speaking Turkish and the regime of no technology

Hey, it's Jasmine. It seems that once again, I need to keep Dad in check. In his post about the electronics, my dad made himself seem like the heroic parent who stood up to his kids and saved them from excessive screen usage. What he left out was the severity of this new regime. I am honestly a mild technology user. Sam is a bit more excessive in his use, but he is also much more tech savvy than I, therefore he embraces technology more. And Zach is only ever concerned with checking his email and playing Akinator. Our parents though, seem to think we are unengaged and "get angry" when we experience screen withdrawal. First of all, Sam is naturally cranky and it has nothing to do with his ipod use. Second of all, what teenagers want to spend every waking second of the day in intellectual conversation with their parents? There aren't even that many teenagers who want to spend any time with their parents. 

The idea that we are "checked out" came from our trip to Kapadokya, when we drove for 11 hours, and our parents actually had encouraged us to bring our ipods on the long drive. They were insulted though, when we didn't want to listen to their endless reading from the guidebook and thus we were labeled disengaged, and the ipods were dubbed evil machines. 

On a different note, as I'm sure he has told you, my dad has started taking Turkish lessons at the official Turkish language center, Tomer. He now comes home everyday and spends hours (I'm am not kidding) trying to pronounce all the different Turkish sounds correctly (and in the end says almost none of them correctly). He also spends afternoons trying to get us to converse with him in Turkish and quizzing us on all his new Turkish words, acting extremely surprised if we do not know the answers (because we speak fluent Turkish, not). But, one thing we have taken to doing is pronouncing Turkish words we see/ hear, under our breath, as I had previously mocked my father for doing. Even my mother (who refuses to learn Turkish) and I (well I just don't like sounding like a complete idiot) have taken to muttering words we see on signs to ourselves. This is because the only thing more frustrating than nobody understanding you because they don't speak English, is when people still don't understand you when you try to speak Turkish. 

So now, I am just going to give a brief low down on what is happening here. It is now regularly chilly here (like 40s Fahrenheit), we are going to start sailing lessons tomorrow, Sam is going to a birthday party, Zach is basking in the glory that kids here actually laugh at his jokes, my mom wants to start learning Spanish (in Turkey, go figure), mom is also going to Paris next week, and dad is going to Germany soon after she returns. The grandparents are coming while my dad is in Germany and yeah, that's about it.