School, or that thing I came here to do

So registration here in Ankara was one of the most painful stressful experiences I think I'll ever have, but its over so all is okay. I'm in 3 required classes on Turkey and Germany, a Turkish language class, and a class about gender in Turkey. Sounds awesome! The gender class should be great because people love to use women's rights as the exemplification of how Islam is "horrible" to women without looking at a broader understanding of women in religion and society. Do we all really think that women in the US are equal to men? Yeah, not, but people love to say how Islam treats women so terrible. Take a look in the mirror, America! Okay rant done.

The school itself is HUGE, really its enormous. The campus is in the middle of a forest with a lake. Oh how I miss Whittier where the farthest you had to walk was from the registrar to the athletic center. It's about a 10 to 15 minute walk where ever I go. Haha it makes my life at Whittier look positively lazy. Also METU has a history of being really radical. Below is a picture of the stadium where a chemistry student used acid to burn "Devrim" into the stadium. Devrim means revolution. He did this in the early 1970's and they've never been able to get rid of it.


Yeah its HUGE, those are little people there on the right.

In other news, people in the program seems nice. We had orientation and keep running into each other sporadically around campus. The national breakdown is about 4 Germans, 4 Turks, 2 Americans, an Armenian, a girl from Kazakhstan, a Brit, and a few others I can't remember right now. I guess there should be an Italian, a guy from the West Bank, and a Ghanian, but they missed orientation. I'm sure we'll all get to know each other pretty well considering we've got two years together.

The real fun news is that Tugba's brother was in town this weekend with his whole family. Tugba's brother (who's about 40), his wife, two kids (aged 7 and 10), and his wife's sister were all staying at our apartment which means I was inducted into the family this weekend. We went to Tunali and walked around the busy shopping areas and then went to the Ikea of Ankara! This was actually perfect because event though I have a great room, I needed to get some small shelves and things for my closet. Also I noticed that children are thoroughly loved in Turkey. When there's kids around, adults just kiss and hug and talk about how cute they are haha, maybe I just haven't been around enough young kids in the US, but it was like smothering the child at all turns with affection.


Here's a picture of Tugba's brother, his 7 year old daughter, Tugba, and me at a park in Tunali.


Also another cultural aspect about Turkey is that no one will let you pay for anything! I tried all weekend to pay for little things like tea, coffee, candy, my OWN food, but no one would let me. I know its all part of this game where you try and be the first person to sneakily buy the food, but ah I just feel so bad! I hate it when people buy things for me, but whenever I try and pay for things they all guilt me into letting them pay. I think I might be the easily persuaded person ever, but not because I don't want to pay because they just make me feel so guilty and bad about it! Tugba just goes, "Kristina, no no you can't, don't do this now, no you can't, this isn't nice, it's not nice at all, really let us pay, you cannot pay" and she gives me this pity face and looks a little angry and sad and I'm just like "ahh okay, okay, just this time!" Its so bad! I mean I know you just have to not listen to them, but gah its like a game I'm not good at at all! I have to become stone cold and just keep paying for my own things! I'd just like to note that I never let them pay for anything above a few lira, but gheez its so hard to try and slip money into Tugba's pocket!

Anyways, the best part of her brother's visit was the traditional seafood dinner we had on Saturday. This was a huge family gathering that Tugba graciously invited me to. There was fifteen of us total. We had mensa which are several small dishes that everyone shares (think tapas in Turkey). It's traditional to drink raki with mensa which is basically like Greece's ozo. Medium sized raki glasses are filled with half raki, half water, when water is added the raki turns foggy. Basically everyone sips hard alcohol plus water, haha amazing. Through observation I realized the appropriate thing to do was to keep cheersing the people around you going "shadaifay!" (pronounced sahy-day-fay meaning cheers!) and making everyone drink until all the raki was gone. Haha but even when it was gone, the servers kept refilling everyone's drink. They also added this sweet/sour drink to chase the raki with. Unfortunately they showed me the label which said "fermented carrot juice" ehh I think that if I had only left me in ignorance I would have actually liked it, but knowing it was fermented juice then smelling it was a horrible mistake. There combination of smelly seafood, practically straight hard alcohol, and fermented juice was just a little too much for me so I didn't really drink my juice chaser.


Family party!! From left to right: Tugba's sister-in-law in the blue shit, Tugba's neice in the pink, Tugba's sister-in-law's cousin's wife (blonde haired lady), her daughter, Tugba's sister-in-law's cousin, Tugab's sister-in-law's sister, Tugba's brother (standing), Berdam (also standing), Tugba's nephew (blue shirt), and then me and Tugba!

Its just an interesting cultural note that America really seems to be the only country in which adults getting drunk is frowned upon. At dinner the whole spirit of the meal seemed to be getting everyone drunk enough to dance to the traditional music and laugh at each other. It was great haha all the kids were bored out of their minds, but the parents were just laughing and joking with each other. Eventually we got the traditional live band over to our table and then the adults eventually got everyone to stand up and sing and dance. Yeah, WONDERFUL. Tugba's brother was the funnest, he kept dancing and pretending to be Berdam, Tugba's boyfriend, (who he was sitting next to), who apparently danced on the table in college once. Ah, the whole night was hilarious and so much fun! I was so lucky to get to join!

It's also just funny to look at culturally. Can you imagine a party of 13 drunk adults at Red Robin with their whole family taking shots of vodka and dancing? Haha yeah its so frowned upon. Ah our Puritan roots kill us from having so much fun. Just an aside, but I asked my British friend if drinking heavily as an adult was taboo in England and he was like, "God no, my parents probably get pissed every other night." America, we are really behind. I'd just like to also note that its not like people here are getting drunk with their family all the time, but every once in a while getting drunk with old family friends is part of life.


Here's the water chaser, the fermented carrot juice, and the RAKI!

Anywho the internet was installed this morning so *hopefully* this means its really working now. Its been much much much too long without seeing anyone's face on skype. I miss you all, I hate not having skype!!!! Its been wayyy to long.