Mashallah!

Apparently there is a Turkish belief that if you are a male and you pass under a rainbow you become gay, and if you are a female you become lesbian. The tour bus with all us BUSEL (Bilkent University School of English Language) interns on in went under a rainbow on the way to Cappadochia (Kap-a-DOKE-ee-a), so I guess they don't have to worry about us making babies this year. Another widely-held belief that receives a greater level of genuine credulity here is that cell phones interfere with the brake systems of buses. Furthermore, if someone shows you a picture of their new-born baby, you are supposed to say "Mashallah!" (God watch over you/may this continue) and pit on it (I'm not sure yet if this applies when they bring in the actual kid), beacuse saying how beautiful the baby is is bad luck (you are giving it a potential arrogance that will have to be erased by something bad down the road). One way to ward off this bad luck is with the evil eye, which cancels out the effect with its own badness, or absorbs it. Those suckers are all over the place here. To review: please don't call my cell phone over here to tell me about your baby, because if it goes off while I'm on the bus and I say how cute it must be, I'm going to get a lethal dose of evil eyes and the school will end with gay Bucky kebab for lunch.
A parade of wedding cars went past us yesterday in Cappadochia and honked their horns while we all cheered. This morning another parade of festive vehicles passed us, and as we began to cheer, our guide said that it was actually in celebration of a circumcision, because "Mashallah!" was written on one of the cars. That helped explain why the guy in the tux was crying. Life here is interesting, but I miss you all like that guy misses his foreskin!