The
exciting things in my life lately:
- Traveling to Hatay/Antakya, meeting new friends, eating good food, and seeing one of the best Mosaic museums in the world…
- Cutting out paper snowflakes, decorating the house, watching the first flakes of real snow fall, and bonding with roommates….
- Traveling to Edirne/ Istanbul, seeing beautiful mosques/churches, enjoying long bus rides, and receiving a Müzekart [Free Museum Admissions!!!]...
- Retrieving packages from locked safes at custom control, venturing to a new (strange?) part of the city, trying to argue in Turkish, and accidently breaking several universal bus rules on the way back…
- And, on Wednesday: cancelling class, watching an ostrich [not] give birth, and bonding with my students.
Every time I think I understand my life, I am consistently
proven wrong. When my students came late to class and told
me there was a “camel bird” on campus, I was more than intrigued but tried to
keep up my teacherly façade (which isn’t that great in the first place). When, with the use of Google Translate, they
invited me along to see an ostrich, that teacherly façade disappeared
completely. What my students may not
realize: If presented with the option of
an exciting adventure, I will always choose that adventure over a boring
classroom. My academic attention span is
truly quite short.
So.
Back to the ostrich.
I followed my students out to the Animal Hospital and to
exclamations of “So-and-so is a gentleman” as every door was held open by at
least three students was ushered to the “Livestock Operating Room” in the
hospital. Lo and Behold, there was, in
fact, a sedated ostrich sprawled out on the floor and surrounded by a variety
of upper-class veterinary students and faculty.
Being a bit averse to blood (read:
not wanting to pass out on the concrete floor in front of my students) I
stayed near the head and neck of the ostrich but, obviously, the exciting
things were happening nearer its nether regions where all of my students were
crowding eagerly. Based on their
location, the jokes being made in Turkish which seemed to all contain the word
“coming”, the explanations the seemed to include some indication that something
was wrong in the bird’s stomach, the fact that nothing was happening—everyone
was waiting, and the fact that my students said they wanted to watch the
ostrich for an hour, I made the only logical assumption: Obviously the ostrich was giving birth.
(Knowing nothing about the ostrich birthing process, I assumed an hour was an
accurate amount of time).
I watched for about 40 minutes before leaving the operating
room and cancelling class. The students
left with me and explained something about cutting into the stomach. “Oh, a C-Section!” I thought.
Afterwards, my roommate reminded me: An Ostrich is a bird. It lays eggs.
It doesn’t give birth. So…I don’t
know what I watched for 40 minutes. I do
know it was interesting, I do know it was unexpected, and I do know that it was
an adventure. Welcome to my life in
Turkey.
