Team Turkey Strikes back!

Sorry fellow deputees, but I think we got the best country. Not only
is this place on the Mediterranean, full of helpful, friendly people,
and extremely historical, but they also have crazy-good food including
the BEST PUDDING EVER!!! We are all doing just swell, especially
since the heat has gone down from 130F (I kid you not!) to around 100.

On Sunday we had an amazing experience going to an international
church in the Old City, where there were Christians from Poland,
Germany, Singapore, Michigan, Norway, and lots of other places.
Despite coming from such totally different backgrounds we all sang
together and worshiped the same God. It was very peaceful and
encouraging, plus we got to eat lunch with Welsh missionaries
afterwards!

Our first full week of Kids Klub has gone swimmingly even though we
were abandoned by almost ALL our English-speaking friends here (Ben,
Verna, Tansule, and Shafak) while they went to a week-long education
conference in Bodrum. We started on Monday with 6 students for the
strictly English Kids Kamp, but on both Wednesday and Friday we only
had three! Their names are Ilayda (9), Zeynep (13) and Orcun (7?) and
they are wonderful and have lots of personality. We've also started to
make friends with the women who work there even though the language
barrier stands strong, as always.

The Gorem Center is somewhat different in that we only spend about
four hours there each day with a long lunch break in the middle of the
day when we either watch kids swim or teach our "translators" (Cemal
and Ahmet) important slang like, "Sup" and "I have to pee."

Speaking of the Gorem Center, funny story. In a nutshell, we had the
most naïve blunder this last Thursday. We were teaching our classes
when the owner came in and said we needed to "go to the government"
with him and give him some information about our "educations".
Assuming this was some sort of thing we HAD to do, we went with him to
meet a man we learned was the superintendent of private schools in all
of Antalya… and we had to bring A GIFT. The owner of the Gorem center
wanted some sort of UW merchandise, but all we had was a t-shirt
(designed by Jeff Spohn!) from my Spring Break trip to go see The
Price is Right at NBC studios. It had a huge print of Bob Barker's
face and the words "UW LOVES BOB" on it. We went with the intention
of telling him that Bob Barker is beloved American icon and that UW
realllllly admires him but it wasn't even necessary. The man loved
it. And it was dirty too!

Anyway, apparently we're NEVER supposed to go to any government
buildings alone because of several possible (and unpleasant) scenarios
like getting your face in the newspaper and this IS a Muslim country
so you can never be too careful. We didn't realize this until later
but luckily all we did was have tea with the guy before we were
rescued by a phone call from Verna. Hopefully the "government" enjoys
it's UW LOVES BOB" t-shirt! It's 100 % authentic US textile.

For the 4th of July we went to a party at Karn's and met some
Intervarsity students from Arizona, two Albanian women, and Karn's
best friend, Theresa. We had a GREAT time and got to run around with
roman candles in the parking lot because fireworks are always legal
here! (YESsss). We also got to eat a NORMAL meal, which was
fantastic because we learned that none of the girls on Team Turkey can
really cook. I can do scrambled eggs, VZ's got the oatmeal, and Dayna
SAYS she can cook Mexican food but… who knows. Lindsay makes an
AMAZING glass of water. Please pray that we will learn this skill
quickly, because we failed miserably at making beans and rice the
other night (sounds easy, right? WRONG.) The beans came out
extremely chewy and gross-tasting despite an abundance of salt, and
the rice was like school food that you get shoveled onto your plate
with an ice cream scooper. We all think that part of the deputation
screening process should involve cooking skills, because we have been
eating lots of sliced apples and PB&J here!

We all LOVE Antalya and hope all the other teams love their countries
as much as we do! Enjoy the pictures of our dinner with Marco, VZ and
our translators, and some of the kids at the Kids Klub!

-Sara, from TEAM TURKEY