Turkish Hospitality

At dinner the other night with the family in town from the village... (sister, husband, 2 kids, husband's mother)

It wasn't as awkward as the first time...this time they didn't stare and weren't as afraid of me, the foreigner. The kids played with me and weren't as scared of me. The little boy (nephew) doesn't talk much, but he and I ended up communicating just fine. It helped that he used small words that I could understand. I was sitting in a chair and he told me come to the balcony, where he pointed out the cats. So he and I beckoned to the cats asking them to "gel, gel"(come, come). Of course they didn't come, but we got to bond. Then I got to play with his fat, pudgy cheeks. Oh I love his cheeks!!! They are so fat that you can squeeze both cheeks and his lips don't move! He just stood there and let me terrorize his cute cheeks. So I let him get mine too...his mom stopped us from our play after a little while.

Super A is weirdly fanatic about children's cheeks, and after I played with his nephew I can see why. Super A sees a kid and says he wants to make shish kabob with his cheeks. OK, a little cannibalistic, but if not taken literally, its not as scary a thought.

Dinner wasn't as awkward, they already knew that I can't comfortably kneel and sit on my knees for the meal. So the food was brought directly to the coffee table instead of the floor.

The food was DELICIOUS!!! One of my favorite Turkish dishes was served, stuffed eggplant, but this was the best I've ever had! So I ate 2 servings of eggplant, beans, grape leaves stuffed with some kind of grain and soaked in some kind of fruit vinegar, and they kept serving me more food. I was trying to say that I couldn't eat more, but more was heaped on my plate. So I ate and ate.

After dinner is tea time. With pistachios. How can I eat more?? Well I ate pistachios because they said something if I didn't.

Then is dessert, rice pudding. I didn't have room but I ate.

Then comes fruit. I tried to get away with eating just a plum. Not good enough. So I ate a pear.
HOW MUCH DO YOU THINK I CAN FRIGGIN EAT????

So then I was trying to hold nature's call, since their toilet is the 'old fashioned' kind, a porcelein hole in the floor (just not the same as sitting on the pot). But home was a taxi ride then a bus ride away, I managed to hold it.

Turkish hospitality will make you fat. These people can EAT! And the food is soooooooooooooo gooooooooooooood!!!! YUM!!!

Blessing

For any of you who are aware of some of the struggles of my life in the past year, one thing has become a little better...

For those of you who are unaware, here it is.

A few months after I moved to Turkey, my fiance's family (Dad) became unsupportive of us getting married. They started out fine with it, then around last Oct/Nov they said they didn't want anything to do with us. This is a different kind of society than the US and Western Europe...We can't even go visit them, see the grandparents or his 5 brothers and sisters. This is really important to me, to meet his family and see where he came from before we get married. Also, his grandma who raised him, is getting really, really old and is in ill health.
Its also been really hard because it means we can't have a wedding. Especially with my family being in the US, we have no real emotional support or family here. We both feel very alone and "us against the world".

This month his sister and her husband came to Istanbul for 3 weeks. The brother in law talked to us about the situation, then talked to the Dad about it. Well, now the family is behind us and our relationship has their blessing. They will have a proper traditional village wedding for us, complete with henna, folk dancing, 3 days of celebrations and gifts of gold (and goats?). We just have to get *officially engaged*.

I'm healthy now!

I've been smoking my cigarettes with a plastic filter that filters out a lot of tar...

So I haven't quit yet. But it's healthier now, right?

Anyway, I haven't been getting many responses to my posts lately.... do I still have readers? Did my political rants piss you off? Where are you? My readers consist of family and friends, I don't get many randoms...

I need you, show me some LOVE!!! C'mon...

another Saturday, come and gone

I dragged my ass to work today, yes I work Saturdays too. I actually got some stuff done, so it wasn't so bad. More of my 'disaster management' skills got to shine. But of course my ass was hurting from sitting so long so I decided I go take a long walk after work.

From work I catch the bus at the seaside, and after a short walk I realized my foot still hurt from falling earlier in the week. I think I broke a toe, its really been hurting the last few days. Its just a toe, my only concern is that I think I damaged it up higher in the bone to the top of the foot. Back years ago when I was in karate, I broke toes all the time. But then again, this is the gal who broke a friggin ankle in Mexico and continued to backpack for a week with a cane, without seeing a doctor until 2 days back in the USA. Oh go figure, same foot! So taking my better judgement I decided to go home.

On the way home I stopped off to buy some beer (discount store in the neighborhood has some cheap beer that isn't bad at all) and stopped into a place to grab some grub instead of making dinner. The guys working there are really nice, they noticed my shopping bag that I was clutching to my chest was broken and gave me a new one. They were really friendly to me, not making fun of my bad Turkish.

I'm so happy I treated myself to cig kofte tonight, I love the stuff! (Christine, its the stuff you hate. Well every American hates it actually.) Ready to be grossed out? OK this is what it is: bulgar wheat, spices and raw lamb formed into small pieces that take about 2 bites. When you buy it, they give you lemon to squeeze on it, some flat bread (what we call tortillas), lettuce, fresh spinach, mint & parsley to eat it with. YUMMY! I'm full now and ready to break open the brew-haha.

I must be getting old. Its 9:30 pm and I'm tired. I never thought I'd get old, but I sure am feeling it now!

On the way home

I stopped by my buddy's house after work yesterday for a few beers and to lecture him on how friggin competent he is (we all need it sometimes).

I left his place after midnight, walking up Istiklal Caddesi (main drag of Taksim, a hip part of town) up to the dolmus (van sized bus). Istiklal is usually full of couples and groups of all ages cruising the drag on foot on Fri & Sat night. Being a yabanci (foreigner) I always get looks and attention no matter how I look or what I wear, weaving in and out of the casual pace of people, occasionally bumping someone enough to spin my watch 1/4 of the way around my wrist.
I had a few beers tonight, could have used a few more to feel just about right.

In the last few weeks since I've gotten this office job, I feel my ass cheeks spreading. I'm not consuming more cals than I was before, but I am noticing my hips gaining an inch and the proportion of my waist isn't catching up. Yeah, I know be greatful to keep the hourglass shape, but my figure is standing out (literally and figuratively) more than these skinny ass tan biatches over yonder.

I guess it wouldn't matter so much if I didn't attract so much goddam attention as it is, with my whiteass skin, blue eyes and foreign vibe. At least 'American' isn't the first guess I get usually, suppose I've grown colder. (Americans are soo friendly compared to Europeans!!)

So I'm sitting in the front seat of the dolmus (van) noticing the guys in the seats behind me staring at me. (Please don't make me ask the driver to stop, are these asses going to follow me? If they do I'll stop in at the convenient store near my house, the owner and his son know me. All I can think of in Turkish is "it herif!" meaning "dog man".)

I don't have to request my stop, just jump out as he stops for someone else. I walk the few blocks home with no worry, just more eyes. (None of them speak, but I live on the street, so they know who I am. If anything were to happen, I'd be protected, one of the benefits of a tight city community.)

Kid outside my house is picking up the garbage with the rickshaw looking bag he pulls by 2 sticks. He apologizes as I step over the trash to the door.

"Problem yok. Kolay gelsin," I say. (No problem. May the work come easy.) He probably didn't hear me, but I meant it.

And one short rant: I only catch a few music vids these days, but these gals with perfect makeup and super-skinny bods can't fucking dance. Such a let down. I so should have been an extra in music videos!

Word of the Day

OK, this is like one of the creepiest things that happened to me this morning. (I'm not gonna even mention my wierd ASS dream don't want to be psycho-analyzed over it.)

So I'm sound asleep in bed. Feel like some little bug is biting my arm, it knocks me into a slight consciousness, I sit up, smack my arm, shake out the top sheet. Go back to sleep.

Of course I was on the edge of slight consciousness for the rest of the night, heard the imam's 4am sound off.

Then when it was still sleep time, but with bright daylight pouring in, I feel a biting on my knee.
Smack it off. Then a biting on the side of my leg. That prompted me to sit up in bed and scream. Super A wakes up nasty and growling "What now?!!"

I point to my leg, yelling,"LOOK! LOOK! GET RID OF IT!!"
Its a flipping CATERPILLAR! HOW THE FUCK DID A CATERPILLAR GET INTO MY BED???????

He of course disposed of the nasty little thing and calmed me down. (Oh, so 'caterpillar" is his new word of the day.)

Still don't know how the fucker got in the house, let alone my bed.

And why is it whenever there's a bug in the bed it chooses me to bite or crawl on??? Not that its all THAT common of an occurance, but if it happens, it happens to me.

He says its cuz I'm white. Maybe he's too hairy and smelly for the taste of creepy crawlies. (He's not "smelly", just man smelly, you know what I mean ladies, musky. He's gonna kill me if he knows I wrote this...)

Oh and just a note, when I wake up with a scream or an AAAAAAHHHHHH! he isn't mean because he's an asshole....its just that I have a tendency to do that, like scream when I'm just a little startled. Less than 2 weeks ago I was having a scary dream and he just touched my back in his sleep and I screamed. He says it scares him, I think its kinda funny...

Slow Sunday

I've been working like a dog. Not much free time except for Sundays. I'm not blogging much because I'm trying to save my wrists, carpel tunnel prone they are.

Yesterday after work A and I went to a "cafe", a few tables set under trees that serves only tea by the Bosphorous. It was so nice to sit by the water, watch the ships go by. We even saw (yunusbaligi) DOLPHINS!!!! I didn't know they came to these parts, guess its rare. They were headed towards the Black Sea.

We also saw the Prince of Saudi Arabia's yacht. I thought it was a cruise ship! A corrected me. I joked that I should go find him and see if he'd take me to dinner on the yacht.

I don't get home until late, late from work these days. I hope its starting to slow down a bit, the disasters under control. My friend says that management in Turkey is all 'disaster management', while US style is mostly smooth.

So now I'm going to scrub the mildew out of the shower with bleach. Sundays are my only chance to do these things!