Turkish School

And I thought I was going to come and coast through a couple of easy weeks of Introductory Turkish... just for fun. Ha ha ha! Classes are taught Audio-lingual style, military pace. There are only 5 of us in the class; Peter (a Polish American - not named Peter, but as I called him Peter for the first 3 days of class, leet me continue), Matt (American), "Warrior Princess" from Russia, "Hans" a music teacher intern from Germany and me. The teacher gives us LONG lists of words which we take turns reading and conjugating and then she drills us. The next day we are tested on this. Even more amazing is that we all seem to study at the same pace! Then, the night we went drinking together, I found out why!

One evening after class, we all decided to head off to Balik (fish) Pazari off of Istiklal Caddesi (the 2nd time in these side streets) for a mezze and fish dinner (and raki)... and conversation in a multitude of languages - not a single person in the group was limited to one! In this first picture, you can see Peter (far left) telling a story not in English, Polish or Turkish, but in cartoon-like Spanish to Ella from Peru and Echo (half Thai, half Turkish). Trish (Dutch) lights a cigarette and listens.
The next picture is a quieter one. Y-chan and I smile for Meimei who has been helping us demonstrate the differences between Korean, Japanese and Chinese languages. And the next picture is Meimei being "picked up"? by Peter who hasn't understood a word of the German she was chatting with Matt in! And this is Matt and Trish. Trish is quiet, but not too quiet, she has promised to come along to a salsa club with me and a few others, and a few of us have promised to accompany Peter on a foray into the outskirts of Istanbul to find the Polish community.This last picture is a shot of Echo with all the women. After this picture, we headed off to another little alleyway to drink more raki. I have no idea where or why, but we al had heaps of fun and another such night is planned soon. Tomorrow night I hope to meet Meimei and Warrior Princess...