Welcome to Ankara, where wedding crashers is not just a popular american movie.

Always something, ya know?

I guess it all started on Thursday. I was sitting around peacefully down in the lobby of the Foreign Language doing absolutely nothing because my job is a joke. I was busy tending to my Farmville Farm and skyping various peeps (yes peeps) online, when all of a sudden I look up to see Duygu (the security guard) escorting a raggedy looking man my way. I look into this man's arms and hes holding a cute little teddy bear. My original thought was "Oh how nice, Duygu's boyfriend got her a teddy bear, but geez, hes a bit old for her." As they proceeded closer to me, I thought "oh god, maybe this man is yet another random turk stalker!" (See: Julia and Cappadocia) but it was then that logic hit, and it dawned on me that this had to be a Valentine from Gil!!!! I was so happy, it was the sweetest thing ever!! The best thing about it, is that people aren't as cynical here as they are in the US about valentines day, and they were all almost more excited than I was...which was almost a bit strange. All around, it was a great surprise :)

And so begins another wild adventure.

Earlier this week, I had asked, nay, instructed Katie to hop on a bus and make her way from Istanbul to Ankara for the weekend. I was in need for a local valentine (seeing as how Gil lives 6,000 miles away) and I asked Katie to "Be Mine" for the weekend. She was to arrive later on friday night, so I told her we would meet up with her because we had been invited to a traditional Turkish pre-wedding bachelorette party. We had been looking forward to this event all week, often bragging to our co-workers about our upcoming weekend.

"You will do what this weekend?"-coworker
"We are going to a Turkish pre-wedding party!"-silly americans
"Ohhhh how do you know the bride?"-coworker
"We Don't!!!"-ignorance

Yeliz, a professor and PhD student at Ankara University is traveling to the US in March, so she wants to help us with her english. She is the nicest girl, and we met all her friends and her fiance (fingers crossed for a wedding invite in may!)

So we are told we are invited with Yeliz to her friends traditional "bachelorette" party. The night before a woman gets married, (mostly) the women in her life get together and bless her with henna, dancing, and their real or fake tears. Personally, I spent the night bonding with the bride's granny, who didn't speak a word of english, but encompassed all that I wish to be as an old person. She was nuts! Granny and the bride's brother told us that we were "not allowed to sit" and we had to continue dancing all night. Oddly enough that would not be our only forced dance-a-thon of the weekend.....

The bride was absolutely gorgeous, like a model, and her name was Gonca (Pronounced Gone-Jah...i think). We somehow quickly became like part of the family, and participated in all of the traditional dances with the bride, henna rituals, songs (we didn't really know the words) and candle ceremonies. Often, while we were standing next to the bride with candles and wishing her the best, i felt like vince vaughn and owen wilson in wedding crashers. It was almost comical how out of place we looked, but at the same time, we fit right in. Unfortunately, Julia's stage 5 clinger wasn't there, but we would hear about him later in the weekend.

We left the wedding party with new friends, new phone numbers, and new turkish phrases, as well as a splotch of henna on our hands. We returned home to find Katie and Kutay working on a couple bottles of wine, and we quickly joined them. The night continued with conversations of crazy turkish men (Kutay is a Turkish guy's body with an American guy's mind...a rarity in these parts) because in a few hours, Julia was to wake up and be whisked away to Cappadocia for the weekend by her night-in-shining sweatervest , Goksel.

Because my boyfriend is back in the commonwealth, I often live vicariously through Julia. Goksel, also known as my turk babysitter, is a quiet guy with a shy demeanor who confessed his love to Julia on their first date. After several attempts to explain that she didn't want a serious boyfriend and 2 weeks later, Goksel thought it ok to plan an entire weekend in Cappadocia, bought her a necklace, and neglected to bring a toothbrush on the weekend getaway...I give it maybe 2 more days....

The night before, we got in with the wedding party, and they told us we should go to the ceremony the next day at noon. So saturday, we all wake up at 12:30 and lounge around the apartment until we decide to meet up with Katie's friend Umur, because we obviously had slept through the wedding festivities. We have lunch on 7th street, go to Nargile, and proceed to display all of our qwerky weirdness for the country to see.

We got back at 8 o clock, met up with the boys, and decided to go to a Spanish party that the Poles had told us about. Wojtek told us he would meet us at the metro, so naturally he wasn't there and we went to happy days for dinner. I figured, even if things went wrong, at least we were sitting in a place called happy days....and it couldn't be that bad....

We finally make it to the spanish party- which happens to be Nacho's birthday. Nacho was a jovial 20 something with a very soft beard and very drunk persona. In fact all of the spaniards were pretty wasted -including my favorite of the night- drunk spanish girl. Drunk spanish girl just stumbled around the party dancing and tackling people all night, she was fantastic. Also represented at this party were:
America (us)
Poland
France
Spain
Germany
Portugal
Turkey
Holland
Italy
and The miscellaneous people who no one could really understand when asked when they were from because they were too drunk to speak ANY language.

Naturally, this United Nations party was the most ridiculous mix of people i have ever spent time with, but it was awesome. People were so chill, and as i looked around at the many different walks of life, i felt i could suggest only one thing....

the olympics.

As I yelled out to the crowded drunken party that we should have a party olympics, there were many nationalistic chants that were yelled back, but no one listened until one particularly booming voice suggested a bar that we should all go to! Now this party was well over 50 people, and needless to say we were rolling deep (a slang term we had taught our classes the previous week) but everyone managed to meet up again in the club basement for the biggest rager i have ever attended. I began getting tired at 3 in the morning on the dance floor, but was told by a dutch boy that i must continue to party until at least 5 in the morning.

Through all of this- we ended up losing Jamar, our apartment keys, and most of our sanity.

It rocked.

The next day, we woke up groggy and ready to exchange stories from the night before. Jamar was still lost somewhere (we later found out he drunkenly wandered off to get Kokorech and then somehow ended up in Tunali- we were just glad he was alive). We got flowers from a secret admirer (Warren) which was so sweet and really brightened our day. Katie and I went to armada to get a happy meal and doner, and spent the rest of the day talking in a cafe called "Kahveli Dunasi" -chocolate world- and had one of the best valentines days I can remember.

Peace
The G.