cats in class

İstanbul, Turkey

Wow it's been a busy past four days. I haven't actually been home in two or maybe it's 3 days now. And I'm sure you're all dying to hear about what I've been doing. Thursday I visited Burçe at Boğaziçi university. She was an exchange student at UNC last semester and she lived in my dorm. She didn't actually believe me when I told her I would visit her so she said it was like being in a dream that I actually showed up. I went with her to the sailing club meeting and listened to a lecture by a turkish olympic sailor...in turkish of course. There were some pictures which was very exciting. And a total of 3 cats stolled in during the lecture and it was really hard not to laugh as they walked around the front of the room. Then I went to the sailing club's spring break trip reunion dinner where they nailed a white table cloth to the wall to use as a screen to project their vast numbers of photos onto. And the food was amazing! Oh how I love turkish food.

Day the next. I visited one of Efdaluddin's caligraphy teachers who is 80 and speaks Turkish, Arabic, French, English and Farci. He seems like an absolutely amazing person. And he was giving lessons in the library of the Sulimaniye mosque complex which is absolutely beautiful. The have a courtyard and garden in the library which I think is a great idea. Later that night I went back to boğaziçi to see a show in the parking lot where they had put up a big stage. The guy singing was Kenen Doğulu and I think that he must be really famous because all the people there knew all the words to all the songs.

English is a very hard language. I think that if I hadn't been born in a place where everyone spoke english than I never would have learned it. I gave my first english lesson on Saturday. My pupil is the son of the nanny to the adorable two year old son of Aylin whose house I have been staying in for the past two nights. I helped him with his homework (How many times a week do you play football? I play football twice a week) and then asked him questions about life, school etc. When I ran out of questions I decided that it was his turn to ask me questions. I hope I was helpful. I feel like I was kind of inept and have no idea how to teach a language.

Yesterday morning I went to a big brunch held by the Sufi group that has adopted me. İt was in a building right on the bosforus that they say used to hold elephant food in ottoman times. An entire building for elephant food...but then I guess elephants eat a lot. The brunch had almost enough food to feed an elephant I would think and it was all amazing. And everyone sat around and talked and the kids ran around and then Alikan (the son of Aylin) fell asleep in his mommy's arms and was even more adorable. And she had to carry him around for an hour.

In Turkey they have an intermission during movies. I think that's possibly one the smartest things ever. The movie theaters in the US should certainly start doing that. Especially with 3 hour movies. And it would make it possible for them to sell even more drinks since people would be able to go to the bathroom halfway through. You would think as good capitalists they would have thought of that before.