Sorry for the delay. I have been busy and the internet has been busy being a bitch. Monday was pretty low-key. We listened to Orhan Gencebay's "Batsın bu Dünya" in lab, which I had been listening to the night before while doing work, so that was fun. It's a great song. Yesterday was a bit more exciting. After class we went to the 1453 Panorama Museum. This is a museum in the sense that it has posters on the walls that contain facts. Other than that, it is basically a monument to the conquest of Constantinople by Fatih Sultan Mehmet (Mehmet the Conqueror) in 1453. Hear me out. It was awesome. The structure of the museum is basically this: a large antechamber that features a kickass video about the battle, replete with Turkish nationalist imagery and intense music and CG effects, and the main chamber is an 80ft-diameter dome that is a really, really good painting of the battle at one of the city's old gates. The city used to be surrounded by really badass walls (some of which still stand today), and so the Ottomans had to shoot the walls with enormous bombard cannon. This is painted. Also pictured are crazy-eyed Turks on horseback wearing cheetah furs.
The experience was interesting for a number of reasons, not the least of which being the fact that a great percentage of the people there (outside our group) were women wearing headscarves or their husbands. I saw one man praying while admiring the painting and the military music. It was weird. There were sound effects in the massive chamber, too. I took a bunch of pictures, but I think maybe a video will better demonstrate what I am talking about. The painting itself was incredibly well done, they nailed the perspective. I was really, really impressed.
Also impressive was the gift shop, where I got three things, awesome things, for 13,50TL, or under $10. One of them is a poster. The museum is a testament to the resurgence of this concept of Ottomanism being the ideal. It's pretty silly for the most part. Some Turks really like to play up the tolerance aspect of things, while others enjoy it more as a means of displaying the glories of Islam and Turks generally.
Dinner after we got back consisted of "ev yemeği," or "home cooked food," except this stuff was at a restaurant. Well, restaurant that consisted of a woman in what was, essentially, a home kitchen, but with a lot more tables. She makes different stuff every day, and yesterday I had some sarma (dolmas) and some patlican böreği (eggplant börek). It was easily the best börek I have ever had, and it will definitely find its way back to my stomach again soon. Incredible. We watched the news while we were there. More floods up on the Black Sea coast. The news here really likes to exaggerate stuff that doesn't need exaggerating, like car crashes, explosions, and floods. Last week in lab we watched a news report on flooding, and it had a clip of a house collapsing. Last night, in their report on the new flooding, they used that same clip without saying it was from last week. Senseless stuff. It is almost as frustrating as watching the American news. Almost.
Today I gave my reading teacher some allergy medicines. She got excited thinking they were from America, and then was disappointed but still grateful when I told her I got them at the eczane down the road. Then later in class she referred to Ankara as "the countryside." It was hilarious. She is a born and raised Istanbullite, and they tend to hate Ankara.
Oh! We watched a movie on Monday called "Korkuyorum, Anne," or "Mom, I am scared!" It was by the same director as "Hayat Var," that depressing movie I complained about last time. But this one was hilarious and great! There was a whole plot line about a kid hiding from his circumcision. HA! I will try and find it and bring it back to screen. In the meantime, though, I will have to watch "Casino" and "Shoot 'Em Up," (Turkish title: SHOOT EVERYONE) which I bought last night at the bootleg store. While there, two Turkish men were looking for movies from America with subtitles or dubbing, and I helped them pick some out. It was really funny, because they would ask me what certain movies were about, especially those with two women on the cover. I think they were hoping for porn. One of them turned out to be about lesbians, but when I said it was a love story, they became less interested. After I paid and was leaving, one of them said "come here" and showed me some of the bootleg perfume they sell there. He sprayed it on my hand and I jokingly said "nice." Then he sprayed my chest with it FIVE TIMES. I walked home smelling like a cheap Turkish whore. Fantastic.
I have to email an assignment to my teacher now, so I will rap at y'all later.
Was it D.E.B.S??!?!?!
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