Christmas Eve

Last week, all of the American and British teachers in the school drafted and signed a petition asking for Christmas Eve off since Christmas falls on a Saturday this year and we’d get that day off anyway, holiday or not. Fortunately, the principal granted our request and dealt us a much-needed 3-day weekend. That was my big motivation throughout the week- once I get past Thursday that’s it for the week! Sort of reminded me of college and those oft-missed 4 day class weeks.

I had planned to sleep as late as possible Christmas Eve morning, but I ended up waking up at 7:30 and not being able to fall back asleep no matter what I tried. I guess this “leave the apartment at 7:15am every morning” routing is starting to stick with me even when I don’t want it to. The girls didn’t get up before 11, so I had the morning to myself. I made some scrambled eggs while listening to the ‘O Brother, Where Art Thou’ soundtrack, and watched a classic Celtics-Pistons game from the mid-80’s on NBA TV as I ate my breakfast. Nothing like a little Bird, Parrish, and McHale (all in their primes, mind you) to accompany a Christmas Eve breakfast for one in Turkey.

I went food shopping with Jen around noontime. She needed help bringing back food and ingredients for our Christmas dinner from the market, and I gladly obliged. We sashayed over to one of the malls, Carrefour, and it was unusually low-key. It took us a while, but then it dawned on us that it was Friday, and not Saturday- on the weekends this place is MOBBED. The parking lot looks like football game just ended and everyone’s trying to get out at the same time. But today? More or less deserted.

I took a nap for a while after we got back, and then I headed down to downtown Karsiyaka (a neighborhood near Mavisehir, where I live) and check out a big pedestrian sheet with hundreds of stores and little doner kebab sandwich places. I took a dolmish, over there, which is a little taxi you share with 3 other people. It’s a fairly cheap and easy way to get around from neighborhood to neighborhood, and you use the ferries when you need to get across the bay. I just ambled around Karsiyaka for a while, sampled a few sandwiches, and eventually made my way back home.

We had Turkish class tonight from 6-8, but I didn’t go. I really wanted to take the whole day off, and I didn’t feel like commuting an hour into Alsancak for it, when the teacher we have on Friday isn’t very good, anyway. More on that in a later entry. I took great joy in my 6-8pm nap, knowing I was missing my Turkish lesson, and once I got up I checked my email and watch a little of The OC (the only English-language show on at the time). At 10, I walked all of about 90 seconds over to the mall and the movie theater, where I saw the cinematic triumph known as Blade 3: Trinity.

That’s right, it’s Christmas Eve night, and I went by myself to see Blade 3, baby! And Christmas night, I think I might just go bowling to top it all off. I would have loved to have seen something else, but I had my mind set on going to the movies and it was either that, National Treasure, The Grudge, or a Turkish-language action farce called G.O.R.A., so I picked the lesser of the evils. I had wanted to see Alexander, but Blade had taken its place THAT day, so Blade was it. And the movie? It was pretty bad. The first one was pretty good, the second one just OK, and this one was a stinker. It was pretty dull and boring for the first half until Ryan Reynolds of all people showed up and started cracking a lot of jokes, saving the movie as best he could from utter mediocrity. The guy who wrote and directed this was in charge of writing the new Batman movie coming out next summer, and that seriously worries me.

I got out from the movies exactly at midnight- Christmas was actually here. I went back to the apartment and then I started getting a bad stomach ache. The water here is not very friendly to my stomach and digestive system, and I was trying to think what I ate that could have made me so sick. I had a 7-UP at the movies, and all I can think is that the water they use out of the soda fountain tap isn’t bottled or filtered. That must have did it, and boy, did it do me in. I wasn’t able to fall asleep till around 4:30 in the morning! I watched 2 episodes from the 1st season of The West Wing to ease my mind from how miserable I felt, and eventually it subsided enough that I could fall asleep.

It’s tough to avoid the water here, because everything’s cooked in it, so it feels impossible to avoid it completely. I was accidentally drinking it everyday with my lunch at school because I thought the water they put in pitchers on the table was bottled, but someone clued me in about 2 weeks too late. Gee, no wonder why I felt sick to my stomach for 14 straight days! I don’t know, can I even have soup at a restaurant now? I’m getting more vigilant about it because I’m sick of, well, feeling sick. From now on I’m not drinking anything that doesn’t come from a sealed bottle, no matter what it is. Probably right when I’m about to leave Turkey my stomach will become adjusted to the foreign bacteria in the water.

Water issues aside, it’s Christmas morning now and I’m feeling a heck of a lot better. To anyone who’s reading this, Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!