After making and eating a large batch of mercumek köfte (a type of vegetarian "meatball," made with lentils, bulgar, and fresh greens) for lunch yesterday, I took the metro out to the Büyük Ankara Festivali (to see a free concert) with my host sisters and some of their friends. The festival is a week-long celebration conducted for the citizens of Ankara; it's kind of like a cross between a summer concert series and a county fair.
When we got there, my older host sister and her best friend grilled me about my American guy friends (apparently they're looking for something other than Turkish men) while we wandered the rows of stands and worked our way through the crows of locals that had come out to enjoy a government-sponsored Sunday afternoon.
We had some time to kill, so we played in an astro-jump (or bounce-house, as I'm told it's called by some of my program friends), ate some ice cream, and loitered next to a giant red outline of Turkey displayed under an Ataturk banner at the edge of the festival grounds.
The actual concert (featuring the Turkish pop sensations Kutsi and Demet Akalın) was pretty fantastic, as it somehow brought the most diverse group of people (old, young, hipster, conservative,...) together, to sing and dance to some of the most repetitive (albeit catchy) music I've heard in a long time. I started to be able to sing along by the end, and I'm hoping my Turkish will improve enough by the end of the summer to learn at least one of the songs fully. I'm posting some videos of the two artists to give you a better idea of the atmosphere. I'd apologize for the shaky camera handling in the second one, but I think it adds a little something special to Demet Akalın's performance.
We got home fairly late after the concert, and I didn't get to bed until around 1, but I managed to stay awake during class today without much difficulty. Although I was able to skip most of the afternoon session in order to visit the local Citibank with our instructor in a failed attempt to get a new debit card. (An HSBC ATM ate my card last week, and I would have been able to pick it up easily the next day, but we were on our way to Cappadocia at that point and the bank's regulations did not fit with my plans. Apparently, I missed my chance and the card has been destroyed altogether for security reasons.) I've since spoken with a customer service representative and should *hopefully* have a new card by Thursday. I was too frustrated to do much of anything this afternoon, so a few friends and I relaxed over some Efes beers in a local cafe, watching the music videos in the background become progressivly trashier and 80s-er (think CCR and Dire Straits turning into Duran Duran and Eurythmics) while discussing the politics of US presidential races and EU accession. It's been a quiet night since then, and I'm looking forward to a good night's sleep.
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