Who will you be today?

I have had nursery songs stuck in my head all day.

Tomorrow is my third day working with the kindergarten kids. I'm working at Mavi Kuere, a kindergarten that just opened two years ago. I'm not really teaching so much as singing along with whatever video/cd we are playing and letting all the little girls play with my hair while the little boys stare shyly at me. In all honesty, the kids are adorable. Except the 6 year olds. They're annoying little things. Well, the boys anyway. All they do is find new ways to torture each other. The 6 year old girls, on the other hand, find new ways to cuddle with me. They save me a seat and try really hard to get me to pronounce their names correctly.

Overall though, my workday seems short. I leave the house at about 9:30 and arrive at the first school. Mavi Kuere has two schools though, so at about 11:00am, the English teacher and I get shuttled to the lunch pick-up place and transfer shuttles to the other school. This school is about 1 1/2 hours away from my house. I'm supposed to be "teaching" until 4, but since it takes me so long to get home, they let me out at 2pm. Can't say I mind it. =)

In other news, I met some of Tugce's friends. We went to a street behind the university that is just entirely cafes. You can get Turkish coffee (which is delicious!), food, hookah, or any other number of drinks. So far it seems that hookah is more American-Turkish than Turkish-Turkish. They have it, but I didn't notice many people smoking it. It's probably different in other hookah-smoking countries, though (P.S. Can anyone explain how and when we use the word "though" at the end of a sentence? Like a rule? I can't for the life of me think of an easy way to explain it to Turkish people.)

Lastly, I got mistaken for a Turkish girl today. Some little old lady on the bus insisted on speaking to me in Turkish for quite a while, before I enlisted another Turkish girl to translate for me that I do not, in fact, speak Turkish. The lady wanted to know how I got around then, as she had been asking me the direction of the bus. She then proceeded to tell us her life story about her family in America, and ended with a warm invitation to her home, if we had time. =) Another show of Turkish hospitality. And another country in which I apparently fit in. It seems my undefinable-color hair and changing eyes work pretty well for me. Good to know. =)

Haven't taken any new pictures, so I'll just post another one that I like. =)