This entry is gonna be a little shorter than the others, because there's been a full week and four nights of drinking between now and the events here, so it's not really too fresh in my mind anymore and I'm mostly going off notes. The second day here not a whole lot happened and I don't have any notes from it, so it must not have been very exciting anyways. I remember going to Kızılay with Clint and that's about it.
I decide to kick off the third day with some REAL cross-cultural leaps. At breakfast I picked up the milky/yogurty Turkish drink known as ayran. Upon tasting it, I discovered that it was not sweet and savory like I had hoped, but salty and bitter instead. Really? The exact opposite? It tastes like cottage cheese juice, but with less cheese and more milk and salt. It does not please me and is cast into the trash.
We go to our first Turkish language class and my spirits are lifted as I discover that our teacher is attractive. Very attractive. She's also wearing a ring with a stone the size of my fist, but I am not fazed. Just because there's a goalie doesn't mean you can't score. This bodes very well for the next six weeks indeed. We learn the alphabet and various basic words. During this time, the half cup of ayran I drank begins to wreak havoc on my innards and makes for a very disturbing visit to the bathroom after class. At lunch, Yun gets scratched by one of the stray cats that are everywhere and now needs rabies shots every week. It is very humorous. We have a lecture on Turkey and the EU in the afternoon with our professor for the Contemporary Turkey international relations course most of us are taking, and he cracks a bunch of jokes at the engineers' expense. I think we will get along famously.
In the evening, Cambak takes us all into town (to Bahçeli district this time). We wander around a bit and I pick up a pair of aviators. They are sick. I look like Tom ****ing Cruise when I put them on. We get dinner at a local restaurant and I have the Köfte İskender, which consists of meatballs and tomato sauce on top of bread with yogurt on the side. Delicious.
After dinner, we make our way to a local pub. We order a huge teamer-sized tube of Efes and our first sampling of the Turkish drink rakı (ra-KUH). It is served by pouring some into a glass and then pouring water into it, which causes the whole thing to turn a milky white colour. I am intrigued. I drink some. It tastes like mild Sambuca mixed with ouzo. I am very intrigued. None of the girls like it, so they all give their glasses to me. I could not be more intrigued.
We start collectively hammering away at the beer while me and Yun also work on the rakı. Cambak starts to get pretty drunk and cracks some jokes in broken English. At one point after a long discussion, Yun looks down at his beer and notices it's a good deal lower than it was when he last set it down. He makes a comment on this and Cambak replies that "I think it disappear into thin air". We all look at him confused before he shouts "THE THIN AIR OF MY BELLY! AHAHAHAHA!" I am almost in tears laughing. I decide he is my new best friend. We get into a big political discussion about birth rates and stuff as we proceed to drink more and more. Eventually we stumble over to the dolmuş stop and while we wait I empty my bladder onto what turns out to be a huge Turkish military base. From Canada with love motherfucker! My memory fades to black at this point, but I wake up in my own bed in the morning so all is good. I am starting to like Turkey very much.
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