A Turkish Wedding...

A lot has happened in the past few weeks. Honestly, each thing excites me so much but if I tried to share it on this blog I would end up writing a novel. With that being said, I'll continue to share the "top" moments of my experience. Just the other day I went to a wedding. It was the cousin to my host sisters. I've only been to one wedding in my life, so I was really anxious to see a "Turkish" one. Well, it was extremely beautiful/extravagant and I was bewildered. The actual marriage process was a lot different from what I expected. It was actually rather short and basically just signing a paper. However, the "after part/reception" which they call the "wedding part" was the celebration of the now married couple, and that is considered the most valuable part. Not only was everything decorated beautifully, but there was a group of traditional dancers from Trabzon that performed as well as a belly dancer. A several-course meal was served along with good music and dancing. The bride and groom looked lovely and at the beginning shared a special dance together (like weddings back home). Before the wedding, there was a special night in honor of the Bride-to-be called "Henna Night". Its for girls only and just a lot of dancing and fun, plus Henna! Basically a bachelorette party you could say. Fun fun :)

Okay, now school. I love school. It's quite appalling to me because I really can't understand much, and turkish schooling is SO HARD. Math and science...ummm WOW. These people are incredible. They don't use calculators. Ever. I just can't even begin to describe how smart these kids are. Probably if they came to the U.S.A all of them would be Valedvictorian material. No joke. I'm so jealous and I feel like a complete idiot. I know that its been taught entirely in Turkish which makes it ten times harder, but still. I do. But I LOVE MY CLASS SO MUCH! They are all so sweet and nice and its so funny. During biology we have spitball wars and the teacher doesn't even notice. I understand that we should all be paying attention, but the kids don't even need to because they are all geniuses. Wow just so much happens in the classroom. We just have way too much fun. Especially when they crack jokes about me or something I can't understand. The teachers are all really nice and try to help me, but I just say "çok zor!!!!" meaning "very difficult" because I simply can't understand. When I begin to understand I get soooooooo excited, but then I realize I still don't understand. It's okay though, it will get easier in time. My language classes are going well too. I can understand a lot of turkish and can basically survive in the language. I can have conversations with my classmates, and although my turkish is either very basic or in the wrong sentence structure, they understand me and say my turkish is "really good". Even if it isn't, having confidence is key when learning the language. I was beginning to think that I would never get it down, but I just tried anyway and started to make so much progress! I actually have friends at school (sort of) hahaha we talk and even when I can't I just smile because I really am so happy. On Friday we had a lot of fun. I played hangman in Turkish and I also played tic-tac-toe against a friend. And I won hehe:) But they also made me dance and sing and they really enjoyed that. Turkish dancing and singing, by the way. I just love the culture so much I can't get enough of it. I hope to take a picture of my school and class soon to post. Okay I'll talk more about my school later. It just keeps getting better and better everyday. Oh, and I'm starting to get used to my uniform haha:) Alrighty, here are some wedding/henna night pictures!

HENNA NIGHT!

Henna!

After!

Wedding!

We have fun:)