It is Sunday morning and I am currently at an internet cafe near Ali’s on Baraj Yolu, Adana. My other 4 co-inhabitants from Ali’s room are still sleeping.

I came to Adana last night as this weekend Maria returned for a visit with her boyfriend. She will leave on Monday, this time for much longer than a week!

Yesterday I caught the full 19:33 train from Mersin. From Adana train station I walked to the bus stop and jumped on the blue 7C bus to Baral Yolu and Ali’s place. There were the other trainees and Zeynep, Maria’s workmate from the Seyhan Hotel. Zeynep had very kindly brought some profiteroles from Mado. Yum!!!!

From Ali’s 6 of us crowded into Zeynep’s Holden Barina (or whatever the equivalent is in Turkey – Opel ___?) for ‘Cazara’. Yes, the same place with the same band I had seen on my 3 previous visits to Adana!

At Cazara, there were many Americans from the nearby Incirlik air base in the audience. With their haircuts, persona and other other features it was fairly easy to pick them. The band were good as usual – playing the same cover songs, both Turkish and Western. This time Magda, the Cazara expert, assured me they played one new cover song!

As Zeynep, Hande (another Seyhan Hotel employee) and I have the same looking grey Nokia 3210 telephones, there were the same phone swapping shenanigans as the previous week. It is great when the phone language change to العربيّة or Русский with the press of a few keys! Someone also gave Ali’s phone 71 missed calls when Ali was concentrating on something more important….

In a way, this weekend was like the Bill Murray movie Groundhog Day only this time it was fun for the participants!