Monday, March 16

I made meatballs today for the turtle. OK, not really meatballs, but I spread out little bits of ground beef onto a plate to freeze and then scraped them into a freezer bag to keep on hand for Yertle. See, Yertle won't eat his turtle food pellets so now we're experimenting with other things. I wandered into an "Akvaryum" store today and showed my scrap of paper with three words from my dictionary, "kaplumbaga yemek" (turtle food) and "solucan?" (worms?). The man grabbed a bag of mealworms and I was all set. Or so I thought. I got them home and Brian pointed out that they are freeze-dried mealworms and not live ones. Another Turkish errand that was full of triumph at the start, but ended in disappointment. And I wonder why we didn't have a turtle earlier?!

Maren's not feeling well, so we stayed home today. I think that makes it two whole weeks where I have gone to work for 5 days in a row since starting work in December. Between holidays and sicknesses, I have a horrible attendance record. But I have to say, I am truly appreciating staying home if I'm sick, or staying home to take care of a sick kid and not giving them meds and pushing them out the door to school anyway.

Brian didn't know if I was going to work today or not when he left, so he took a gamble on his way home from school and waited for me, just in case, near the walk of flower sellers between my bus stop and the dolmus stop at Guven Park. He mentioned to me that he was able to casually and successfully get off his bus from school downtown and navigate his was all the way home with only the 5 lira in his pocket because of all the exploring and testing I had already done with the dolmuses, etc. Kaye had mentioned that I was doing so well with the navigating and language and I explained that I only knew my "rut". But I keep working on widening the rut at least!

I've been reading "The Yogurt Man Cometh" by Kevin Revolinski the last two days (a find from the Cepa D&R) and trying to decide if I am enjoying it or not. It is a book describing an American teacher's year teaching English in Ankara. It is probably a good thing we didn't read it before coming! It includes some truths we weren't told: like winter in Ankara rarely includes much snow and is mostly just cold drizzle, students are not well-behaved and seem to look forward more to their 10-minute passing periods of candy eating and basketball shooting than to learning their subjects, and crossing a road as a pedestrian is a gamble with your life. I will admit that the descriptions are right on, and not much seems to have changed since his time here in 1997-98.

This afternoon it snowed a bit more and the flakes were giant puffballs that floated upwards and sideways as much as they falled toward the ground. It is kind of fun to be on the 11th floor looking out on the snow falling everywhere. Aeden noticed the snow out the window and pointed, so I said, "snow". He followed up with a "nooo" version of snow. Again and again. It was pretty cute. Sounds like he'll be adding a lot of new words pretty quick here.