Real life, Ankara-style

My last few posts have been primarily about my Seker Bayram trip, but now that I've finally got all my photos of that online, I figured at this point I'll just post more detailed captions on Flickr and move on here to more recent events. Finally.
Life just gets busier and busier here. I'm currently taking one class at ODTU, and have two different Turkish tutors. Last week, I started volunteering as a substitute English teacher for refugees through the Ankara Refugee Support Group and Meryem Ana, the church at the Vatican Embassy; those classes are twice a week. My first day there was quite a fun challenge; the refugees speak pretty much no Turkish, and I speak neither Arabic nor Farsi, so I got to put my acting skills, such as they are, to good practice. I'm not sure how often I'll actually have the opportunity to teach, but I hope to be able to return relatively often.
Last weekend was pretty darn busy for me as well. On Friday, I had my Turkish lesson (luckily, the closer one, not the 1.5-hours-away one), and then skedaddled over to Ulus to go to a hamam with 3 of my fellow Fulbrighters. It was fantastic; we went to Tarihi Merkez Hamami, which is an 18th century hamam and still very much a neighborhood institution. It was also, compared to Istanbul hamams, wonderfully cheap: 20 lira for the works, compared to up to 60 in Istanbul's main hamams. We got scrubbed within an inch of our lives and then wandered back to Cankaya, where we met up with a few more Fulbrighters for dinner. On Saturday, I met up with my friend Jen for lunch before we got mani/pedis, which we'd won at the ARIT open house. When we got to the salon for our 1pm appointment, we were told that the person who did the mani/pedis on our certificates wasn't in til 4. So we left, and I ran a few errands, before meeting back up at 4. We didn't get out of the salon until after 6, which was kind of an issue, as we were both going to the Marine Corps Ball that night, which started at 6:30. After a mad scramble back home, into my dress, into makeup/accessories, and up to the Swisshotel, I arrived fashionably late just after 7, just in time for the presentation of colors and the speeches. The ball was really fun; a wide section of the diplomatic community was there, as well as 4 or 5 of us Fulbrighters, and a sizeable contingent from the USO (including the Ying Yang Twins, which was kind of cool), who were on their way through Ankara on a whirlwind tour. After the speeches, they served dinner, which was followed by a live band and later a DJ. It was a great chance to catch up with folks I don't see as often as I should (for all we live in the same city...), and I kept running into people I knew (for a city of 5 million people, Ankara is really a small town, where everybody knows everybody). After dancing with friends and other folks, I cut out just after midnight, a la Cinderella. This weekend, I've got another ball to go to, this one hosted by the Brits, which should also be a lot of fun, as Fulbrighters from out of town are in Ankara for the weekend and coming along.
Speaking of this coming weekend, it looks to be fun and a half: we're celebrating Fulbright Thanksgiving this Saturday, with most of the out-of-town Fulbrighters coming in for the weekend. We have a real turkey (surprisingly less than easy to find in a country with the same name), cranberry sauce, and are potlucking everything else. Most of the outlying Fulbrighters I've not seen since orientation, so it'll be great to catch up on everything.
Other than that, life continues to be steadily busy, and I continue to learn more and more Turkish, and more about Turkish foreign policy every day. Next week, I'll be taking off for Thanksgiving for a little ex-RA expat reunion, Madrid-style. Stay tuned for pics.
kib,
-R