little to no

After a few visits to turkish friends houses and a talk with my turkish teacher today I realized one thing: Turkish people dont really have much. I was at my friends house, who are university students. I was looking around their apartment and there is nothing in it. The Tv was really old and had rabbit ears, when we were watching tv every station was really fuzzy. Like barely be albe to see the picture fuzzy and that was just normal for them. There house wasnt full of decorations or knick nacks. What is our fetish with knick knacks? I honestly believethat the amount of belongings I have here in turkey may surpass that which they own. That was hard for me to wrap my head around. all the things that I find so necessary to not live without, they probably dont own. The little treasures that I hold onto, dont exixt in these turkish households.

After my Turkish lesson I asked my teacher how his new job was going. He made teh comment that he works way less than at English time and make more money, He was like well only 100 more but much less money. I make 1,100 a month. ! He was working 45 + hours at english time making only 1000. He said it was about 4 lira an hour. THis was normal for Turkish people. THey are all salaried then expected to work a lot more. He pointed to the workers at the restaurant where were sitting and said they made even less. I thought about it. That was about my salary in Americorps, but we had a lot of perks, we didnt have families to raise, we knew that we just had to make it a year. This is life here. He said most people, unless they were engineers or doctors, would only make that much for thier life. That is probably why so many of hte people i talk to are engineer students. It is one of the few professions that makes money.

Obviously this is probably why Turkish houses dont havea lot, they never had a lot. their families didnt make money to randomly spend it so therefore they know they dont need it either. Makes me think about materialism around me. Also makes me think about the tourism industry and what they may think about those people buying loads of random things. Interesting.