My first test has come and passed. I did not do as well as I wish I would have, but for some reason I am just really struggling with this whole language learning thing. One conclusion that I have drawn though is that my brain is used to learning languages in a very different way, then I am learning Turkish right now; and I even have proof of this based on the first test.
So, every language I have ever learned, I have learned though sound; meaning that I have been immerse in it and developed an ‘ear’ for what sounds right and what does not. I have never learned a language by learning how to grammatically structure a sentence, and thus use newly acquired vocabs to form sentences based on strict grammatical rules. However, that is exactly how this class is going; and to say that I am struggling is an understatement. As said, I learn languages through the sound of it, and thus on the listening and reading section of the test (listen to a passage and then write what was said, and read a passage and translate into English) I did quite well, but on all of the other sections where I needed to fill in suffixes and change cases, I was having a lot of trouble figuring out what exactly was being asked of me.
Oh well, I guess I can just hope to do better on the next test. Though, I do have to admit that I was quite upset when I got my test back. It is not that I necessarily care that much about my grade; because I am pretty sure that it will not be part of my SU transcript (I can chose to attach a separate transcript if I want to, with the grades from this class.) However, the atmosphere within the program has a very competitive nature, even though it is very nicely packaged. Some people are openly competitive with each other, but that happens everywhere; it is the underlying feeling that no one here has ever failed at anything that is getting under my skin. I definitely would not say that I am failing at learning Turkish, but things aren’t just clicking as easily for me as they are for others. I feel like that kid that is holding up the entire class, because they have no idea what is going on. And let me tell you it is NOT because I am not paying attention; I think that I am paying more attention than I do in my normal classes, but I just don’t understand what is going on.
On a side note, I have also realized that I desperately need to find a coffee shop, which will become my ‘usual spot.’ First of all, I have realized that I have really become addicted to the coffee shop culture of Seattle, and second of all I really think I need to meet some locals and hear them speak. The teachers at the school are absolutely amazing, but unless I get some exposure to the locals, I could have taken an intensive Turkish class in Seattle, and just gotten as much out of it. I have a really hard time justifying being here when I spend the entire day shuttled between school and my apartment (i.e. classes and homework.) Thus, I am going to make a sincere effort to look for a coffee shop (or something of the kind) where I can hang out and do homework. There are plenty of tea/coffee shops here, but I just feel that it would be weird for me to go in there and do homework, because they seem to have more of a sit and talk culture, then the ‘individualist American’ culture that I have become very accustomed to.
This brings me to another side note, all the store/restaurant/etc. owners here will make us sit down have tea with them and talk with them. They are always very surprised to hear that we are from America, and then insist on talking to us in English. They are super friendly and it is quite fun to chat with them, but this just makes my quest for a coffee shop where I can practice my Turkish even harder!
Anyway, on to more fun things; I swear those do exist, just in a lot smaller doses then the stress of school. Let’s see, I think I will just walk you through the last couple of days from where I left off in the last post.
Sunday was a major study day since the test was on Monday, but we also insisted on making it a beach day. By ‘we’ I mean my roommates and I, and we also had one of the guys from the group join us. On another side note (I am just full of those tonight) our professors advised us to go out in mixed gender groups, because they is less likely hood of blatant hitting on. Sunday, proved this to be quite true. In the words of our professors, if there is one guy in an all-girls group (or vice versa) it is enough to throw them off, because they are unsure if the guy is a brother or boyfriend of one of the girls and thus they do not awkwardly flirt with you, or more importantly the store owners are less ‘aggressive’ when trying to get you to buy things. So, I completely digressed…but basically Sunday was actually a really nice day even though it involved a lot of studying. We took all of our flashcards to the beach, got an umbrella and quizzed each other, cooled off in the water every once in a while and some even napped a little bit. Overall, a very good day.
Monday was test day, and as with any type of test that was definitely not the highlight of my day, but we went out to dinner that night, which proved to be more entertaining that initially expected. We visited a restaurant that was recommended to us by one of our professors. It is a restaurant that specifically focuses on ‘kofte’ (meatballs), but they called it ‘cevapi’ (which is not the traditional Turkish name for it, but a version of the Bosnian name for a version of the food.) Well, as the name of the place had suggested these guys served one of my favorite Bosnian foods ‘cevapi,’ and it was beyond delicious. Of course, the owner came out and talked to us and that was quite a show. He is Albanian, but has lived in Turkey for most of his life. However, aside from speaking perfect Turkish and I am sure Albanian he spoke a little bit of English, some more German and a little bit of Bosnian. Between one of my roommate’s and my knowledge of German, my Bosnian and our English we were able to carry somewhat of a real conversation with this man, but I am sure that it would have been the funniest thing ever to observe. One sentence was literally constructed through three different languages and yet we were able to understand each other, even though I am sure some things got lost in translation. Yet it was really nice and just plain energizing to be able to have a conversation with this man in a strange conglomerate of a variety of languages.
As you might have gathered at this point, Turkey seems to be quite a melting pot. Even though I have seen and experienced things like the above, I still worry about the authenticity of my experience here, because I am living in a very touristy town (if it was up to me I would have rather been living with women in a village surviving through the magic international language of charades, but alas.) Though, I am very excited for this weekend, because we will be visiting a village across the mountains, which is supposed to be a lot more traditionally Turkish. I seriously think that I have seen and heard more Scandinavians, Dutch, and Russians here then I have Turkish, but I am looking forward to this weekend.
All right, I really need to spot tangent-ing. Tuesday was pretty similar to Monday, except that there was no test and we went out to a much fancier restaurant. One of the most fun parts of our dinner last night was the waiter, who was positively hilarious. If anyone has seen “Dirty Dancing – Havana Nights,” this waiter was the spitting image of the main character in that movie. His mannerisms and speech were identical, and he is a waiter. What is even better is that we had a fantastic view while we ate dinner, but as I looked down I saw this taxi cab drive up a hill between a row of palm trees, and I felt like I was literally being transported onto the set of the movie. If you don’t know, that is one of my favorite movies (well technically both of them, the original and this new one) and that entire scene last night just made me so happy.
Afterwards, I led the girls down to a chocolate/pastry store that I had seen on one of our earlier walks. Even though, I did not know exactly where it was, I have to admit that my nose lead me right to it. When chocolate is involved, I think I just have a sixth sense about it. Anyways, I had this amazing pudding there. It was this super rich chocolaty pudding over a bed of cream puffs, and it just made me float on clouds. Man, I am starting to sound like George when it comes to food :-)
That is about all of yesterday and then there is today, which wasn’t too bad. I was pretty stressed out during the second half of class today, because everything just got completely mixed up in my head, but the girls insisted that we go to the beach for an hour or two just to clear our heads, which definitely helped. Then I convinced one of my roommates to trim my bangs (actually she created bangs, because my hair had grown out that much), and now I can see when I put my hair down and don’t have to wear it up all the time. We also briefly went to this festival thing, but everything was on Turkish time (i.e. not on time) and we were all worried about going home and getting our homework done, that we did not actually get to see any of the festivities. That I must say is one of the downsides of this program, it is really hard to do something outside of studying, because you end up feeling super guilty that you are not in your room studying.
I got my homework done, but am still slightly confused. Who knows maybe it will click in the morning, but for now it is high time for me to go to bed, because I have to get up for school in about four hours.
Sending lots of sunshine….
Thursday, July 2, 2009
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
Mid-Week Report
My first test has come and passed. I did not do as well as I wish I would have, but for some reason I am just really struggling with this whole language learning thing. One conclusion that I have drawn though is that my brain is used to learning languages in a very different way, then I am learning Turkish right now; and I even have proof of this based on the first test.
So, every language I have ever learned, I have learned though sound; meaning that I have been immerse in it and developed an ‘ear’ for what sounds right and what does not. I have never learned a language by learning how to grammatically structure a sentence, and thus use newly acquired vocabs to form sentences based on strict grammatical rules. However, that is exactly how this class is going; and to say that I am struggling is an understatement. As said, I learn languages through the sound of it, and thus on the listening and reading section of the test (listen to a passage and then write what was said, and read a passage and translate into English) I did quite well, but on all of the other sections where I needed to fill in suffixes and change cases, I was having a lot of trouble figuring out what exactly was being asked of me.
Oh well, I guess I can just hope to do better on the next test. Though, I do have to admit that I was quite upset when I got my test back. It is not that I necessarily care that much about my grade; because I am pretty sure that it will not be part of my SU transcript (I can chose to attach a separate transcript if I want to, with the grades from this class.) However, the atmosphere within the program has a very competitive nature, even though it is very nicely packaged. Some people are openly competitive with each other, but that happens everywhere; it is the underlying feeling that no one here has ever failed at anything that is getting under my skin. I definitely would not say that I am failing at learning Turkish, but things aren’t just clicking as easily for me as they are for others. I feel like that kid that is holding up the entire class, because they have no idea what is going on. And let me tell you it is NOT because I am not paying attention; I think that I am paying more attention than I do in my normal classes, but I just don’t understand what is going on.
On a side note, I have also realized that I desperately need to find a coffee shop, which will become my ‘usual spot.’ First of all, I have realized that I have really become addicted to the coffee shop culture of Seattle, and second of all I really think I need to meet some locals and hear them speak. The teachers at the school are absolutely amazing, but unless I get some exposure to the locals, I could have taken an intensive Turkish class in Seattle, and just gotten as much out of it. I have a really hard time justifying being here when I spend the entire day shuttled between school and my apartment (i.e. classes and homework.) Thus, I am going to make a sincere effort to look for a coffee shop (or something of the kind) where I can hang out and do homework. There are plenty of tea/coffee shops here, but I just feel that it would be weird for me to go in there and do homework, because they seem to have more of a sit and talk culture, then the ‘individualist American’ culture that I have become very accustomed to.
This brings me to another side note, all the store/restaurant/etc. owners here will make us sit down have tea with them and talk with them. They are always very surprised to hear that we are from America, and then insist on talking to us in English. They are super friendly and it is quite fun to chat with them, but this just makes my quest for a coffee shop where I can practice my Turkish even harder!
Anyway, on to more fun things; I swear those do exist, just in a lot smaller doses then the stress of school. Let’s see, I think I will just walk you through the last couple of days from where I left off in the last post.
Sunday was a major study day since the test was on Monday, but we also insisted on making it a beach day. By ‘we’ I mean my roommates and I, and we also had one of the guys from the group join us. On another side note (I am just full of those tonight) our professors advised us to go out in mixed gender groups, because they is less likely hood of blatant hitting on. Sunday, proved this to be quite true. In the words of our professors, if there is one guy in an all-girls group (or vice versa) it is enough to throw them off, because they are unsure if the guy is a brother or boyfriend of one of the girls and thus they do not awkwardly flirt with you, or more importantly the store owners are less ‘aggressive’ when trying to get you to buy things. So, I completely digressed…but basically Sunday was actually a really nice day even though it involved a lot of studying. We took all of our flashcards to the beach, got an umbrella and quizzed each other, cooled off in the water every once in a while and some even napped a little bit. Overall, a very good day.
Monday was test day, and as with any type of test that was definitely not the highlight of my day, but we went out to dinner that night, which proved to be more entertaining that initially expected. We visited a restaurant that was recommended to us by one of our professors. It is a restaurant that specifically focuses on ‘kofte’ (meatballs), but they called it ‘cevapi’ (which is not the traditional Turkish name for it, but a version of the Bosnian name for a version of the food.) Well, as the name of the place had suggested these guys served one of my favorite Bosnian foods ‘cevapi,’ and it was beyond delicious. Of course, the owner came out and talked to us and that was quite a show. He is Albanian, but has lived in Turkey for most of his life. However, aside from speaking perfect Turkish and I am sure Albanian he spoke a little bit of English, some more German and a little bit of Bosnian. Between one of my roommate’s and my knowledge of German, my Bosnian and our English we were able to carry somewhat of a real conversation with this man, but I am sure that it would have been the funniest thing ever to observe. One sentence was literally constructed through three different languages and yet we were able to understand each other, even though I am sure some things got lost in translation. Yet it was really nice and just plain energizing to be able to have a conversation with this man in a strange conglomerate of a variety of languages.
As you might have gathered at this point, Turkey seems to be quite a melting pot. Even though I have seen and experienced things like the above, I still worry about the authenticity of my experience here, because I am living in a very touristy town (if it was up to me I would have rather been living with women in a village surviving through the magic international language of charades, but alas.) Though, I am very excited for this weekend, because we will be visiting a village across the mountains, which is supposed to be a lot more traditionally Turkish. I seriously think that I have seen and heard more Scandinavians, Dutch, and Russians here then I have Turkish, but I am looking forward to this weekend.
All right, I really need to spot tangent-ing. Tuesday was pretty similar to Monday, except that there was no test and we went out to a much fancier restaurant. One of the most fun parts of our dinner last night was the waiter, who was positively hilarious. If anyone has seen “Dirty Dancing – Havana Nights,” this waiter was the spitting image of the main character in that movie. His mannerisms and speech were identical, and he is a waiter. What is even better is that we had a fantastic view while we ate dinner, but as I looked down I saw this taxi cab drive up a hill between a row of palm trees, and I felt like I was literally being transported onto the set of the movie. If you don’t know, that is one of my favorite movies (well technically both of them, the original and this new one) and that entire scene last night just made me so happy.
Afterwards, I led the girls down to a chocolate/pastry store that I had seen on one of our earlier walks. Even though, I did not know exactly where it was, I have to admit that my nose lead me right to it. When chocolate is involved, I think I just have a sixth sense about it. Anyways, I had this amazing pudding there. It was this super rich chocolaty pudding over a bed of cream puffs, and it just made me float on clouds. Man, I am starting to sound like George when it comes to food :-)
That is about all of yesterday and then there is today, which wasn’t too bad. I was pretty stressed out during the second half of class today, because everything just got completely mixed up in my head, but the girls insisted that we go to the beach for an hour or two just to clear our heads, which definitely helped. Then I convinced one of my roommates to trim my bangs (actually she created bangs, because my hair had grown out that much), and now I can see when I put my hair down and don’t have to wear it up all the time. We also briefly went to this festival thing, but everything was on Turkish time (i.e. not on time) and we were all worried about going home and getting our homework done, that we did not actually get to see any of the festivities. That I must say is one of the downsides of this program, it is really hard to do something outside of studying, because you end up feeling super guilty that you are not in your room studying.
I got my homework done, but am still slightly confused. Who knows maybe it will click in the morning, but for now it is high time for me to go to bed, because I have to get up for school in about four hours.
Sending lots of sunshine….
So, every language I have ever learned, I have learned though sound; meaning that I have been immerse in it and developed an ‘ear’ for what sounds right and what does not. I have never learned a language by learning how to grammatically structure a sentence, and thus use newly acquired vocabs to form sentences based on strict grammatical rules. However, that is exactly how this class is going; and to say that I am struggling is an understatement. As said, I learn languages through the sound of it, and thus on the listening and reading section of the test (listen to a passage and then write what was said, and read a passage and translate into English) I did quite well, but on all of the other sections where I needed to fill in suffixes and change cases, I was having a lot of trouble figuring out what exactly was being asked of me.
Oh well, I guess I can just hope to do better on the next test. Though, I do have to admit that I was quite upset when I got my test back. It is not that I necessarily care that much about my grade; because I am pretty sure that it will not be part of my SU transcript (I can chose to attach a separate transcript if I want to, with the grades from this class.) However, the atmosphere within the program has a very competitive nature, even though it is very nicely packaged. Some people are openly competitive with each other, but that happens everywhere; it is the underlying feeling that no one here has ever failed at anything that is getting under my skin. I definitely would not say that I am failing at learning Turkish, but things aren’t just clicking as easily for me as they are for others. I feel like that kid that is holding up the entire class, because they have no idea what is going on. And let me tell you it is NOT because I am not paying attention; I think that I am paying more attention than I do in my normal classes, but I just don’t understand what is going on.
On a side note, I have also realized that I desperately need to find a coffee shop, which will become my ‘usual spot.’ First of all, I have realized that I have really become addicted to the coffee shop culture of Seattle, and second of all I really think I need to meet some locals and hear them speak. The teachers at the school are absolutely amazing, but unless I get some exposure to the locals, I could have taken an intensive Turkish class in Seattle, and just gotten as much out of it. I have a really hard time justifying being here when I spend the entire day shuttled between school and my apartment (i.e. classes and homework.) Thus, I am going to make a sincere effort to look for a coffee shop (or something of the kind) where I can hang out and do homework. There are plenty of tea/coffee shops here, but I just feel that it would be weird for me to go in there and do homework, because they seem to have more of a sit and talk culture, then the ‘individualist American’ culture that I have become very accustomed to.
This brings me to another side note, all the store/restaurant/etc. owners here will make us sit down have tea with them and talk with them. They are always very surprised to hear that we are from America, and then insist on talking to us in English. They are super friendly and it is quite fun to chat with them, but this just makes my quest for a coffee shop where I can practice my Turkish even harder!
Anyway, on to more fun things; I swear those do exist, just in a lot smaller doses then the stress of school. Let’s see, I think I will just walk you through the last couple of days from where I left off in the last post.
Sunday was a major study day since the test was on Monday, but we also insisted on making it a beach day. By ‘we’ I mean my roommates and I, and we also had one of the guys from the group join us. On another side note (I am just full of those tonight) our professors advised us to go out in mixed gender groups, because they is less likely hood of blatant hitting on. Sunday, proved this to be quite true. In the words of our professors, if there is one guy in an all-girls group (or vice versa) it is enough to throw them off, because they are unsure if the guy is a brother or boyfriend of one of the girls and thus they do not awkwardly flirt with you, or more importantly the store owners are less ‘aggressive’ when trying to get you to buy things. So, I completely digressed…but basically Sunday was actually a really nice day even though it involved a lot of studying. We took all of our flashcards to the beach, got an umbrella and quizzed each other, cooled off in the water every once in a while and some even napped a little bit. Overall, a very good day.
Monday was test day, and as with any type of test that was definitely not the highlight of my day, but we went out to dinner that night, which proved to be more entertaining that initially expected. We visited a restaurant that was recommended to us by one of our professors. It is a restaurant that specifically focuses on ‘kofte’ (meatballs), but they called it ‘cevapi’ (which is not the traditional Turkish name for it, but a version of the Bosnian name for a version of the food.) Well, as the name of the place had suggested these guys served one of my favorite Bosnian foods ‘cevapi,’ and it was beyond delicious. Of course, the owner came out and talked to us and that was quite a show. He is Albanian, but has lived in Turkey for most of his life. However, aside from speaking perfect Turkish and I am sure Albanian he spoke a little bit of English, some more German and a little bit of Bosnian. Between one of my roommate’s and my knowledge of German, my Bosnian and our English we were able to carry somewhat of a real conversation with this man, but I am sure that it would have been the funniest thing ever to observe. One sentence was literally constructed through three different languages and yet we were able to understand each other, even though I am sure some things got lost in translation. Yet it was really nice and just plain energizing to be able to have a conversation with this man in a strange conglomerate of a variety of languages.
As you might have gathered at this point, Turkey seems to be quite a melting pot. Even though I have seen and experienced things like the above, I still worry about the authenticity of my experience here, because I am living in a very touristy town (if it was up to me I would have rather been living with women in a village surviving through the magic international language of charades, but alas.) Though, I am very excited for this weekend, because we will be visiting a village across the mountains, which is supposed to be a lot more traditionally Turkish. I seriously think that I have seen and heard more Scandinavians, Dutch, and Russians here then I have Turkish, but I am looking forward to this weekend.
All right, I really need to spot tangent-ing. Tuesday was pretty similar to Monday, except that there was no test and we went out to a much fancier restaurant. One of the most fun parts of our dinner last night was the waiter, who was positively hilarious. If anyone has seen “Dirty Dancing – Havana Nights,” this waiter was the spitting image of the main character in that movie. His mannerisms and speech were identical, and he is a waiter. What is even better is that we had a fantastic view while we ate dinner, but as I looked down I saw this taxi cab drive up a hill between a row of palm trees, and I felt like I was literally being transported onto the set of the movie. If you don’t know, that is one of my favorite movies (well technically both of them, the original and this new one) and that entire scene last night just made me so happy.
Afterwards, I led the girls down to a chocolate/pastry store that I had seen on one of our earlier walks. Even though, I did not know exactly where it was, I have to admit that my nose lead me right to it. When chocolate is involved, I think I just have a sixth sense about it. Anyways, I had this amazing pudding there. It was this super rich chocolaty pudding over a bed of cream puffs, and it just made me float on clouds. Man, I am starting to sound like George when it comes to food :-)
That is about all of yesterday and then there is today, which wasn’t too bad. I was pretty stressed out during the second half of class today, because everything just got completely mixed up in my head, but the girls insisted that we go to the beach for an hour or two just to clear our heads, which definitely helped. Then I convinced one of my roommates to trim my bangs (actually she created bangs, because my hair had grown out that much), and now I can see when I put my hair down and don’t have to wear it up all the time. We also briefly went to this festival thing, but everything was on Turkish time (i.e. not on time) and we were all worried about going home and getting our homework done, that we did not actually get to see any of the festivities. That I must say is one of the downsides of this program, it is really hard to do something outside of studying, because you end up feeling super guilty that you are not in your room studying.
I got my homework done, but am still slightly confused. Who knows maybe it will click in the morning, but for now it is high time for me to go to bed, because I have to get up for school in about four hours.
Sending lots of sunshine….
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