Monday, 19 August, 2013; 10:40 PM; Host family's living room.
Today, I learned several things.
1. Turkish soap Operas are... interesting. I'm still trying to figure out whether I like this show or not. It's a formulaic plot of "who slept with whose former fiancée/ spouse, who is this girl in love with, who is feeling guilty for stabbing the FMC in the uterus" type of shows (though I don't entirely understand why someone stabbed the FMC in the uterus). I also don't get why the girl's former fiancée keeps bringing her flowers. You'd think he'd get the hint after the third time he saw her put them in the dumpster. Wait... no... she's keeping them this time. Also, the ad break went during the Epic Romantic Stare on the Balcony. The funny bit was that it was an ad for a set of fried eggs that were placed kind of like eyes.
2. Supermarkets are a good place to learn languages.
3. Ketchup is spelled similarly in Turkish.
4. 51 is a fun card game. It involves trying to get rid of all one's cards in a manner that is difficult to explain. It's called 51 because you have to have the cards you're trying to open with add up to 51. You can open with 3/4 of the cards of a certain number (three eights, for example), but if it doesn't add up, you can't open. You'll frequently need to open with multiple sets. The other way to do it is to have a streak of numbers in the same suit. Jokers are used if necessary, though if someone clears their hand and you still have one in your hand (aka not on the table), then you get a penalty. You also get penalized if you discard a card that someone else could use (like the fourth eight) and if you start to open and then realize you can't. Also, Ace of Spades (incurs a penalty if you have it in your hand). All of those are a 25 - point penalty. If you don't open by the time someone else clears their hand, then you get penalized 100 points. The game uses two decks of cards; everyone gets dealt 14 cars; the person to the left of the dealer starts. There's an upside-down pile that you draw your cards from. The discard pile is face-up; you can draw from that, but only if it means you can open something with it. That doesn't apply to the first person, who starts with the card face-up.
5. Apparently, the adults in the house can get super competitive over a game of 51.
6. Bergüm, we learned, can play computer games until four in the morning, and then sleep until almost four in the afternoon.
7. Coca-cola has way less sugar here than it does in the US. In a 330 mL, there's 37 grams of sugar; in the US, it's at least 45.
That's basically what we did today. Gen and I woke up at around 11and had a breakfast of Nutella and bread. We tried to put honey on it, too, but Gen accidentally dropped the jar. Since it's glass, it broke. We cleaned as best we could, but we still had to tread with caution for the rest of the day (Part of the issue is that it's frequently considered impolite to wear your shoes indoors, so we normally go barefoot).
At around 2:00, I learned to play 51. I'm terrible at it - once we played with penalties, it quickly became clear that I would lose miserably (I kept putting away usable cards and not being able to open my hand before Buse cleared all of hers) (A/N: I would like to point out, for the record, that this has as much to do with Buse's being excellent at 51 as it does with my noob status). In all, I as around 300 points behind Buse by the end of it all.
As previously mentioned, Bergüm woke up at around 4:00. After she arrived in the living area and we wrapped up the card game, we all sat around and didn't do much. I did a bit of reading, messed up my samurai sudoku, and did a little bit of writing. For some reason, I was able to start in a new world (writing-wise) today. Normally I stick to the ones I've already created, but this was a weird and unexpected combination of dystopia (not really) and DnD classes. The setup is one of the darker things I've written. The speaker is being hazed into this organization by participating in this underground revolution. It has to be underground because if they get found out, they'll be found guilty in a ten-minute trial and wiped from existence. Like, each of their names will be erased from the ledgers of their landlord, their grocer, the brothel, and the public library. All debts will be erased, and mages will remove them from the memories of everyone except their mothers, who will be forbidden to speak of them.
I don't know where I'm going to go with this, but I like it. I'm not sure how I feel about the fact that it kind of reminds me of 1984. (I wasn't a huge fan of the work at the time I read it. The only things that got me through it were patience and half a pound of jellybeans).
Ah, well. It's not as bad as the time I had to read 80% of Wuthering Heights in a day. That wasn't fun. Wuthering Heights is obnoxiously dense. At least Jane Austen has some sort of adaptability! And Jane Austen, if experienced as an audiobook, is actually pretty good!
Conclusion:
If you ike dystopia, read George ORwell.
If you like character developmment in your romance novels, read Jane Austen.
If you want a super-massive brain fart, read Wuthering Heights.
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