembered to keep going. The people who run the place fogot too, so I ended up with 2 and a half months for the price of one. Finally about a week ago, they realized I had been there too long and coincedentally a friend asked me to join his gym, so I got out of there and now I go to a different gym, in my opinion better. The manager is there every day and he looks like he has a beer belly. I wan mentioning to Cem (pronounced John) that its not a good sign to come to a gym run by a potbellied old man and Cem laughed too. As we were leaving he told the guy what I had said, which made me cringe, but I was totally amazed when the guy lifted up his shirt and he actually had a six pack. It was the wierdest six pack I'd ever seen, but the guy was really strong, so now I trust him. Its actually a good thing that I picked this up because I have become completely addicted to comfort food. I can't resist pudding, chocolate, or anything with lots of sugar on it. Its being ballaced out by my gym activity every school day, my mile every school night, and I do push ups and sit ups every night before falling asleep. Oddly enough, its cancelling each other out exactly as I have literally gain absolutly no wieght (I still wiegh 165) and no highth (Im still 6 foot). But before I got here I could only do one pull up, and today at the gym, I did 5. So something good is coming out of it. I decided at my next house I will start watching what I eat, but for now I'll use my comfort food crutch.
Speaking of which comes my second reason for not writing. Call it culture shock, though the culture is not really that different, or call it depression, I have been completely out of it for the last 2 months. The only time I am truly comfortable and happy is when Im up in Izmir with my exchange friends. That's only happend 3 or 4 times. I thought that maybe it came from coming from the complete fall from home to now. Back at home I had a goal, I was accomplishing it, my family was happy with me, I could make friends with whoever I wanted, and I had way more confidence than was good for me. Here I barely have the confidence to put an entire turish sentence together. I am limited by language in almost every way. And the worst part is I came up with the stupid idea that I could learn a bunch of Turkish on my own, and then I could at least comunicate in a basic way to everybody and I would then allow myself to persue friends as a kind of award for learning Turkish. Complete faliure because learning a language is so boring that its almost impossible to consentrate on it for more than 20 minutes. So I haven't put much effort into finding friends. I thought that by putting pressure on myself to learn the language I could learn it faster. I told myself that as soon as I could talk to people, even just a little, I would then go out and actually try to have friends. This left me dependent on my english class friends, who as a group, has completely dissolved. I have litterally accomplished nothing in the last 2 months that I couldn't have accomplished in the first 2 weeks of school. But I've made a bunch of friends in the 11th grade class, and now I talk to them mostly. I'll have to take pictures someday soon so you know who they are. The hardest part so far is mixing languages with them. I can't speak in full sentenses most of the time so the only way I can practice my Turkish is to mix languages. Its hard to understand when somebody is talking to you in 2 different languages and just as hard to speak it because the sentense order is all screwed up. I usually end up saying something like "lets go to the bazzar az sonra okul. I have to pick up some yemek ve benim bir pantalon var to get me through the kiş" That means "lets go to the basar later school. I have to pick up some food and I've only got one pair of pants to get me through the winter." The reason its so hard for me to understand and learn Turkish is its based on suffixes. All of the little words that help the sentense but have no real meaning are cut down to one, two, or three letter suffixes and put onto the end of the noun. Words like with, to, in, on, from, of, and oh so many more. Plus all of the verbs are conjegeted in thirty million different ways. There's the universal past, present, and future tense, but when we add may I, or while I was, or I should have, here there is a different way to conjegate for every one of those. There are even new tenses that Ive never hear of like the you all and respectful that go along with you, me, he, she, it, we, and they. There's a really wierd conjegation that is called story mode. If I asked you where Steven was and Jenny told you where he was an hour ago, you have to use this tense that explains that YOU don't know where Steven is, but somebody told you that he was wherever he is. CRAZY.
But I will survive. As everybody is telling me almost to the point of becoming annoying, "Don't worry Brian, your Turkish will come along. Just be patient. Everything will be better when May comes around." Sorry if this is wierd, but if you leave a comment, PLEASE don't write that. I don't think my second reason was clear, but it was because I was worried about sounding like I was whining, or that I hate it here which is not true. I have enough patience to make it until next summer, especially with the multiple pots of gold that have been promised to me then, but I would be lying if I told you there is nowhere I'd rather be. Thank you for reading this, and I truly hope that this is the first, last, and only negative blog that I write about my exchange expirience.
I hope your life is going well,

Hosçakal