Sunday, April 29, 2012

LUNA PARK

Aa, bugün çok iyiydi! Gelecek Cuma günü, arkadaşım Mathe'nin doğum günü olacak (o da bir öğrenci değişım, Brezilya'dan), ama biz bu hafta sonu kutladık. Arkadaşlarımla ben Luna Park'a gittim. Çok eğlendik!

Today was such a fantastic day! Next Friday is my friend Mathe's birthday (he's another exchange student, from Brazil), but we celebrated it today. With my friends, we went to Luna Park. We had so much fun!

Luna Park 
Fernanda waiting for her doom 

Mathe ve ben
This was a really fantastic experience, because I had never been to a Turkish amusement park. It was great! Although there were no intense rollercoasters, we still had a blast on the spinny, make-your-stomach-drop rides! We even made new friends waiting in line- some Turkish soldiers who wanted to hear all about America and Brazil, and of course how much we love Turkey!

Wednesday, April 4, 2012

Evleri Değistirdim - Changing Families

I'm still bad at keeping up... WHAT HAPPENED? In the beginning I would post once or twice a week, and now I don't even have time to post once every two months. Okay. Let's go.

I'd like to talk about switching families, which is one of the Rotary program ideals. Most people have at least three families so that they can see different aspects of life in another culture. A few weekends ago I switched from my second family to my third, but I never really talked about what it's like moving from my first to my second. So here it goes:

Moving families is stressful. My thought process: Poop! I have to put all the things in the suitcases and somehow get the suitcases from one end of the city to the other, and meanwhile my things have quadrupled in number and nothing fits and- Ohno! I'll have to truck all this stuff back to the States and its like a 22 kilo weight thingy and- Gack! NOTHING FITS.

Fact: I fit in my suitcases, my things do not.

Moving from my first family to my second was a big life change. I had gotten used to (in 3,5 months) to living in a two bedroom apartment very close to the city center, a lot of freedom and responsibility, and living with just anne, my mother.

1st house, in summer
Then, in a flash of light and a swirl of packing, I found me and my luggage in the bedroom of my new home - something equivalent to a Beverly Hills mansion. I had two parents, a dog, and a little sister. And we lived in the "country," which is to say that I have to walk a ways through the streets in order to get from bus to house.

2nd house, in winter
And now, I live with my third family, again in the city. I'm learning to ride the metro with ease and use a combination of transportation to get to my destination (rhyming...). I live in a three bedroom apartment with Anne (my fantastic chef of a host mother), Elif (my amazing host sister who loves all the same things as me), and sometimes Anneanne, my tiny, funny grandmother.

3rd house, in spring
This is one aspect of the Rotary program that I really like- being able to experience different things. I am certainly learning more about Turkey and Turkish families by having different experiences with all three.