Food Day at School

I've finally been able to get into a routine after being here for a month and a half, and I go to school everyday from 8:50am-5pm and by the time I get home, I feel like my day is completely finished and I never have time to blog because it usually starts as a quick little post and turns into hours of writing.  I like writing, so it's okay.  I think the last time I posted about my exchange was my first day of school, and that was about three weeks ago, so obviously a lot has happened since then.  Right now I'll tell you about Food Day at my school!

Alrighty, so one of my English teachers is very determined to teach me Turkish, so one day (about two weeks ago) during class he asks me (in Turkish) what I like to do, and I think to myself, "Okay, well last year my life mainly consisted of studying, complaining about AP Physics, and reading Sparknotes... what do I like to do? I guess I like to read, I never read. Hmm, I'll just be normal and tell him I like to hang out with my friends." I cannot say "I like to hang out with my friends" in Turkish.  I told him in English, so he told me in Turkish, and it was very long and I don't remember it anymore.  The next day, the same teacher asked me what I like to do, and I obviously didn't remember the huge long sentence he told me for "I like to hang out with my friends," but I remembered a verb I learned from my Rosetta Stone course the night before for cooking, and I told him I liked to cook.  This is true.  I really like to cook, and I haven't been able to cook here, and I realllllly miss cooking.  So, my teacher asked me if I wanted to make something for the class, and I said  once I got the package from my parents with brown sugar and baking soda and other things that are not easily found outside of the United States I could make chocolate chip cookies for the class.  He had this grand idea to have a food day for everyone to bring in a food and then the Turkish kids would say in English what they did and I would explain what I did in Turkish.  This didn't seem too bad until he said "Food day is in a week, next Friday!" and I was like "UGHHH I'm not going to have my brown sugar in a week!!!" I didn't actually say anything, I just had a giant epic sigh in my head when he announced the news.

The next Friday came around very quickly and  Thursday night I had to enter my host parents' kitchen and attempt to make Chocolate Chip Cookies using margarine  white sugar, salt, baking powder, eggs, flour, chocolate and vanilla (that I brought from home).  In America I use unsalted butter, white sugar, brown sugar, salt, baking soda, eggs, vanilla, flour and chocolate chips to make cookies.  I kept reminding myself that I made cookies for my Spanish host family with nearly the same exact ingredients and they came out perfectly fine.  These did not come out perfectly fine.  I had to bake them on a glass 9"x13" pan in a toaster oven.  The cookies made in the glass pan came out really hard and brittle, and there wasn't a metal cookie sheet here, so I ended up making the cookies in the muffin pan I brought from home and only letting them cook like half way, so when they deflated they would still be squishy.  This all ended up working out, but the 45 minute task of making cookies turned out taking like 3 hours, and I ended the night angry that my cookies were not up to par and tired because it was nearly 11:00 and I was sick of being in the kitchen with my ugly cookies.  I ended up going to bed, trying to cram the Turkish of what I did to prepare the cookies in my head, and hoping that tomorrow would be a happy day.

I woke up in the morning in a much better mood, and was off to school with my messed up cookies.  None of these Turks knew what "Annie's Amazing Chocolate Chip Cookies" were supposed to taste like, and I knew I could just bring better ones in once I made a nice batch.  Once I got to school, my friends all showed me their yummy Turkish Foods, and I grew excited for third period to try the yummy foods.  I was able to memorize my speech (I already knew about half the words in it, so it wasn't very hard to memorize), and I was giving the speech to the second period teacher and she said "Aww, you're so cute when you speak Turkish" and everything was working out nicely.  I bought some milk to go with the cookies from the school store before 3rd period and told the class, in very simple, redundant Turkish how I prepared my cookies (most of it was a lie though because it was quite an experiment making them).  My friends brought in Baklava, Grape Leaves, Borek (a filled pastry, this one was filled with potatoes and cheese) and Lentil Kofte (kofte is like meatballs, but these were made with lentils rather than meat).  Everything was delicious, and I told my friend "I wish food day was everyday!" and she said, "Me too, but I can't take the kilos," so I replied, "I'm an exchange student, BRING ON THE KILOS!!!"

It ended up being a really nice Food Day, and everyone enjoyed my cookies.  I was so happy to be able to speak Turkish to the class, and everyone was supportive of everyone else in their attempts to speak a foreign language.  We had someone come in to take pictures to post onto the school website, so I'll post a link later once those get posted to the internet.  I feel like I'm becoming closer to my school friends and I enjoy being with all of them.  For now, I need to get some Turkish going up in my head so I can improve my relationship and communication with them.  It's great how all over the world food brings people together. :)