Tenses and Driving and Pancakes...Oh my!
 

So today I discovered why the kids in my class have touble with the differance between the present simple tense and the present continuous tense. The tenses are just one single tense in Turkish! For example: if you say he is making- you say yapıyor. If you say he makes- you also say yapıyor. The word is the same for both tenses. I thought this was the most simple thing in the world, but once I saw it from their perspective, it got a lot trickier. However, it makes the Turkish present tense very easy for me to understand. :D I am trying to learn tenses, verb forms, and sentence structure now, because what good is it to know a bunch of words and not be able to make a simple sentence with them? It's easier than I thought it would be but it's still a very difficult language.

Now to driving. After being here a week, I have learned there is only one rule when it comes to driving: drive where ever there's a space. Turkish people drive on the left just like in the U.S but there are very few rules. People can talk on their cell phones, they rarely wear their seatbelts and while most vehicles stop at stop lights, some still don't, especially if the vehicle is a taxi. Cars absolutly never stop for pedestrians, so crossing the street is sort of like a hit and miss game. You have to watch traffic very carefully and when there's a gap RUN!!! There is a really busy main road right in front of our apartment so it's very, very noisy. I think I can say that I'm getting used to it though, considering the sound no longer wakes me up at 6:30. It's crazy...but I love it! :)

One last thing: I made pancakes for my host mom and Serim(my host sister) today. They loved them! True, they were made from a mix, but they still tasted very much like pancakes. I'm starting to get used to the food here, but it is a daily thing and each day I get more and more accoustomed to the differents spices and herbs.

Monica