So far Turkey has been awesome. It kind of sucks living in a hotel, but I'm used to it now. The food here is good, I live across the street from the sea, and there are plenty of cool things to see in Istanbul (when I get the chance).
But one of the biggest differences between Turkey and Japan/Denmark is the level of communication. This is my first experience having a non-American/Canadian coach. Obviously everything is said in Turkish, and I get about.....40% translated for me by the assistant coach. His translations are sometimes a little funny, and maybe a quarter of the time make no sense, but hey I roll with it. Often times this leads to me having absolutely no idea what we're doing in practice. I compensate for this by being the last into drills, so I can figure out what we're doing. This is unusual for me, I've always been one of the first to go in drills. But no big deal.
Besides adjusting to a foreign coach, I've had to adjust to general public not speaking/understanding English. In Denmark, everybody under 60 speaks English, many better than myself. In Japan many people are too shy to speak, but most can understand you if you speak slowly and with basic words. But in Turkey there is almost no English. Sometimes it's frustrating, but most of the time I don't mind because, hey, I'm playing basketball in Turkey.
Tonight I went down to the restaurant in the hotel for dinner. I wanted something really filling because we have a game tomorrow at 1 pm. I had eaten their tortellini before, and it was delicious. But it came with mushrooms and no meat. I decided to order the tortellini, with grilled chicken on top and minus the mushrooms. This was my first big mistake: Never complicate food orders, it doesn't work!
I was excited to see my tortellini being delivered just as I was finishing my vegetable soup. I was pleased by the impeccable timing, but dismayed to find no chicken and mushrooms in my tortellini. Too hungry to care, I dug into the tortellini...leaving the mushrooms on the side. I wasn't third-world hungry! The last time I ate tortellini I wasn't full when I went back to my room. To compensate I started eating a lot of rolls that were at my table. After the rolls I was feeling satisfied and looking forward to desert.
As the waiter came to take my plate away, I saw he was carrying another plate. This caught my eye, because normally they serve my ice cream in a bowl. When he set my plate down, I was surprised to see another dinner entree. My grilled chicken had arrived. Complete with mashed potatos (unequivocally the worst mashed potatos I'd ever had. I now know why they serve fries with everything), rice and half a tomato. The waiter then explained to me, or at least what I think he was trying to explain to me, was that they aren't supposed to serve two entrees but he was doing me a favor. I thanked him and as he walked away I wondered how I was going to eat this second dinner.
I managed to eat half the chicken and all the rice. I took one bite of the potatos and nearly lost everything. This leads me to something else....I think I have a weird reaction to terrible food. When something is really terrible, and spitting it out is not a viable option, I lose my ability to swallow it. I don't know what it is....maybe I'm worried about the after taste, because sometimes that is worse than the regular taste.
Anyway, point of the story is I finished both entrees, all those rolls, soup and desert. And now I'm laying in bed writing this post, unable to move and with a severe stomach ache.
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