Merhaba! I have had a pretty exciting weekend. On Thursday, my family took me to the seaside city of Antalya for a four day trip. Antalya is a beautiful city. We stayed in a town right next to Antalya called Side. Side is a word in the Anatolian language, which, in Turkish, means nar (pomegranate). Our hotel was next to the beach and I got to go swimming in the Mediterranean Sea! On Saturday, I walked down the beach with Semra and Fettah to the center of Side. Side is a really ancient city that still contains ruins of buildings that are centuries old. We walked past all of the shops and restaurants, and then we turned the corner, and we were standing next to the ruins of a Roman temple to Apollo from the 2nd century! A piece of one of the walls of the temple still remains standing and there are pieces of pillars and walls lying all around it. We also walked to a Roman amphitheater from the same time period. Seeing these ancient buildings was incredible.

This is my second week of school. I still have no idea what my teachers are talking about in class, however, everyone is really nice and more than willing to help me. I have also been studying Turkish from my grammar book and that is being really helpful. I realized that last Thursday marked my one month anniversary of being in Turkey. Wow, the time has gone by really quickly.

Ramadan started last Sunday. The whole country seems different during Ramadan. There are stories about the holiday on the news everyday and there is Turkish music played over the loudspeakers throughout the city.

On a completely different note, I found a similarity between the Turkish calendar and the Jewish calendar. The month of April is called Nisan, July is Temmuz, and September is Eylül. Sound familiar to anyone? I just thought that was interesting and I wanted to share it.