Grape Leaves, Cheeks and Ears, and Walking the Line

So I welcomed in the New Year with a family from church. My roommate and I arrived in time for dinner, a little after 8, and man, what a dinner! I felt horrible, but the poor lady put so much on my plate that I could not clear it. I was beginning to feel sick by how much I had already eaten when she asked if I wanted more. It was unbelievable. There was eggplant cooked in a tomato sauce with some sort of sausage, some other sausage things that were deep fried in breading (think small corn dog except with spicy lamb sausage), there were all types of salads (four different ones I think), homemade humus, baked chicken (of which I was given a whole quarter), rice, and finally, and by far the best, were these little grape leave things. They were the size and shape of those really big pretzel sticks. It was simply grape leaves stuffed with rice and spicy meat and I don't know if I've eaten anything in this country that tasted as good. You can see why I was feeling so sick to my stomach! I ate till I just couldn't eat anymore. Then, around 10 or so, a table of different fruits and nuts was brought into the living room (yes, they picked up the kitchen table and brought the whole thing). I had to eat again, since one of the daughters was peeling fruit and handing it to me. If it hadn't have tasted so good, I would've been miserable. As it was, it was a good miserable.

But by far the best part of the evening for me was after the fruit and nut table was finished. The little girl (I'm guessing maybe 8 years old) took the better part of an hour teaching me the Turkish word for different things in the living room, and different body parts. She was great, and honestly, I probably learned more new words in that hour than I did all last week. She is a tough teacher! More than once I had to hold out my hand so she could slap it for missing words. And surprisingly, the hardest two words for me to get right were the words for cheek and ear. They're similar enough to confuse me and different enough to make me feel like an idiot when I can't get them right. When it was all said and done, it was probably the most laid back New Year's Eve I've had in a while and by far the most I've eaten on New Year's Eve (that does not include New Year's at the Gouges, since they're dinner is on New Year's Day, not Eve).

And finally, if you haven't seen the movie "Walk the Line," go watch it. It really is a good movie. It's just a movie about life, the life of a very famous man, but a very mortal man. It'll give you a little insight into why Johnny Cash was so famous to begin with. He could relate to his fans. I am in no way saying my life has been anything like his, but I can say that if any celebrity could walk into one of my family's patented Christmas Smackdowns and not be caught off guard, it'd be a man like Johnny Cash. And though adulterous in nature, the love story between himself and June Carter is great. I love a movie with a whole lot of loving in it! Watching the movie took me back home, to Piedmont, SC, and to the nights my grandpa would get drunk and crank up his western swing eight tracks and dance with my sister in the living room. Good times.