Day 25

Vino
Cleaned wine bottles with Şeda, another volunteer. Should be ready to bottle last year's wine next week. Can't wait.

Tea Time
Drinking tea is a Turkish past time that I have grown to love. This isn't saying much coming from the Chinese girl, who as lore will have it, drank so much tea by age 1 that her teeth were stained brown.

Tea is a defining characteristic of Turkish culture - they drink it like a religion. Tea is always served in glass cups that Sinan calls 'waisted cup' because it narrows in the middle. Turks make tea in a double decker kettle. The top kettle holds the strainer and a mean, concentrated, bitter concoction, while the bottom kettle holds hot water. When pouring tea, you fill the waisted glass halfway with the tea concentrate, and then dilute it by filling to the brim wıth hot water. Add the requisite sugar, stir with a mini silver spoon, and voila! Turkish tea!

At home, we drink tea for breakfast and after dinner, and tea is always served when guests come over, as a gesture of hospitality. An extension of this is shopkeepers will often offer tea to customers, especially in stores where there is some degree of perusing involved. While shopping for $8 sunglasses at the Grand Bazaar, the shopkeeper insisted that I sit down for some tea. Once the tea arrived, the bargaining began. Tea is even offered on bus rıdes, which creates difficulties on long haul trips due to lack of bathroom facilities. Tuvulet is an important vocab word in such situations (connoting urgency also helps).

I might keep up this tradition when I get back to the states, especially since there's that beautiful silver tea set sitting at 919-so-fine. Time to whip out the silver polish. I love polishing silver. It's so satisfying. Makes you feel like a winner.