For those of you who don't know what Bayram is, it is basically the Turkish version of Thanksgiving, but instead of turkey, they eat sheep (probably because if they ate turkey it would be considered cannibalism...) Bayram happened this past Thursday, it is a religious holiday, and the idea behind it is that you share your lamb with those less fortunate. On top of that it is a time for family, and reestablishing bonds. The other nice thing about Bayram is that you don't have school for 5 days. Back in the day, people used to slaughter the lambs in the streets, and the gutters would flow red with blood. Now people will buy a lamb, take it to a butcher, get it cut up, and then do the rest of the slicing back home with the family. My Bayram started with a nice breakfast with a lot of the family. Grandma and Grandpa drove from across the city, Cansu, my sister, came in from Istanbul, along with my uncle who is fluent in English. After breakfast we all got to work cutting up the lamb. My family kept asking me if I was alright, since there was a lot of blood, but I just told them that I had cut meat before, and the sight of blood wasn't anything new to me. Now if I saw the lamb getting sacrificed, that might be a different story. Once we had finished cutting up the lamb, mom threw all the bits into the pot, and the ladies got to work cooking while the men sat and had some drinks and read the paper. I found myself having a nice conversation with my uncle.
Finally it was time for dinner, and after smelling delicious aromas for the past hour, I was ready to eat. They have their dinner around the same time we have our Thanksgiving dinner since there is a ton of food and you don't want to be bloated when you go to bed. We had a typical Turkish potato salad, which is a lot like the one they serve at Barbur foods. As well as a type of lamb stew where the bits of lamb are cooked in a gravy of their own flavors. All of it was delicious, and the company was wonderful too. Everyone hung around the house for a while trying to recover from the massive food coma. After they shook off the sluggishness, the extended family hopped in their cars and drove back home.
The next day was pretty low-key. Nothing happened for the majority of the day. Around dinner time the family pulled up again and we indulged in some of the best lamb I have ever had. Again we all sat around trying to recover from our lack of consciousness. Again the extended family got in their cars and drove away. The next day my family decided to go to Cesme. This would have been a wonderful idea hadn't Cesme been a little too cold, and very windy. We did spend some time watching the wind and kite surfers that Cesme is very well known for, but none of us went swimming, and most of our time was spent indoors. The next morning we piled into the car and drove back home for a final dinner with the whole family together. After dinner Cansu left with the other family members to go back to Istanbul for university. But I was told that I would be going to visit her in December, which I am very excited to do.
Monday was Republic Day, or their 4th of July. My Brazillian friend said that there was a parade down town celebrating Republic day, so we decided to go. It seemed like all of Manisa was either in this parade, or watching it. We spotted our Canadian friend walking in the parade with her mom, so we jumped into the stream of red to join her. At first this was fun, then it got a bit awkward because we were 3 obviously foreign people in a sea of Turks who were screaming how much they loved their country in Turkish, and we didn't understand a word. But we went along with it, and when the parade ended, Gabriel and I took Shannon around to some of our favorite spots in Manisa, since she had missed out on the previous 2 "Explore Manisa days." It was very nice to spend some time with people who understood English, and we all had a great time.
Unfortunately school was the next day, which might I add has gotten a little less boring, but I still can't understand half the lesson. On the brighter side we will be starting language lessons this Saturday. The lessons are 3 hours long and they will last until the end of January. I am very excited to finally be doing the lessons, because now I can really start learning the language, which was why I came here.
Goruscuruz
-Torvald
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