Turkish Delight

You won’t think this is funny, but I still can’t stop laughing. A few days ago during class someone’s cell phone starting ringing. The woman next to me — the lovely and shy Natalia from Russia — blushed, grabbed her purse and ran out the door. While she was outside digging frantically through her purse, inside the classroom the phone kept ringing.

When she poked her head back in a few seconds later, with a look of total bafflement, the entire class went into hysterics. One by one students would regain composure, but then erupt as one all over again. For ten minutes I had to bite down on my lips and avoid looking at anyone, or I would have gone over the edge.

It was like the time Mom and I went shopping for a pocketbook in Grass Valley. A horrible, officious man was scrambling around the store finding us different models. From the top of a stepladder, fat butt drooping toward us, he tossed down another one. “This is a poopular item,” he announced. Mom and I glanced at each other, and I will never forget that look on her face. She tried to contain her irreverent mirth, proper lady that she is; I, errant, had to rush out of the building.

After school I finally had a chance to take a quick walk down my dirt road toward the West River. What to my wondering eyes should appear among the trees but… a graveyard! You know how I love those.

Here’s a satellite picture of where I live. I’m at the foot of Black Mountain. In the upper-right corner of the little blue rectangle, you can just make out a structure. That’s the screen house where I like to go to do my reading for Second Language Acquisition.

Way down where the road bumps into the river there’s some sort of encampment with school buses, trucks, trailers and trash. I passed a guy about 70 wearing an eighteen-inch white beard and a propeller beanie. He was waving his arms around rhythmically and swaying his hips as he sashayed down the center of the road. I guess I know where to go if I ever want mind-altering substances.

Thursday was our last day of Turkish. Ray beh had a full agenda for us, including Turkish Delight that he’d brought back across the ocean. Then he attempted to teach us a folk song about Turkish Delight. For a grand finale he played some traditional Turkish music and led us in a kick-step dance around the room, out the door onto the balcony, and back inside.

I’m pretty sure you’re fluent in Turkish, but just for fun here is the translation to the song:

While going to Uskudar, we got some rain.
My scribe’s long gown got muddy.

While going to Uskudar, I found a handkerchief.
I filled my handkerchief with lokum [Turkish delight].

Here’s a little video I assembled. This one is really big (about two megabytes) so you’ll probably have to hit play and then pause it while it loads. At least I will, on my 33k dialup connection.

[flashvideo filename=wp-content/video/turkish.flv image=wp-content/video/turkish.jpg /]