Pumpkin Fun!

In Turkey, it's tough to find orange pumpkins. We usually end up carving a big greyish green one instead. Let me tell you, those things are tough to carve! The rind is at least 3 inches thick, and hard as a bowling ball. Try carving through your kitchen table, and you'll get an idea of the pumpkin carving experience here in Turkey.

James took the pumpkin I carved for our girls to school to show his students and they were impressed and EXCITED. They'd only seen jack-o-lanterns on TV. His tenth graders immediately begged him to bring pumpkins in for them to carve. They all threw in a little cash and sent "Teacher" to hunt them down.

By the way, Turkish students call all their teachers "Ogretmenim (my teacher)," so when they have an english teacher, he automatically becomes "Teacher." In the US, you'd only hear that coming out of a kindergartener's mouth. So it sounded strange to James to be greeted that way by 16 year olds, but I guess he got used to it...

Anyhow, with 20 lira in his pocket, Teacher headed out to the pumpkin patch.... er .... roadside stand... and did his best to pick out a few nice round greyish-green pumpkins.

Kind of ugly, aren't they? And those orange things in the background... the ones that you probably think are pumpkins... I'm pretty sure those are overripe melons. They're supposed to be green, like the melons on the right.

After James chose a few, the melon/pumpkin guy weighed them with his yellow crate and pulley thingy. He threw in a few melons so that James could use up the entire 20 lira.

I'm pretty sure James tried to swipe an extra melon... check out that guilty look on his face.

A few days later the highly anticipated event finally came, and several excited 10th graders got to sink their butter knives into the pumpkins! The administration wouldn't let them use sharp knives, so James made the first cut then handed the hard and warty green pumpkins over for those poor kids to try to continue carving with butter knives. Good thing 16 year olds are strong.

Everybody took a turn digging out the guts...

This girl found a plastic glove to wear while digging out the pumpkin's innards. Smart! She must have a good teacher.

Mehmet and Ahmet. Good friends putting their heads together to design their very first jack-o-lantern.

Gotta love the uniforms. Makes me wish I had one in high school.

The finished product. Three beautiful pumpkins. Twelve happy students. One happy teacher (the guy in the back with the teeny head and a goatee). And the english practice?? They wrote all about it three times. In past, present, and future tense.

James is a great teacher!

Love and Marriage

Had an interesting conversation with a new aquaintance, Bahar. It gives a good picture of the marriage experience for many women her age, and what things are still like in some parts of Turkey.

Bahar: My granddaughter is 22, she's about to graduate from college with her Master's degree.

Me: Wow! You don't look old enough to have a granddaughter that age!

Bahar: Thank you! I'm 57. I got married young. My mother gave me away when I was 13.

Me: Weren't you scared? Had you met your husband before you married? How old was he?

Bahar: Yes, of course I was scared. I was very scared! We'd never met before. His mother saw me and asked my mother for me, and then we got married. He was 22.

Me: How old were you when you had your first baby?

Bahar: I was 14. I was still a child myself. I liked to play with my daughter's dolls! We grew up together.

When I am 35, I will have a 7 year old, a 5 year old, and a 3 year old. When Bahar was 35, she was a grandma!

Pickles!

Not long after I arrived in Turkey a friend of mine, Gonul, was showing me how to make stuffed cabbage leaves (which, by the way, are one of the most mouth wateringly delicious little things I've ever eaten). After we were done we had quite a lot of cabbage left over. If you've ever seen a cabbage here, you'll understand why. Anyway I said (or at least kind of tried to say... I used a lot of hand motions during this phase of my life), "What should we do with all this extra cabbage?" I must have communicated somewhat effectively because she looked at me with a smile and a sparkle in her eye, raised a finger in the air as if to say, "Ah ha!" and then started making pickles.

Gonul found a large jar, chopped the cabbage into wedges and stuffed it in. She opened my refrigerator and started pilfering the contents and throwing them into the jar - carrots, tomatoes, cucumbers, parsley, bell peppers. Then she grabbed my vinegar, dumped it in along with water, salt, some garlic and lemon juice, and screwed the lid on. Next Gonul pointed to my calendar and showed me that I needed to wait at least a week and then (pointing to the strange assortment curing in the corner of my kitchen and motioning with her hand to her mouth) I could dig in and eat it up, and (patting her tummy, smiling, and saying "mmmmm") I would like it.

What Gonul couldn't have known is that I'd already tried a similar concoction of pickled vegetables at a neighbors house and absolutely hated it. It was, let's see, how can I put this delicately, well, it was absolutely disgusting. But I ate it. I ate a whole lot of it. After choking down one bowl of pickled who-knows-what in order not to offend my hostess, she assumed I loved it and served a second even bigger bowl.

Back to Gonul's pickled assortment. I let it sit for a week so that when she came over she'd see I hadn't just tossed it, then I put it in the refrigerator and every day threw a little bit away. Yep, in order to keep from offending, I basically lived a big fat lie until the giant jar was empty.

Since that time I've learned to speak Turkish and become less scared of offending. Whenever anyone offers me a bunch of pickled stuff I kindly explain that I don't care for pickled stuff. Then, without fail, they say, "Oh, that's because you've never tried MY pickled stuff" As if their recipe is so very very different from everyone elses.

They serve me up a big bowl and wait eagerly while I try it. And without fail, I plaster a fake smile on my face, say, "Oh, you're right... this is better." Then I try my best to choke down at least half of it before lamenting about how full I am and how I can't possibly eat another bite. I lie, I know it's bad, I know I shouldn't, but at least I'm being honest for you, right?

Now I feel like my world has turned upside down. I feel like I've become the thing that I once detested. I've entered a dark and confusing phase of my life.

I make my own pickles. Not only that, I feel really really cool making them, like a pioneer, or a pilgrim, or at least a really homey domestic make everything yourself kind of gal.

It makes me feel so cool that I want to fit it into conversations, just to let people know how crafty I am... but I don't find the opportunity very often.

I keep hoping that one day a friend will be complaining about the price of pickles, and I can say, "Oh really? I wouldn't know... I make my own pickles... from scratch." Or maybe someone will say that they can't decide which brand is best, and I'll say, "Oh, you mean store bought pickles? I wouldn't know. I make my own."

It started with my friend Kim giving me a pickle recipe and a jar of pickles she'd made. This was the first and only time I've ever experienced homemade pickles in Turkey and actually enjoyed it. It probably had to do with the fact that she only pickled cucumbers. She didn't venture into the vile world of pickling vegetables that the Good Lord never intended to be pickled.

Thanks to my new inspiration, I made some pickles too. First I bought cucumbers. Do you see how cucumbers here are much smaller than cucumbers in the States? These are sold in grocery stores as pickling cucumbers.

I tried to take a picture of a cucumber in my hand so I could show you the size, but then I looked at it, gasped as I realized how badly I need a manicure, and immediately deleted it. Here's Marie demonstrating the size for you instead.

I washed these babies up, and threw them in a jar, like so....

Then I put a couple of cloves of garlic (they're called teeth, not cloves, in Turkish... thought you might enjoy a bit of Turkish language trivia). I poured a mixture of boiling vinegar, salt, and water over the top, then tossed in a few sprigs of dill. Last I put on the lid, put it in the fridge, let it sit a few days, and wa-lah! I had myself a jar of pickles. Easy as pie. Or really, it's much easier than making pie.

Sadly, I've now become one of those annoying pickle pushing people I once tried to stay far away from. If you come to my house it wont be long before we're having this conversation:

"So, do you want some pickles?

What? You don't like pickles?? Oh, well that's because you haven't tried MY pickles. Give them a try (pointing at the bowl of pickles that I've shoved in front of your face and motioning hand to mouth) and you'll find they're delicious (saying "mmmmmm" while I smile and pat my belly)."

Third time's the charm

When a baby is born in Turkey, friends and neighbors bring gold. At least that's what I was told and what I read in books about Turkish culture.

When Elise was born 4 months after we arrived in Turkey, I sat at home and waited for the gold to roll in. Well, not really. I sat at home and watched her breathe, sure that she was so fragile and tiny that she would die at any moment. But somewhere in the back of my mind I remembered the gold. Instead of gold...

I got a little vest someone knitted, kind of like this:

And a box of milk.

Those were nice and all, I mean I was really impressed with a neighbor taking the time and effort to knit Elise a little vest, but inwardly I was a little disappointed that no one brought gold. I decided I didn't get any gold because we didn't know anyone very well. We didn't even speak Turkish yet. I mean if someone had brought us gold, I wouldn't even have been able say, "Thanks for the gold."

Two years and five months later we spoke Turkish, we had friends, knew lots of our neighbors, and had another baby, Marie. This time I was fairly confident that at least a little gold would come our way. So again, in between nursing, watching the baby breathe, and wishing my belly fat would disappear, I wondered when we'd get our first piece of gold.

But this time, we were given about 5 little vests, several boxes of milk, a few baby outfits, and a pair of underwear for Elise.

I thought through the possible reasons why we weren't given any gold. Here's what I came up with:

1. Nobody really liked us very much. Hmmmm, I hope not...

2. All of our good friends were too poor to give us gold. No... we had some pretty wealthy neighbors.

3. Gold is only given to relatives. Maybe

4. This whole gold thing was just made up by somebody. It's a myth. But I've seen the little baby charms in the stores...

5. Giving and getting gold is more of a community savings thing than a no-strings-attached gift. Ah ha! I think I've got it!

I think there's a more official name for it, but it basically community savings has a goes around/comes around type of meaning. Like, we all live together... for the long haul. So, when my baby is born you give me gold, knowing that when your little squealer comes along I'll give you gold. Then, when my daughter says "I do" you give her gold, and when your daughter walks down the aisle I give gold to her. So, we all help each other out, but come out even in the end.

James and I are foreigners so even though we live next door, we're not really a part of the community. We are outsiders. If you give us gold, unless you're on the verge of giving birth yourself, you can't count on getting it back.

This theory made perfect sense to me and made me feel a little better about being shut out of the gold circle. Oh good, I thought when I came up with the theory. People do like me. It's just my foreignness that keeps them from giving me gold.

Two years and three months later, when Clara was about to come along, we had only lived in our neighborhood for about a month and didn't know any neighbors well. We were definitely NOT an established part of the community, so for once I laid my gold wanting greediness aside and had absolutely no thoughts about it. I was sure that as foreigners we were just shut out of that part of the culture. But then this happened:

And this:

Shiny little gold charms. One for me and one for Clara.

Mine says Allah in Arabic. At least that's what I think it says... I don't know arabic, but think "Allah" is more likely than "Congratulations on your new born baby girl!"

Clara's is a little blue eye bead... to protect her from the evil eye.

The other English teachers at James' school chipped in to get them for us. There goes my theories about community savings... guess I'm not as smart as I thought I was.

Unless I give into the whole "people don't like us" idea, the best I reason behind who gets gold and why that can come up with now is third time's the charm. Do you get it? Third time... charm....

Oh, we also got a box of milk and a little vest a neighbor knitted. I think the books on Turkish culture shouldn't go on and on about gold when babies are born. Instead they should emphasize the obviously fashionable and wildly popular baby attire - hand knitted vests. And boxes of milk.