One of my biggest mistakes has been to mentally lump Turkey in with the rest of the Middle East. While technically Turkey is part of that region, it's culturally and geographically so different from the Arabian peninsula that the association causes a lot of false mental images. For example, does the name Istanbul conjure up images of shadowy deserts and fearsome nomadic traders going to spice markets? Yeah, that was my romanticized delusion. Until I got here and saw this:
Whoa! Not a desert at all. It's mountainous! It has trees! It has snow! Ankara looks a lot more like Wyoming* than Egypt. We're at the same latitude as Chicago, in the mountains, about as far away from a sea as you can get on a peninsula, so it makes sense that there would be snow. I had simply never taken the time to reason this out.*The mountains, not the city part.
This is our second snowfall of the season. The first was in December, when we got about two inches that lasted for a day or so before melting. But when I woke up this past Saturday morning and peeked out the window, I was delighted to see a white blanket covering the rooftops and narrow alleyway between the buildings. (Our apartment faces the back, which means my view is all concrete. Hardly inspiring.)
Unfortunately I work all day Saturday and Sunday and had no time to enjoy this. So I simply prayed a lot that the snow would stick around until Monday. God must have decided there was no harm in letting me have a snow day for once after years on a tropical island, because while I watched students take exams on Sunday, the snow kept going.
So on Monday it was time to play. We had decided that it would be fun to make a snowman on our day off. City life is not so conducive to snowman building, seeing as we don't really have yards and street snow gets dirty pretty quickly. However, a quick scout around the neighborhood turned up a nice big snowy spot in the park near our bus stop. Hurray!
In college, I had a friend from Arkansas who showed up in Nebraska freshman year without a proper winter coat to help her survive the subzero Arctic chill of the prairie. At the time we Midwesterners laughed at her, unable to fathom a land where people didn't have closets full of snowpants and boots. The joke's on me now: in packing for Turkey I did not anticipate playing in the snow and did not plan for this occasion. Neither did my flatmates. So we improvised.
Oh how stylish we are. White knit hats, Concordia sports gear, a very fashionable puffy coat deemed "so Taiwanese" by Americans in Chiayi, and yes I'm wearing pajama pants under those yoga pants.
The snowman quickly turned into a snow octopus with a giant head and eight tentacles pointing every which way. At some point during the building process, one of my flatmates pointed out that it might have been wise to learn the Turkish word for octopus in case anyone came by and asked what we were making.This turned out not to be a problem, since we soon discovered that the word is "ahtapot," which is highly intelligible in the context of, "Şu ahtapot mu?" (Is that an octopus?) A mom and her toddler came by to admire our work, or at least the mom admired and the little girl looked on in horror before finally running away.
He needed more definition, so we rounded up some red berries and leaves to make a face.
Voila! The octopus is complete. We celebrated by continuing to indulge our inner children on the playground equipment. You would be surprised how few strange looks we got from passers-by.
I am amazed that I can still fit into a safety swing. There is a bright side to having short legs!
The story ends on a bit of a tragic note. Our ahtapot lasted less than 24 hours. When I went to the grocery store this afternoon, I stopped by the park to see if it was still there. Nothing remained but a flat expanse of snow. You would never guess an ahtapot had been there. Someone clearly did not appreciate our ahtapot. Oh well. No killjoy can ever take away the bliss of snow construction.
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