Monday, February 21st, 2005

Long time no talk… I know, I know. I’ve had a nice time in Iskenderun and stay out too late at night, which means instead of writing I simply lump out on my bed and sleep. I’ll try to give you a recap of my recent days.

The normal schedule is for me to show up at the school at about nine, and then get paraded around, looking at the different programs here. I try to ask questions and observe all I can. More will be accomplished later on; at this point I am enduring the tour of the facilities, show-him-what-we’ve-got thing. Which isn’t that bad.

I am still amazed by the Turkish style of doing things. I must have had at least 12 cups of tea just today.

After the day at school I go out with Ebru, and usually Mustafa, sometimes Hasan, and we have some dinner. Either at a restaurant, at someone’s house, etc. This is then followed with more tea, sometimes a beer, maybe a coffee… basically lots of chilling out.

Over the weekend we had some serious fun. Friday night we went to Mustafa’s for a huge dinner. After this we found out about a concert being given by some band from Istanbul, so we went to check it out. This was a great choice. Not only did we drink some nice rakı, but the band was really great. They had an amazing violinist, as well as piano, drums, guitar and vocals. It was a mix of Turkish as well as more western rock and was very, very wonderful music. I especially got into the more slow, eastern-sounding stuff. It was very trancelike and emotional music. On the last song the main singer started doing this whirling dervish twirl thingy that sounds cheesy but was really quite incredible. I was very impressed.

Saturday was Mustafa’s birthday, so we got together and went out for a humungous meal. We were stuffing our faces will all sorts of mezes, or starters. One was a tasty paste made from hot peppers and walnuts, another was some spicy eggplant, another was primarily liver, and, of course, some excellent hummus. All of this is eaten with piping hot pide bread. I was so stuffed by the end of it and almost freaked out when they asked what I wanted for the main course! It was too much! Fortunately, we decided to order one dish between the four of us and split it, as we had all eaten too much.

Next was a nightclub, which was surprisingly empty for a Saturday night. Rakı was ordered in large quantity, bad techno was played, and we began to dance. It was really lame and really great, all at the same time. We left at about 1 a.m., and did a tipsy walk home in the light rain. What a nice night.

Tomorrow I’m giving a presentation about my education in Business Information Systems to a group of business teachers in Antakya. I’m not sure what they’re expecting, but hopefully all will go well. I already have a presentation on the topic from my time in Cankırı, so it’s not much to worry about. I’ll be sure to tell you all how it goes.

And the other thing… the forecast is upper 60’s and lower 70’s for the next few days. And it’ll only get warmer! Mwa haha hahaha haaha haaaaaaaaa. I love the Mediterranean!