Monday, July 31, 2006

Istanbul, Turkey

I've been really bad about this blogging thing. I swam across the bosforus!! We went on a boat trip this past saturday, and climbed up the castle on the asian side and then had an amazing lunch and then got to swim across while doging the tankers. It was about 30 minutes in choppy water, and at the end it was all I could do to climb up the ladder into the boat. But it was a really amazing experience

Class is going well. I know the past and present tenses, the forms for can you do something, and let us do something as well as all of the cases (of which the accusative is the most annoying). I had an hour long conversation with my friend Cat and a ceramics seller on Friday, which was super exciting. And watching movies I find myself understinding a lot more.

Last night we went to a concert to hear this pop star named Yalin (although there's not a dot on that i). It was held in an outside ampitheater and it was a bunch of fun. And it was exciting because we had been listening to his CD, so we knew some of the songs that he played. And he also played an obnoxious maroon 5 song, but it was crazy how like them he sounded. and for the first half he had a purple velvet couch that he sat on.

I've started my shoppping. If you have any requests of things that you'd like from Turkey you should send them my way and I'll see what I can do. Back to my odev (homework). I really want to get to the future tense!

Abreviated turkish version typed on an american keyboard

Gecen hafta sonu bogaz turuya gittim. Bogaz'da Asya'dan Avrupa'ya yuzdum. Kucuk balikle meze yedim. Dun aksam konsere gittim. Konser cok guzel, ve dans ettik. Sarkici adi Yalin. Bu aksam arkadaslarimle ben patlicanle domates pisirdik.

Ders iyi gidiyor. Oretmenlarim cok iyi. Ders kitabi cok ilginc, ve resimlar var. Benim en sevdim sozcuk gezmek.

Turkiye'den ne istiyorsunuz? Simdi odev yapiyorum. Cok odev var.

Monday, July 10, 2006

And the Winner is....

ITALY! May the team with the best ice cream win. I went with Jason, and he's fluent in Italian, so we were rooting for Italy. And the game was very exciting. I may end up a football fan yet.

Thursday, July 06, 2006

whoops

Istanbul, Turkey

So I guess I said I would write and it's been kind of a long time. But I haven't been slacking! There's been lots of Turkish. We've done compound nouns, temporary and permanant posession, location, there is/there is not sentences, and there have been lots and lots of words. Some of them I find more exciting than their english counterparts, so I use them alot. My favorite word right now is salatalik, which is for cucumber.

Other things besides class...yesterday we went on a field trip to the asian side to this place where they make really good yogurt. And it was good. (Yogurt is a turkish word by the way). I had some balli yogurt (yogurt with honey). The day before that a bunch of us went with our TAs to get baklava. And that was also yummy.

I went to Bursa with the sufis last weekend. We went to all the important sufi sites and then they sang songs and prayed in them. It was very interesting, although I felt a little bit out of place. Bursa was very nice but very hot (cok sicak). The ulu camii was especially interesting because the middle dome is glass and it has a big fountain in the middle. I also got to see Ali Kahn (the son of Aylin and Kubi) which was very exciting. He's just as cute as ever, and when I said a few words of turkish to him he got really excited and started talking to me for the first time ever.

Mom and William were back in Istanbul for a few days and I got to see them which was very exciting. One day we went over to a professor's appartment and had tea. The professor was someone they met at the conference. His wife had chicken pox, which was sad. But they were very nice. We had an excellent dinner at a fish resturant under the galata bridge. They had eaten there before and all the people remembered them. And I asked for napkins (pecete) and got them which was very empowering. I've used the word a lot since. And the next night we ate at Devali, which looks over the sea of marmara and has amazing food. And then mom gave me her debit card, which means I've been able to get money. Which is always a good thing.

I think it's been a long time. I went to a Turkish punk rock concert - the band's name was Athena. And the next night we went on a party on a boat. I'm having difficulty remembering other things that we've done, but there have been a lot. And there are always new turkish words...weather words, food words, clothing words, family words, words, words words. Excitement