interviews oh interviews

Ankara, Turkey

I had three interviews today and they all went really well. Yay! I kind of don't feel like I should be talking about what people said in my blog though, so if you want to find out about them you can read my thesis someday insallah.

I'm now staying with a family that is friends with Canguzel's family. However, I am very bad with names, and turkish names are once again proving to be worse than american ones and so I know the daughter is named Ozge but I can't remember the names of the rest of the family. But I have to say that the four year old is really cute and I feel bad because I can't talk to him.

Anyways, today Ozge was very nice and came with me to all the interviews. And I got to meet her friends at this chinese resturaunt that also had sushi. She goes to an international school, as does her brother (the 16 year old one, not the 4 year old) so they both speak fluent english which is really nice. Some day I really will learn turkish!

While I was at METU (middle east technical university) I got to see Claire and Oktay which was very exciting. Claire (who is brittish but now speaks fluent turkish) is in the process of starting up a dissabilities probgram at METU which seems to be a challenge, but also very rewarding. Apparently it's the first program like this at a Turkish university, but now there is another one that is starting up as well.

At the state planning office once again I talked to a woman I had already talked to and then the man I was going to interview was very late. Ozge left and eventully he showed up at about 5:30. Apparently there was some problem with the licensing of his car and something and he had to wait 3 hours. He gave me a ride home after I interviewed him which was really nice of him. It was kind of funny though. The neighborhood I'm staying in is confusing, and so he stopped somewhere and asked for directions, which turned out to be bad. So he went back to the same place to try again. We did find it eventually, but the directions he got the second time were exactly the same as the first time, and still wrong.

I was very late getting back and so missed dinner, but they saved some for me. And it was manti!!! Manti is my favorite turkish food, or perhaps food in general by the way. If you haven't it's turkish dumplings in a yougurt sort of sauce and well, it's really good. And it was homemade! Yay!