At some point during the madness that is my
life in Turkey, I happened upon a sign at a bus stop. With a Fanta logo at the top and my favorite
Turkish singer, Tarkan, taking up the rest, it immediately had my undivided
attention. I was able to work out that
Tarkan was coming to Izmir on July 2nd, and if I had any doubts about the
validity of this information, they would soon be swept away after I got to see
Fanta's ad for the concert on the television fifty billion or so times.
I love Tarkan.
I never thought I would be able to see him in concert, because he
certainly isn't about to come to Kansas anytime soon. I didn't really think I had much of a chance
to see him now, either, but I had to try.
It could be my only opportunity, and I was willing to do scary
things--like talking to people!--in order to go.
After speaking with my classmates, I learned
that getting a ticket wasn't quite so impossible after all. You need ten points to turn in at a grocery
chain to get a ticket, and each can of Fanta had three points. I began buying a Fanta during breaks,
collecting the orange tabs that I needed.
But when I finally had four, I found that the Tansaş store near TÖMER
was out of tickets and began to grow worried.
The day before the concert my host mother took me to the Tansaş near our
apartment, and when they didn't have tickets either, I was completely crushed.
The day of the concert we had our excursion to
Boncukköy, which was a little hard to enjoy when you're feeling disconsolate
about the fact that you can't go see one of your favorite singers and your
camera has mysteriously stopped working so you can't record any of your
experiences. There wasn't much at
Boncukköy; we went to an artisan Evil Eye maker, who had a rather secluded
workshop with a lot of shady plants and a menagerie of animals running
about--including peacocks and baby peacocks!
We listened to him explain about the process of making the beads (I
picked up the word "blue" and I think that's about it). Then we watched another man make a bird, and
then went into the gift shop. There were
a lot of different products with evil eyes on them, but none of them were
really the type of things that I felt I really needed/wanted to have. I ended up getting just a keychain with an
evil eye bead since I needed a new one anyway, and then we left. It didn't feel like we'd been there all that
long or learned all that much, but I guess it was still an experience.
On the bus, however, something much more exciting
happened. Some other students had
managed to get tickets and Hanna, who was tired, gave me his. Hope rekindling inside of me, I texted my
mother to say I could go. She called to
work out the details of how I would get home so late. Apparently the ferry was going to be running
late, and Charlotte, who either lived nearby to where the concert was held or
was getting her transportation nearby, could take me to the ferry. Then my phone promptly died, although earlier
it had had three bars of battery (I was later to learn that while my phone
might go a few days at full strength, as soon as it loses a single bar, it
loses them all fast).
The bus dropped me and several students
(Abigail, Charlotte, Chris, Kate and Melissa) off at Konak and we went to a restaurant
to eat before heading to the concert.
Abigail's buddy and her older brother met us there and eventually my
buddy as well, but Spencer's host mother was making him stay to eat so he told
us he would meet us there. We took a
very hot bus to the concert venue, where I learned that my stress about the
tickets had been completely pointless.
There were people selling tickets for five lira all around (which was
probably less than the cost of my four Fantas), and Efe, who didn't have a
ticket, was easily able to buy one. We
didn't go inside immediately but got some drinks and sat down to watch the
ocean. We got into the line to go in and
I passed someone selling Tarkan t-shirts.
I really wanted one but thought there would be one inside the concert area
(it was an outdoor concert), and since I didn't want to slow everyone up, I
continued on. My water bottles were
thrown out by the staff at the entrance and we were allowed through. Although we were a few hours early there were
less people than I had expected and we were able to get sitting space (on the
ground) pretty close to the front.
Spencer joined us, and it kept filling up from there. By the time they started playing music to get
the crowd pumped, we were standing crushed together and I was barely able to
see over the heads of the people in front of me to see the stage.
Opening for Tarkan was Emre Aydın, and although
I had heard of him before I wasn't really familiar with his music so I'll admit
that I was rather impatient for him to finish, even though he was good. My feet were starting to hurt already (who
knows why they chose that day of all days to suddenly become incredibly weak)
and the heat of the crowd surrounding me was almost unbearable. I couldn't see Emre on the stage at all so I
had to rely on the two screens on the side of the stage, which really should
have been placed higher because even they were hard to see. But finally, amazingly, it happened. Tarkan came out singing his new single "Aşk Gitti Bizden" and everyone went
crazy--including the Turkish girls to my right who were jumping up and down and
slamming into me repeatedly. But it
didn't matter, because TARKAN was there.
We listened to several songs but then everyone
was really hot because of the body heat so we held hands and tried to make our
way to the back where we could "see better" and get some air. It was nice in theory...not so nice in
fact. I have never, ever had that much difficulty
getting through a crowd before. It was
just too crowded. Several times I was
almost split off from the group and then I began to wonder if there was a end
to the crowd as we got farther...and farther...and farther away from
Tarkan. Finally we made it to the drinks
stand, where there was less people, but our view of the concert wasn't much
better than before. We rested up for a
bit, listened to more music, but then everyone decided that they were tired and
wanted to go. Although I was also
exhausted, I was disappointed because it might have been my only time to see
Tarkan and I would have gladly suffered the pain to see it the whole way
through. But since I was relying on the
others to see me home, I had no choice.
That was when we discovered that the ferry was
not, in fact, running late, and that I would have to take a taxi. We first tried getting on a bus, but even
though we had left early, they were already extremely crowded. We tried to get a taxi but all the taxis in
the way we were walking were full. Lucky
for us, crazy taxi drivers are crazy and didn't see any problems with driving
over the grass median to get to us. I
went with Chris, Charlotte, and Kate.
They were all getting off at Alsancak but I needed to get back to my
house, so Charlotte called my mom so she could give directions to the taxi
driver, then wrote her number down in case we needed to call her again (Spoiler
Alert: we did). After paying the guy ten lira (forty divided
by the four of us), it was just me and him.
I was incredibly nervous but hoped that with my mother's directions he
would be able to find it with minimal help from me.
Turns out he couldn't. There was one point in time where I did know where we were and I gasped and he looked at me, but I assumed that he knew where he was going so I didn't tell him to pull over. Then he took me to what looked like the middle of nowhere and asked if this was okay. I had no idea where I was and said it wasn't. After calling my host mother and driving around a bit, we finally found our apartment. I kissed forty lira goodbye, showered, and collapsed, exhausted but extremely grateful for my experience. It may not have been my best concert experience ever, what with the heat and my feet in agonizing pain and barely being able to see anything, but it was definitely an experience.
Cooking class, I think, is a bit of a
misnomer. It should be a "filling
things" class. This time we made mantı, which is like a Turkish ravioli
with a garlic yogurt sauce. I was slightly less successful at making the mantı--we were given a thin sheet of
dough and told to cut it and my squares were more rectangles, which did not
make things easy--but they weren't ginormous as other people were making them,
so I suppose they were passable. This time, instead of waiting the next day, we
got to eat right away (as soon as they'd boiled), and it was quite good. As for the rest of the week, the only really
interesting thing that happened was turning in our documentary draft to be
edited.
The weekend, as I had come to expect, was just
as exciting. Although I had a lot of
time in the morning/early afternoon to do things (such as homework and
cross-stitching), Saturday night some of my host mother's friends came over and
we went back to Kameraltı. I thought we
were going there to go shopping, but we went to a Köfte (Turkish meatball) place for dinner and then walked like
twenty feet away from that to have some tea. By the time we were finished,
although it was still early, a lot of the shops were closed.
We then walked to the Konak Pier, where more
shops, as well as some really pretty cafes that are right on the water, are
located. I saw my first movie theater in
Turkey, and we wandered about looking at the shops. I spent some quality time inside a bookshop,
but I would have loved to have spent more.
We excited the pier and went to some more outdoor cafes that were right
next to it. We got a lovely seat right
by the water, and everyone but me got a beer.
I got a Coke. But we had a nice
time just chatting and laughing, and even though I didn't know a lot of what
was said, I felt completely at home and included. All in all, it was a very
nice night.
The next day was much like the one before it,
only instead of Kameraltı, my host mother, host sister, and one of my host
mother's friends took a bus to Kipa. It
was a giant mall with a lot of stores in it and it was really, really cool. We
went to a clothing store first--which wasn't as cool--although it did have some
stuff I liked. I think my host mother wanted
me to get a dress for the party at the end of the program, but I wasn't sure of
my size and I didn't really feel comfortable changing with them so I didn't try
anything on. After that my host mother's
friend left and Füme and I went to an electronic store to look for headphones
(mine had just broken; technology hates me in Turkey, apparently), and to look
at cameras since mine still wasn't working. I got headphones but didn't buy a
camera since the cheapest was about 200 liras and not all that great. We went
to some other stores, including one which had some really cool stuff, including
a glass ax with Ottoman calligraphy on it. Oh, how I wanted it. But sadly, it
was not to be.
We waited for the bus to take us home, and that
was that. I was left with only wishful thinking about that beautiful, beautiful
ax :c
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