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.