Last week I was contacted by three separate groups who wanted to come to Van. To each I replied, “Why do you want to come here? We’re still waiting for God to lift the plague of frogs. The old Turkish men say we still have eight left.” But the people wanted to come anyway. Who knows what inner demons they were running from, to be driven here.

They came at a good time, though. The weather is turning, the grass is growing again, and no one has seen the Van monster in over fifty years (though we must always be prepared). Tourism is starting to emerge, though the word tourism must translate to something different in Turkish because when I asked a Turkish friend when tourists would start to come to Van, he laughed. However, on my first of two tours of the Kedi Evi (cat house, where we keep 80 of the 280 Van Cats left in the world locked up and under cuddly surveillance) I met a man from Taiwan who came this far only to take pictures of the cats. Weirdo. Just hide one in your backpack and taxidermy it when you get home. Viola! 3D picture.

But in the course of my three separate tours of Van castle during three consecutive sunsets (and three separate explanations of my fear of heights and why I wouldn’t climb the rampart wall) I began to realize that my city is actually a cool place. In my previous trips to the castle the ground was either covered in dust and gypsy children or in snow and mud. Both made the climb to the top difficult, though only one of these four elements threatened to leave me stranded if I didn’t pay it money. However, this past weekend grass covered the ruins of the Old City and the sun stayed in the sky long enough for us not only to watch it set but also to be hungry for dinner, and not lunch, as we walked back to the city.

The three groups that passed through Van only combined once for a show of force on Saturday morning, when the nine of us rode a minivan to Gevash and then took a boat to Akdamar Island, the site of an old Armenian church. The sign at the boat dock said it was built in the 8th century but one of the Turkish girls on our boat said it was at least a hundred years old. After a quick tour of the inside we spent most of our time on the island climbing trees that overlooked the salt lake. My friends said it was beautiful, and I suddenly felt like Van was the unpopular artsy girl that spring gave a make-over just in time for me to win a bet by taking her to the prom.

The only problem came with the university guest house in which I live. It’s basically a hotel for thirty people and its run by students from the tourism department, many of whom have never seen an American (some have heard stories about me, but dismiss them as fairy tales). So when I bring guests, the initial reaction is: “THEY DO EXIST!” It takes quite a while to get a room, and rates vary depending on how confused the student is, because many of them have worked for several months but have never had to check someone in. So as a solution, I began to sneak people in one by one while the receptionist wasn’t looking. I also had success with registering two girls for a room that eventually housed four and convincing the staff that two of my friends were married.

However, I felt some pride when the four-for-the-price-of-two was discovered by Ercan, a 19-year-old who occasionally works the front desk. When he discovered two other American girls hiding badly behind a wall in the courtyard, he contemplated the situation for a moment then said: “Only for you, Mr. Cass.”

“Tron stands alone in a field. Behind him is a slain dragon, and in front of him are
three very alive, very angry others. Tron does not flinch. With his rapier over his shoulder and two bandoliers of grenades across his chest, he stares them down. Cass, you have initiative.”

Thus began the Dungeons and Dragons game that six of us Fulbrighters played on Saturday, after our mid-year evaluation with the Embassy and program heads. When our Dungeon Master (DM) spoke these words, I was overcome with both a sense of how awesome this game was and how awesome I am. However, both illusions were shattered when it turned out that this opening was a dream sequence. Our DM knows how to crush spirits.

If you don’t know D&D, it isn’t satanic – Mom. It’s just a few guys having a good time wishing that they were anything but the loser I am. That came out wrong. It’s a pen and paper role playing game, where the DM casts a scenario and the players have to react to it (badly, in most cases).

My character’s name was Tron, but since he was French it was pronounced “Trau”. I spoke in an accent, and tried to make it consistently French, but it kept bouncing from French to my hog farmer uncle John to Arnold Schwarzenegger (though I had an easier time than Matt, who was playing a bard and kept trying to rhyme everything he said for the first half hour of the game). Tron was a musketeer unjustly jailed by the ruling Elvish class and replaced at home like a reverse Sommersby. As an afterthought, I made him incredibly racist against elves (you would be too, if you languished in their prisons for fourteen years). This ended up affecting the game a lot more than I had intended.

When we got out of the dream sequence and into the reality of the game (yes, irony is my specialty), the first three things my character did in combat was a) throw his rapier into some trash bags, b) vomit on an opponent’s shoe, and c) head butt a wall. The game turned out to be more difficult and I turned out to be less invincible than I previously thought.

The six of us had been talking about playing for quite some time, and because of this, we each came into the game with a well thought out character. The best was Ugga, a half human, half troll nine year old who swung a pine branch with the strength of ten Trons (since it’s a pen and paper numbers game, I know this is mathematically true). As Ed, Ugga’s creator, described his character’s religion, Cassian, I began to recognize elements, like a devotion to fish sandwiches and dragons, and the belief that it’s prophet, Cass, will come again in the guise of a dragon. My character converted three fourths of the way through the game.

We played for seven hours, and most of that time we spent impatiently waiting for the DM to spring a trap – for ninjas or even stray cats to attack, so we could finally fight. I was luckier than the others in that since my character was racist, I was forced to attack any elves I saw, whether it helped the party’s situation or not. However, when an attack came, most of the time I was too excited to do something logical, so I would react in a manner that doesn’t even make sense in my dreamworlds (I have many). For instance, at the beginning of our first major fight, I tried to shove a grenade into an opponent’s mouth. Instead, the live grenade fell at my party’s feet, and everyone had to spend the next turn scrambling behind tables, waiting for it to go off. Since I had the highest dexterity (a mathematical characteristic), I always went first and more often than not ruined scenarios by doing something similar to this.

Sadly, the game ended just before midnight because a) all the Fulbrighters not playing wanted to go out, b) Matt got tired of speaking in meter, and c) I used up the last of my grenades. It had been ending gradually for a half hour when Ugga, the adolescent half troll, got in a friendly-fire fight with our illusionist during a face off with the boss. It escalated until the illusionist, who could only conjure things less than three feet tall, created several floating crossbows that danced about the room in a random fashion. When his roll to complete the task was successful, we all turned to the DM and asked, “What happens next?” All through the game, the DM dictated what our opponents did, based on our actions, and he had been pretty good about handling our (my) more stupid moves. To this, he looked at us in disbelief and said, “I have no idea.” And so we declared ourselves victorious and went out for drinks.

This past weekend was the mid-year meeting for all Fulbright ETA’s in Turkey. The Fulbright Commission paid for the Ankara Hilton this time – BOO YEAH. They had a pillow menu. The hot tub wasn’t that hot, but I was definitely there for a long time because where else am I going to find a hot tub in Turkey? In comparison, the last meeting we had in Ankara was in an orgetmenevi, or teacher’s house. Three plus out of the fifty Fulbrighters got food poisoning, and the railing on my balcony was broken. I could’ve died.

On Friday, we went up one by one to a stand and microphone and gave a summary of our individual situations. By the second presentation, I realized I am ridiculously lucky to be in Van. Most everyone had some outrageous complaint: my boss doesn’t talk to me, my peers think I’m not a real teacher, I’m not getting paid, Cass stares at me when he thinks I’m not looking (I overheard the last one at breakfast). Almost every single girl, even the ones who stated that they loved their situation, said men think they are prostitutes, and will on occasion shout that out in the street.

I get paid regularly. I love my department head and my peers. I have yet to be called a gigolo. Plus, no one else lives in a city with its own animal. Van cat outside my window – high five! Or run away because of my sudden movement.

It’s obvious that Fulbright regrets these difficulties – I mean, they gave us each 300 lira in incidentals (of which I spent 50…on keychains). It remains to be seen how well the problems will be fixed by the time we leave.

However, Saturday was a free day and I’ll just come out and say it – the best day I’ve had in Turkey, hands down. After switching hotels (no one could afford the Hilton if the government wasn’t paying for it), a few friends and I played Dungeons and Dragons for seven hours. I can’t say much now, because it deserves its own post, but it is definitely the greatest thing I’ve ever done, right behind regularly serving the homeless at the soup kitchen where I made BANK. Per hour of work, I don’t think I’ve ever made more.

Saturday night, everyone wanted to go out. In our respective villages, no one drinks much because of the stigma, so when Fulbrighters get together, people drink a lot (not me, Mom). On Friday, at the pinnacle of drinking time, I had a guy offer me a job in the fall at a camp in California; at breakfast on Saturday he not only couldn’t remember it, but admitted that he had no authority to hire anyone. Anyway, on Saturday, I did not want to go out, but I am a follower so there was really no choice. As it turned out, the bar we went to had a dance floor. CHA-CHING.

I realized after a few hours of dancing that people in Fulbright don’t really know the actual versions of each other. Though no one tries to hide themselves, inevitably what we get is the Turkish version of each other. No one knew I liked to dance.

I’ve often dreamed about being able to play the piano well but never doing so. That way, after weeks or months of knowing someone, I could sit down at a piano and make people cry. Then all the girls would be like, “Cass, I totally see you for the stud muffin you are, underneath your big eyebrows.” However, when I started dancing, all the girls would say is, “You’re crazy,” or “Your shirt is on inside out.”

We named the award after him…sort of.

Or how my voice cracked while dancing in front of an audience of thousands of my peers. Listen how they laugh at 7:54. However, they seem impressed with my high kicks around the 3:15 mark.

Regardless, I got to relive my glory days and I only hit one Turk it the head with an elbow. Or he’s the only one who complained. All in all, great weekend.

Here in Ankara, we wear dress clothes everyday to attend seminars on Turkish Culture, English Teaching, and Covert Intelligence (I can’t really tell you what I’m doing in Turkey). But last Friday, after we finished our discussion on capturing and interrogating a tail, we were told by our advisors to dress extra special for dinner. Job fair? No. Even better, they said. We’re going to the Ambassador’s house.

I’m kidding, just kidding. Really I’m underneath your bed, and I’ll grab your ankles before you lay down to take a nap tomorrow afternoon. Don’t believe me? THEN LOOK UNDER THERE.

But seriously. I spent the last three months at a summer camp, and boy do I love children. They taste like veal. I have many stories of silly things campers did and extremely stupid things counselors did, and hopefully over the next few weeks I’ll share some of those if I feel like it. Honestly some days I wake up and everything feels like a lie. Those are the days I just make up stuff while I type.

A few of my friends and I went to see The Expendables last night for four dollars, and was it ever worth four dollars! I half expected to hear Terry Crews lament, “If I had a nickel for every torso I exploded,” and then I would hand him my four dollars and search around in my pocket for fifty five more cents. I’m still having trouble processing what happened. By the time the credits came around, I was astonished – they actually hired a writer. Someone got paid. Have you ever seen a movie or read a book and thought, I could do better? Well that wasn’t The Expendables. You can’t script improvisational genius. I’m pretty sure no one tried to script Mickey Rourke. All of his scenes were probably filmed in his home, and all the dialogue was actually him speaking frankly to Stallone on candid camera. But why am I talking about this?

Halfway through the summer my plans for next year changed. I was planning on working for BYX Nationals as a chapter consultant, but in late June I was notified that I received a Fulbright grant. Most people that I tell are from Arkansas, and assume this means the Fulbright Arts and Sciences College at the University, but nay, it’s actually a government program. It’s pretty prestigious, but I don’t say that for myself – I was an alternate’s alternate. The only reason I got the scholarship was because eighteen other people turned it down; the last one said, “Why don’t you give it to Cass? We’ll all get a laugh from that.”

The grant I have will send me to Turkey for nine months. I’ll be teaching English in a university there. I’ll be in southeast Turkey, right next to the borders of Iraq and Iran, so I’ll be sure to get you a souvenir. I hear crossing the border is as easy as one two three months in prison. However, instead of writing about a fraternity, I’ll now be writing about a foreign culture. I hope that’s cool with you.

I may not be deserving of this grant, but do you know who else won a Fulbright scholarship, fair and squizare? Dolph Lungdren, who portrayed Gunner in The Expendables while wearing a rubber Gary Busey mask. Dolph has a masters degree in chemical engineering, and won a Fulbright to attend MIT, but quit after two weeks because Stallone asked him to punch murder Apollo Creed. That’s the kind of spring board I’m hoping this turns out to be.