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               Şimdi, az kalda. We only have three more days at the Eyup çocuk yuvası and then we will say our goodbye’s and head back to America. It will no doubt be a huge shock, after six weeks of going to the yuva every day, to suddenly leave Turkey and not see any of the kids again. Certainly, it will be hard for to leave, that much is easy to say. As for the kids, some of them more than others will be upset when we leave, but the thing I had been wondering is how hard it is for those children to say goodbye. 
               If saying goodbye to people you care about is the sort of thing that people could get used to, the kind of thing that you are eventually numb to because its just a part of life, then our departure shouldn’t be too hard on the kids. They, after all, have said more important goodbye’s as seven or eight year olds than I have yet in my life.
               For the children who have parents nearby, they have become accustomed to seeing their parents maybe for a while and then saying goodbye to their own family for some indefinite amount of time. For the ones who don’t have parent’s nearby, its been even longer. Utku told me one day how sad he was that his dad was coming to visit, because its hard to always say goodbye again. That was about three weeks ago, and Utku still hasn’t been back to the yuva, but I assume that when school starts again he will come back to the yuva. For the children whose parents decide that, after leaving their child under the government’s care for some number of years, they can take them home again, there are new goodbyes. When Nermin’s mom got out of prison, and when Akın’s mom decided to bring him back to Ankara, they left their best friends and the community which had taken care of them for so long and headed out on their own. After Celal’s birthday, he was too old to stay in the yuva any more. He headed out to a “dorm” for children who have grown too old for yuvas. He left behind him the most desolate crowd of children, sitting and staring at the ground and telling us how long they had been friends with Celal and how they missed him. Gulben, too, left for another yuva. Not because she was too old, she just came up one morning explaining, ‘they just told me I have to go to a different yuva tomorrow” These kids are uprooted and separated and left behind, and they deal with all of it surprisingly well. 
                 Today was one of the happiest goodbye’s that I have seen. Yağmor, a teenage girl who was found on the street and taken in, has been on a waiting list for a long time now to be moved to a yuva for people with special needs and mental handicaps. Finally, a spot opened up and she is able to go. Zehra held her head and kissed her cheeks, and the kids all crowded around to see her off. 
                Despite the frequency of goodbye’s, this will still be a tough one. A while ago I mentioned that I would be going to America on August 16th, to which one of the kids replied “okay, and when are you coming back?” I’ll miss the craziness of hardly understanding the shouts and questions. I’ll miss responding to “abla, abla, abla”. I’ll miss Mertcan (the younger one) asking me every few hours, in English, “How old are you?” So that he can respond, “I am ten years old” demonstrating a phrase we taught him. And on Friday, it will be a very strange feeling to say hoşça kal, goodbye, without the görüşürüz, see you.
 

    Today was our last Monday of work, so this is my 6th and final blog. When I was getting ready for work this morning, my mind wandered to this weekend, and I started thinking about what I should do. All of a sudden I realized that I’ll be traveling all day on Saturday, and then I’ll be home! The past 10 weeks have flown by, and I also feel as though I’ve been here forever. Last week the five of us made a detailed plan of our last meals and activities, and now that we’re eating those delicious foods and doing the last touristy things, it seems very real that we’re going home soon.

    As with all goodbyes, this one is bittersweet. I’m really excited to see my family, go swimming, eat my mom’s delicious food, and see my friends again. I’m not so excited at the prospect of starting my senior year in 2 weeks and dealing with the hassle of moving back to Durham. And honestly, I’m not excited to be leaving Istanbul. It’s a fun, historic, different city, and I think I’ll really miss living here.

    Yesterday we were in a Turkish newspaper. We were interviewed a couple weeks ago, and a photographer came and took pictures of us at the beginning of last week just before Guven returned to Durham. The newspaper tried to get permission to take pictures of the kids, but the government rejected their request. We were surprised and nervous to open the paper and see two pictures of the kids. As far as I know, no one at the yuva said anything, so hopefully we (and they) won’t get into trouble. I hope the article was good, but I have no idea since I can’t read Turkish! Sarah said there were a few inaccuracies, but for the most part it seemed to be a decent and complementary article. I’m looking forward to reading a translated version.

    Today was a pretty good day. It was my last time in charge, so I’m kind of relieved that it’s over. Now I can just enjoy the rest of the days w/o the stress of planning and preparing. I was worried because the weather forecast last night and this morning predicted rain all day, but we only had about 5 minutes of drizzle.

Today’s theme was science and the environment. We started out w/ a review of English words. Most of the kids have learned a fair number of words, and one girl knows all of the words we have taught! After the English game, we played Jeopardy. It was our third attempt at playing, and it was by far the best. I decided it would be better if they had to write their answers and hold them up instead of yelling them out or raising their hands. The writing did encourage much more teamwork and hesitancy before answering. We never had to tell them to discuss the answers, which was a very nice change from last time. We also eliminated 10 questions, so the game did not last as long. I hope they will remember some of the information, but I kind of doubt it. I was astonished by their lack of knowledge about Turkey’s geology. One question asked for the number of lakes in Turkey, and one team said 2! I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t expect them to get the exact answer, but to think that there are only 2 lakes in the whole country?! Another question asked for the number of volcanoes in Turkey, and that same team said 1. Common sense should have led them to pick a higher number!

After Jeopardy and a lovely American snack of pb&j sandwiches, the kids did a quick scavenger hunt. Treasure hunts and scavenger hunts are a great way for them to get some energy out in an organized way b/c they all sprint around trying to find the stuff, but then they actually return to us! Next, we unburied the tins of different materials that we buried 5 weeks ago on the very first day at the yuva. It was neat to see how things had decomposed. We couldn’t even find the banana and orange peels because they were completely gone, but of course the aluminum and plastic were in perfect condition. I think the kids actually understood and recognized the decomposition rates, and they all seemed really upset that the plastic was still there. I doubt that this lesson will translate to their lives because recycling is practically nonexistent here, but hopefully they’ll think about it occasionally.

After the undigging was the highlight of the day: the volcanoes! We did two bottles of baking soda and vinegar reactions, and they were really lame and disappointing. Practically nothing happened. Diet coke and mentos was a different story! The diet coke shot 4 or 5 feet above the bottle when the mentos reacted with it. I tried to get 6 or 7 mentos in the bottle, but the reaction was too quick for me to drop them all in. The kids loved it! After the first one, they started shouting for me to do it again. I’m glad that I bought 2 bottles!

After lunch we had them write on strips of poster board things they will do to help the environment. I don’t know what they wrote, but we made a nice, colorful chain link with the strips. I’m glad for them to think for even just 2 minutes about how they can influence the world around them. We had been planning to make rocket ships, but by that point they were all too antsy. We spread ourselves out among soccer, Frisbee, reading, and other activities for the rest of the time.

Chrissy and I walked along the Golden Horn for about an hour after we left the yuva. We went in an entirely cast iron church that was created in Vienna in 1871, shipped to Istanbul, and put together on the shore. I wasn’t sure what to expect from an iron church, but it was quite pretty! It’s such a nice walk along the water, and I’m glad that I’ve gotten to do it several times. I hope the rest of the week is as pleasant as today was. I’m so grateful to DukeEngage for funding this program b/c it has been a truly amazing, challenging, eye-opening experience. I can’t imagine having spent my summer any other way!
 

Yesterday was Olympics Day, which meant doing Olympic-related activities with the kids and introducing them to the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing.
Unfortunately, most of the kids didn’t actually watch the opening ceremony of the Olympics with us like we’d hoped. And the same type of situation arose the night before when we tried to plan a movie night for the kids. We put on Dr. Doolittle, and within 15 min. or so, none of the kids were even sitting watching the movie. We had bought popcorn and milk and everything, hoping to have a chill night with them, but apparently with seven and eight year olds, that’s virtually impossible to expect from them. I’m also amazed at how many fights break out between all of the kids. It’s like they feel the need to constantly show one another who’s boss. One of the funniest children in this respect is Ayse (pronounced Eye-Shay). She’s a nine year old who’s about 3 ft. tall, but that girl has some serious bully in her. She’s the size of most of the six and seven year old boys, so she basically decides to fight with them as opposed to the older boys. Any time one of them says something to her she doesn’t like, she will, without hesitation stomp up to the boy and punch him in the back or arm or face, wherever it will hurt him most. On Thursday, she tried to attack Yigit (a six-year-old adorable little boy – one of my favorites) multiple times despite all of our warnings for her to stop. And she looks so scary when she’s angry! She intimidates me as a 3 foot nine year old – if she were my age and size, I would not even look at her without some kind of body protection on.
I wonder if this has anything to do with her initial upbringing. Did her parents abuse her at all, I wonder, to cause her to want to be such a bully to all of these other kids when provoked? Or is it maybe because she’s so small for her size, she feels she needs to over compensate? I don’t really know. But it really is kind of disturbing to see how much fury is in her eyes when she gets pushed around by the boys. On the other hand, though, when she’s not angry, Ayse can be a lot of fun. The typical nonconformist, Ayse usually tends to not do whatever the rest of the group is doing, whether it be crafts, games, English lessons, or other activities. However, on occasion, she’ll still approach each of the ablas wanting a hug or to sit on one of our laps. Sometimes she’ll braid our hair or point at pictures on our shirts. Despite her aggressive tendencies, I’ve noticed she’s a very curious girl who still needs just as much affection as less aggressive kids. Hopefully, if she’s shown this affection long enough, she’ll grow out of her aggressive Napoleon complex.
So now there’s only one week left with the kids. I can’t really decide how I feel. I’ve kind of begun feeling like I’m ready to see the states again and to be able to communicate with everyone around me without a language barrier issue, but I don’t think I’m ready to say goodbye to the kids. Several of us “ablas” have decided it will be harder on us to leave than it will on them. They’re still so young and have so many more things to experience; this one experience doesn’t seem like it will be as memorable to them as young children as it will to us as young adults trying to figure out what to do with our lives. To us, this experience is more about finding out how well we work with children and discovering how we adapt to challenging situations and emersion in a new culture. With them, it’s more about meeting new “big sisters” and enjoying what games and knowledge they bring with them from the states. They enjoy all the attention and affection we show them, but I can’t really tell if they’re forming significantly unique bonds with us (despite obvious bonds formed through mutual appreciation for language differences…).
It’ll be interesting to see how affected they seem to be on our last day with them. It’ll be interesting to see how affected we seem to be, too.
 

Kader was one of the first children I noticed at the yuva. The first thing that makes her stand out is her remarkable size. At seven years old, she looks close to three and a half. Secondly, there is the fact that she never seems to get hurt. If someone kicks her, she swings back, and if she falls of a table, she giggles, and if someone three times her size makes her mad, she'll take off after them. If I were three feet tall, I think I would be scared of her.

It quickly became apparent that Kader didn't understand as much as the other kids. The staff at the yuva explained that she was one of the children who had been found, and that there was something wrong with her, some kind of developmental issue. They didnt anticipate that she would be able to participate in many of our activities. Games with lots of rules and more difficult crafts would be, it seemed, a little over her head.

Indeed, she seemed confused by or disinterested in many of the more structured activities which we set up. While most of hte kids are very patient with our muddled attempts at Turkish, she seemed to all together not understand. Ne? Ne? she would just say and laugh. The first time she and I played a game together, I felt like it was a triumph. We would count to three, and throw a pebble to the other person at the same time.Not exactly a difficult game, but I was glad we had understood eachother.

Gradually we've been able to understand eachother better and better and at this point we can almost converse. You know the game kids like to play where they tap you or cover your eyes and you have to guess who it is? She loves it. And it doesnt matter whether my eyes are closed, whether she has just tapped me five times and theres nobody within ten feet of us, or whether she's sitting in my lap and reaches up from there to cover my eyes. She asks who it was. I guess someone else. When i guess her, she smiles and says it wasnt her. I tell her I dont believe her and she howls laughing. It never seems to get old.

On the day when each kid made a scrap book page to put together in a yuva book, we asked them to answer, on their page, who they were, what they liked this summer, and what they hope to be when they grow up. Kader was thrilled to have a photograph which she recognized as herself, but after pasting it on, wasnt doing anything else to her page but walking around with it and showing people 'this is me'. Assuming at first she wouldnt understand the questions, I just traced her hand, but deciding to give it a shot I asked her a few times "when you grow up, what do you want to do?" After a few tries, she suprised me. "Police". Thats what she wants to do. So she has an ambition, and that was really exciting.

I really like Kader, and I feel like she has a lot of potential. She seems to understand more and more of what is going on, and I really think that with lots of individual attention and some extra help in school, she could eventually accomplish her goal. I dont know her full backstory, or what things will be like for her later. But I think the staff at the yuva told us that they just located her biological mother somehow, and next week, for the first time, Kader is going to meet her mom. For most kids, I think it would be really hard at seven to meet your mother, but I think Kader will be okay with it. Im hopeful that it will go well, and Im curious to see how our last week goes with Kader.

Last week, one of the girls left for home early, so it is down to six total at the yuva, including Sarah. I think the week went fairly well with one less person because we are very used to the children, the system at the yuva, and the days’ schedules now. Every few days or so, a batch of kids leave for camp while another few come back. This past week, Melisa and Kerim’s two other siblings came back, so we have a full set of siblings for the first time I think. They all seem fairly close and protective of each other, I wonder what it is like to live with your brothers and sisters at a foster home knowing that your parents can’t take care of all of you. 

This past Sunday, Lisa and I went to the Rumeli Hisari, a fortress in Bebek by the Bosphorus. It was built by Sultan Mehmet the Conqueror in the 15th century. We forgot cameras and thought that our memories would do it justice, but the views of the Bosphorus from every angle forced us to leave early so that we can save some exploring for this weekend when we go back with cameras. Then we went to Ortaköy, where we got kumpirs, these amazing potatoes engorged with anything you want, and gözleme, these amazing stuffed flat dough things. I think we’re going back this weekend for another round and a boat ride at night on the Bosphorus.

Istanbul is absolutely amazing, there is never nothing to do. I cannot believe I’m leaving in a week. I feel like my time here has just begun. I can’t bear leaving so soon. I knew from a few days after being back this summer that I will have to return again, and now I just feel more strongly about that. I feel like I've only started learning the language and people here, just like last year, and the time allotment is just not enough. I will be back.