The Village (part 2)

Back at the village. Within the first 30 minutes we were greeted with hugs, kisses, and a delicious meal including hazelnut butter. The planned 10 hour drive only took us 8.5 hours. I didn’t get as much sleep as I was hoping, but Mehmet, our driver, requested that I sit next to him and keep him awake. I tried to use the opportunity to practice my Turkish, but the most I got were a few numbers and the word hazelnut. Mehmet spent some of the time teaching me how to sing a few Turkish songs, but of course that didn’t really stick either. It was fun though. Between attempts to learn, I asked Mehmet about his life using a multitude of gestures to communicate. Turns out Mehmet is a Greek Turk, and his great grandfather came to Turkey. He tried to tell me something about his great grandpa being very wealthy man. I think that he worked in the gasoline business. His grandpa died in an accident on the road in his gasoline car. Then His dad died when he was 58 from a heart attack. Apparently he had diabetes, “too much sugar”. I was a horrible navigator and drifted in and out of sleep, but we eventually made it to the village. 

After our amazing meal that Yasmin "threw together", the men wanted to hear one of the girls on the trip Helen sing. She wowed them with Summertime and then they had me follow up with a small portion of my Walking in Memphis. After we finished eating some of the men showed us their guns for shooting off at the wedding. The first shot rang into the night and set off a nearby car alarm. I asked to look at it for a little bit and immediately Hamza asked me if I wanted to try. Two seconds later I did two shots off the balcony, and set off the car alarm again. We took turns trying out the gun –it's a fake pistol that uses blanks only- and then moved into the living room.

One uncle played the drum and danced. Then it erupted into a full on dance party and we learned all different types of dance while they blared Turkish music. My personal favorite was the pinky dance, one in which you hook pinkies and dance around in a line with a touch step pattern. Yasmin showed us a HILARIOUS dance in which she mimed an excited man. The men and women all burst into laughter while the other students and I laughed in shocked disbelief.

We’ve only been here a few hours, but I’m so glad we could come. Hamza was saying that Yasmin and Ismail were saying if the students came, then I HAD to come. Ismail greeted me with the traditional forehead touching when I got off the bus and it felt like coming back as not just the foreigner guests but as part of the family. This is an amazing place with the kindest people and who knows when I’ll get an experience like this again, or if I ever will. Tomorrow will be a day full of gunshots, food and festivities. I’m so ready…as soon as I sleep. I'm exhausted.

First shots.