Ticks and other devious creatures

I did not go back to the hospital tonight for my second bloodletting to see if I have hemorrhagic fever. I laugh in the face of danger!

My host mom keeps telling me I've lost weight. Ha. She apparently thinks I am an amateur at living among peoples who enjoy overfeeding their guests, and have a will that is easy to break with innocent-sounding compliments. But thanks to my experience in Russia, I see this for what it really is: a devious ploy to get me to eat even MORE of the delicious food she heaps on my plate at every meal. Nice try, Nursen Teyze.

Today in class we had a mini "evaluation" of the program so far (one of our teachers is also the program director for Ankara) in which we critiqued our host families, language classes, and supplementary lectures in Turkish. I said, "I like my host family, but they don't understand that sometimes I just don't want to eat." My teacher's response was, "If I had known they were from Erzurum, I would have warned you. You never stood a chance. With people from Erzurum, there is no chance not to eat. You will be able to roll back to America."

I did not know this about people from Erzurum. All I really know about Erzurum, which is a city in eastern Anatolia, is that the people there hold a hard candy in their mouth while drinking tea instead of sweetening the tea, and the word they use for "cup, glass" (bardak in standard Turkish) is istakan, borrowed from Russian stakan. Nursen Teyze's mom told me that when she found out I spoke Russian. I was very pleased to learn this (because I am a dork who loves word borrowings), but I still refused to let her convince me to take a second helping of lentil soup. I will prevail!