Day 29

Clean
Spent all morning clearing weeds in the vegetable garden. There's something therapeutic and raw about gardening that I have grown to love. Maybe it's the simplicity of the task, and the single-minded fixation that comes with the mundane repetition of physical labor (the same elation does not happen on a treadmill). The garden looks beautiful. Like Eden, pre-apple.

Party with the Turks!
Agaın, repeat Sunday night, this time at Bade's house at the top of the hill. It all got started late afternoon, when the neighbors arrived, all dolled up, to carpool with us. We also picked up Tomaş and Nevin at some random rendezvous point, and off we went! - 10 of us packed into the van like a makeshift dolmuş, with Irıs, Şeda, and me opting to ride in the trunk. Like cats.

When we finally arrived and popped out of the trunk, we found ourselves at the TOP of the mountain. If there is a tower of Babel in Turkey, this was it. Bade and Orhan's house is perched near the top of the hill, and it's beautiful. They have a gorgeous porch that looks down into their Anatolian kingdom (of which we are subjects). Throw in a few hours of socializing on the porch, an unstoppable amount of wine, raki, and beer (it was like Dıonysus was invited to the party!), and the same successful formula from Sunday night: mezes, live folk music, Turkish bbq. By 11, we were well on our way to another night of Turkish delights. Bade and Orhan turned it up a notch and started playing Turkish dance musıc, and the well-lit living room was soon swarmed by crazy dancing Turks, snapping their fingers and dancing with a gusto usually associated with Cubans. Luckily I'm a lightweight, so it didn't take long before the Chinese girl entered the fray. We danced to traditional Turkish music, Turkish techno, old British and American rock, the works! All in all, yet another memorable night fete-ing with the crazy Turks.