Besssssssssiiiiiiiiktassssssssss

Yesterday I went to the Besiktas-Galatasaray football match with a big group of friends. This is a huuuge game because these are two of the three teams in the city of istanbul (the other is Fenerbace). It was at the Besiktas stadium so we rooted for Besiktas. And I paid 60 Lira for a sweatshirt so I'm an official fan - I can' t turn away now. And they won! 2-1. So fun, complete craziness all around the stadium, inside and out. The cheers were all in Turkish, obviously, so I got by with following the hand motions and mumbling similar sounds in similar intonations. The atmosphere was so exciting, it reminded me of game day at Umich. Ahh just like home... and before the game a camera approached us to ask about the game (in Turkish), and I'm really hoping we got some airtime with our blank looks and me saying "Merhaba, Tesekkular" ("Hello, Thank you"), because that is like all I know. People who come to the states would never make it if they spoke English as bad as I speak Turkish. Thats another reason I love this country -- they just accept us!

Speaking of my terrible language skills, I learned how to say "very good, very bad, beautiful, handsome" so I had a 30 minute cab ride where I just talked to the cab driver about how bad traffic was, how good Besiktas was, how beautiful I was, and how handsome he was. Thats all I got. Oh and I can say my name and that I'm American.

We missed a culture night sponsored by the school to go to the game. I wish we could have done both because it was pretty much a free night of food, folk dancing, and art. Its nice how the school does these sorts of things. I definitely want to go to the next one (as long as its not the Besiktas-Fenerbace game!)


Ugh, and reality is setting in about school... I have HOMEWORK I have to do today! And I went to my lab for soil mechanics where I for the first time felt completely outnumbered by guys. As a girl in engineering, I was warned about this, but never experienced it anywhere at Michigan. Here, its another story. I walk into my lab and the conversation (in Turkish of course) froze. Absolute silence. So I gave them a kind of wave and said the obvious: "Hi. I'm the only girl." They laughed... and then I go to sit down at one of the tables where everyone was sitting. I am sitting down and all these hands reach out to grab their bags out of my way. I swear, every eye was on me. It was like in Eurotrip where they go to the nude beach and the girl they bring is the only girl and all the old men at the beach are like "GIRL?!". Yeah, kind of like that. So that should be interesting... I'll keep ya posted on that. But now its time to actually learn (or at least stop playing on the computer!)