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….
Saturday, June 27, 2009
First Week in Turkey
Hello lovelies!
First of all let me apologize for not writing a letter earlier, but it has been a pretty crazy week and I did not have any internet access the first couple of days. It has only been a week since I have arrived in Turkey, but it feels like at least one year must have gone by. My experience thus far has been very rich and quiet fast paced. I was overwhelmed the first couple of days, to say the very least, but have since started building a pretty comfortable routine.
[For those of you who don’t want to/don’t have time to read a whole story here is a synopsis: spent about 24 hours getting from D.C. to Alanya which included three planes and one bus; received an introduction to the town including a walking tour but then spent the rest of the day totally lost – probably walking in circles, enjoyed the wonderful Mediterranean sea, went to an amazing outdoor opera, covered three units of a language book in four days (read almost 100 pages), taken three quizzes, and spent over 30 hours on homework, had fun at the bazaar, have my first test on Monday…]
Now for those of you who actually want to read the full stories…After leaving Seattle bright and early (read: crack of dawn 3:00am) last Wednesday, I arrived in D.C. for an orientation through the State Department. The first night consisted primarily of introductions. Thursday however, was the focus of the orientation. There was a long list of speakers that came including: diplomats, state department workers of various calibers, a woman from the Turkish embassy, as well as a couple of alumni from the program. The speakers were definitely very engaging and have made me further consider my interest in diplomacy as well as law. The students that I met were quite impressive as well. Quite a few of them are from Ivy League schools and highly intellectually oriented individuals.
One really fun aspect of the orientation was meeting all of the different individuals that are participating in the Turkish program (there are three levels which are being hosted in multiple cities in Turkey.) Within my short stay in D.C., I spoke more German and Bosnian then English. There was only one other person that spoke Bosnian, but I would say that at least one third of the Turkish group has some knowledge of the German language. Two out of the eleven other people in my group speak German really well, and we have definitely bonded over that.
After an exhausting Thursday, we had Friday free to ourselves until mid-afternoon, which, might I add, was the last time I really had time to decompress and fully gather my thoughts. Thus, in true Seattleite fashion I wandered D.C., ran some errands, and then found a little coffee shop and spent some time mentally preparing myself for the trip to come as well as processing the orientation.
At 4:30pm sharp is when the epic journey half-way across the globe started. We loaded a bus which took us to the airport and got on our first plane destined for Munich. According to our tickets we had a one hour layover in Munich, which was supposed to be just enough time to catch our next plane. Of course there were issues with the plane, and we did not start our departure until half an hour later than scheduled. Fortunately though we made all of our flights and had no problems with customs. Once, we landed in Antalya we took a bus (about another two hours) to our final destination. I was half-asleep throughout most of this ride, but definitely fully woke up when I realized that our bus driver was driving in reverse down an incredibly steep hill. Let’s just say that all of us were holding our breath during the 20 minutes or so that it took him to find our lodging place.
I must admit that I was pleasantly surprised by our accommodations. As I mentioned there are 12 students (6 female, 6 male) all together and we were divided into groups of three and received our own apartments. The apartments are absolutely wonderful. The apartment that I am in has a very large living room, two bedrooms (one single and one double/master…I am in the double), a bathroom, a kitchen, and the best part: two balconies. There is one balcony in the bedroom that I am staying in and one in the living room. We are on the third floor and have a magnificent view of the ocean and the city below us. What I forgot to mention is that our living accommodations are about three quarters up what could only be called a mountain, and our school is practically at the peak of the mountain. I will try to take some pictures soon, so that you can see the harsh reality of what it feels like to walk up a 60/70˚ hill in 100˚F weather. Honestly, though I have really enjoyed the heat. Even though people keep saying that it is really hot, I have yet to feel uncomfortable from the heat. Who knows, maybe it is the fact that I try really hard to keep hydrated that keeps me cool.
Anyways, I love my apartment and I love the girls that I am living with. Speaking of, there is a really diverse mixture of age and interest within this group. Almost half of the group is PhD students that are in the middle of their research, then there are quite a few grad students. There are only very few undergrads, but that is okay, because it just adds to the overall diversity of conversations that we engage in. The interests of the group run the whole spectrum from archeologists to linguists. However, one of my roommates is a recent graduate that majored in international business and German, and we have had fun fawning over our love of econ, and commiserating over our dislike of finance.
Now that you can somewhat picture the setup of my current living situation, it’s time to let you know what I’ve been up to. As I alluded to earlier, Sunday was a day of walking in circles. We met up with the director of the program in the morning and had a wonderful breakfast just a short way down the hill from where we are living. Let me just say that Turkish food is more or less like my parent’s home cooked food, and thus makes for fantastic comfort food. After the director gave us a walking tour of the city, she dropped us off at the beach. As my roommates and I were hoping to spend the rest of the day being beach bums, we thought it would be a good idea to go drop off our bags at our apartment beforehand. Thus, we embarked on a journey back to our apartment. In order to get the full effect of the story you have to realize that we only had two hand drawn maps, which do not have many street names on them, but instead use landmarks as orientation points. Furthermore, the street names were not helpful anyway, because most of the streets do not have street signs on them. Let’s just say that we spent about three hours circling the town before we finally figured out how to get back to our apartment. Alas, that was not the end of our being lost that day.
As we had every intention of being beach bums, we did not let the fact that we got lost for a while damper our enthusiasm for the beautiful Mediterranean beach. Instead we trekked back down the hill and dove right in, and might I add that all of the effort to get there was completely worth it. One of my roommates, Amy, and I decided to swim all the way to the rocks, aka a point that was jutting out into the ocean. The water there was even bluer and clear then in the middle of the ocean, if that is even possible. After we swam back we got, we got out where we thought we had left our other roommate Katy, but did not see her anywhere. Thinking that we might not have swam far enough we started walking further away from the rocks.
Well, after about a good half hour of walking we decided that there is no way that we could have swam that far and we started heading back in the direction that we had come from. We were tired, our feet were sore, and panic was starting to rise with every step we took. Here we were in just our swim suit, in the late afternoon with no sense of direction but a sense of impending doom if we did not quickly find Katy. We walked part of the way back and swam part of the way back in order to relax our sore bodies. Finally, we recognized some of the building on the street and eventually found Katy. At this point she had also started worrying about us and was not quite sure what to do. The funny thing though is, that she saw us walking past her the first time around, and thought that we were getting ready to do another lap, thus did not say anything to us.
After our adventurous Sunday, we have pretty much mastered the city and the beach, and have not gotten lost since then. Monday, was the first day of class and what a day it was. The morning started off with one of our teachers, who is also living in the same building as us, showing us a shortcut to school. When you look from right outside our building up towards the school it looks like it would take you at least an hour to walk over there, but with the shortcut it only took us 15 minutes. Though, I have to say that we looked like little first graders all with our backpacks on in a single-file line walking across this rocky shortcut.
Our school days are divided into a couple of parts. The first part of the day is from 8:00am- 10:00am then we get a half hour break. Following that we have some more class from 10:30am-12:00pm. Then it is lunch time until 1:30pm. Our lunch is prepared by an amazing cook every day. He buys local fresh ingredients every day, and makes typical Turkish meals for us, which is just delicious. We also have four peer tutors that join us for lunch, and ‘hang out’ with us on most school days. On some days we also have lectures after lunch, which revolve around history and culture, or we have excursions in the evening.
Class on Monday was more than just overwhelming; the pace at which we covered things was crazy. Thankfully our teacher allows us to ask questions in English, but that will soon not be allowed either, and often there is not even enough time to ask questions. By the time I understand what we are doing and formulate the question we have already moved past three other things. It was definitely an academically intense day. Following class, we had lunch and meet with our peer tutors, which took us downtown to purchase cell phones. I have a cell phone now at which you can reach me anytime; it does not cost anything for me to receive phone calls, so if you need to reach me please feel free to call me (I recommend you use skype though, because it will cost you obviously.) My cell phone number is:
531 469 86 81. Just also know that you will need to dial the country code for Turkey, if you want to call me.
After our little walk downtown we came back and worked on homework and studied our first set of vocabulary. We have a vocabulary test pretty much every day, and a list of about 70 vocabs that we need to learn every night, in addition to which ever random vocabs (i.e. numbers, colors, fruits, vegetables…) we learned that particular day. Let’s just say that doing the homework took me about eight hours that night.
Tuesday involved a similar morning, except for the fact that we had a different teacher for the first part of class. Every Tuesday and Thursday we have a conversation teacher that comes in for the first part of class, and she does not speak any English. I really like her and really enjoyed her teaching style, but have to admit that it was incredibly hard to try to understand what she wanted from us considering our very limited knowledge of Turkish.
A lot of the people in my class have a strong background in Arabic, and say that it is very helpful for their studies of the Turkish language, and some of them have even had some Turkish before coming here. I had never encountered the Turkish language before coming here and have to admit that there have been many moments when I have felt quite inept during class. I have learned different languages before, but I have never learned a language from scratch in an academic manner. I have always been thrown into the language and somehow found my way through it, but trying to learn Turkish from a book is not coming easily to me at all. It is a lot more difficult than I expected, and I have probably been getting a lot more frustrated with myself then I should be. After all, I have barely been here a week and I really should not expect too much, even though the teachers expect quite a bit.
Anyways, Monday as you can see was very academically focused, but Tuesday is a different story. After class a couple of us went to a restaurant that two of our tutors (they are husband and wife) own and did our homework there. It was really nice to get to hang out with them. I had real Turkish coffee, which was really strong but yummy, and we even got to ‘play’ with turtles, because they have pet turtles in the garden around their restaurant. What was really nice about doing homework with them, is that they could help us and they would correct our pronunciation.
The best part of Tuesday, came later that night though. This was our first real excursion. We drove for a couple of hours back into the main town of Antalya to see Puccini’s opera “Tosca” in one of the best preserved Roman amphitheaters. It was an absolutely amazing experience. First of all, the opera in general is a breathtaking work of art, but being able to see it in the dead of night with the stars high above you was just magnificent. This is going to sound really nerdy of me, but I also got really excited about the architecture of the theater and some of the props that they were using on stage. I took an art class this past year that focused in large part on various types of theaters throughout history, and I could very easily connect my knowledge from the class with the theater that I was sitting in, and just got super excited.
The opera as you can imagine was amazing, but getting up the next morning was not so much, since we had not gotten home until 2:00 or 3:00am. Wednesday was what I think will become a pretty typical day of school, homework, and a little bit of time at the beach. Thursday, however, we had our first guest lecturer and we learned about the Turkish family unit. The lecture was really interesting for me, because I could draw quite a few parallels between the Turkish family life and the Bosnian family life. There are quite a few similarities, but also some differences. Yet, as the days go by I am noticing more and more things where I can pull out the exact influence that the Ottoman Empire had on Bosnia and its culture.
One cultural even that we have been able to observe quite a bit are ‘circumcision parties.’ Traditionally, in any Muslim a male child needs to be circumcised; however, specifically in the Turkish culture this is done when the boy is of an age when he is coherent (around 5 or 6 years old). The reason for that is that every boy receives a very elaborate party for this event, it is of equivalent importance and lavish as a wedding for a girl. Thus almost every other day we stumble upon a caravan of cars decked out in streamers, honking everywhere they go, and a little boy dressed in a king or sultan’s outfit sticking out of one of the cars. It is definitely a fun spectacle and one of the very authentic cultural experiences that I have had so far.
As Friday, lies at the end of the week so comes a lot of exhaustion with it. It was a pretty relaxed day, and my roommates and I went to the bazaar. The bazaar takes place every Friday and is primarily for fruits and vegetables, but there are also some other knickknacks there and definitely also sweets. Somehow we ended up with one kilo of Turkish delight and also approximately a kilo (which is about two pounds for those of you trying to convert) of halva (which is this delicious sweet thing, but I am still not exactly sure what it is made out of. I know I have had it before, because it is also a Bosnian dessert, but still no clue what is in it.)
So, today Saturday, was a really rejuvenating day. We had planned on going out last night, because the town seems to just completely come alive at night. We can hear the music and see the people from our balcony. It’s around 2:00am (so technically Sunday) right now and I have all the windows closed and yet I can hear and feel the music that is blasting from the different clubs in town. However, when I looked over the city earlier tonight (around 10:00pm) there was not a single beep to be heard and I could only see a few people out on the street. Yet, now the city is alive and blaring! Thank goodness that I don’t have trouble falling asleep with noise.
Anyway, most of today was spend hanging out with my roommates and doing homework; tomorrow will be spend studying massively, because we have our first test on Monday. This program is technically a year’s worth of language study, thus it is divided into two semesters, four weeks each. Each ‘semester’ we have two tests and one final; so by the end of the summer I will have taken a ridiculous number of quizzes, four tests and two finals…that is almost an entire quarter’s worth of testing! Aside from studying, we also had a really awesome tour of the historic sites of Alanya this evening.
Since, Alanya was a fortified city and had a castle it was amazing to walk along the ruins of the wall, as well as the rebuild parts. Though, I have to admit that my favorite part, still, is the water. It is just this incredibly gorgeous blue color. Maybe we will take our flashcards with us down to the beach tomorrow, and go swimming, that would be nice. Every time I go out on the balcony I feel like the water is taunting me. I want to go hang out at the beach so bad, but yet I know that I have to do my homework or study.
Well, that is about all that has been going on with me this past week or so. If you are still reading you are trooper and I promise that I will try to update more often now that I have steady internet access (i.e. I will try not to write any more novels…for any of you who remember Nazir’s emails: after seeing how much I had written, I kind of feel like I wrote one of his epic letters…).
I hope you are all doing well and am sending you lots of beautiful sunshine.
With love,
Ajla
First of all let me apologize for not writing a letter earlier, but it has been a pretty crazy week and I did not have any internet access the first couple of days. It has only been a week since I have arrived in Turkey, but it feels like at least one year must have gone by. My experience thus far has been very rich and quiet fast paced. I was overwhelmed the first couple of days, to say the very least, but have since started building a pretty comfortable routine.
[For those of you who don’t want to/don’t have time to read a whole story here is a synopsis: spent about 24 hours getting from D.C. to Alanya which included three planes and one bus; received an introduction to the town including a walking tour but then spent the rest of the day totally lost – probably walking in circles, enjoyed the wonderful Mediterranean sea, went to an amazing outdoor opera, covered three units of a language book in four days (read almost 100 pages), taken three quizzes, and spent over 30 hours on homework, had fun at the bazaar, have my first test on Monday…]
Now for those of you who actually want to read the full stories…After leaving Seattle bright and early (read: crack of dawn 3:00am) last Wednesday, I arrived in D.C. for an orientation through the State Department. The first night consisted primarily of introductions. Thursday however, was the focus of the orientation. There was a long list of speakers that came including: diplomats, state department workers of various calibers, a woman from the Turkish embassy, as well as a couple of alumni from the program. The speakers were definitely very engaging and have made me further consider my interest in diplomacy as well as law. The students that I met were quite impressive as well. Quite a few of them are from Ivy League schools and highly intellectually oriented individuals.
One really fun aspect of the orientation was meeting all of the different individuals that are participating in the Turkish program (there are three levels which are being hosted in multiple cities in Turkey.) Within my short stay in D.C., I spoke more German and Bosnian then English. There was only one other person that spoke Bosnian, but I would say that at least one third of the Turkish group has some knowledge of the German language. Two out of the eleven other people in my group speak German really well, and we have definitely bonded over that.
After an exhausting Thursday, we had Friday free to ourselves until mid-afternoon, which, might I add, was the last time I really had time to decompress and fully gather my thoughts. Thus, in true Seattleite fashion I wandered D.C., ran some errands, and then found a little coffee shop and spent some time mentally preparing myself for the trip to come as well as processing the orientation.
At 4:30pm sharp is when the epic journey half-way across the globe started. We loaded a bus which took us to the airport and got on our first plane destined for Munich. According to our tickets we had a one hour layover in Munich, which was supposed to be just enough time to catch our next plane. Of course there were issues with the plane, and we did not start our departure until half an hour later than scheduled. Fortunately though we made all of our flights and had no problems with customs. Once, we landed in Antalya we took a bus (about another two hours) to our final destination. I was half-asleep throughout most of this ride, but definitely fully woke up when I realized that our bus driver was driving in reverse down an incredibly steep hill. Let’s just say that all of us were holding our breath during the 20 minutes or so that it took him to find our lodging place.
I must admit that I was pleasantly surprised by our accommodations. As I mentioned there are 12 students (6 female, 6 male) all together and we were divided into groups of three and received our own apartments. The apartments are absolutely wonderful. The apartment that I am in has a very large living room, two bedrooms (one single and one double/master…I am in the double), a bathroom, a kitchen, and the best part: two balconies. There is one balcony in the bedroom that I am staying in and one in the living room. We are on the third floor and have a magnificent view of the ocean and the city below us. What I forgot to mention is that our living accommodations are about three quarters up what could only be called a mountain, and our school is practically at the peak of the mountain. I will try to take some pictures soon, so that you can see the harsh reality of what it feels like to walk up a 60/70˚ hill in 100˚F weather. Honestly, though I have really enjoyed the heat. Even though people keep saying that it is really hot, I have yet to feel uncomfortable from the heat. Who knows, maybe it is the fact that I try really hard to keep hydrated that keeps me cool.
Anyways, I love my apartment and I love the girls that I am living with. Speaking of, there is a really diverse mixture of age and interest within this group. Almost half of the group is PhD students that are in the middle of their research, then there are quite a few grad students. There are only very few undergrads, but that is okay, because it just adds to the overall diversity of conversations that we engage in. The interests of the group run the whole spectrum from archeologists to linguists. However, one of my roommates is a recent graduate that majored in international business and German, and we have had fun fawning over our love of econ, and commiserating over our dislike of finance.
Now that you can somewhat picture the setup of my current living situation, it’s time to let you know what I’ve been up to. As I alluded to earlier, Sunday was a day of walking in circles. We met up with the director of the program in the morning and had a wonderful breakfast just a short way down the hill from where we are living. Let me just say that Turkish food is more or less like my parent’s home cooked food, and thus makes for fantastic comfort food. After the director gave us a walking tour of the city, she dropped us off at the beach. As my roommates and I were hoping to spend the rest of the day being beach bums, we thought it would be a good idea to go drop off our bags at our apartment beforehand. Thus, we embarked on a journey back to our apartment. In order to get the full effect of the story you have to realize that we only had two hand drawn maps, which do not have many street names on them, but instead use landmarks as orientation points. Furthermore, the street names were not helpful anyway, because most of the streets do not have street signs on them. Let’s just say that we spent about three hours circling the town before we finally figured out how to get back to our apartment. Alas, that was not the end of our being lost that day.
As we had every intention of being beach bums, we did not let the fact that we got lost for a while damper our enthusiasm for the beautiful Mediterranean beach. Instead we trekked back down the hill and dove right in, and might I add that all of the effort to get there was completely worth it. One of my roommates, Amy, and I decided to swim all the way to the rocks, aka a point that was jutting out into the ocean. The water there was even bluer and clear then in the middle of the ocean, if that is even possible. After we swam back we got, we got out where we thought we had left our other roommate Katy, but did not see her anywhere. Thinking that we might not have swam far enough we started walking further away from the rocks.
Well, after about a good half hour of walking we decided that there is no way that we could have swam that far and we started heading back in the direction that we had come from. We were tired, our feet were sore, and panic was starting to rise with every step we took. Here we were in just our swim suit, in the late afternoon with no sense of direction but a sense of impending doom if we did not quickly find Katy. We walked part of the way back and swam part of the way back in order to relax our sore bodies. Finally, we recognized some of the building on the street and eventually found Katy. At this point she had also started worrying about us and was not quite sure what to do. The funny thing though is, that she saw us walking past her the first time around, and thought that we were getting ready to do another lap, thus did not say anything to us.
After our adventurous Sunday, we have pretty much mastered the city and the beach, and have not gotten lost since then. Monday, was the first day of class and what a day it was. The morning started off with one of our teachers, who is also living in the same building as us, showing us a shortcut to school. When you look from right outside our building up towards the school it looks like it would take you at least an hour to walk over there, but with the shortcut it only took us 15 minutes. Though, I have to say that we looked like little first graders all with our backpacks on in a single-file line walking across this rocky shortcut.
Our school days are divided into a couple of parts. The first part of the day is from 8:00am- 10:00am then we get a half hour break. Following that we have some more class from 10:30am-12:00pm. Then it is lunch time until 1:30pm. Our lunch is prepared by an amazing cook every day. He buys local fresh ingredients every day, and makes typical Turkish meals for us, which is just delicious. We also have four peer tutors that join us for lunch, and ‘hang out’ with us on most school days. On some days we also have lectures after lunch, which revolve around history and culture, or we have excursions in the evening.
Class on Monday was more than just overwhelming; the pace at which we covered things was crazy. Thankfully our teacher allows us to ask questions in English, but that will soon not be allowed either, and often there is not even enough time to ask questions. By the time I understand what we are doing and formulate the question we have already moved past three other things. It was definitely an academically intense day. Following class, we had lunch and meet with our peer tutors, which took us downtown to purchase cell phones. I have a cell phone now at which you can reach me anytime; it does not cost anything for me to receive phone calls, so if you need to reach me please feel free to call me (I recommend you use skype though, because it will cost you obviously.) My cell phone number is:
531 469 86 81. Just also know that you will need to dial the country code for Turkey, if you want to call me.
After our little walk downtown we came back and worked on homework and studied our first set of vocabulary. We have a vocabulary test pretty much every day, and a list of about 70 vocabs that we need to learn every night, in addition to which ever random vocabs (i.e. numbers, colors, fruits, vegetables…) we learned that particular day. Let’s just say that doing the homework took me about eight hours that night.
Tuesday involved a similar morning, except for the fact that we had a different teacher for the first part of class. Every Tuesday and Thursday we have a conversation teacher that comes in for the first part of class, and she does not speak any English. I really like her and really enjoyed her teaching style, but have to admit that it was incredibly hard to try to understand what she wanted from us considering our very limited knowledge of Turkish.
A lot of the people in my class have a strong background in Arabic, and say that it is very helpful for their studies of the Turkish language, and some of them have even had some Turkish before coming here. I had never encountered the Turkish language before coming here and have to admit that there have been many moments when I have felt quite inept during class. I have learned different languages before, but I have never learned a language from scratch in an academic manner. I have always been thrown into the language and somehow found my way through it, but trying to learn Turkish from a book is not coming easily to me at all. It is a lot more difficult than I expected, and I have probably been getting a lot more frustrated with myself then I should be. After all, I have barely been here a week and I really should not expect too much, even though the teachers expect quite a bit.
Anyways, Monday as you can see was very academically focused, but Tuesday is a different story. After class a couple of us went to a restaurant that two of our tutors (they are husband and wife) own and did our homework there. It was really nice to get to hang out with them. I had real Turkish coffee, which was really strong but yummy, and we even got to ‘play’ with turtles, because they have pet turtles in the garden around their restaurant. What was really nice about doing homework with them, is that they could help us and they would correct our pronunciation.
The best part of Tuesday, came later that night though. This was our first real excursion. We drove for a couple of hours back into the main town of Antalya to see Puccini’s opera “Tosca” in one of the best preserved Roman amphitheaters. It was an absolutely amazing experience. First of all, the opera in general is a breathtaking work of art, but being able to see it in the dead of night with the stars high above you was just magnificent. This is going to sound really nerdy of me, but I also got really excited about the architecture of the theater and some of the props that they were using on stage. I took an art class this past year that focused in large part on various types of theaters throughout history, and I could very easily connect my knowledge from the class with the theater that I was sitting in, and just got super excited.
The opera as you can imagine was amazing, but getting up the next morning was not so much, since we had not gotten home until 2:00 or 3:00am. Wednesday was what I think will become a pretty typical day of school, homework, and a little bit of time at the beach. Thursday, however, we had our first guest lecturer and we learned about the Turkish family unit. The lecture was really interesting for me, because I could draw quite a few parallels between the Turkish family life and the Bosnian family life. There are quite a few similarities, but also some differences. Yet, as the days go by I am noticing more and more things where I can pull out the exact influence that the Ottoman Empire had on Bosnia and its culture.
One cultural even that we have been able to observe quite a bit are ‘circumcision parties.’ Traditionally, in any Muslim a male child needs to be circumcised; however, specifically in the Turkish culture this is done when the boy is of an age when he is coherent (around 5 or 6 years old). The reason for that is that every boy receives a very elaborate party for this event, it is of equivalent importance and lavish as a wedding for a girl. Thus almost every other day we stumble upon a caravan of cars decked out in streamers, honking everywhere they go, and a little boy dressed in a king or sultan’s outfit sticking out of one of the cars. It is definitely a fun spectacle and one of the very authentic cultural experiences that I have had so far.
As Friday, lies at the end of the week so comes a lot of exhaustion with it. It was a pretty relaxed day, and my roommates and I went to the bazaar. The bazaar takes place every Friday and is primarily for fruits and vegetables, but there are also some other knickknacks there and definitely also sweets. Somehow we ended up with one kilo of Turkish delight and also approximately a kilo (which is about two pounds for those of you trying to convert) of halva (which is this delicious sweet thing, but I am still not exactly sure what it is made out of. I know I have had it before, because it is also a Bosnian dessert, but still no clue what is in it.)
So, today Saturday, was a really rejuvenating day. We had planned on going out last night, because the town seems to just completely come alive at night. We can hear the music and see the people from our balcony. It’s around 2:00am (so technically Sunday) right now and I have all the windows closed and yet I can hear and feel the music that is blasting from the different clubs in town. However, when I looked over the city earlier tonight (around 10:00pm) there was not a single beep to be heard and I could only see a few people out on the street. Yet, now the city is alive and blaring! Thank goodness that I don’t have trouble falling asleep with noise.
Anyway, most of today was spend hanging out with my roommates and doing homework; tomorrow will be spend studying massively, because we have our first test on Monday. This program is technically a year’s worth of language study, thus it is divided into two semesters, four weeks each. Each ‘semester’ we have two tests and one final; so by the end of the summer I will have taken a ridiculous number of quizzes, four tests and two finals…that is almost an entire quarter’s worth of testing! Aside from studying, we also had a really awesome tour of the historic sites of Alanya this evening.
Since, Alanya was a fortified city and had a castle it was amazing to walk along the ruins of the wall, as well as the rebuild parts. Though, I have to admit that my favorite part, still, is the water. It is just this incredibly gorgeous blue color. Maybe we will take our flashcards with us down to the beach tomorrow, and go swimming, that would be nice. Every time I go out on the balcony I feel like the water is taunting me. I want to go hang out at the beach so bad, but yet I know that I have to do my homework or study.
Well, that is about all that has been going on with me this past week or so. If you are still reading you are trooper and I promise that I will try to update more often now that I have steady internet access (i.e. I will try not to write any more novels…for any of you who remember Nazir’s emails: after seeing how much I had written, I kind of feel like I wrote one of his epic letters…).
I hope you are all doing well and am sending you lots of beautiful sunshine.
With love,
Ajla
Sunday, June 14, 2009
Cold Feet, Maybe, Maybe Not...
I think I have a thing for couches. I am currently once again curled up on a couch; except this time, I am tucked away in the comfort of my parents’ house. These last couple of weeks have been absolutely crazy. I had a ton of group projects, two major papers, and four real finals. I finished my last final about 48 hour ago, and I feel like ages have gone by since it. If that is not an illustration of what kind of a whirl wind, my life has been in the last couple of weeks then I do not know what is…
I have completed finals and all of the other busy work associated with them, celebrated my and some good friends’ 21st birthdays, said many a goodbye, and moved out of my apartment. I could have never imagined I had that much stuff, until I saw it all in a UHAUL van. Now, all of my stuff is just jammed into my room at my parents’ house, and I pretty much have to summersault over things in order to get to my bed. Yet, I will need to open all of these boxes, rummages through them, and find what I need for
My flight for D.C. leaves bright and early (or at the crack of dawn if you will…
In the meantime, I have been mentally trying to prepare for my time in
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
Testing The Water
I created this blog about five months ago; curled up on the sofa with a hot cup of tea, in what could truly be called a bachelor pad, located right in the middle of Beijing, China. I titled it “Ink Trail Through The World,” and was not quite sure what to do with it. Now I am curled up on the sofa once again. Except this time I am at my apartment, with a thunder storm going on outside; and it is not Christmas break but the final stretch of the spring quarter of my junior year. I am also inevitably about a month away, from figuring out exactly why I chose this particular title.
My mile markers for this past year have consisted of particular places that I explored and the oceans that I hesitantly dipped my feet in. However, now I am ready to go swimming. In just under a month, I will be leaving for an orientation in D.C. and then an intensive two-month language program in Alanya, Turkey. Following this I will spend about a week and a half at home, and then it’s off to Graz, Austria for about a quarter. From that point on things start to get a little blurry. I am thinking that I might want to take the next two quarters after that off, and travel around a bit, maybe try to pick up some Spanish. Nothing is set in stone yet, though. These are just foggy ideas creeping up here and there.
I am really excited and I am really nervous. The last time I was away from Seattle and essentially home, for more than three weeks at a time, was during the summer after my freshman year of college. It is not that I did not enjoy that summer, but I definitely got homesick, which was an incredibly unexpected realization.
The first four weeks of that summer were spent in beautiful Italy, partially traveling around with awesome friends and partially in conjunction with an academic program. Nevertheless, the next five weeks of my summer involved catching up with family. That is my family that lives in Sarajevo, Bosnia; well the part of my family that does not constitute my parents, because they are something much greater than just my parents, they are my life.
I had expected to feel at home and just be comfortable throughout my time there, and I was. After all, that is my birthplace and there is definitely something to be said about the place that you come from. What I did not expect though is the terrible yearning that I had for Seattle. This city with its bipolar weather and rainbow colored life-style clicked with me in a way only few have thus far.
Since that summer, I have continued traveling, particularly this past year. Yet, there is always a sense of familiarity and comfort when I see the Seattle skyline, especially the Space Needle, the way it is isolated and protruding from the rest of the buildings. It is like a lighthouse calling a lost sailor back to its safe harbor.
This realization is what makes me slightly nervous about my upcoming adventures. I am leaving a city that I have grown to call home, as well as some of the people that mean the world to me.
Yet, there is also an overwhelming excitement of endless possibilities that have somehow managed to take over every spare brain cell. Possibilities: for swimming the world’s oceans, as well as dreams of a future that might potentially involve law school; and in some faraway distance a life of diplomacy. Who was it again that said that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree…..
My mile markers for this past year have consisted of particular places that I explored and the oceans that I hesitantly dipped my feet in. However, now I am ready to go swimming. In just under a month, I will be leaving for an orientation in D.C. and then an intensive two-month language program in Alanya, Turkey. Following this I will spend about a week and a half at home, and then it’s off to Graz, Austria for about a quarter. From that point on things start to get a little blurry. I am thinking that I might want to take the next two quarters after that off, and travel around a bit, maybe try to pick up some Spanish. Nothing is set in stone yet, though. These are just foggy ideas creeping up here and there.
I am really excited and I am really nervous. The last time I was away from Seattle and essentially home, for more than three weeks at a time, was during the summer after my freshman year of college. It is not that I did not enjoy that summer, but I definitely got homesick, which was an incredibly unexpected realization.
The first four weeks of that summer were spent in beautiful Italy, partially traveling around with awesome friends and partially in conjunction with an academic program. Nevertheless, the next five weeks of my summer involved catching up with family. That is my family that lives in Sarajevo, Bosnia; well the part of my family that does not constitute my parents, because they are something much greater than just my parents, they are my life.
I had expected to feel at home and just be comfortable throughout my time there, and I was. After all, that is my birthplace and there is definitely something to be said about the place that you come from. What I did not expect though is the terrible yearning that I had for Seattle. This city with its bipolar weather and rainbow colored life-style clicked with me in a way only few have thus far.
Since that summer, I have continued traveling, particularly this past year. Yet, there is always a sense of familiarity and comfort when I see the Seattle skyline, especially the Space Needle, the way it is isolated and protruding from the rest of the buildings. It is like a lighthouse calling a lost sailor back to its safe harbor.
This realization is what makes me slightly nervous about my upcoming adventures. I am leaving a city that I have grown to call home, as well as some of the people that mean the world to me.
Yet, there is also an overwhelming excitement of endless possibilities that have somehow managed to take over every spare brain cell. Possibilities: for swimming the world’s oceans, as well as dreams of a future that might potentially involve law school; and in some faraway distance a life of diplomacy. Who was it again that said that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree…..
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