My Box!!

I pretty much got the best present in the world last Thursday. A box from my family in the U.S.

This lovely little box contained 2 shirts, American peanut butter, a tiny box of Milk Duds, a whole bunch of amazing piano music and probably the nicest thing... my dance shoes. :) There was also a nice note and my brothers school pictures.

There they are, for those of you who don't know what my brothers look like. Titus is on the bottom, he's 15; Cyril is on the top right, he's 13; and Gregory is on the top left, he's 11. Okay, I'll admit I miss the (former) twerps a whole lot. Especially considering the only sibling I have here in Turkey is a sister. Take your victory and run with it guys :P (just kidding)

Anyways, I almost cried when I got this amazing little box. It has been well appreciated!!!

You remember how I said I really liked volleyball? Well here's what happened because of that enthusiam:



On the bright side, I won! They had to send for a bag of ice and it hurt really bad for a couple of days, but it doesn't hurt anymore; just looks nasty.

Yesterday, I had this drive to get more Turkish in my brain and completed 4 lessons on Livemocha. Granted, I already knew one of the lessons and it was mostly just vocab, but that's still a large Turkish dose in one day. I didn't do them all at once though. I did the first two then watched Disney's 'Sleeping Beauty' (I had NEVER seen it before and I understand why. It would have given my nightmares when I was little.) on YouTube. I then had 'Once Upon A Dream' stuck in my head all day. (For those who find this a total waste of time, I then decided to find this song in Turkish and I think I like it a lot better. If you want to hear what Turkish sounds like, you should look it up too!! I am now resolving to get the Turkish version stuck in my head and this way I can enjoy a classic song guilt free. I think it will be a fabulous learning tool.)

Anyways, I then did two more lessons and so my vocabulary has been boosted this weekend. I'm getting to the point where I can understand certain words in a sentence and so grasp the whole meaning of a conversation. It feels very good, especially since I have to around my 'grandparents'. They don't speak any English and I'm glad I can understand a little of what they try to tell me. My host family tells me not to worry, my Turkish will come. After all, tomorrow marks the end of my first month here in Turkey and already my language is leaps and bounds better than it was when I got here.

I made sugar cookies for my host family today. The sugar here is different, so they didn't taste the same as American ones, but they turned out really, really well considering the circumstances.

They were really good. Serim also taught me how to make Turkish coffee, and below is how they served it. It was really good! I didn't drink coffee in the states, so I was a little nervous about having coffee here. I put two teaspoons of sugar in mine, and it was amazing! Okay Dad you were right, I do like coffee now.

I love this picure because they weren't posing for it. My host dad was trying to get Serim to smile for the picture and she didn't want to, but I took this anyway. 

So that wraps up what I've been doing for the last few days. Now it's back to school, and this weekend bring the promise of a Rotary trip to Kapadokya. I'm so excited!!

Monica