Chai and Other Matters

With today's instant communication cheap and fast travel and globalizing economies one would think that all of the cultures of the world would begin to confrom to one ideal. I was under the impression that this was, to one degree or another, the case before I made this trip. With McDonalds the world over and a KFC within sight of the Gaza pyramids how could I not? But I have found to my great pleasure that the culture here in Turkey is both different from my own and exceptional in its own right, despite the fact that Burger Kings dot Istanbul and Coke is available everywhere.
There are the obvious differences of course that mainly follow from Turkey being a Muslim state. Many of the women wear headresses and long dresses and mosques stand on each street corner calling the faithful to prayer five times a day. But having lived in rural Turkey for a short time I have noticed more subtle variations in the culture. First and foremost is the friendliness of the people despite the fact that I cannot speak more than a dozen words of Turkish they always stop to converese in one manner or another with me. This point was made most clear to me on my last two days in the field. My team's survey area had taken us to the very edge of the village where pepole were constantly taking an intereset in our activites children followed us through several fields and farmers always came to talk with us when we were near their homes. On one occasion yesterday we were asked in for Chai, a strong tea drunk cut with water and sugar. The man who did not speak a word of English ushered us into his yard and lay out several carpetes for us to sit on, shortly thereafter the farmer's wife (I presume) came out bearing Chai for all eight of us. She began to pour hot water into one glass, swirled it about and then poured it from that glass into the next until all of them had been rinsed then she filled each cup half full of chai and topped them up with hot water from the larger of the two huge teapots she carried stacked one atop the other. I thought it was very kind of them to treat us so, there were even biscuits on the tea trays, but then they began to bring out the food: a great platter of bread, then a bowl of goat cheese and one of parsley or perhaps cilantro to go on the cheese then a delicious sweet bread and then a bowl of fresh picked apricots and sweet peppers, all from their own garden. We sat there for an hour and a half eatting and trying out best to converse with the man and his wife who were soon joined by several older men and women as well as their daughter (once again an assumption).
Today in the feild we were asked in for chai several times but had to refuse as politly as we could ecause of the amount of work we had yet to do. Even after our refusals the farmers brought out some food for us. One gave us a bucket of the most delicious raspberries any of us had ever had and another gave us a bag of some small plum like fruit which I could not identify ut happily eat three of.
The differences in my own culture and the one here go on and on of course varying from things like erratic and sometimes nervewracking driving to the call to prayer echoing from the nearby mosque each morning and listing them all would take far longer than I am willing to spend, but it is a great comfort to know that in this modern world some cultural distinctions still exist.