Yikes - It’s March already! Where does the time go?
Today has been another day without much field activity. We had lots of rain last night, which meant that our cameras didn’t pick up much but raindrops. And luckily, we didn’t get any hamsters – I was worried we’d find cold wet animals in our traps, which would not have made me happy. Because our permits haven’t come through yet, Cumali went into the field to check the traps, and said that four were plugged – which is a sign that someone lives there. That is fantastic!
We had another Kilis run this morning, but thanks for Alice and Ben, I was able to bow out. I stayed home and made notes about our activities and organized things.
When Alice and Ben returned, we all got into another great discussion of research ideas – and nailed down plans for at least two topics, and have methods for several others germinating quietly. Since then, we’ve each been on our computers doing lit searches and looking at journal articles. My eyes are slightly glazed, so I thought I’d write a post instead.
As promised, I will include a story from the past couple of weeks. Today’s topic: Tea. We drink tea constantly. Even the two Brits say the Turks are excessive when it comes to Tea. Not only do we drink tea with every meal, but we drink it whenever we are in a social or business situation. Safak and I went to pay the van rental and we drank tea. When we go to the army or police offices to see about the permits, we drink tea. When you walk into a store, they offer you tea. In addition to the tea while conducting business, we have the tea that is greasing the political wheel as it were. The other day we went to the Jandarme office here (local army office) to have tea with the commander. We also made a social call to the Mayor’s office, where, of course, we had tea. Turks must have enormous bladders!
These social calls are always a bit awkward because the English speakers just sit there while the Turks blab and blab. I try to take part, but I’m not very good.
I hope all is well with everyone –
I’d love to hear from you.
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4 comments:
May your bladder be healthy and adaptive to the Turkish lifestyle!
I'm really enjoying your blogs, Misty!
Thanks, Leora! It's nice to know that someone is actually reading them. Bob has told me about all of the snow in Ithaca - I hope you're able to get out and enjoy that, too!
At least you like the tea well enough. Imagine if you really hated it or had an allergy to it.
How well do random folks in your neighborhood speak English? In most of Europe (esp. "western" Europe) I'd guess that your average mayor would be reasonably conversant in English. I remember more than a few conversations in Hungary where I sat and listened to other people talk in Hungarian, though. At least you can swear at them if you need to :-).
We had two consecutive snow storms last week that dumped pretty hard across most of Minnesota and Wisconsin. Morris missed most of the snow from the second one, but we still went from bare ground to a food of packed snow in a week. Tom's school was cancelled both Thursday and Friday, mostly due to blowing snow in the country, which he figures almost made up for having to do a lot of shovelling.
Random folks here don't speak any English at all. None. So if we didn't have Safak with us, we'd be in real trouble!
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