Small Things

In contrast to the last few epic posts, here's a short one, of still-shorter collected thoughts:

-Elections are coming! At the end of the month, Turkey has its local elections. Campaigning has been fierce; I personally was somewhat put out to find that I do not reside in one of the cities where the municipal government is handing out free washing machines in a blatant vote-garnering bid. This was especially distressing as my washing machine broke today, with about 2/3 of my seasonally-appropriate wardrobe still locked inside. Harika.

-Accomplishment of my February: I got YouTube to work. I am a technological master. Ok, maybe I followed a set of clear directions, but it involved monkeying around with my system and fiddling with settings.

-Some things you don't think about when looking at differences between life in Turkey and life in the US. Milk is one of them: I've been on a bit of a milk kick lately, and have run up against several issues: 1. most milk sold here is shelf stable. To me, this just tastes off. 2. There is pasteurized, refrigerated, goes-bad-in-4-days-or-less milk available in the grocery stores, but nothing larger than 500 mL. Also, there is typically one row of milk cartons, hidden next to 10 rows of Ayran cartons, which are next to the other containers of Ayran. Turks love their Ayran. 3. While some of the 'shelf-stable' milk is 'Light', all of the refrigerated milk is whole. Not even 2%, whole/ This takes some getting used to. It does make for great chocolate milk though.

-In this article, a Parliament commission notes that 15% of Turkish students bring guns or knives to school. Not such a good thing. I don't know much firsthand about the primary and secondary education system here, but from what I've heard and read, it's extremely difficult for children coming through the public school system. Turks with any money send their kids private, and if that's not possible, they supplement the public school educations with private exam prep schools.

-As you may have noticed, I'm trying out a little bit of a new look for the blog; I like it so far, but we'll see how it goes.