I made it!

It felt like it took forever to get here. I got bumped up to first class on my flight to Atlanta, which meant talking to the rich girl beside me and the sassy flight attendant for most of the flight - and free booze! I picked champagne. I felt like it was appropriate. That was the best the trip over got, though. The flight from Atlanta got delayed, of course, so I missed my flight out of Manchester and had to wait five hours in what's got to be the most depressing airport in a first-world country - all screaming kids (the British have the most annoying screamers, in my opinion), duty free stores and neon restaurant signs. I set the alarm on my new Ipod, and fell asleep in the waiting area. I woke up an hour and a half later so afraid that I'd missed my flight again because the alarm had been going off for thirty minutes but wasn't loud enough to wake me - I was out so hard I was probably snoring. Luckily, I caught my THY flight and got my first taste of Turkey. Literally. Olives and beyaz peynir and vişne suyu and hazelnuts (which Turkey promotes now with the advertising slogan "THE MIRACLE NUT COMES FROM TURKEY"). I was smiling so big at the back of the seat in front of me that the guy next to me actually asked me what I was smiling about. 

I got to the airport and walked out to a sea of mustaches and head scarves and searching eyes. Apparently five people were expected back from Mecca tonight, and their entire families came to greet them at the airport, filling up the whole terminal. I watched them greet their families from the Vodafone store, where I bought minutes and charged my phone and got made fun of by the guys working there for 1) being American, 2) being from Texas, and 3) holding a pen weird. Whatever. 

I got to my hostel and went out to get food at about 12:30 a.m. - which I knew was risky, but I was starving! I immediately got harassed by some dude, and then an American came and got me out of the situation and then came with me to dinner - because the Turkish dude was still following us when I got to where I wanted to eat! This guy had been traveling for three months, and was on his way to Egypt after this. He's been all over... so interesting. 

I slept late today, and then spent the day buying souvenirs for friends and family and exploring the Bazaar District, getting buyuruned left and right - and then hello'd and bonjoured and hola'd and everything else. I bargained! I was not shy about it either. Those guys don't need to eat, right Mom? Anyway, the shopkeepers were impressed by my Turkish (it comes back so quick). I in turn was impressed by the ten billion other languages they know enough to use to sell. 

Then I caught the ferry over to Haydarpaşa to buy my train ticket for tomorrow night. I stopped and sat where my friends and I got tipsy waiting for our train in May. I've been trying not to do things like that - thinking, oh, this is where we... - because I want to make new memories and not be focused on the past. But that was such a nice night, drinking rakı on the steps of Haydarpaşa station, staring at the Golden Horn and the curvy skyline of Istanbul (and that giant weird ball-thing), that it was good to remember. 

When I got back to the hostel, a group of Germans was going out to eat, and they invited me with them. They were stopping through in Istanbul for New Year's on their way to Ethiopia. They were tons of fun! We talked about everything, and drank rakı, rakı, rakı. I am continually impressed by the quality of the English of every German I meet. It's funny, though, that whenever foreigners talk to Americans, they want to talk politics. 

Now, I'm sitting at the little table in my hostel, where I don't think one surface isn't painted some bright color, and I'm struggling to get it into my head that 1. I'm in Turkey! and 2. I actually did leave for quite a bit of time. Number 1, really, is different from the whole, oh I'm in a new place shock thing. It's something I had a problem with in May. I think it has something to do with how at home I feel here, how I have to remind myself that I'm actually in a foreign country, that I should be soaking in every minute of it. When I called my friend today, I told him I was going home tomorrow night, by which I meant Ankara, but which he took (like any normal person) to mean America. Number 2 is more of that. It feels like the last six or seven months never happened, and I never left. Except that I'm (just a little) older and a lot wiser. 

Istiklal is still here, still brought to you by Turkcell, and still crowded and dirty as ever. The same men still sell mussels, or steaming chestnuts, or lottery tickets off spinning wheels, only now they're wearing more clothes, because it's snowing (it was so cold in the Tünel that we could see our breath as strong as if we were puffing on cigarettes). The women's hair is still perfectly coiffed, with a few bottle-blonde and bright reds mixed in. The Bosphorus still shines and men with long fishing poles and buckets of smelly live bait still line its bridges. And I am still in love with it all. 

Especially the food! Oh my gosh! So much for no appetite! So far, I've had olives, vişne suyu, ayran, salep, gözleme, kıymalı pide, some meat dish with potatoes and peas, mercimek çorbası, pılaf, ve salata. Even the salads are amazing. 

Alright, it's time to sleep. More from Ankara, probably. 

It's 2:36 am and I'm not asleep yet. I could be, but I remembered this blog. I'm sure nobody checks it anymore. I don't care. 

I've gone through a lot lately, and now that I finally see where I need to be heading, I've been thinking about Turkey a lot and the person I grew to be there. I don't know if everyone has such a deeply personal experience on study abroad trips - I suppose they do, and that's why they're so popular. But the beauty of personal experiences is that even if everyone has one, they'll always be unique for each person. To me, it felt like more than a study abroad trip. 

I'm going back a week from today. Through hard work and a series of fortunate events, I got the opportunity to do research for my thesis over the break, paid for by Plan II. 

I've been having very vivid memories of certain times in Turkey for about a month now. Memories of my time there were never really that suppressed, but they had died down when my semester got crazy (and this semester has been the most stressful I have ever had, hands down). But lately, they've been coming unbidden, usually when I get a couple of minutes to myself. They're the kind of daydreams that end with a shock when I realize I'm not actually there. For some reason, the most vivid have been of bus rides in the East, Selçuk, the Kale in Ankara, or my home. 

I close my eyes, and the next thing I see is the sun peeking out from behind tall blue curtains, my friends sitting close in the seat in front of me, debating whether this Turkish saying means this or that. I see the young, scrawny and slightly sweaty attendant on the bus passing by with a tray of Nescafe, tea bags and chocolate cake in plastic wrappers, Lake Van out the window glistening bright blue. I see women and their children dressed in mismatched, baggy, flowered layers, their heads covered, beating their carpets in a stream between two bare hills. I see flocks of sheep roaming plains that seem to go on forever. I count the minarets of mosques in villages. 

Or I see all of Ankara spread out in front of me, my legs dangling from a centuries-old castle over a narrow cobblestone street, the sun setting in clouds over a city where probably a quarter of the people are drinking tea at that exact moment. 

Or I'm laying in a field of flowers under a ridiculously beautiful tree. I can still taste the cheese, coarse bread, olives and fruit wine that was our picnic and I'm laughing, because my friends are eating the carpet of flowers for dessert. I'm tired, because it's the last day of our trip, but I don't want it to end. Snippets of Turkish rise from the village over the hill, and I can understand some of the language that weeks earlier seemed so foreign. 

Really, though, what I got out of being there was not so much a file of memories that I can pull out when I need a diversion, but a new sense of myself. It was the first time that I really experienced being me, myself, and being happy with that, not wishing that I was this, or that. Not wishing I could be more... or be less... or be here, or there, or with this person, or away from that person. Not waiting for this, or that. I knew that I was who I was, and that was who I needed to be, and that although I may change over time, I was always going to be myself, and that that was enough. 

There were times this semester that I missed Turkey desperately. Partly because it was so fun and there was so little responsibility besides keeping myself alive and not lost, but really because I missed feeling how I felt about myself there. Now I see that I don't need Turkey to feel that way about myself. I'm working on it. But I know that just because I'm a work in progress doesn't mean I'm not a whole, complete person right here and right now. 

Alright, nothing really worth talking about has happened lately, aside from the trip to Kapadokya, but I've already been there and we didn't do much that I didn't do last summer. The salt lake was full on the way, which was different. We walked out a little peninsula thing and I got water on my shoes, and I didn't wash it off fast enough so it ate through the leather - not enough to make them unwearable, but it's definitely not a good thing. We did go to "Turkish night" where we danced and watched traditional dances and stuff. Lots of stuff was in caves, like last summer. I dunno, I don't really want to replay everything. Underground cities, fairy towers, cave churches, pottery, carpets, onyx, Haci Bektash, blah blah, all the touristy things. 

This weekend we're going to Ephesus - I'm leaving tonight, and coming back Monday night/Tuesday morning. We kinda made our director mad by planning on skipping a lecture. I don't really care. It's one lecture. I'm excited!

I guess I'll post something I wrote last night while I should have been sleeping. I realized I haven't really written in years, and doing this felt good. Yay. Okay, here you go!

Yesterday I found myself in an almost involuntary search for a bathing suit. I spent an hour and a half looking all over in the small part I know of Ankara, the capitol city of a predominantly Muslim (although progressive) country, for the one thing I am probably least likely to find. The search was productive, although I ended up still swimsuit-less in the end. I realized two things while I was out, digging my hands deep into my pockets to fight the oncoming cold front.

The first - and this is the reason for my search - was that I really miss swimming. Lately, my substitute has been the gym, with my IPod to combat the monotony of the machines. Before that, in Austin, I ran. Running almost satisfies me sometimes, but the jarring of my feet against the pavement, the passing cars, and the ever-present thought of my route never really allow me to think. I miss the rare grace I have when I swim -- the feeling of my hands slicing the surface, the bubbling of water across my ears, my muscles knotting against each other and pulling against the water, the propulsion I get from so little work, it seems. Its not even something I'm really proud of; pride in something implies effort to master it. It's just something that feels right. 

When I'm moving through the water, I can think with lucidity. A little burst of adrenaline hits when I replay a conversation in which I misspoke or misunderstood, my arms pull harder against the water, I kick off a little quicker from the wall. I smile at a funny phrase or the memory of a happy moment, and taste cold chlorine through my teeth. In the water, God speaks and I truly listen. Sometimes we fight, but in the water it's the fight of a daughter against her loving father, not of a lonely girl against some invisible idea of a God. Things become as clear as what I'm gliding through. 

The second realization was that some of my most meaningful moments in Turkish have been when I was alone. I love my friends and family here, don't misunderstand. We have some funny moments and some awe-inspiring ones, and probably the times when I am happiest are spent with them. But as I stood in the grand courtyard of Kocatepe Mosque, in this country whose language still feels like molasses in my mouth, a few drops of rain began to fall on my face. The setting sun still shone, unobscured by the black rain clouds on the horizon - my favorite kind of weather. I stood, despite the beginning rain, just staring at the two giants - the mosque and the thunderstorm - and was blown away by the world's vastness. When I'm around people, I focus on them, and I miss experiences like this. I guess both ways I'm gaining something. Why worry about how to better spend my time, when I've got all my life to both connect with people and to be alone? 

Sometimes while I've been here, I feel like I've been sliding backwards, wiping out the progress I've made in the last year. But I realized that no matter what I'm doing, I'm learning. When I'm walking alone through the streets of Turkey, comforting a hurting soul or being comforted, climbing a mountain, in a cave, on the minibus, in a plane, talking to an old friend, laughing, planning, remembering, I'm still learning, working my way through things. So maybe in order to move forwards, I have to fall back. 

So, second post. I've been wanting to do this one for a while. 

Things I miss about America:

Friends/family

Hot water from the tap

Drinkable water from the tap

Sushi

Cajun food

Mexican food

My comfy bed

Bathtubs, although I hardly ever take baths

Effortless communication with people I need things from

It NOT taking an hour to get anywhere

Being able to go see a good movie at the cinema easily

Large bodies of water inside/right next to the city

The abundance of trees

Things I love about Turkey, and will miss when I go home:

EVERYTHING ELSE, especially

My host family

Visne suyu/recel

ekmek

baklava

that sesame dessert my family buys me cuz they know I love it

hearing the language every day

the niceness of the people in general

wearing slippers at home

cay

making/hearing funny language mistakes

the ability to go to the hamam

traveling almost every weekend

my little room

cheap, abundant fruit

...and plenty of other things that I can't think of right now.

Ahh, sorry it's been a while, it's kinda been busy/I've been lazy. 

So, last weekend Dan, Sina, Claire, Austin, and I went to Amasra, which is this little city on the Black Sea. It was sooo beautiful, and so nice to see the sea again after Ankara. I miss large bodies of water! Anyway, we were given a lot of advice of what to do while we were there, but the piece we heard the most was "eat fish!" 

We decided to go on Wednesday, got our tickets on Thursday, and left on Friday. We took the bus, and instead of it taking us straight to Amasra like we thought, it dropped us off in this little town thirty minutes away from Amasra, and then we had to take a series of dolmuses to the town itself at 12:30 in the morning. It was interesting. We found one of the pansiyons I had researched and talked the guy down from 25 YTL to 20 a night. The pansiyon was so cute - very brightly colored, and from the girls' room we had a view of the sea. It was also attached to a patisserie - so we had really good baklava both days. Also, it was about 20 feet from a mosque. I remember being woken up by the muezzin before dawn. 

The next morning we woke up at 7:30 to go explore. The town is deserted at this time of the year, so we had it all to ourselves, but we also got stared at a lot. We met a woman who spoke no English but almost fluent German, and Sina just happens to be German and so she got us breakfast. We explored the kale area, climbed things we probably shouldn't have climbed, and went into holes we probably shouldn't have gone into. No one got hurt, though, so it's all good. Then, Claire decided she really wanted to climb the island that half of the city is built on. So we climbed to the top of the cliff and played around and relaxed for a while. Then we played around/bouldered/went swimming in the Black Sea, which is actually unpleasantly cold this time of year, and probably always. Then, lunch time! We had mezgit - probably the most amazing fish I've ever had. They were small and fried and we ate them whole, because the crispy outside made you not notice the bones. Then we walked around some more, just basically enjoying the relaxed feel of the place, and the sea, and the baklava. Then, some narghile, manti, gozleme, a beer, some exchanging of life stories and further bonding, and sleep. 

We had been told that we would get bored in Amasra and so we should go visit Safranbolu. So, the next morning we hopped on a "bus" - a mini-dolmus, really - for the 1 1/2 hour ride to Safranbolu. This town is known for its well preserved Ottoman architecture, and the saffron which gives the city its name. And that's pretty much all it was. We walked around, visited the pazar, did some shopping, had some cay, and then we were like, okay, not much to do here. It was really cute and I'm glad we went, and I bought some cool stuff at the pazar, but seriously, I think you'd get bored more easily in Safranbolu than in Amasra. So, we got on the bus back home. 

So, that was my weekend, and this week has mostly just been school and the gym and relaxing with my family, until last night. We went to If - this music venue - to see this clarinet player that Claire said was amazing and she'd heard in the states. He was amazing, and it was really fun, but the concert started at 12:30 and didn't end til 3:15, so we crashed at Austin's host family's house (they were SO nice), and then today I was really tired for the 7 HOURS OF CLASS that makes up my Thursdays. Then I took a one hour nap that lasted for 5 hours, and now I'm up, and my sleep schedule is probably screwed again for a while. 

Tomorrow, we leave for KAPADOKYA! My favorite place ever. We're not staying in a cave hotel, so I'm a little bummed about that. But I really want to go back, so maybe next time. Yay! Okay done!

Alright

Tonight was fun. The electricity goes off at twelve, while Gozde is in the shower. So the house goes dark and the TV goes off and both me and my host mom start laughing and asking Gozde if she's alright, who comes out all wet with soap still in her hair. We try to flip the breakers, using my computer as a flashlight, since they don't have one and mine's in my suitcase somewhere. Flipping the breakers doesn't do anything, so they decide it's something to do with some device on the wall out in the hall. We call the neighbors, because one of them might know what to do. She brings some copper wire, and fiddles around with the little device, while I dance around in the hallway so the motion detecting lights don't go off. But something doesn't reach, so they ask me if I have any American copper money. I go to my suitcase and take out a penny, the neighbor plops the penny into the device, then screws the device back into the wall, we flip the breakers, and Let There Be Light!

Moral: Always keep your laptop charged, and a penny on hand. Oh, and don't be afraid to dance even when there's no music. 

So, mostly culturally uneventful week, except two things, really. 

First, yesterday, Claire, Teresa, John, Austin, Dan and I went to a hamam. We were given directions by our friends who had been there last week, and told to be prepared to get naked. The directions were as good as they could be considering the hamam was on a "shady" back street in Ulus, the old, awesome but confusing part of town. Finally, after being stared at a lot and asking for two or three sets of directions, we found it. It wasn't a touristy hamam, so the boys and girls went our separate ways. We went in to the outer room where we stood around looking confused for a while before they directed us to our changing room, and then gave us these sweet wooden geisha sandals and directed into the inside part. Inside everything was grey marble, with faucets pouring into marble basins for us to do some preliminary washing. The ceiling was vaulted with domes that had maybe eight or ten skylights shaped like six- or seven-pointed stars - so beautiful. At some of the basins were other women, some our age and size but most magnificently large, mostly naked women - they were beautiful in such a natural way. They reminded me of the little mother goddess statues at the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations. 

Then, we hung out in the sauna for a little while before the woman called for us. She scrubbed so much with this exfoliating glove that the top layer of my skin pilled up and formed little rolls. Then, a quick massage and rinsing and soap and I was done. Afterwards, my skin was so smooth that when I sat down and tried to rest my elbows on my knees, they kept sliding off. Afterwards, we were all so relaxed that we all hardly talked while eating lunch - at a kebap place called Kebabistan. 

Then, today I went to church with Joseph and John. On the way in, they swiped us with metal detectors - not something I'm used to when going to a church. After that though, everything was so familiar, I almost forgot I was in Turkey - except that we sang some of the songs in Turkish, and some in a mix of Turkish and English. Prayer was in all different languages - Turkish, Persian, English, Korean... So cool! Kids were running around everywhere, and nowhere have I seen so many gorgeous children in one place. I went out to lunch with the lady who runs the child care, and hung out with her four-year-old daughter, who kept asking if I was going to come to her house afterwards :).  The woman said if I was going to be here in a few weekends, she'd love to have some help. In the end, I'm going to be helping out with the kids on a substitute basis when I'm in town. So quick!

Anyway, now I'm home and we're gonna go eat pudding at the neighbors in a minute. I was supposed to hang out with Ufuk and Co. tonight, but Ufuk woke up with a cold she caught from little Hande, so that's put off until later. I hope she feels better.  Today was a gross day - being sick right now would really suck. 

One thing I'm kinda bummed about is that my Turkish hasn't gotten that much better in the last week, partially because we haven't learned anything in class. Most of it's my fault, though. I haven't really been trying. 

Well, I think I'm going to Adana this weekend, so more after that probably!

Sorry I haven't posted since last weekend. I wrote a long post last week but when I went to post it, the computer wouldn't let me do it. Oh well. 

Basically, two Saturdays ago, we went to Beypazari, a little town northish of Ankara. It snowed a lot, and we had a snowball fight. We saw people doing traditional arts - ebru, called marbling, and kilim weaving, and silk scarf weaving. It felt so good to get out of the city for a while. Oh, and they gave us free time, so we followed the sound of music to this guy's going away party - he was starting his military service. The family pulled up chairs for us and invited us to join them! It was fun. Then, Sunday, I woke up to a blizzard. My host sister and I went shopping, but the rest of the day was a nothing day. The rest of the week was full of just random hang outs and stuff, until Thursday. 

Thursday night, we boarded the overnight train to Istanbul. Ugh. I hate overnight trains. I was also not looking forward to Istanbul at all, since my experience of it last summer was horrible. Friday morning we arrived in Istanbul, and after dropping our stuff off at the hostel, we went to this old electric plant-turned-museum and played around for a while. We saw an NGO - really made me want to go work in one, but there isn't really something like that in Ankara. The kids were so sweet. Then we had the night free, so me and some of the guys went to go play tavla and such. 

Saturday, the scheduled tour was of Topkapi, the Hagia Sophia, and the Blue Mosque. Since I'd already been, I went with some of the year-long students out to Buyukada, an island a one and a half hour ferry boat ride away. It was a lot of fun! I hadn't spent much time with the returning students, and I really like hanging out with them. The island was beautiful - I couldn't believe how different it was. The houses were big plantation-looking mansions, with amazing woodwork. The views were incredible, and there were parks everywhere. Trees! Oh my gosh, green! My eyes were so happy! We stopped in this park to get tea, and while we were sitting there, horses came walking up out of nowhere, just grazing. Kristin thought we were in Narnia for a second. We finally made our way home, after stupid-but-hilarious conversations on the ferry, and ended up having a lot of fun wandering the streets of Istanbul until 4 am. 

By some weird coincidence, I ran into the only person I knew that lived in Istanbul at 2:30 in the morning, so the next morning, we got up and played frisbee in Taksim Square and then checked out the Orthodox Greek church. Then our group went to Dolmabahce garden. I have one thing to say about that place: chandeliers. The guy had a huge thing for giant crystal chandeliers. Giant. Chandeliers. 

Then, after a cruise on the Bosphorus, we boarded the train again, and arrived in Ankara yesterday morning. After that, I slept til four and then did nothing. 

So that's the trip in a nutshell. I'm sorry I don't have any real observations, but I'm really tired and I have a paper to write. More later. 

Today, first, I lost my wallet and then found it again. Then, I took the wrong dolmus (little buslike thingy) and ended up on the other side of the hill from my house at 10 pm. So there I was, wandering alone (and female) down dark streets in a (sort of Middle-Eastern) foreign country in a city that goes on as far as the eye can see, knowing that I'm probably, but not certainly, in the same neighborhood as my apartment complex, and that if I can just get to the other side of the hill, I might be able to find something that looked familiar. Then, I slip on a patch of ice, and my phone goes flying down the hill. I search around in the dark for my phone, find it, and then realize it's snowing. Today was not a good day to forget my scarf. I walk for about 10 more minutes and finally decide to admit defeat and call my host sister. She calls a taxi for me and the taxi takes me through the winding streets, about six blocks away to my house.

Grrr.

Favorite quotes so far:

Samantha: "I think Jewish women are way more attractive than Jewish men."
Me: "I utterly disagree with that statement."
Samantha: "I guess you're right. I guess they're about half and half."
John: "So they're statistically normal."

Diana (in Ulus): "Man, these back streets are really well lit."
Me: "Maybe that's because we're surrounded by lamp stores."
Diana: "Yeah... that would be logical."

Pretty much anything Claire says, including, but not limited to: (when trying to order dinner from a buffet and really really wanting the potatoes) "How do I.... um... how do I..... PATATES!"

Pretty much everything Cigdem says, especially: "Are you burning?" and "Craps!" Also, her impression of a vampire is priceless.

Erica: "The tiny Cigdem in my pocket is totally saying 'craps' right now."

Oh man, I'm so glad I'm staying with a family! I met them on Sunday - it's a mom and her daughter, who's 22 and goes to METU and speaks really good English. The mom's really really sweet but doesn't speak any English at all. It's definately not awkward to be living with a family, but it is a little frusterating to be set up in this situation that is supposed to be so close and intimate, but also be unable to even say the simplest things. Imagine not being able to communicate with your own mother, when you're in the same room. There are so many things I want to learn, but I can't say more than I want this or I like that or there is such and such. Meh. I got Gozde (my host sister) to teach me the simple present and the present progressive and the past tense last night, but I still don't know many verbs. I wish Active English didn't have such an aversion to teaching us anything useful!

We went to Ataturk's mausoleum yesterday, and now I understand a little better why the Turks love him so much. He definately did a lot for the country, and he was a pretty classy guy. One of my friends was talking about a speech he made to the Australians after Gallipolli, I think, where he says something like "Our country is blessed to have your sons and daughters buried on our land." I think that's pretty awesome. I still don't know how I feel about his means to Westernize the country (seems like it was mostly through banning symbols of Islam), but my opinion continues to change every day. My brain hurts from all the higher thinking.

We went to this pretty boring lecture today on migration in Turkey, which was held in a stuffy room with tiny, wooden seats. It was still useful information, though, and the teacher was in the process of telling us the different waves of migration and settlement communities when some stupid European dude raised his hand and cockily asked, "Excuse me, what is the point of this lecture?" The (German and female) professor first asked him whether he was provoking her, and when he answered, basically, that he wasn't here to listen to stories, she basically started to ramble off facts, proving that she knew her stuff. At the end she said something like, "So, if you are here to be entertained, I suggest you leave. I guess I am telling you a story. Fairy tales are a different matter."

It was awesome.

Also, we taught our Turkish teacher the word crap today. Only she says craps. Its hilarious.

Tea time!!

Well, since all my family wants me to keep updating, I guess I will.

So, it's officially been a week since I arrived, and already it feels like I've been here months. I've noticed that every time I do something that requires a lot of people to get to know each other fast, like NYLC, Cho-Yeh, and this, by the end of a week it feels like you've known each other forever. We've been going, going, going all week, and now that it's Saturday night, everyone just wanted to go home and get some rest. I think this is one of two times that I've been in a room without someone in my program for the whole time I've been here. Normally, we all go everywhere in a huge group, but lately we've all been getting a little tired of that, so we've been breaking off more. Being in such a big group makes us all feel stupid, partly because we have to get the Turkish students who are with us almost constantly to speak Turkish for us. I can't wait until we start working on grammar, since all I know right now is vocabulary.

Travel plans keep being made, but we obviously haven't had a chance to carry them out yet. Me and some of the girls are talking about going to Konya next weekend, and maybe to Çatalhöyük since its relatively close. Hung out with a guy last night who's taking exams early and traveling all around the neighboring countries - the relatively safe ones, of course. We're going to Istanbul two weeks from now, but that's with the big group.

It's fun going to all the places we visited last summer - Tunalı, the Museum, etc, and remembering that I thought I might never come back. Now I'm back here only six months later.

So I always dismissed southwestern Asia and the Middle East as a bunch of -stans. They never really interested me until I came here. Now that I'm here, and there are riots in the streets almost every day and policemen with riot gear and tear gas and water cannons and my roommates are from all these countries that I always thought of as just a name and not a country and everyone's talking about terrorists and the PKK and the headscarf issue and I can see Atatürk's face everywhere - now I think this might be the most interesting place in the world. You can get in deep conversations with anyone within an hour of meeting them, and you never run out of things to talk about. Oh, did I mention that my new roommate is from Iraq? Yeah, just over the border. She's Kurdish. Talk about interesting conversations. One thing I'm realizing is that I know so little about anything that matters over here.

Anyway, I don't know if I said this in the last post, but if I did it deserves to be said again: the Turkish people are so nice! Aaah! So nice!

Today we went to Kale (the big Seljuk castle - I think it's Seljuk - up on the hill) and Ulus. Kale was awesome, and the area around it reminded me more of how I saw Turkey last summer - more interesting old buildings and kilims and sitting on the floor and cobblestone streets. I can't wait to get out of the city. I like it here, don't get me wrong, but it's a big, relatively new city with homogeneously ugly architecture. Oh, and did I mention the smog? I'm lucky I don't already have respiratory problems. But hey, at least I'm in Turkey!

Anyway, I think it's time to go. I bought Snow by Pamuk and I'm gonna go read it and go to bed early. I'm so worn out from this week. More later!

I'm in Turkey!

I've been here for about five days now, but it's been really hard to fınd an internet connectıon. Also, the keyboards a Turkısh one so Im just gonna type and forget fındıng dotted ı's and apostrophes too often.

Anyway, When I got here, jet lag was bad and the people were tıred and annoyed that we had to be herded around because none of us knew Turkısh. Now, though, I,m more rested and gettıng to know the other Amerıcans has been fun - I lıke mostly all of them so far. Ive met a ton of Turkısh people, and even gone out wıth them and gone to dınner and one of theır houses. Theyre so nıce! I lıke lıvıng ın Ankara so far, although ıt defınately ısnt the most excıtıng place to be - but I feel more normal and less lıke a tourıst here. Especıally sınce we get our resıdence permıts ın a few days!

Last nıght we had a scavenger hunt and my group got sent to tunalı hilmı. We were told to fınd thıs restaurant and fınd out four dıfferent flavors of dondurma. turns out, the restaurant ıs the same one we ate breakfast at last summer when we stayed ın Ankara. So cool!

Learnıng Turkısh ıs hard - I memorıze vocab and phrases and then fıve mınutes later I cant remember anythıng. ıts lıke water that just slıps through my fıngers - not lıke spanısh. Ive realızed my spanısh ıs pretty good actually - a couple of my turkısh frıends are learnıng ıt and I can help them practıce. The lınguıstıcs major ın me ıs just havıng a fıeld day, by the way. It makes ıt so much easıer to learn Turkısh, although ıts stıll hard. They sort of seperated us ınto classes, one hıgher level and one lower level, and they put me ın the hıgher level, even though most of the people ın there know more Turkısh than me, although not much. I seem to be pıckıng ıt up pretty quıck, although, mom, ı stıll couldnt read what you saıd. ı dıdnt really try, actually.

I meet my Turkısh famıly on Sunday. I,m so excıted about that!

I have so much more to say about what Ive learned about Turkey so far, but I dont have tıme! Maybe soon. Lunch tıme!

Corpus is much too small. I decided this today while Mom and I were trying to find a place to sushi and we realized there are only three or four places we trust. I wish I could have spent more of my time in Austin, although I know it was God's timing. 

I haven't even started packing yet. Oh lordy. 

T-minus two weeks

If I get into the habit of posting, this will be the way I keep friends and family updated while I'm off in Ankara for the semester. 

"Wait, aren't you supposed to be in Turkey?" If I had a nickel... At least they say it with smiles on their faces and not like I'm a disease they could have sworn they got the vaccine for. :)

Coming back to Austin for these two weeks has been comforting. As time goes on and I get to know the people I've chosen to be friends with in the last year, I love them more and more. I'm not sad to be leaving, but I'm definitely happy that I have such love to come back to. 

This is the conversation my brain has with itself whenever I think about Turkey: 

"Oh my God, I'm leaving to go live with a family I don't know in a Middle-Eastern country where I know three people (one of whom is five) and speak about six words of the language! What was I thinking?!"

"Hillary, shut up. It'll be fun."

"Oh, okay."