The Turks have been celebrating the
birthday of Mohammed this week with various kinds of festivals, rituals and
traditions. As a part of that celebration,
today is National Children’s Day. It’s a
school holiday and the children dress in colorful costumes representing the history
of their variety of cultures. One of the
families we’ve met here have two precious little girls 8 and 3 years of age,
and the 8 year old asked us to come watch her class perform their ceremonial
dance they’ve been rehearsing. Of course, no one could deny that request.
Today has been a cool but sunny day and
the celebration took place outdoors at her school in a town called Altinoluk,
just up the highway about 10 miles away.
A large crowd of admiring parents and grandparents was present and
crammed like sardines around the concrete playground next to the school
house. We were very fortunate to
recognize her right away. She is such a
beautiful girl, but after all, every little girl here has long dark hair and
olive skin. Their class performed first,
so we got to see her dance and take a few photos - then we slipped away.
Our friends were busy doing other things today, so they dropped us off along the seaside
business district and the two of us launched into the unknown with only a
couple of Turkish words to work with:
Meriba = hello ; Banyo = restroom ; Merci = thank you. Of course, I always have lots of made up
words that I created from parts and pieces of other languages. Even though I always try to communicate well
with them, and add a few clever inflections and accents of my own, I usually
get the same look on their faces as what I get on Jeannette’s. (NOT WORKING).
Anyway, we set out with plans to run up
and down the coastal towns and tourist traps via the minute buses, doing what
tourists do . . . eat, find bathrooms and spend money. We strolled along through the menagerie of
streets and little storefront shops while Turkish patriotic music played on
loud speakers. We stopped at another
schoolyard and watched older kids dancing in pairs to what sounded like Eastern
European traditional waltzes.
The boys were decked in their dark slacks,
white shirts and bow ties, looking either bored or stupefied (like young boys
everywhere do when it involves girls).
The girls, on the other hand, were arrayed in Cinderella-like gowns with
lots of ruffles, or ballet tutu’s and hairdo’s – and they were really into the
dances (like young girls everywhere do when it involves dancing). It was so sweet watching dozens of
adolescents dancing the waltz. We missed
“Dancing with the Stars” on TV this week so this was a great substitute!
By that time we were ready to try our luck
at finding food without assistance, and we happened upon a nice looking place
that served gyros. I know what those are
and I really like them. They were
made behind the counter right in front of us just
like they build sandwiches at Subway. It
was a good choice. (2 gyros + 2 Cokes =
19 TL (Turkish Lire). Exchange rate is
about 2.70:1 USD, so 1 Lire = .37. Our
meal cost about $7.00 US. We were proud
of ourselves.
Moving on, we came to a food wagon street
vendor giving away little bags of “Turkish donuts” which is a traditional part
of the big birthday observance mentioned earlier. I ran across this a few days ago in
Akchai where a long line of people were waiting for the same - but those were
really big like the soft pretzels you get all over Germany. I think it’s like having fruitcake at
Christmas or maybe funnel cakes at the State Fair. I think.
Well, you know . . . I think.
Regardless, Jeannette stepped up and got hers.
From there we hopped a minute bus and rode
back down to Gure (our current home town/village).
I looked for the tailor and found him. Without a translator present, our chit chat was more chit than chat. He called his son and our friend, who showed up in 3 minutes. He knows more English than he’s comfortable speaking so our situation didn’t improve much. He order chai. We drank it. We looked at each other and smiled. Then I had a great idea . . . I’d tell the tailor that Jeannette sews very well and point at her - then his machine. Surely he’d get that.
I looked for the tailor and found him. Without a translator present, our chit chat was more chit than chat. He called his son and our friend, who showed up in 3 minutes. He knows more English than he’s comfortable speaking so our situation didn’t improve much. He order chai. We drank it. We looked at each other and smiled. Then I had a great idea . . . I’d tell the tailor that Jeannette sews very well and point at her - then his machine. Surely he’d get that.
Another minute bus ride to Akchai, the
next town down the highway that is a bit more developed. I bought a pair of shoes from a little shop
that looked like really good walking shoes for these rocky, bumpy, lumpy,
cobbley streets. I have some new
blisters on my toes that I didn’t have this morning.
We concluded our window shopping
adventures and headed for the little grocery store for some actual shopping,
then jumped the minute bus back the other way to our stop in Gure. The walk from there to the apartment is about
5 blocks distance, which seemed like 50 blocks with those puppies screaming. We made it back safely and feel like we
conquered the world today.
(And prepared for an evening with our friends.)
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