Türk Kızılay Derneği - Turkish Red Crescent Society Headquarters

Even though I've fallen off a bit in updating this for our weekday excursions and I typically don't do any updates without pictures I had to make an exception for our trip today. We were given the chance to take a guided tour of the headquarters of Türk Kızılayı, the Turkish Red Crescent Society, which is the local branch of the Islamic equivalent of the Red Cross that operates in a number of countries throughout the world. Though I didn't know what to expect going into the trip, it turns out we were granted entrance to the large compound by the airport that serves as their national headquarters and given a guided tour of their operations! After some conversation and tea (of course!) in the disaster response area we were shown around to the other buildings to see some examples of the temporary housing and tents they use, the factory where they construct the tents, and the local archives dating back to the late 19th century. According to our guide they can put up the temporary housing units in about four minutes a piece and from the ones we saw they can fit a pretty good number of people without being too crowded. Türk Kızılayı has been involved in disaster responses not only in Turkey and elsewhere in the region, like Gaza, but also for the Tsunami in Indonesia and the recent earthquake in Haiti. Maybe the best thing about the trip is that it is one of the few times that I have visited an organization like this and come away thinking that I wish there was some way for me really get involved in their work. Though a classmate and I joked that going to work with them on water treatment in Gaza did sound like more fun than grad school, I think it was mostly hypothetical! Nevertheless, it does seem like an organization where someone could put some knowledge of English, Arabic, and Turkish to good use so I will keep it in the back of my mind. If nothing else, I was able to exchange information with the archivist which could be a very good resource in the not too distant future. All in all, this was probably one of the best weekday trips of the summer and something the program should try to do much more of in the future!

[Cultural lesson of the week: After the trip to the Red Crescent Society and a few rounds of beer and nargileh with friends, I returned home to find my family watching the Turkish version of Wheel of Fortune. Although the basic game is the same, in Turkey it goes on for nearly two hours and, rather than featuring audience members as the main contestants, it has a rotating cast of characters that not only spin the wheel and guess the puzzles, but also break into song and dance numbers at seemingly random points in the game! In addition to the odder aspects of the show, they still feature some participation from regular people, often via satellite in various small villages throughout the country. The oddities of the professional players are made up for by these people that would probably never make it past the producers of the American version. I saw an elderly woman in one of the villages win a house on the game tonight and I'm not sure I've ever seen anyone so happy! I couldn't quite make it through the whole two hours but it was still fun to watch! Now if only they had a local version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire like they did in Damascus. There's nothing like building your language skills and your random trivia at the same time!]