Dinner with my Students

I was thrilled when five of my female students asked me out to dinner this week. I rarely see my students outside class and am having a hard time not forming relationships with them. A few now are getting more confident in their English though, so I hope that I will be hanging out with them a lot more now.

The girls decided on Pizza Pizza in the city center so we took the bus down together. The meal was pretty interesting. We all shared pizzas and we asked questions about each others' families, the standard first questions in Turkey: How old are you? Are you married? What is your fathers job? How many siblings to you have? What are your siblings' job? Do you like Turkey? Have you been to my hometown yet? These questions were asked in about a half hour time span and then their English was basically spent.

It was a very enjoyable evening though. The most interesting aspect though was this: Our table was covered with pizzas and bottles of Coke and American pop music videos were playing on the tv. It seemed this scene could have been anywhere in the US. And then the call the prayer started, and the waiter muted the tv. This is the first time I have experienced this in Turkey. The tv was muted the entire length of the call to prayer. And I was probably the only one who noticed. Then about ten seconds after it finished the tv was turned back on. Our conversations had continued the whole time as well as others' in the restaurant. It was just very telling that they silenced the music.