Irony or karma?

I have another column out in Voices Newspaper entitled "Whose Holding Their Hands?". In the column I muse about our first times in Eskişehir with the student exchange. The contradiction between extreme hospitality but feeling like we were going to get taken out by a car any minute.

I am not sure if it is irony or karma that the day I bought the newspapers to check on my printed article...I was waddling out of a store ın a pregancy ınduced haze where we had bought some new sheets, annoyed at how expensive our sheets were, blindly following my husband to the car when someone was parallel parking and hit me with the car...don't worry it was a slight tap...but ohhh I was angry. The man apologized and I started balling(reminder 38 weeks prego) and my husband told me that I am the one that needs to be careful and that I need to watch where I am going...well I was pissed at this comment and I am huge how could one not see me? The tears were flowing at this point. I got over it but what do you think...ironic I had just written about this or karma for musing about another culture? Or maybe just proves my point...read my column and open your third and fourth eyes! Pregnancy haze is no excuse...

The next part of my column talks about the ONE test university system of Turkey. Although the system is wonderful for the students that pass the test and is very inexpensive they don't leave options for the rest of the population. I think in the states we are very lucky to have the community and technical colleges as an option for preparing for university or just taking a few classes to improve a skill or just for the sake of learning, also for older students. Unfortunately it sounds like right now the university system is cutting classes left and right and so many teachers are out of work. My old teacher writes about these issues often at her blog, Kloe among the Turks.

Obama just passed a $12 billion initiative for community colleges...Hope it works out...don't forget how important the teachers are!!!!

Here is an interesting program from the U.S. Department of State community college initiative for foreign students...


The photo is of Hubby and I on our Kayak...it is so great!

old post...marriage

 

I am going back through all my old posts labeling...not fun...advice is to label from the beginning but found this old post about before we got married in Turkey June 2008.

So here's my old post and mark my words we are still going to have our wedding party in America! It will just include a meet our little daughter part also!(two years later) This post is from when I was debating on whether or not to make my blog personal. Well I definitely open it right up...

When I started this blog I wanted to keep it about some of my experiences in Turkey but to not get too personal but here goes...

So we did it! We got married, my beautiful Turk and I. I have been on hiatus from the blog, not sure what I want to add. The above photo is of where I got my wedding dress. It was a surreal whirlwind experience of planning this party in two days. We were just going to go to the government building-justice of the peace style and have a party later. It is hard both having amazing friends and families but in different countries and on such short notice. Caglar's friend regretted not having a party and his family never forgave him so he took it upon himself to plan. His friend took us to the old shopping center and the top floor is only wedding dresses but Turkish wedding dresses with fluff and flouff and glitter and polyester and layers upon layers upon fake flowers and glitter and ruffles. It ties to my earlier blog entry of Delightfully tacky...

My dress turned out to be beautiful though. I kept saying to keep it small, less poof. I tried on a few and then found a beautiful one, initially didn't zip up the back so the women just tore out the zipper and put in a lace up back, like on a corset. We had our clothes and were ready for the ceremony.

Column: Eskişehir and helping hands...

This is one of the painted domed ceilings of a mosque in the Odun Pazarı, old part of Eskişehir.

Another of my columns, A JOURNEY WITHIN came out through Voices Altinkum Newspaper here in Didim.

In this story I reminisce about first coming to Eskişehir and the people that helped us along the way.

ESKIŞEHIR means old city in Turkish but is actually known as a very modern, young person’s city or student city because of the two large universities located there, Anadolu Üniversitesi and Ozmangazi Üniversitesi. It is this Anatolian city located between İstanbul and Ankara where I spent my first months in Turkey through my student exchange in 2007.


















The keeper of the Korans(not the man I speak about in my article.)

Now it's time to say goodbye...

Where did the time go? There we all are,(Kloe and other exchange students) dancing at one of our favorite clubs. I feel like I just came to Turkey. Everything new, meeting all the other yobanci orenci(foreigner students) for the first time and now I am saying good bye. Exchanging emails and wondering who you will really keep in touch with. All my friends from U.S. are writing me "see you soon". I am in love with a Turk...what do I do about that? Wow life flies by! I guess just live in the now and enjoy as much as you can! I will always have a special place in my heart for Turkey and I know this isn't the end. I am excited though to see friends and family(of course). I miss food variety, sushi, blue water seafood, my mama's cooking, big fat Mexican burrito!!!!!! In my Turkish city variety is lacking for sure! I also miss Yoga and people to run with! Paths to run on and not getting stared at like a freak when you run by! OK that is it for now...I still have a month and a half.

Sweeter than sugar...

These children are much sweeter than sugar cubes. Since being in Turkey I have been completely enamoured with the Turkish children who run around in their little blue school uniforms. Each child has a different hand embroidered white collar. At our University there is a hot lunch program they offer for one lira per day(about 75 cents). Surprisingly it isn't too bad and obviously you can't beat the price. They also bus in elementary school children to feed. The kids are always zipping and zooming around us during lunch. On this day Spring was in the air and oranges(portokal) were on the lunch menu. All these kids were outside in the sun eating these huge, sweet, juicy oranges in their blue complimentary color uniforms. I thought they were so beautiful and asked if I could take a photo of a few of them. At first there was three, then seven, ten and all of a sudden my photo was swarming with twenty-five orange and sun kissed children. I felt kinda bad cropping the photo because each was posing in their own cute way.