by BarbaraSher » Tue Oct 17, 2000 12:00 am
I\'m on the Internet at home! Finally! No weird letters and a bit of normal speed. What was wrong? A friend drove into the nearby town and shanghaied the local internet wiz and hauled him to my house. Apparently my house is the only one in the village with pulse dialing instead of tone dialing, and they had changed all the access numbers since the last time I was here. So the good news is that the infrastructure is fine (except for my house, which has mysteriously been accomodated on the dialing side). I take the little dog and go up the hill into the main street each morning (adults still turn their heads in shock at the size of a Yorkie, and he takes on every big dog in the town. They (the dogs) think he\'s not right in the head, so they run away which increases his delusions of grandeur.) And I sit and watch the early morning action. The men are mostly in suits (although some have tweed jackets over baggy men\'s pants, small at the ankles and oddly elegant), some of them are young and important looking (schoolteachers or government officials perhaps) and some are a bit dustier, slightly more bent over. The walk down the middle of the village street. This morning one of the older ones bent over, picked up something, maybe a piece of broken glass, and after searching a moment for a likely spot, threw it out of the way of tires and horses or donkey\'s feet. The the children show up, walking fast to school, wearing some kind of blue top with a white round collar, often carrying a backpack. Some stop in the store where I buy bread, and I\'m not sure what they buy although today I saw two 10-year-old girls leave with a large, flat package of gift-wrapping paper. Then the donkeys go by, often ridden by people larger than they are, with baskets or kilim-woven saddlebags on each side. Day before yesterday my neighbor was the donkey-rider. She\'s a generous-sized woman and was wearing her shalwars (baggy pants) and her wrapped scarf, and over the scarf a large square of white cloth which attaches itself to the crown of her head and falls back over her shoulders. Only friction seems to hold it on. Behind her, her two teen-age daughters, coming to help her bring in a part of the harvest -- so they couldn\'t come to English-Computer class this week. They smile and wave, and come over to speak more English than I have Turkish: Merhaba, Hello. Gel benim evde bugun, okule? (are you coming to my house today for school?) Yok, yok, Anneh bahci yardim (No, no we have to help our mother with her garden.) Well never use that Turkish anywhere you want to make a good impression...I talk like a 4 year old, or Tarzan: Me Tarzan. You Jane. The two volunteers, on the other hand, are total wizards at the language. I often ask them what someone has said -- and they\'ve only been here a week! Everyone loves them (and should!)Emilia\'s name has been changed to Aylin (moonlight) and Tor\'s to Temel (a manly name meaning \'solid foundation\' but also unfortunately, the local name for Popeye the Sailor Man. After some hesitation, I think he\'s decided to hang onto it, and brave it out. Tor has blond rasta hair, Emilia stands like a dancer or a queen, and both are eager to help, hard-working and extremely smart. I think the kilimwomen project got really lucky when they decided to take a semester off college and join me here. They\'ve turned out to be the only volunteers, but I think given the size of the program, that\'s okay. I\'ve had a wicked flu, aching all over yesterday, and fingers crossed about today, so this is the only internet response I\'m sending. Hopefully tomorrow I\'ll be able to catch up. I am warmed by your responses Kim, Lindsay and mbnc. If you saw me smile while I read them (which I caught myself doing) you\'d be glad you wrote. I\'ll try to answer more specifically later.