A Few Things I Love About Life in Turkey
The Bazaars: The Bazaar is a large, open area yet covered area filled with vendors of every variety. The abundance of fresh fruits and veggies is incredible and it is always an interesting experience. First of all, all the vendors are yelling at the top of their voices proclaiming the how much more excellent their cucumbers are then the cucumbers in the stall next to him that look exactly the same. It is so crowded you can hardly walk and I quickly learned to stop wasting time saying "pardon" and being a nice, considerate person. It is survival of the fittest and everyone else is pushing, shoving and stepping on each other. "When in Rome do as the Romans", right? Okay, I did feel a little bad when I totally walked into and tripped over a crippled old man in an wheelchair. That's when I run away as fast as possible to escape the wife who starts waving her cane and yelling Turkish at me before a cabbage hits me square on the head.
Teaching Speech Club: Once a week, I lead out in a speech club for the foreign kids ages 10-12 in the area. We actually have a blast. "Speech club" and "blast" sounds like two major oxymorons. I should know, I was in Gavel Club for three years... haha just kidding. Kind of... Anyway, We play fun games and do all kinds of creative stuff that has anything to do with public speaking and then the kids all blow me away with their excellent speeches, Table Topics and evaluations. It's been very rewarding to see them do their best and improve every week.
The Old, Historical Sites EVERYWHERE: Obviously, I come from America. America is pretty awesome and but our old, historical sites are not. Pretty much all we have are some lame Indian mounds out in Arkansas or Oklahoma or something. Over here in this part of the world, ancient ruins are almost a dime a dozen. The other day while we were out visiting in a relatively small town/city, we drove about 5 minutes out of the town and lo and behold there were Roman ruins. Tile mosaics, an acropolis and ampitheatre all graced the side of the hillside. I climbed to the top of the wall and had a lovely view of the town and surrounding farmland. There were seriously chunks of stone with ancient Greek inscriptions just lying around, anyone could of taken in home if they wanted. (I already have limited space in my suitcase, unfortunately) From on top of my ancient stone arch I could see excavations going on in a nearby field. Sticking out of a farmers field, old, roman pillars were being unearthed. No biggie.
NO MATH. I don't even need to explain my reasoning behind this statement. This is Chloe speaking. Almost anything that means I can leave math behind for a couple months MUST be awesome, right? My logic and reasoning is impeccable. Don't you math-lovers dare question it.
Hospitable People: The Turks have the art of hospitality down pat. I love how they make guests feel so special. I feel almost ashamed as I think back on my form of hospitality at home, "Hey y'all just come on it," and if I'm being really good and on top of things, "Can I get y'all something to drink?" Yeah, that would be considered pretty insufficient here. I am convinced, you could visit at Turk in the middle of the night and they would say, "Welcome! Sit down and here is some tea and wait just a minute while I go make you an entire meal." It would be okay though if the sweet people didn't feel the need to feed us for the entire duration of the visit...I am sitting there thinking, "I will have to do 400 hours of crunches to burn off the calories I have amassed during this 3 hour visit..."
I really could continue going on and on...
