Addition to the Blogroll

Everyone, meet Maeghan. Maeghan, meet everyone. Maeghan is a delightful redheaded exchange student hereabouts, representing the great nation of Canada. Her blog, Turkey or Bust, is an excellent, comprehensive blog that she actually updates (mea culpa).

Check it out, yo.

The Hunger Site (et al)

Or something like that.

There's a website that I've probably told most of you about before, but hang on to your hats, because you're getting the same spiel again. The Hunger Site is a not-for-profit advertising-sponsored website. Tap the "click here to give" button once a day, and your click registers on the site's counter. The advertisers donate a certain amount per click - the case of The Hunger Site, 1.1 cup of food to a hungry person. It's easy. You can do it every day. If you're clever, you'll do it at work and then at home. You can also browse the site's tantalizing online store, which features a delightful array of apparel, jewelery, and furnishings. Most are fair-trade, and with every purchase, an additional donation is made.

But wait! There's more! The Breast Cancer Site, The Child Health Site, The Literacy Site, The Rainforest Site, and The Animal Rescue Site are all navigable from The Hunger Site and all work under the same principal. Adding them up: six clicks a day. Speed demons can do this in under a minute. You don't have to save the cheerleader to save the world. All you have to do is click.

AND AND AND!

If you don't know freerice.com, get thee to a new browser and go play for a few minutes. It's vocab games! Educational and fun (for wordies like me, anyway). Every correct answer donates ten grains of rice to the United Nation's World Food Program. Go. Play. Now.

Türkçe konuşiyorum! (kinda)

This is apparently what happens when I am left unattended, bored, and hungry. I write travel prose. In Turkish. In very bad Turkish. HannahSam, eat your heart out:

Geçen kış tatilinde. Patagonia’ya gittim. Çok güzel bir tatildi. Kansas City’den Panama’ya kamyonlu gittim. Panama’da at kiradim. Panama’lı bir arkadasim var, adı HannahSam. HannahSam’lı buluştuk. Birlikte Patagonia’yı gittik. Patagonia dağlarında dolaştik. Dağlar çok güzeldi. Cennet gibiydi. Ondan sonar haydutler hücum ettiler! – ama biz uzağa sürdük. Biz vahsidik. Patagonia’da küçük köy vardi. Köydu herkes sadece patlıcan yidiler. O çok görülmemişti. Köydu çok kar vardı. Belki patlıcan ve kar bağlıdı. Bilmidik. Köydu çok fil vardı. Hannahsam ve ben, filler evcilleştirdik ve sirk yaptık. Sirk çok güzeldi. İspanya’nın kral bakmak geldi. Kişin sicak havuztudu maymunleri yüztük. Köydu insanlar fakirdi ama cana yakındı. Onlar arkadaşlarımız. Günler çok güzeldi. Biz çok mutluduk. Krallar ve eceler bize bakmak geldiler. Ondan sonar huzur kırtı. Dinozorlar uyandilar.

Last winter I had a vaction. I went to Patagonia. It was a very good vacation. I went from Kansas City to Panama in a truck. In Panama I rented a horse. In Patagonia was my friend, named HannahSam. I met with HannahSam. We went to Patagonia together. I wandered around the mountains in Patagonia. The mountains were very good. It was like paradise. Then we were attacked by bandits! - but we drove them away. We were very ferocious. In Patagonia was a small town. Everyone in the town only ate eggplant. It was very strange. There was a lot of snow in the town. Maybe the eggplant and the snow were connected. We didn't know. In the town were many elephants. HannahSam and I tamed the elephants and made a circus. The circus was very good. The king of Spain came to see. In the winter we swam in hot pools with monkeys. The people of the town were poor but very warm. They were our friends. The days were very good. We were very happy. Kings and queens came to see us. Then the calm shattered. The dinosaurs woke up. *

...Yeah, I don't know, either.

* I used "woke up" as my dictionary contained neither "reanimated" nor "resurrected."

Kindness of Strangers (part - wow - III)

So I posted last night about the saintly neighbor woman who brought over salad and fish for dinner last night, yes?

Well, today, she brought over this:



The Turkish name is - and forgive my spelling - aşure, or wheat pudding. It's the dish that Noah and his family, according to legend first ate after emerging from the Ark (remember how I talked about the Koran and Old Testament being fundamentally the same? I wasn't kidding). It's a wheat base, with beans and fruit cooked in. Hardcore applesauce meets fruit cocktail. As I understand it, cooking is rather labor-intensive, as every ingredient must be cooked separately before they are combined the end. The one the neighbor brought over was liberally topped with cinnamon, walnuts, and pine nuts.

Legend says that because Noah ate the dish in celebration of the convenant with God, it's a dish of thanksgiving. And yes, I am giving thanks.

I just put a lemon cake in the oven. It's officially hers.

Kindness of Strangers (part II)

My host family is out of town this weekend, so I am, of course, partying it up - which in my case, seems to consist of sitting around in my pajamas, drinking too much Turkish coffee and watching Dr. Horrible on YouTube (through a proxy, natch). It's not terribly exciting.

So I was a bit surprised when the doorbell rang this evening and disrupted my short-term hermitude.

It was the neighbor from across the hall, whom I have spoken to perhaps once, and she came bearing this:



It was quite delicious.

Those little fish look a bit dubious - I believe they're fried anchovies - but they are very good. Just be careful - the little bones are pokey.



Next time I make cookies, she gets first dibs.

Bread Lines

There's something about waiting in line for food that brings out the worst in people. I am firmly convinced that the USSR would have lasted quite a bit longer if so many people hadn't spent so much time standing in cold, huddled lines to pick up their biweekly cabbage ration.

Just sayin'.

Anyway. Lunch at school works under the same principle. There are two venue options: the yemekhane, or the cantin. The yemekhane is buffet-style and features good hot food and free slices of bread. It also costs $150 TL/month - almost exactly $100 USD, which is half again as much as my entire monthly stipend, not that I've ever actually recieved my stipend - but that's another post. Suffice to say that the yemekhane is so far out of my monetary reach that you'd need binoculars to see it.

The cantin is the other option. It's essentially a wide and varied a la carte - you can buy sandwiches, burgers, soft drinks, tea, coffee, kofte (mystery meat on a bun), etc. Rather than the orderly buffet of the yemekhane, it's a wide window opening to a small kitchen with about four beleagured employees, tearing around and delivering food to a mass of hungry, squabbling humanity waving $5 TL notes. Seriously. At anyone time, between five and twenty people will be crammed into the window's opening, extending their arms piteously inward, shouting demands for hamburgers and cola - and that's not counting the other forty people crushing in around them. It's bedlam. It's horrible.

I am not, by nature, a pushy person. I can be mean, and I don't mind digging my heels (or claws) in - but only if someone else starts it. So I carefully make my way to the cantin window, and politely order my tost (and juice, if I'm feeling indulgent). I smile. I say please and thank you. If I've been waiting a while, the cantin employees will ignore pushier customers and ask me what I want - although I've been ordering tost long enough that they usually know what I'm going to say. And I find myself now being routinely undercharged. The employees ask me how my day's going. It's a highly pleasant interaction in the midddle of a small riot.

I never bought my lunch in high school in the US - a habit dating back to junior high, when I couldn't reach the trays in the buffet line and started bringing sandwiches from home out of necessity. In high school, I typically brought an apple and some peanut butter. A granola bar, if I was feeling hungry. And that was that. Occasionally a friend and I would traipse down to the cafeteria if strawberries were in season, and we'd spring for cookies if it'd been a rough day (roughly all of spring semester of senior year). But we were hardly common patrons of the school kitchens. I don't remember the sort of craziness in the cafeteria there. I never paid enough attention. I can't remember if I ever said thank you to any of the cashiers.

I hope I did.

Mundanity! (Part I in a series!)

Breakfast this morning:

• one (1) kiwi, sliced and peeled. Usually I eat them with the skin on - to the amusement of my host family, who were slightly (but nicely) horrified when I reassured them that it was only a little like eating a mouse;
  
• one (1) chunk of beyaz peynir, which is a crumbly soggy white cheese, a little like feta that never quite made it. It's an acquired taste. I didn't like it for a month or two after I got here; and
  
• one (1) thimble-sized cup of Turkish coffee

It was a good meal.

Lunch:

• one (1) tost - sort of grilled cheese, squashed into supermodel thinness by a Foreman-style grill. That's how you get grilled cheese here. It's pretty good. And I get "lite tost," because it's on whole-wheat bread. Yum.
• one (1) cup ayran - a yogurt-based drink made by combining water, plain yogurt, and salt. I didn't like it until Lela made it for lunch once, and I've been a fan ever since. There's something about food prepared with intent and affection that can make the most repulsive grub taste wonderful.*
• one (1) segment of a caramel chocolate bar.

Again: a good meal.

--

* Sorry, Dad: I love you to pieces, but all the love, affection, and bribery in the world will not prompt me to eat your pot roast. I'm sorry, but that's how it is.

Does this, or does this not, sound discomfortingly like an old-school James Bond plotline?

Operating in many NATO and even some neutral countries,^[2] Gladio was first coordinated by the Clandestine Committee of the Western Union (CCWU), founded in 1948. After the creation of NATO in 1949, the CCWU was integrated into the Clandestine Planning Committee (CPC), founded in 1951 and overseen by the SHAPE (Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe), transferred to Belgium after France’s official withdrawal from NATO's Military Committee in 1966 — which was not followed by the dissolution of the French stay-behind paramilitary movements. - Operation Gladio in Wikipedia

This is the sort of thing one finds on a rainy afternoon.

Bit of a sad day yesterday - the Crazy Australian leaves us on January 7, departing for another hemisphere and decidedly warmer climes, and yesterday was our goodbye. A bowling expedition occurred, followed by a meal (tavuc doner pide - chicken kebab in a pita. Sort of), and then Canada, Ohio, et moi wandering through freezing drizzle and bonecracking wind for an hour or two, trying to find a mall with a multiplex playing Australia. No luck. Exactly how his city supports two mega-malls within blocks (cold, wet, windy blocks) of each other rather boggles the mind.

Happy New Year

In 1456, Pope Calixtus III rang in the New Year by praying for deliverance from "the devil, the Turk, and the comet." Not quite PC, but he was certainly covering his bases.

Happy New Year, everyone.