You Might Be Surprised

-Many Turks here think you can get sick from drinking a cold drink

-Turks often carry or wear a good luck charm, kind-of-a-thing, that is called the evil eye. The thought is that when good things are happening to you or people are praising you, others become jealous, resulting in evil eyes pointing at you. Carrying an evil eye charm is supposed to protect you from the millions of evil eyes shooting at you when you are succeeding. The evil eyes shooting at you don't just come from enemies, they can also come from friends. Interesting.

-Many Americans, living in Ankara, feel that it is safer to live here than in the States

-The malls here are amazing and there's a ton of them. They usually have 5-6 levels, amazing food courts, and pretty fancy stores. They, for the most part, are pretty high end, more so than even the States. Many of them also have movie theatres inside.

-Most people do not stop when the call to prayer comes on. They just go about their business.

-We have guards outside our apartment building.

-We live one building down from the mayor of Ankara.

-There is a button, outside our building that you can push for a taxi. Taxis are very convenient and cheap. Sometimes I can speak German with the taxi drivers, if we are having trouble communicating. It is usually better than their English and my Turkish.

-98% of the base the school is on is owned by the Turks. It is a huge area and used to be solely owned by the Americans. Now, we only have the school, a chapel, a small community center, the BX, the commisary, and soccer fields. There is no housing for Americans on the base and not many military offices. The Turks have tons of housing, offices, a shooting range, training course, just to name a few. We aren't allowed on the Turkish side of the base, though.

Stay tuned for the 2nd Edition of this post. I'm sure there are many more "surprising" things I will learn about.