Monday, November 15th, 2004

Today I awoke at 8:30 a.m. to my cell phone ringing. The name “BALCI” appeared on the screen. I groggily answered, trying to sound awake. “Simon, how would you like to come to my house for celebrating Byram today?” Sure Dr. Balci, when should I be ready? “Half past ten.” Ok.

Well, at 10:15 Balci shows up. Amazing. He is the only Turk I’ve ever met who has been early. And I of course was in my pajamas, which he found very amusing. Anyway, we took off for the Balci residence, where I spent all day eating food, drinking drinks, laying around and even talking a bit. The Balci’s live near the Middle Eastern Technical University campus. It’s kinda the outskirts of Ankara but still only 15 or so minutes away from the city centre. A nice mix. Anyway, the apartment was spiffy; the nicest one I’ve seen in Turkey so far. I’m sure that the Balci’s are living quite comfortably here.

Anyway, we kicked of the morning with nice brunch, featuring: three different cheeses, two different kinds of olives, tomatoes, a wonderful apricot jam that we ate with special Ramadan bread, a tasty eggy mix with veggies and sausage, and wonderful thin pastry roll-ups that were stuffed with cheese and parsley, I think. Oh, and also cherry juice and plenty of çay. I was in heaven!

After this I lazed around with Balci’s sons, Fatih and Mehmet. I had met Fatih before and enjoy his company. Mehmet is nice but a bit younger, with limited English skills. But we all had fun together. We watched the news on the BBC and discussed world events and things. Also just talked about whatever. Some visitors came in throughout the afternoon, as it is the custom during this time, so we went through a lot of introductions and ate a lot of snacks. Dinner came around (I was nowhere close to being hungry) and was once again great. We had soup, really tasty fish from the Aegean Sea and a tomato-based salad. Wow. Not to mention Baklava for dessert. I was practically reeling after all of this.

I came home to the dorm, went to the internet café and am now drifting off into the realm of sleepy, stuffed tummies. I’ll speak with you all again soon.