Conversations at work and Turkish Party!

March 20th, 2002 – Nice conversations at work
Even very sleepy I had to come work today. The day started like everyday… wake-up, takes half hour to start putting the cloths on, leave home, take the bus, fight against the fingerprint identifier that doesn’t read my fingerprint correctly, send e-mails, work and having lunch… nothing new if wasn’t a guy from Bestel (marketing department in Endel) come to my office after lunch to invite me to have a tea (çay) with everybody there. Of course I accepted and went there.

I met a lot of people that I’ve seen before but didn’t have a chance to talk to. I realized they don’t speak english so well but they can understand quite good... I talked about what is my work here, in what I can make their work better, talked about Samba, capoeira, carnival… I made the Rio de Janeiro marketing, of course! Only to think that there is hot I get colder here.

Today I still have AIESEC meeting again… I can’t support anymore of it… I’m thinking about to have dinner and sleep, I need more sleep than meetings. This week there will be a party in a dance club very famous here in the city… let’s see if I can play my CD’s there.

Frozen kisses to everybody!

March 21st, 2002 – Today is a Party day!

Hi everybody! Yesterday as I told you, I went to AIESEC. We had dinner and then I went to sleep, no meetings.

Today the day started as everyday… very cold… freezing!! But I had to come to work. I’m creating things to do because my boss didn’t give me anything officially. Well, I’m remodeling some things I found here, let’s see what he thinks. Tonight there will be the AIESEC party. Finally something in this city to do! I think that I’m slow because I’m missing do something different then work-dinner-sleep.

I’m curious to know what kind of party they have here because after the bread with chicken leg on snow, I’m prepared for the worst. Let’s give them a credit. I’m going there to see how is it and if it is too boring I ask to play some Brazilian music J.

Kisses,

March 22nd, 2002 – Turkey party – very weird for a Brazilian!

Hi again! Yesterday was... let’s say... totally different. Everything here is weird. Let’s explain my impressions. Left work, went home… a dam cold weather (basic), starving, stopped in a market to buy some biscuits. Problem solved, changed my clothes and let’s go party!

Parties during the week here start at 9 pm and finishes at 1 am, very different from Rio. About music, it is quite normal… there was a group playing some rock (in Turkish, of course) and everybody was enjoying a lot. Here seems they like a heavy rock! After 40 minutes of show the band stopped and they started playing some techno and electronic music. After this interval there was more rock and, at the end of the party, some pop music like Tarkan. This guy, Tarkan, is the man… all women here die for him... they get crazy when the music starts playing. But the DJ left it to the end.

Some more basic differences: There aren’t people “hunting” a partner here. The guys just didn’t go for the women. You cannot see people kissing anywhere. I think that even the couples or don’t even go to those places or just stay as normal friends. I couldn’t see people kissing the whole night even dancing all the time close to different groups, specially because everytime someone requested me to introduce to their friends as the Brazilian guy who dances samba. Hehehe!

In one of those introductions I met one nice girl and invited her to dance. We danced a lot together and getting closer every music, looking in her eyes, trying to seduce her and she seemed was enjoying it, letting me go further. I think I got too excited when I was very close to her face when I went to her to try to give her a kiss, to see if she would kiss me. Suddenly, she jumped back! With her scared eyes looking at me she run out of the dance club. At that time I thought: “Its over… I’m going to dye… I made a huge shit… she is going to bring the police to arrest me!”. I don’t know where she went but I didn’t see her the rest of the night.

At the end, it was fun. It’s strange but the Turkish don’t dance at all. They shake a lot but a little bit I share is a lot to them. Them I danced a lot all night long. I’m done today. Who knows me know that I don’t like to dance but staying here as the only one Brazilian, I need to defend my Samba and Forro in the land where they think Rio is the capital of Brazil, Batistuta is Brazilian, Brazilians dance Tango, Boca Juniors is a Brazilian team, and many other interesting things I heard last night when speaking to some people.

And the night was not over yet. After party, in Eskisehir, turks go for… soup! Yeah, that’s it, soup! There is a place opened 24 hours where they sell all kind of soup you can imagine. As the dance clubs close early, everybody go there to drink a soup and warm-up a little bit. I went there, of course! I had my soup as well. But with all those things, the time went away and I just got home to sleep around 3 am. This morning was harder than every to wake-up, but I’m here… let’s say… trying to be awake.

Unfortunately I don’t have pictures to show you anything. I left my camera at home as I didn’t know how safe it would be.

Kisses to everybody. Missing to speak portuguese and someone understands me!

Working and learning Turkish

March 18, 2002 - Started to learn turkish and to work

First day at work and the first kick on learning this weird language. My day at work was completely free but I noticed that maybe my boss did it to see how I would work without pressure. I decided to work hard then and almost finished 1 week work only in 1 day.

I think I could do more if 2 nerd turks from our IT deppartment didn't want to install a fingerprint identificator in my machine. There are so many computers here at the office, why mine? Anyway, they expent a lot of time there, almost 2 hours, and always when I tried to check my fingerprint... nothing. I think this cold weather erased my fingerprints. After they left I decided to try more and more and finally I could register it. I hope everyday I can open my computer easily.

After work, I went to AIESEC office to find out where I can develop my photo film, where I can wash my clothes (in turkish house there isn't place to wash it, neither a place to hang it to dry), where I can buy some bateries to my digital camera, and so on... I met Onur there and he told me Claudia called him telling she bought a book to learn turkish and wanted to know if I was interested to join her and Katerine, the colombian trainee, to study. For me is great, I'm not going to expend a cent with classes or books because she already have one. We studied till 10pm when I decided to go home. Before go home be brave to walk in 2 degrees weather... but I'm alive.

Kisses people... today I'm so tired I think I'm not going to have more news tomorrow. I just want to sleep a bit after dinner in my very simple but confortable bed on the floor... at least it is very hot.

March 19, 2002 - I just wanted to sleep, but...

I just wanted to go home early and sleep but...
I left work and went home to change my clothes because it was very cold and I was frozen. I dressed 2 moleton pants, 2 t-shirts, a pullover and a jacket over... I was ready to fight against the cold outside.

I don't know if there is a work to express it in english but there isn't in Portuguse... it was not only cold... it was minus 2 degrees. My clothes were enough but my nose frozen. At least only for 20 minutes, when I was walking till AIESEC office.

From there we went to dinner at the same place but this time I decided to try something different... I went for Manti. I liked a lot and I'm thinking about to eat it more times, also because ot is cheaper than Yogurt'lu Kofte. I was starving and only this plate was not enough... I need to eat some bread at home.

At the restaurant Mehmet (one of the AIESEC'ers) destroied my weekend plans. This weekend there will be something for new member and they need some help again. Ok, no problems, next weekend I'm planing to go to Istanbul to 3 Ankara trainees and the next one maybe a brasilian party here. Mehmet also put my film to develop today. Soon I will have some pictures and I already found out that there is a scanner in my company. I just need to convince the guys, in turkish, to scan them to me.

After dinner we went to a pub to watch Galatasaray (the biggest turkish team) versus Barcelona. Before the game starts I said, just to play, that Barcelona would win for 1x0... guess what happened? Exactly, Barcelona did it for the same score I said!

Now, more than ever, I have to find a safe place to watch the game between Brasil and Turkey for the World Cup. BEcause of this match at the pub I went home to sleep only at 1am.

Kisses,
Alex

Ankara city tour and pic-nic

March 16, 2002 - Ankara’s adventure

Beginning from yesterday...
After work I went to Anadolu University to a AIESEC new member presentation. I didn’t understand anything they said at the entire presentation but at the end they asked me a help to talk about myself and my expectations. I talked about how is to be a changing agent but I think they have another idea about this traineeship. There was a guy translating to turkish what I was talking but I’m really sure they didn’t understand anything.

I met the colombian trainee. She is an English teacher here in Eskisehir but sadly she works on Saturdays and will not join us in our weekend trips.
After the presentation I went to Claudia’s house to do something because it was Friday! Eskisehir is a young town but it was too cold outside and I think everybody decided to stay at home. We walked a lot looking for something. We found a techno party in a place that seems to be the city point but we didn’t enter because it was a bit expensive. Finally we decided to come back home, but it was fun anyway.

Today: Wake-up was dificult... the bus leaves to Ankara at 9... we got it without problems and 3 hours later, we were there.

AIESEC Ankara is very nice... it is a house... yelow... at the corner. I checked my e-mails there and we left to a city tour guided by 2 AIESEC’ers I don’t remember the names. We went to Ataturk mausoleum - this man is the national hero because he made a lot of important things. From there to a huge mosque, very nice... I can’t describe. Then, we went to a book store because Claudia wanted to buy something to learn turkish and then, back to the office.

I really wanted a place to dance a bit, have som fun... but we decided to go to a cafe and we stayed there, just talking. After 40 minutes, 2 people came over, one of them Marcia, a brasilian trainee from Curitiba - Paraná. It was enough for us to make a party at the place because I had in my backpack some samba and forró CD’s.

Giving a “brasilian way” I convinced them to put the CDs to play. The rest of the night was only dancing and making them believe that we knew how to dance samba and forró. But I think they were a bit terrifyed because here they don’t dance so close to each other.

After this dancing night we went to an AIESEC’er house to sleep. There, I still had time to try to teach her and Claudia some forró and samba.

There are more adventures tomorrow.

March 17, 2002 - Picnic on the snow??

Second day of adventures in Ankara!
Wake-up early again... 9 am the bus leaves to pic-nic. We paid more than was agreed before, but it is ok... what metters is the party.

Getting there, 1 hour by bus, I saw a white stuff on the ground... I thought it was something like foam. To my surprise it was snow! I saw snow the first time in my life. The first thing I did when I left the bus was to run to this snow and make a snow ball  I took some pictures.

I was very curious to know how was a turkish pic-nic in a place with snow. Well, turk stuff, chicken legs barbecue with bread (of course). When the chicken legs got finished they appear with some snacks and cakes... saved the day!

Here they have some different games.. we played some... but as the time was passing cloder was getting. The temperature was around 5 degrees celcius maximum. Was very hard but I survived and around 5pm we came back to the bus.

From the pic-nic to the bus station... from there to Eskisehir (3 hours by bus). Arriving here at the city a surprise... 2 degrees!! Guys, you know, I’m from Rio... I can’t live with this temperature.

The only thing I did was go home and sleep.

Kisses and hugs to everybody.

Alex