Our flat is a little crowded now that we are 7 people, but it's for the better. We're all together, Erasmus students who are here since September of last year and us.
We were here for 2 days when a French girl also arrived, so a French majority is present in the multicultural flat we live in. :)
The first question I had to myself when I woke up in my first morning here was, "so...what will I eat?", since ofcourse I didn't bring any food with me, needless to say that without food in my suitcase I barely fitted into 20kg-s. So I went downstairs to a small shop that is right next to our flat, and with an unsure voice I said "Merhaba" and quickly started to look for the things I need. Bread, milk, salami, buttercream, coffee...I put my stuff on the counter, and the seller man, who's always in an unusual good mood started to talk to me in rapid speed. I stared at him, like I never learned turkish in my life, and he quickly realised, I'm not understanding him. So he asked "Nerelisin?" which means 'where are you from?', I answered "
Macaristan", he greeted my answer with a huge smile, saying "Turkey and Hungary are brothers! Turkish and Hungarian people are friends!". I was really surprised, before I came here I had no idea about what Turkish people could possibly think about us Hungarians. Many Turkish followed this type of a response to my origin, which I'm very happy to hear.
Some who know me might ask, why don't you say you are from Serbia? Yes, I live there, and in a somewhat deeper conversation with someone who understands English (not many in Mersin), I gladly and proudly say, I'm a Serbian Hungarian, but I feel like for some this is a difficult state to understand, and it takes a history lesson to explain someone why am I a Hungarian who's living in Serbia, so because of the lack of my Turkish language knowledge, for now, I'm from Hungary. :)
We faced many smaller everyday life problems along the way, like this one, considering I came here with nothing but a suitcase and a good friend. But luckily, our new 'Erasmus family' never turns us down when we ask for help. Hours and days here go by really fast, because we always do something or go somewhere that is still new for us. We went to visit our new University, for a couple of hours, and it wasn't an official welcome, but we got to sneak peek into what's waiting for us when the semester will start. We went to the seaside and rented small electric motorbikes and we were riding for half an hour alongside the most incredible view I've seen in a long while. Another day we went bowling (I'm really bad at it, considering the winner had 90 something points total while I was still at 42...), we went to several reastaurants, tried out fish, 'kebap', the last one I really like and will have many more times during my stay, but also we cook for each other many times.
The other day we visited the Grand Mosque of Mersin (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mersin_Grand_Mosque ). I got to learn many new interesting things about the religion and the way muslims pray. Before I entered the Mosque I covered my hair with my scarf, it was a really odd feeling, I imagined that most women of this religion live their whole life covering up their hair, sometimes their whole body to the point where all you can see is their eyes. When I left the Mosque, I deliberately didn't take off the scarf. By this I wanted to experience 1% of what it feels like to be a Muslim. It might sound crazy, since I have 0 intentions of becoming one, but I do have intentions of learning about this type of life and the beliefs that are making it. I might not agree with everything about it, but I didn't come here to judge, I came here to learn and by learning, grow.
Today while the others went fishing and diving at a madly early hour (considering we usually never go to sleep before 2pm) me and my Hungarian friend went to explore the Catholic church of Mersin. I was so excited to see it, I didn't care that it was 3,5 km-s away from our flat, we marched towards it like there's no tomorrow. I wanted to see if it's different then the one that's built and nurtured in a Catholic environment. I wanted to know how many Catholics live in Mersin ect. So the closer we got the more curious I became. We saw the big cross on top of the small bell tower and we entered. The small garden infront of the church was beautiful and we could see that it was well kept. A kind man, I think he is the priest there told us some informations, like there are 400 Catholics in Mersin, and the grand prayer is at 11 every Sunday, and he'd gladly see us if we feel like coming. For the first time since I arrived in Mersin, I found something that looks, feels exactly like something from back home and I am really happy that I decided to find this church.
It's a nice feeling to never be alone, to go together everywhere, to always have people around me that are my age and just as dedicated to having fun and discovering new things in life.
