New from September

Hello there! I have been writing this email to you for a couple months now to tell you things that have been going on...I am finally sending it!
A few weeks ago I went to a traditional, cultural pre-wedding ceremony. It is for girls only, every bride does this, all of their friends and relatives whom are female get together to dance and eat and do traditional things. There is lots of dancing and food, and one big ceremonial thing. The bride wears this big velvet red robe and a red veil on her head. All the unmarried girls in the group wear red scarves on their head and a shiny cloth on their hand a hold a candle. The brides best friend walks into the room first, carrying a big mound of gooey henna (henna in powder form mixed with water) with candles in it. All the girls follow with their candles and everyone sings. The bride comes in and sits on a chair in the middle of the circle. We sway around her and the main girl kind of dances with the henna. (translated to English, the party is called Night of the Henna) Then they take clumps of the gooey henna and put it in the brides hands and tie her hands. If the bride opens her hands and welcomes the henna, it means that it is her choice and she is happy to marry. Then all the single girls take a clump of henna too and put it in a palm of the hand. Everyone leaves in in the hand for like 20 minutes and it dies the hand. My palm was all red for a while! It is a really cool celebration, there were old women there and young girls, all female of course…it was really fun. I have a link for recent pictures below

My Gokalp (my boyfriend) and I took a bus down the coast to the SW corner of Turkey…to Bodrum, for a vacation for 9 days. Bodrum is the main city on a peninsula in the SW corner. We didn’t stay in the city actually, we were on the north side of the peninsula about 30 minutes away. The peninsula is on the Aegean and Mediterranean sea. It was so beautiful there. The water was clear and the weather was perfect. That area has a lot of mountains so the beaches and swimming areas were all at the foot of hills. The scenery was perfect. My favorite part was that all the homes were white, cute, matchbox style homes. Every single home! Even the buildings and stores, even burger king, were all made out of the same white material and in the same style. It really looks beautiful on the hills. (It is like the Greek isles if you have ever been there--all the same Aegean Sea style) You can actually see 2 of the Greek isles from the shores of bodrum. We also went to another area a bit south of Bodrum called Datca. I will send pictures soon, I am uploading them

In October, I will go with my aunt (who will be visiting from California) all along the west coast of Turkey to Pamukkale, Ephesus, Troy, and other ancient cities! I am very excited

Also, after my Irish roommates left and went back to Ireland, I have some new roommates. One guy is half Turkish half American, he was born in Wisconsin and wanted to live in Turkey for a bit :-) The other guy is Brazilian. Things are pretty good :-)
Other news...I will be returning home in December....to Chicago for a few months at least.
Keep in touch,
Love Sarah
this is the link for pictures from August and September...pictures of Bodrum coming sooon!
http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/sarah_sommerfield/album?.dir=dcc8&.src=ph&store=&prodid=&.done=http%3a//pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/sarah_sommerfield/my_photos