Mutlu yıllar!
Happy New Years!
I figure this time I should write about how the holidays
were here in Turkey .
Since Turkey
is a Muslim country, most Turks do not celebrate Christmas or Hanukkah or
really anything but New Years in December and January. I was excited to see how
a year without Christmas would be, especially since the American Christmas can
be a bit too commercial and in your face sometimes. The Sunday before
Christmas, the AFS students from Istanbul and
the (relatively) nearby cities of Bursa
and Sakarya threw a Christmas party in one of the Istanbul AFS offices. It was
really nice seeing my friends from Bursa
and Sakarya, especially because I don’t see them often. Our families came to
the party and so did many AFS volunteers. Many of the kids made Christmas food
from their countries, and it was nice to try the different foods :)
On Christmas, I had to go to school. This was interesting,
because in the US
we usually have a lot of vacations at this time of year and my last one was
back at Bayram. Not much happened at school, which was pretty much what I
thought would happen. I found out later that most of my exchange friends stayed
home that day, but I didn’t regret going to school. I think when I am back in
the US
I will appreciate Christmas a lot more :)
New Years was a few days later (obviously) and we still had
school on December 31st. I went to school and found out when I got
there that what they meant by saying we had school was that it was optional and
I was maybe one of 50 kids there. So I slept for a bit and then hung out with
friends. That night, I Skyped with my mother and sister when 2013 arrived at Turkey
and showed them the “glory” of the New Year. The next day I didn’t have school
(finally) and I can’t remember what I did…
Last week, we had two snow days. Two in a row. All because
it snowed for two days. In Turkey ,
it seems like when they have a snow day they have it after the fact. It snowed
on Monday, but we had school. The next day was a snow day, which made sense
because it was snowing like crazy. Wednesday we had another snow day, but there
were only a few inches of snow on the ground and none on the road, so I have no
idea why we had one.
