"I'm in love, I'm in love, and I don't care who knows it!"

This will probably be a short little post, but I just had to write because today is one of those "is this real life??" days. Because it's that good. And I know I'm probably jinxing myself by saying that - it's only 1pm here and things could go downhill so fast - but right this second, life is a dream. 

     

     

      

It's 55 degrees and sunny, the windows are open, I can hear little kiddies playing outside (apparently there's a playground or school right behind where I live) as I eat my PBJ. I'm in shorts because they keep our dorm pretty toasty, which I'm so grateful for today because it means my legs can comfortably be free! I feel at home in my dorm. Oh, and I bought myself a donut. It tastes like America! (I'm a real health nut, if you can't already tell).

Sure, waking up this morning was a little tough. I had a hard time falling asleep last night because I was feeling sick and achey, but I felt a lot better this morning. My first (and only) class today was painting and I was fully prepared to wander campus searching for the room, but I found it right away! Not only that, but there is another exchange student in my class from Texas, so if I'm going to be the weird exchange kid, at least I don't have to do it alone! The class is tiny, there were only 8 of us there today, so I really was not expecting to see another exchange student. In most of my big lectures, I'm the only one. Plus, it's painting class. I'm so excited for next week's class already.

My professor doesn't speak any English, so she has students translate the important parts of what she's saying for me and the other exchange student (again, so nice that I don't have to be in it alone!). The students in my class are very kind and patient in translating everything for us. Also, it's a cool opportunity for me to work on my Turkish. They say that the best way to learn a language is through immersion, so I'm basically going to be fluent by the end of this class. Seriously, though, a good portion of today's class was spent sitting and listening close and watching my professor's gestures and guessing about what she might be saying. And being wrong about what she was saying. I've never watched someone so intently as they spoke, though. I've never payed so much attention to someone's hand gestures or facial expression.

The class is scheduled for 4 hours, which isn't bad, but I've never had a class that long, so I wondered if I'd be antsy to leave by the end. This professor is so cool though. She has a tea/coffee station set up in the back, and encourages us to take breaks. She told us (or, rather, our translator told us for her) that she's fine if we want to leave and get lunch or just sit outside for a little bit, but just to let her know. Also, she told us that we're able to leave the class whenever we want, and that from here on out, she's starting class 30 minutes later, so we have more time to sleep. Again, I repeat, is this real life? If it's a dream, nobody wake me up. Besides all of those perks, though, the class itself is just wonderful. I spent 2.5 hours drawing fruit and vases and listening to jazz. I hate drawing because it never looks how it's supposed to, but I'm so grateful for those hours to just sit and be quiet and be creative. There's something so peaceful about it. It feels like home. It makes me slow down and look closely and notice small details which is such good practice for me.

After class, I finally found a place to print/scan and could actually communicate with the people working there - win! So I successfully printed, signed, and scanned in my lease for next year so that is so nice to have done and off my to do list.

On the walk home, the sun was so warm and the air was just slightly cool and I made myself walk like a Turk. I slowed down and I just tried to take it all in. I took some photos that do this day absolutely no justice. But it is just one of those days where absolutely everything is beautiful and I feel the pressure to capture every inch of it, because the sun is just right and the trees are so tall and green and I'm afraid it's going to disappear.

There's this spot on campus where you can sit and see the Bosphorus really well so I decided to stop there on my way back. I just sat in the sun and watched all the boats drift by and sound their horns. It was quiet around me, which is rare. Since I've been here, I've periodically had this moment where I stop and think to myself, "I'm in Istanbul..." but as I sat there and as I walked home, that's almost all I could think. I get so wrapped up in what is right in front of my face sometimes that I forget to process all of it, I think. Then I have moments like those, and even if it's just for a minute, I remember the big picture. I remember that I'm in a different part of the world and that while I'm eating lunch, my friends and family back home haven't even started today, yet. I remember that I'm in an all-new place, full of things to explore. It's like I'm suddenly reminded of the incredible beauty of this place, and it's as if I'm seeing it all for the first time. And I remember that I get to be here in it. I think this is what wonder feels like. And maybe magic, too.

Today is a win. It feels like springtime. I've got the rest of the day to do whatever I want. My room smells like outside. And I've got the sounds of Sam Cooke in my ears. How did I luck out with this day?

Istanbul, I'm ever so gently falling in love with you.

Lessons From Istanbul

 I’m done with my second week of classes and headed into week five in Istanbul – crazy! On Wednesday, it will have been one month since Kevin, Ashton, and I stepped foot into Istanbul, excited and terrified and severely jet-lagged. I can’t quite wrap my head around that. I think this past week I officially left the “count down” phase, in the sense that I didn’t celebrate another week passed. And I’m sure I’m not out of the woods yet, of course, but I’m noticing each day that there’s something I miss a little less from home, and the food isn’t quite as strange, and I actually kind of like having to walk to where I’m going.

I did, however, largely underestimate how strange it would be to sit in classrooms filled with students having conversations in Turkish. That sounds silly and like something I should have realized (I’m in Turkey – what did I expect?) but somehow that concern slipped through the cracks. It’s simultaneously outrageously cool and extremely alienating. It is one thing to be out on the streets and hear bits and pieces of Turkish conversations as you pass, but it’s a complete other thing to just sit and be surrounded by it. It’s like a whole other version of culture shock almost. It’s disorienting somehow, and I’m not sure if that makes any sense, but it is. It has really given me a new perspective on exchange students, though. This opportunity is allowing me the chance to be an outsider and it’s expanding my capacity for sympathy. It makes me want to reach out to other exchange students once I’m back at K-State and it brings a whole new appreciation for the gift that even just small talk can be to someone.

The Turks have really
perfected the art of
the snowman.

Istanbul is becoming just ever so slightly familiar, but then I have these comical moments where I’m not so gently reminded that I’m a foreigner. Like Saturday, when I went on the hunt for some cold medicine for the boys who were a little under the weather. I had anticipated not knowing what was cold medicine or what I would need to buy, so I had asked my Turkish roommate, Eçe, to help me with writing down the boys’ symptoms and asking what the pharmacist would recommend. I was not, however, prepared for the laughter that would ensue when I would walk into the Eczane (what they call their pharmacies) and point dumbly to my piece of paper with a helpless look on my face and a small shrug. They thought I was hilarious, but I got the cold medicine, so who's laughing now?! (Probably still them).

There are also moments that aren’t quite as comical in the moment, as this new culture stares me right in the face. During the first week of classes, even back home, there’s always a tinge of anxiety that comes with not knowing quite where my classes are or if I’ll find them and if so, if I’ll find them in time. That anxiety only increases when your school is spread across 6 different campuses in total and most people don’t speak the same language you do, it turns out. Who knew? So last week, when I was searching desperately for a classroom with a location so mysterious, that even my advisor couldn’t tell me where it was, you could say I was a bit anxious. But it was in this moment of searching all over campus and asking anyone I could find for directions that I learned a whole lot about Turkish culture.

First and foremost, I learned never to ask a Turk for directions. As I wandered around campus asking anyone who could understand me where the building that my advisor said the class “would probably be held in” was, I was pointed in a different direction every. single. time. When I was thinking about it later, I started to wonder how these students ever got to where they were going. But that’s kind of it, though. The people here are not so destination-oriented. I see that in the way that they meander the streets, linked arm-in-arm and in the way they give directions. Almost every time I asked for directions, I was told to “just keep going.” It’s the same kind of phenomenon my parents talk about when they tell stories from living in Saudi Arabia. There’s a phrase in Saudi, and I’m not sure if it’s said here, but the Turks 100% live into it. The phrase is “Inshallah,” and it means “God willing.” Turkey is very much an Inshallah culture, and that allows for a lot of grace. Classes here generally start at least 10 minutes late. Professors stroll in late to class and take their time setting up. They don’t get annoyed at students walking in even 30 minutes late to class, and in a lot of ways, it seems they expect it. Istanbul has relaxed time schedules that offer a lot of grace. They’re generous with their time and even call time management “time arrangement,” instead, which speaks of the relaxed way they view it. They see tasks as something to be loosely arranged relative to one another, rather than something to be managed and controlled. Some of you reading that may be hyperventilating a bit just at the thought, but for me, this is my heaven. As many of you probably know, I’m perpetually running about 5-10 minutes late to meet friends and I usually end up power-walking to class because I left my dorm too late. Bogazici is the embodiment of who I am – everything is always running a little late, it’s a bit unorganized, and everyone is terrible with directions. No wonder planner-types get frustrated with me...

Icy Istanbul

I’m also learning to ask for help instead of directions. You know, the whole “teach a man to fish” thing. I’ll be honest – I’m still not very good at it. I’m trying to learn to learn how, but I’m reluctant. I’m the kind of person who likes to have her hand held through things that are scary or could potentially embarrass me. It’s a pride thing – another one of my less great qualities. After searching in every direction for my class, many confused looks, some great charade-ery, and the help of Google translator, I found out my class had been cancelled for the week and I was pretty angry. I flew into a mess of “This would never happen at K-State” and “How do they ever get anything done?!” and a whole bunch of other thoughts that completely went against everything I was supposedly learning in my last blog (learning is always two steps forward, one step back, am I right?). Amy Poehler writes that “Anger and embarrassment are often neighbors.” And she’s so right. I was really only mad class was cancelled because I had put myself out there and I felt stupid and out of place and foreign.

The thing is, though, it wasn’t strange to the other students that I was lost and it didn’t automatically mark me as a foreigner or as a failure. Because they don’t have quite the same pretenses as we Americans do. Back home, I feel like we’re all always playing this game of pretending to have it all together. Whether that’s in regards to directions, or our career paths, or just simply in the ways in which we present ourselves. We’re constantly setting goals, making four-year plans, and talking about the future. “College prep” starts in middle school and we ask 17-year-olds to decide what they’d like to do for the rest of their lives. Istanbul operates very differently. 

Everyone on campus is asking for directions from everyone else. They don’t have the next 20 years planned out (or even the next 20 minutes, for that matter). They’re not afraid or ashamed to answer with “I don’t know” and I love that. I’m trying to live into that a bit more in my time here. I usually try to set out with exact directions as a way of saving face, but that’s not how it’s done here. Everyone here is just kind of winging it, it seems. Earlier this week, Kevin was trying to help a guy get up one of the hills in his car. He was getting stuck because of the snow and Kevin was trying to give him a push. After realizing that technique wasn’t working, the driver decided to just get running starts up the hill and was drifting as a result. Kevin went to warn one of the shop keepers that this driver was drifting pretty close to their store and just give them a heads up, and the store owner looked at him and said, “Is that your friend?” Kevin told him no, that he was just a random guy that he was trying to help out. And the guy just looked at him and said “Stop caring.” I think that’s a pretty funny summary of how people do life around here. This is not to say they don’t help out their fellow man – they definitely do. They just don’t seem to worry about things as much. They roll with the punches and just figure it out along the way.

I’m learning (or trying very hard to learn) to just figure it out. To just try something and see how it goes over. To “just keep going” and see how that pans out. And if it doesn’t work out, to learn from it and try it a different way next time. I had a teacher in high school who would tell us to “make a new mistake.” He’d tell us that he didn’t care if we messed up, so long as we didn’t keep making the same mistake. That’s what Turkey has been about the past couple of weeks – making new mistakes (and plenty of them). I’m trying to slow down and “walk like a Turk.” I’m trying to at least mispronounce Turkish words in new ways each time I butcher the pronunciation. And, I’m trying to just “stop caring.” I’ve still got my wingin’ it privileges.
                                                    

  

Fish Out of Water

                             

  

Classes started this week. Today, I had a class called Social Influences on Behavior and already, I can tell it’s going to be one of my very favorites. It’s like if Psychology and Anthropology had a lovechild - and it is fantastic.

Today, my professor talked about culture and how it shapes who we are, how we view ourselves, and how we view our world. We talked about the saying “a fish out of water.” The adage was nothing new to me, and I felt like I had a pretty good grasp on the idea, but as my professor was talking, I realized how little thought I’d ever given it.

See, I had always taken this phrase pretty literally. “A fish out of water,” to me, just represented being outside of your comfort zone, or outside of your area of knowledge. It meant being uncomfortable and flopping around on the deck and generally looking pretty stupid.

In class though, Professor Ataca’s “a fish out of water” meant someone who was outside of their home, or culture. She talked about how we each have a culture, whether we’re aware of it or not. Here, culture is the rolling purr of the Turkish language, the kebap’s and döner’s that they eat, the cadence of prayer call five times each day. It is the practice of offering tea as a sign of welcoming another person into your home. It is dropping by a friend’s house randomly instead of making an appointment to see someone (and welcoming others when they do the same). It is taking off your shoes as you enter someone else’s home. We talked in class about how no one culture is superior. My own American culture is no better or worse than anyone else’s and while it is extremely different from the culture here in Istanbul in many ways, it is also strangely similar at the same time. This is not unique to American/Turkish cultures, either. All cultures are simultaneously so vastly different and so oddly the same.

My professor didn’t just point out that the water represents someone’s culture, though. She went on to say “A fish can only see the water once it is removed from it.” It reminded me so much of David Foster Wallace's speech about culture and day in, day out living. I’ve only been in Turkey two-ish weeks, but man am I aware of my “water.” Never before have I been so painfully aware of my every movement. It’s as if I’m in the 7^th grade, trying to impress some boy again. Only this time, I am aware of how dumb I look and sound. Being in classes surrounded by people speaking Turkish makes my Midwest accent feel all wrong.

And this is where I have to think about how I’m thinking. Because in my bad moments, it’s easy to start thinking I am the center of the universe (like Wallace talked about) and fall into my ethnocentric ways. And in those moments, it’s so unbelievably easy to be frustrated by the unfamiliar and write it off as wrong or inferior. I can catch myself thinking “Ugh. Turkish is so complicated. English is much easier (which is so false). This is a university that teaches in English – why can’t they understand me?” I catch myself getting frustrated by the way they stand in the middle of the already tiny sidewalks and don’t move an inch when I offer up a “pardon?” (which may not even be the correct phrase to use). I find myself thinking things like “Well, back at home ________.”

But that’s just it, isn’t it? This is not back home, and I shouldn’t be looking at Turkey as if it should be Kansas. It shouldn’t be falling short of being America. That’s the whole point and beauty of studying abroad – experiencing a new culture that is so different from home.

I was talking to a dear sweet friend about my trip so far and was telling her how my expectations and reality had been so different, how I had thought every single second would be this huge adventure, but a lot of the reality is day in, day out living. She then said to me “That’s the amazing part… you really are living life there in a whole different culture and part of the world. That means the boring stuff, too. You are brushing your teeth there, eating weird foods there, doing laundry there and going to class.” And she’s completely right. This isn’t some week-long vacation where I have to make every minute count, sightseeing and checking things off of a to-do list.

That’s the really cool part. I get to make a home in an entirely new place for 5 months. I get to be settled here, doing life here. Which means going to school and grocery shopping and reading and watching Netflix when I can. It means experiencing day in, day out in a whole new place and finding ways to create new and different meaning in that. It’s deciding, moment by moment, to remember that choosing to be a fish out of water doesn’t mean I’m dumb and a failure, but that I had the courage to leave the water in the first place.

What Istanbul is Teaching me

It's been a week since I last blogged (which feels like it was years ago) and let me just say, I nailed it when I wrote about how homesickness would hit me. I wrote on Tuesday morning, and by Wednesday, I was exactly how I said I would be - teary, missing home, snuggled up in my cozy blanket from home, eating chocolate. Do I know myself or what?!

The homesickness didn't last too long, but it hit hard and over the silliest of things. I'm learning that missing home is like that. It starts over something trivial and snowballs until you can't pick out a single good thing about the place you're in. One moment, I was fine, and the next I hated the food here, the language, my empty dorm and blank walls, the steep hills everywhere, my uncomfortable bed, the people here who just aren't my family and friends back home, and on and on until I was a sniffling, chocolate-eating mess. It was cute. In that moment, I kept thinking "This isn't what it was supposed to be like. It was supposed to be beautiful and I was supposed to make tons of friends immediately and it was supposed to be an adventure."

I'm realizing now how ridiculous my expectations were. I'm also realizing that this is what adventure is. I'm learning that I don't get to pick and choose the best parts and call those "adventure." Exploration is not just the nice parts - it's the messy parts, too. It's feeling jet lagged and waking up at 3 am and being exhausted by 6pm. It's trying new food and kind of hating it. It's being away from everything familiar and comfortable. It's shopping in grocery stores where everything is labeled in a different language and you don't know if you're buying milk or liquid yogurt (we narrowly escaped the cereal/greek yogurt combo).

 

I’m learning that adventure is about the small victories, too. Like finding fellow English-speakers who tell you which direction the Blue Mosque is or understand what you're trying so desperately to order at the restaurant. Or finding peanut butter and jelly! I cannot tell you what a victory that was. I've now got dinner for a week or so and don't have to stress about scrounging something up or going out alone after dark. Falling into a more natural sleep rhythm - victory. Having two wonderful friends here with me - victory. Warm sun coming through my open windows – victory.

I’m also learning that the cure for homesick feelings is exploring and sightseeing. After a sniffley Wednesday, the guys and I decided it was time for some exploration on Thursday. We ventured around our beautiful campus and ended up on the backside of the Rumeli Hisari. There’s a pathway that leads all through the hills along the Rumeli Hisari castle with a beautiful cemetery along it. You can see the Bosphorus really clearly from there and it’s stunning. We also lucked out with some really gorgeous weather that day, too. It was sunny and in the upper fifties – a total dream for someone used to Kansas winters! We walked along the Bosphorus, too, and on Sunday, we visited the Blue Mosque (which is breathtaking). In my mind, it’s those moments that feel like “This is it! This is exactly what it was supposed to be like!” and I have to remind myself that the day in, day out is all a part of it, too. But man, it sure does help 

                                                      with the homesickness.

Istanbul is (slowly) teaching me to live with a little less, too. I’ve learned, in my very short time here that I. love. Walmart. I never thought I’d say that, but I really didn’t realize the beauty of the supermarkets back home. Super Target is not a thing here (I don’t even think Target is a thing here). The only supermarkets here are in the malls, which are generally about a 30-minute bus ride away and then there’s the whole lugging stuff back fiasco. So mostly, I’ve just been going to the little markets around me (şok has quickly become one of my favorites) and learned quickly never to buy more than I can carry. I think back to moving into my dorm at K-State and the endless list of “necessities” I had to prepare for dorm life and it’s a bit crazy. I showed up here with a checked bag, a carry on, and a backpack, and that’s really all I need (maybe even more than I need). In my dorm, my list of “needs” was filled with picture frames and foam mattress toppers, and desk lamps. At Boğaziçi, I was given some sheets and a pillow, and I have overhead lights. And it’s a good life. I actually really like living a little more minimally.

So far, week two in Turkey is off to a great start and I can’t wait to see what else it holds. Now if only I could get into the classes I need to…