Nearing the End

Its down to the last three weeks of my time here in Turkey. It has been a crazy, exciting, hard, and great 7 months!
I am so excited to get home and be with my family and see my friends again. I am so grateful that I will be back for Christmas and as soon as i get back I get to go to Tanaes wedding with Jill and Chelsea!! I love these girls so much and I have missed them a lot. I have also missed many of my other close and good friends such as bro/Corey and Alyssa (i will be going to her mission farewell the day after Tanaes wedding! )
I am sad I dont get to see my Turkish best friends especially miss Kelly Donkersgood. I have missed having her here in Turkey with me.
I cannot wait to see my family and go back to school! I even miss snow!! not the cold but yes the snow! I am sure this will change after the first couple weeks.

Anyways I am going to miss Turkey dearly, especially my dear sweet Derin who I love spending my days with. I also miss my first sweetheart Zeynep and I hope that I  can see her before I leave.

The good news is that my parents are moving to Barcelona Spain in January if the visas go through in time so I can visit them and then it will be easier to make a trip over to Turkey.
Dad and I had a great two weeks together and it was so nice to spend that time with him and travel together to Italy and Spain and in Turkey. We have seen soooo many rocks!! at least they were cool rocks from ruins and ancient art and such but still in the end a rock is a rock and we saw tons and tons of them!
I will write more on that later.

This week is Thanksgiving and I am planning to cook a few (with Derins help) traditional dishes for my host family. I hope it all goes well and I am excited because I looked up a bunch of fun stuff for Derin and I to do to learn about thanksgiving.
We also started to read one of my  favorite books Ella Enchanted and I am super excited. It is a little advanced for her but its a good change for us to go over new words.

So three weeks and counting down. Derin is sad but I need to keep it in mind so we can make the most of our time. I am so excited to get back into my own country where i will understand the people around me! its going to be weird and i am sure my brain will fry but its so worth it.

I am going to miss Turkey
Adieu for now!!

Man of many talents

Other than Derin I teach a guy who works for Samen (my host mom) as head of the tech department. His name is Kaan Tezimel. He is a very tough student but i must say he is a man of many talents. His true passion is for history, specifically Turkish history but also every other history.
He has written a few historical novels and he is very much into traditional parts of the Turkish culture. He plays a very traditional instrument but i dont remember the name and he sings and dances.
Here is a video of him that he posted on facebook. It sounds very different to anything I am used to but in the Turkish view he is very talented and sings beautifully.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oey6cQ4Y-KQ

here is another video of him from youtube. This is very traditional and Turkish people love to still listen to this kind of music. Things are changing now with our music from the states and such but I think that this culture still runs strong in Turkey.

Also the president of Turkey is on the cover of Time this week for Europe Asia and the South Pacific! check it out!
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/europe/0,9263,901111128,00.html
i need to read it still... :)

Take Luck!