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.