LangMemorize

Check out my latest webtool for word memorizing!
I'm still working on it, but it's allready good enough to test my memory with the oh so different turkish vocabulary!
I've got a list with 1200 words and I think I memorized about 500! :)

NOTE: An here's a link to online turkish dictionary.

Long time no write

Yes! My faithful readers cry for more texts on this blog!
My last text was on the 7th of September, the first day of turkish classes. Since then it has been harder to have the time to come to a net cafe. I have 4 hours of classes in the morning. Also, I start to know more and more people here and meeting them in different places in this city takes a lot of time in transports, I spend on average 3h in transports every day!
Our TR:hoş (nice) TR:oğretman (teacher) gives TR:çok (a lot of) homework and I spend on average 2h studying (hmm, or not)!
The teacher is actually really nice! Last friday we had a study trip around the city, new interesting places with superb views! I specially enjoyed the view there where the bosphurus meets the black sea!
Today the teacher took some of us to lunch at Üsküdar and a visit to the KızKulesi. Excelent turkish food and a great place to enjoy a 360 view of the city in the middle of the Bosphurus!

Body language

One of the things that brings more confusion to my every day life here are the gestures, specially yes and no.
Turns out that in Turkey they lift theır eyebrows when they mean no. This brings confusion because, to me, this seems more like a yes than a no!
Also, my western no (knoding head from side to side) means I don't understand. So they just repeat the question :)
Check out this site for some turkish body language insight (must remember not to use the Gesture that means a person is homosexual , see last picture in the site)

Another thing I found interesting is greeting. So here's the result of my sociologic study:

Occasion	Portugal	Turkey
Man - Man (not close)	Handshake	Handshake
Man - Woman (not close)	2 kisses	Handshake
Woman - Woman (not close)	2 kisses	Handshake
Man – Man (friends)	Handshake	2 kisses
Man – Woman (friends)	2 kisses	2 kisses
Woman – Woman (friends)	2 kisses	2 kisses

PT Rules:

• Man never kısses man
• Woman never handshakes

TR Rules:

• It doesn't matter if it's a man or woman, the only difference is being friend or not.

Man, it's hot in here!

I was going to write that it's much hotter and humid here than I'm used to, but after comparing Lisbon and Istanbul weather for yesterday I can see the difference is not that big, still humidity here got up to 94%! I guess that, when in Portugal, I spent most of the time surrounded by air contitioned and now it's all au naturell!
Anyway, this is what I see every day: people go in the dolmuş which is a mini-bus for 10 people with 2 small windows and no big refrigeration system and they have a turkish bath there! No wonder they invented this! :-P
It's really good for your body to renew the water, they tell me. And then there's a big market for small water bottles, in big squares you can see water bottle sellers wandering though the crowd selling their product, almost everyone is carrying a water bottle since sometimes it's hard to survive without it!