Weekend activities in this neck of the woods

So I'm finally relaxing after a whirlwind of a weekend, only to pick right back up for another busy week. Life in Ankara is surprisingly full.
Thursday my friend Cat arrived in town, for Fulbright Thanksgiving later in the weekend, so I headed over to where she was staying and had a little Seker Bayram adventurers' reunion with her and Corey to start off the weekend. Friday, I got up in time for my Turkish lesson before heading to the 5M Migros to stock up on Thanksgiving ingredients, attempt to find vanilla extract (fruitless, there is apparently no vanilla extract in Turkey), and buy an immersion blender for Cat. I got back in time to get all gussied up for the St. Andrews Ball, put on by the British Embassy.
The St. Andrews Ball was an interesting experience. It was much smaller than the Marine Corps Ball, but was held at the same location, the Swisshotel. I got there Friday night to find media and television crews everywhere. Apparently, I walked in right behind the Fenerbahce football team. They were still in the lobby when I came in. For my American readers, this is roughly equivalent to going to a hotel in New England that the Patriots just checked into (or, if you're a Doffing, the Twins, in Boston ;) ). I got a few photos, but really don't know which player is which. It was exciting though. I met up with Cat, Corey, and Corey's boyfriend in the lobby, and we headed down to the ballroom and chatted for a bit with the rest of our tablemates. I knew just over half of the folks at our table, but everyrone was really nice, and I ended up sitting next to a New Zealander that I'd had dinner with before and a Japanese diplomat who spoke fluent Turkish and not-so-fluent English, and who I ended up spending most of the meal chatting with in Turkish. I was able to hold my own in discussing why Turkey shouldn't join the EU, and Turkish cinema, and my research, but my brain hurt afterward.
The ball was a celebration of Scotland, so everything was Scottish. Every table had a bottle of Scottish whiskey on it. The meal started out with a ceremonial cutting of the haggis. The owner of my favorite Ankaran Indian restaurant got up and gave a speech in a fantastic Scottish brogue (I understood one word, "knife") before flourishing a huge knife and spearing the haggis. It was pretty fun. We were then served haggis, which was interesting and actually not half bad. Dinner was not so Scottish: prime rib and other normal and delicious food. The menu was entirely in Scottish though, so I'm not sure exactly what all else we had.
The after-dinner entertainment was entirely Scottish dancing: highland social dances, reels and the like. It started out kind of interesting, and I did dance with my Japanese diplomat friend, but after awhile it got to be a little much: every song had a new dance that had to be taught to everyone, and we kept waiting for a DJ to come in, or for some more contemporary dancing. In the end, we left I think just before midnight and headed over to a French friend of Corey's' place. I got in pretty late, and was pretty exhausted the next morning when I had to get up to let in my houseguests.
Saturday morning, bright and early at 9:30, Tracey, Deirdre, and Alissa arrived at my place from the otogar. These 3 are Fulbright English teaching assistants out towards the coast in the West, and had taken an overnight bus from Izmir to be in Ankara for Fulbright Thanksgiving, which was later that day. Luckily for me, they were also exhausted, so we all went back to sleep until a much more decent hour. I finally had to get up to get started making my dishes for Fulbright Thanksgiving: I was bringing mashed potatoes, hummus, and wild rice (so, an absurd amount of starch). My houseguests brought an apple pie with them from Izmir and make a chocolate pie at my place, before we all headed over to Corey's. There was a really great mix of people at Corey's: all but two of the Ankara Fulbrighters, and my 3 houseguests and Cat; I think we were 15 altogether. One of the Ankarali Fulbrighters brought her 4-year-old daughter, who was absolutely adorable and precocious. Given the age range of the Fulbrighters (we go up to at least the mid-60s), it felt like we had a whole family spread there.
Fulbright Thanksgiving was delicious. We were able to get a turkey from the US Embassy (they fly them in for the Embassy community, so it was a Butterball and everything), and figured out how to make it, even though I think only one of us had ever made one before. Everyone brought a dish or several, so we ended up with broccoli-cheddar-bacon salad (Joan hoarded bacon bits from the States just for it), carrot-lentil salad, cacik, hummus, vegetable spreads, stuffing, gravy, homemade breads, 3 kinds of potatoes, wild rice, and I think more that I can't remember. It was oh so very American. After the dinner, we sat around in food comas and caught up on everyone's life and projects, and played a little Turkish Scrabble (the rules are a little different: you have to play with verb stems instead of the whole verb, and plurals aren't allowed, nor are any suffixes). Once we'd recovered from dinner a bit, we had dessert, with the pies, several kinds of cookies, and a wonderful, wonderful fruit salad (pomegranates are a good good thing) before settling down for more chatting and a nice game of UNO (it's so much easier to play when the 4-year-old will tell the whole table what cards she can see in peoples' hands...). It was just such a great day, and so nice to have that familiar Thanksgiving experience. I hadn't seen some of the Fulbrighters since orientation, so it was great to catch up, and we all got to do a little bragging and venting about living in Turkey.
After those few crazy days, I've taken it easy so far today. My houseguests left this morning, and now I've got to make and get through my to-do list before heading out for Thanksgiving part II, ex-Bay State Road edition.

Before I go, I thought I'd leave you all with this: http://www.hurriyet.com.tr/english/domestic/10419495.asp?scr=1
which I find really amusing. It's even more amusing when you realize that a second court order has been enacted to ban YouTube, which does absolutely nothing more than the first one and thus is entirely superfluous. I love this crazy country...

kib,
-R