Oyak

13 08 2008

Every day after evening prayers, there is a party called Oyak.

Actually, Oyak is the name of a building outside Taize, where they sell useful items such as snacks and toothbrushes, and soda which is about 10 times better than ours plus it comes in more attractive bottles. No one knows why it’s called Oyak but it is, (actually OYAK is the abbreviation for the armed forces pension fund in Turkey but…) and it makes for great conversational material such as, “Will I see you at OYAK tonight?” or “Want to go to OYAK now?”. Around the building there are some tables and benches, and behind the building there’s a field where Europeans whip our tails at soccer. There’s also some tents back there, but open tents, not the kind you sleep in. And every night after worship was done everyone would gather and there was music and dancing and cheap food and every so often you would run into someone who was either drunk or stoned and giggling uncontrollably.

Then there were the people who got drunk and sang “La Marsillaise” until 4am, but we won’t go into that now. These European people like THE WORST of our music. (yeah, I know that the Marsilliaise is French, I’m just seguing…) As far as I could tell the guitar players knew about 16 songs and they just kept playing them over and over and over.

At any given moment during the evening if you went down to Oyak you would be sure to find:

  • Clapping games. There were a ton of clapping games, and it’s a great way to bond, I suppose. The chants to them were in all different languages, but the basic clapping stuff was the same. I must have learned 6 different ones that week. And one of the things about Taize is, no one is a stranger. You can randomly introduce yourself to people and randomly join in games with people from Lithuania or Poland or wherever. The bishop is standing there watching you teach German people the Chicken Dance. It was great.
  • Other games. By this I mean ZipZap (which I am really really pathetic at, by the way) or the game where you go, “Hyah!” and make a slicing motion with your arms, or the Italian version of Twister, which interestingly enough one girl had to play with a guy who was about to be ordained as a Jesuit priest. That got kind of awkward.
  • People over in the corner smoking something that was not cigarettes.
  • Four or five different groups of people doing various songs or chanting. Everyone centered around the musicians, clapping, and if you were close you got a bench to sit or stand on. Around the periphery of the crowd would be groups or people dancing.
  • Crazy American people obsessing over the Fanta bottles. Their soda is better than ours.
  • Some guys with guitars singing Country Roads Take Me Home, among other songs. They also LOVED Hit The Road Jack and Land of 1000 Dances, probably because they require no lyrical memorization at all, the Backstreet Boys, and Lemon Tree, but not the version you’re thinking of, the one by Fool’s Garden that starts, “I’m sitting here in the boring room…”. They all knew all the lyrics to everything, too. People from Siberia knew more popular American music than I did.

I think that to understand Oyak you really have to be there, plus I’m tired, so to close here’s a video of Oyak: centering on people who don’t know each other, or if they do they met two days ago singing and dancing together, which is a pretty awesome experience.

At least until you got a headache from hearing Zombie for the twelfth time and went back to the tent to take aspirin.

 

For MORE OF THE OYAK EXPERIENCE visit youtube and type “taize oyak” into the search box.

 

This was taken while I was there so I might even be in the background somewhere…but I didn’t look closely enough to tell.





Guess Who’s Back from France?!?

6 08 2008

And I’m not really in the mood to write right (write/right, get it? oh, I just crack myself up) now, but my trip was great, the flights were fine, and I’m glad to be home.

And here’s a preview of what’s to come here on Lapsus Calumni:

  • Olivia learns deep inner spiritual things about herself, such as the fact that she cannot sing in German and juggling is harder than it looks
  • Sometimes, the stuff you think is most pointless in school, like knowing when the Baroque Era occured (answer: in the past) or how to type on a French keyboard, comes in the most handy.
  • When Chanting Becomes an Obsession
  • Olivia thinks France could be Improved By:
  • Ethel the Singing Cow Goes to Paris
  • Olivia Really Should Not Be Here, She Should Be Preparing Her Presentation for Saturday
  • But She Is
  • And She Is Also Chatting on Facebook
  • And Bread and Chocolate for Breakfast is really really good
  • Also, It’s Weird ReLearning How to Use a Knife, Fork, Chair, and Napkin
  • I’m Not Sure Why I’m Referring to Myself in the Third Person
  • But I Can Now Chant In About 16 Different Languages
  • I Just Thought You Needed to Know That




What I Did Today

26 01 2008

Is that a catchy title or what!!!! Don’t worry, I’ll try to make it exciting.

First, I woke up.

Then, I ate breakfast.

Then, I brushed my teeth.

Never mind. Today we had a suprise birthday party for a friend of mine who just turned sixteen, which is very unfair because all of my friends are sixteen and have their learners permits and I’m not even fifteen yet. BUT, back to the subject. We suprised her at her house and kidnapped her and went to the diner and ate lunch. The diner there is soooo much better than the diner in my town. Plus, they have really good French fries. We had a booth to ourselves and talked a mile a minute while we ate, and my other friend Gab stole a straw.

Then we went to a cute coffee shop, where we sat in the window and opened presents. I was very happy her birthday is in January, because the only wrapping paper I had was leftover from Christmas. At the bakery they were selling this awesome new invention called icing shots. They are minature cups filled with buttercream frosting in different flavors. I didn’t try one but my friend had two and said they were delicious, and we made all kinds of jokes about “doing shots”. My mom and I are going to try making them sometime, so I’ll post pictures.

After we said goodbye, my mother took Gab and me to a candy store, where we bought all different kinds of candy (duh. it’s a candy store.) including every flavor of licorice they sold (from Holland, Finland, America, Australia and Scotland.) I got ten different hard candy sticks in flavors like pineapple, huckleberry, lime, cinnamon, and blueberry.

Then we came home and watched “The Office” which is my favorite TV show.

And I got my first text message ever.

So it was a pretty good day.





The Top Ten Strange Questions…

10 01 2008

asked of homeschoolers. We get a lot of weird questions, my friends and I, and I’ve been wanting to post some of them for a while.   

10. Do you have gym class? If you say yes, people look disappointed. If you say no, they tell you it’s not fair.

9. So, are you, like, a superfreaky genius employed by the government to stop terrorist attacks? I have not personally been asked this (Thank God); however, my friend swears it’s true.

8. So, do you get to do whatever you want all day? I don’t think so……

7. Who teaches you? The answer to this is usually “my mom”, which prompts the following question:

6. Did she, like, have to go to college to be a teacher?

5. Do you have to have a hall pass to go to the bathroom? This one always makes me laugh.

4. Does your mom make you read like a hundred books a day? This can be grouped with the ‘do you have to ‘ questions, such as “do you have to do chores?” or “do you have to practice your (insert instrument here) every day?”

3. So, schools have the day off today? This drives me nuts.

2. Do you get to do school in your pajamas? This is easily one of the most-asked questions ever. (duh. that’s why it’s number two on my list.) I don’t totally understand this question, but I find it extremely amusing. Why do regular kids have such a fascination with our sleepwear?

1. Do you have any friends? I always say, “No, I’m destitute.” This has gotten me a LOT of weird looks. Usually people either sort of smile like they’re not sure if I’m serious and then find an excuse to leave. Anyone who laughs is instantly my friend. So far I think my band teacher is the only one who immediately understood that I was joking, which is sort of sad when you think about it. Is school to kids only a place to meet friends? Don’t they have neighbors, or friends at church, or something?

NOTE: These are all questions my friends and I have actually been asked. You can look at this as either good (people are asking questions about homeschooling) or disturbing (see question no.2). I think it’s hilarious, although it gets annoying sometimes.








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