"go shawty. it's your birthday. we gon party like it's your birthday" --50 Cent

aight, so "it's been a long time... i shouldn't have left you...[without a new blog] to step to"

1st order of business...HOOPIN'! i finally, finally, finally got to a basketball court in Turkey! i have been wanting to play basketball for a long time. (i never have time in auburn with class, studio and work). true, the gym is located at the main campus which is 45 min away, and i paid 25TL for a 3 month pass which i found out i only needed for the weight room (but i can get back in there. i've been needing to do that as well) but it was a basketball court, and it's indoors. that's pretty much all the good that i have to say about it. the competition: i'm not gonna say that there was no competition, cus ppl who hoop with me, know that i'm not too good (ask Ebere). but i will say that i wasn't really playing, AT ALL, and my team dominated. we played 3 0n 3. it was kinda crazy tryin to play without really being able to communicate (calling screens was sort of useless and i didn't know what the score was or what we were playin to), but everyone knew when the game was over. more bad news is that i've come to realize from one trip to the gym, that i need new hoopin shoes. the shoes that i brought are worthless...
2nd. in case anyone wanted to know. class is aight. i haven't done or learned much in them yet, except studio. i have an "urban morphology" class that seems like it could be cool, but it seems kind of elementary (i'll explain later). i have an "architecture in cultural context" class in which i just found out that i have a project due at 8:30 in the morning, because professors don't make copies of the syllabus???? studio is the only class in which we are doing any sort of real work. yesterday Daniel and I built a study model of the site that we chose, and tomorrow i plan on doing sketches of my proposal (which is to use the second story of an ancient house and "adaptively reusing" the space to accommodate a desert cafe, a bookstore, and a music store...all around a central courtyard). i'll try to get some pics of my sketches up soon.
i was gonna talk about my horrible experience with tryin to get an akbil (like a bus/metro pass for students), but it's a long story and this is a long post already...
and i still have to talk about the reason that this post got the title it has. well, if you've been keeping up with my blog like the loyal follower that i know u to be, then u'll remember me talking about a girl that i met at Turkcell who was going to help me learn Turkish and i'd help her learn English. she took Adderly and I on a tour of the city and we had a great time. her name is Arzu, and her birthday is Christmas day. but for some reason her friends wanted to celebrate it last weekend...well Adderly and I were invited, and we had a pretty good time. they rented out the vip of a club and did like some karaoke and stuff (it was all Turkish songs, so i had no idea what they were saying or what the songs were)...but after they'd brought out the cake, which was delicious, and we were just about to leave...i heard Arzu on the microphone: "Jeremy. Adderly. Come.".......now i ain't know punk, so i went right on that stage....then she gave the mic to me and said "50 Cent?" --now of course you, my loyal follower, remember me talking about the first time we went to Turkcell and another one of the employees thought Adderly was 50 Cent, so it's been a running joke-- and i laughed...then i heard the words "go shawty...it's your birthday. we gon party like it's your birthday..." and i had a mic in my hand...she definitely motioned to me as if i were to perform 50 Cent karaoke...and being the coo kid that i am, and not wanting to wreck her party, and after thinking "these ppl will never see me again"...i performed the entire song (or at least the lyrics that i remembered, cus it's been a few years and i don't listen to singles).
...got a standing ovation, and the entire party was recorded so i'm going to try to get a copy of the tape...of course you're not gonna see it, though ;)