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.