sleep

During Ramadan sleep is at a premium for most Muslims. People fast all day, beginning at 4 am and going through about 8:15 at night. This means that breakfast must happen before 4 am and dinner must happen after 8:15. Many families celebrate Ramadan at night. The Sultanahmet area of Istanbul draws thousands of people for iftar (breaking the fast). After the breaking of the fast, there are usually families strolling in the square, children playing with balloons or cheap light up toys, and everyone enjoys the live attractions of music, plays, shops, and other festivities long into the night. Often families will stay until midnight or later. Considering that they need to be up and have made and eaten breakfast by 4 am, there's not much time to sleep. Some people try to sleep during the day or nap when they need to, but others work regular long day shift hours throughout Ramadan, so sleeping in the day is not an option for them. As a result, sometimes tempers are short. By 7:30 a person surviving on little sleep and no food or drink for more than 15 hours is bound to be a tad irritable. I've been quite impressed with how little conflict we've seen under these circumstances. I've also been finding that I have had a difficult time getting enough sleep. When we go out for iftar, we often aren't finished with dinner until after 10 pm. Once we've put the kids to bed and I've done whatever preparation is necessary for the next day, it tends to be pretty late. Today was an excellent day for me because it was the first time since we've been here that I woke up feeling rested. I had given the students several assignments to do during the day and we moved our class time until just before iftar, so this meant a long stretch of time to sleep in a bit, get caught up on accounting, do some grading, and work with colleagues here to figure out schedules and arrange payments for some of the special things we want to do here. We ended up being home for a lot of the day, which was exactly what I needed. This afternoon our two kids (ages 10 and 12) proposed that they make an independent trip to the grocery store to pick up some supplies for lunch. We were a bit surprised at this proposal at first, because they've never done this before. In the US, we don't live within walking distance of a market, so there isn't really occasion for them to run an errand without us. We both realized that we were fine with sending them out on their own to the local market, and in many ways we feel safer doing this here than we do in the US. Our experience here has been that if you need help you can ask almost anyone to help you, and at least 95% of the time they will agree. I don't worry about our kids being out on the streets here because the streets are full of people who are more than happy to lend a hand if there's any problem, and most of them won't wait to see if anyone else is going to help out; they will just jump in themselves to solve the problem. The kids went to one market to get their supplies, but that store didn't have mustard (they were determined to make egg salad sandwiches). They decided to check another store nearby, and at that store no one had any idea what mustard was. In any case, they came back with most of what the went out for (and a few things that weren't on the list but that they bought because they felt bad that they weren't buying anything after the shopkeeper went to an effort to figure out what mustard was!) We were pleased that they felt comfortable enough to suggest shopping on their own, and proud that they were able to manage getting what they needed in a foreign language with currency that isn't their home currency. I think the parents of the students should also be proud of their kids (my students) that they are doing so well with figuring out how to manage life here. I've been impressed that they have developed the ability to barter for what they want to buy, do their own grocery shopping, and manage many aspects of daily life here, even though some of them have never been outside the US before. Many of these are little things, but they aren't always easy to manage when you don't speak the language of the people. They have also reached the point of being able to "think in Turkish liras" so they don't need to calculate to know whether something is a reasonable price or not. They have a general idea of how much most staples should cost, and they are making good decisions about managing their funds. One of the things that's always interesting to watch when we bring students here is that they are used to living as students and being frugal with money. We are giving them a daily allowance of 15 lira (about $8 US) for breakfast and lunch. Don't worry - this is enough here. Even though they have this allowance, they are still quite frugal and have figured out all the cheapest places to eat. The other day they came back with a story about how they had found the very cheapest doner (shaved roasted lamb - like gyros). They located a place that would sell them a doner sandwich (like shawarma) for about $1.30. They were particularly interested to find that this place was so skimpy on the meat that one of the "doner" sandwiches actually had no meat in it at all. I think they somehow viewed this as a triumph - they had found the bottom of the barrel! They have also grown so accustomed to being able to buy a liter of clean, cold bottled water for about 30 cents that they are very hesitant to pay for water in restaurants (which may charge as much as $1.50 for a liter of water).