I'm currently blogging from my iPod touch and sometimes it's hard to tell how things are going to turn out! I can't figure out how to place the pictures where I want them, I wish they could have been dispersed throughout the previous post so it wasn't just a big block of text!
Here's what they are though:
1. The peacock
2. The view from the roof
3. Our wonderful wonderful AFS volunteers Deniz and Samet, who both went on exchanges to the states. They did an excellent job looking after us, making sure we had everything we needed and telling us what to expect from Turkish culture. They have now left, and Can, our group leader from DC, is here to chaperone us.
4. A view out of the bus window
5. Our Turkish teacher, Mesut.
Thursday, September 13, 2012
Hoş Geldin Türkiye'ye!
We're here! On the evening of the 6th we flew direct from NYC to Istanbul, and arrived the next morning, exhausted because we watched Battleship and The Avengers, couldn't stop chatting with each other, sharing music, looking up words in Turkish, and talking about all of the things that we were excited for. The good news was that after having barely slept all night, we had no problem adjusting to the time change because we were so discombobulated by the time we did get to sleep the next night.
Sitting together on the flight were us seven YES Abroaders, and three AFS tuition students headed to spend their school years in Istanbul, Adana and Zonguldak. When we arrived in Istanbul we took dorky pictures with the 'welcome to Istanbul sign' in the airport, and then the seven of us parted ways with our AFS USA chaperone and the three other students, and were picked up by AFS Turkey volunteers. We went to lunch at the AFS Istanbul Office and met some of the people who organize our year abroad, then went to our hotel in a nearby town called Polonezköy. What I hadn't realized, and that I think is totally awesome, is that when you cross the Boğaz (the Bosphorus; the channel of water that Istanbul is based around) you are crossing continents: one side of the bridge is Europe, and the other Asia.
At our hotel, we have been having Turkish language lessons for six hours a day, just the seven of us in a hotel conference room with a single teacher. Our teacher is actually the head of the Turkish language teaching department in a university in Anakara that is known for their language program. He told us that he teaches huge classes of students that speak all different languages, but he speaks only Turkish (and Ottoman Turkish, which I think is the mostly same but uses the Arabic alphabet) and a very small amount of German. At first, we were really surprised that he was going to be teaching us and didn't speak any English, but he turned out to be an incredible teacher. It's not like we all became magically fluent in just a few days, but the amount that we learned, remembered and understood from just four days of classes, I think is astounding. In addition, not only was he good at acting out and drawing things to explain them, he could also always understand our poorly formulated questions in broken Turkish. I was quite impressed. Many of the things we learned I had already studied this summer, but we also did some new and different things, so I feel like I've totally solidified what I previously worked on, and expanded my vocabulary quite a bit.
What is so funny is that we had a debate as to whether or not he could actually speak English, and had just told us he couldn't so we would make an effort to speak to him in Turkish. He knew some English words that were language teaching specific like 'present tense' and 'verb' but occasionally he would say something like 'nuance', 'monotone', 'dentist' or 'manicure pedicure' and it made us suspicious. Ultimately Deniz asked him and he said he truly does not speak English, but his students always think he is lying for the exact reason we did.
Similarly to our time in Washington DC and New York, we aren't allowed to leave the hotel grounds. Unlike Washington DC and New York, this hotel is in the countryside, and there are sheep, llamas, ponies, ducks, geese, a swan, and tons and tons of bunnies that just wander around the huge field that belongs to the hotel. Also, we can step out the windows of our hotel rooms onto the flat roof and walk around a corner to have an incredible view of the surrounding hillsides (and get better internet connections).
This morning, we took a bus the 450 km from Istanbul to Ankara. The route was gorgeous, but the bus ride was about five hours and we had to get up at 4 am to catch it, so I slept for most of it. I did wake up long enough to snap some pictures though!
So far I've been absolutely loving Turkey, the scenery, the food, the people, and the language (I can't wait until I can speak it)! I also am so excited to meet my host family and see Kayseri!
Oh, and sometimes there are peacocks in the trees.
Sitting together on the flight were us seven YES Abroaders, and three AFS tuition students headed to spend their school years in Istanbul, Adana and Zonguldak. When we arrived in Istanbul we took dorky pictures with the 'welcome to Istanbul sign' in the airport, and then the seven of us parted ways with our AFS USA chaperone and the three other students, and were picked up by AFS Turkey volunteers. We went to lunch at the AFS Istanbul Office and met some of the people who organize our year abroad, then went to our hotel in a nearby town called Polonezköy. What I hadn't realized, and that I think is totally awesome, is that when you cross the Boğaz (the Bosphorus; the channel of water that Istanbul is based around) you are crossing continents: one side of the bridge is Europe, and the other Asia.
At our hotel, we have been having Turkish language lessons for six hours a day, just the seven of us in a hotel conference room with a single teacher. Our teacher is actually the head of the Turkish language teaching department in a university in Anakara that is known for their language program. He told us that he teaches huge classes of students that speak all different languages, but he speaks only Turkish (and Ottoman Turkish, which I think is the mostly same but uses the Arabic alphabet) and a very small amount of German. At first, we were really surprised that he was going to be teaching us and didn't speak any English, but he turned out to be an incredible teacher. It's not like we all became magically fluent in just a few days, but the amount that we learned, remembered and understood from just four days of classes, I think is astounding. In addition, not only was he good at acting out and drawing things to explain them, he could also always understand our poorly formulated questions in broken Turkish. I was quite impressed. Many of the things we learned I had already studied this summer, but we also did some new and different things, so I feel like I've totally solidified what I previously worked on, and expanded my vocabulary quite a bit.
What is so funny is that we had a debate as to whether or not he could actually speak English, and had just told us he couldn't so we would make an effort to speak to him in Turkish. He knew some English words that were language teaching specific like 'present tense' and 'verb' but occasionally he would say something like 'nuance', 'monotone', 'dentist' or 'manicure pedicure' and it made us suspicious. Ultimately Deniz asked him and he said he truly does not speak English, but his students always think he is lying for the exact reason we did.
Similarly to our time in Washington DC and New York, we aren't allowed to leave the hotel grounds. Unlike Washington DC and New York, this hotel is in the countryside, and there are sheep, llamas, ponies, ducks, geese, a swan, and tons and tons of bunnies that just wander around the huge field that belongs to the hotel. Also, we can step out the windows of our hotel rooms onto the flat roof and walk around a corner to have an incredible view of the surrounding hillsides (and get better internet connections).
This morning, we took a bus the 450 km from Istanbul to Ankara. The route was gorgeous, but the bus ride was about five hours and we had to get up at 4 am to catch it, so I slept for most of it. I did wake up long enough to snap some pictures though!
So far I've been absolutely loving Turkey, the scenery, the food, the people, and the language (I can't wait until I can speak it)! I also am so excited to meet my host family and see Kayseri!
Oh, and sometimes there are peacocks in the trees.
Wednesday, September 5, 2012
Tired Love From NYC
I'm in New York City! We are staying in a hotel by JFK airport, and we aren't go to leave until we fly out tomorrow night, so it doesn't really matter where we are because it doesn't look like much out of the windows.
But we made it safe and sound, I even met three other AFS students from the Seattle area, while I was on the flight, that are going to France and Spain!
Now I'm very exhausted because I was up late packing and trying to get my suitcase to the appropriate weight, but I just wanted to say HAPPY BIRTHDAY! to my mom. She was up until 2 am with me last night, helping me pack and telling me to go to bed, and then got up at 4 to take me to the airport on her birthday. I love her so much and she's probably missing me a lot right now (also we sent my brother off to college on the east coast just last week). I feel like I had so much more to say, but I have to go because we still have another meeting before bed, and I am soo tired, but thank you thank you to everyone who was so excited for me leaving and was so full of help and support along the way!
We fly to Istanbul tomorrow night!
But we made it safe and sound, I even met three other AFS students from the Seattle area, while I was on the flight, that are going to France and Spain!
Now I'm very exhausted because I was up late packing and trying to get my suitcase to the appropriate weight, but I just wanted to say HAPPY BIRTHDAY! to my mom. She was up until 2 am with me last night, helping me pack and telling me to go to bed, and then got up at 4 to take me to the airport on her birthday. I love her so much and she's probably missing me a lot right now (also we sent my brother off to college on the east coast just last week). I feel like I had so much more to say, but I have to go because we still have another meeting before bed, and I am soo tired, but thank you thank you to everyone who was so excited for me leaving and was so full of help and support along the way!
We fly to Istanbul tomorrow night!
Monday, September 3, 2012
T-minus 40 Hours
I am leaving in a little less than two days; my flight to NYC is at 6:30am on Wednesday. I am so excited, and feel good about having done everything I wanted to do in Seattle this summer. A few people have asked me if I'm scared to go, if I'll be really sad, or if I think that I'll miss everything once I get there. While I'm sure that adjusting will be difficult and of course it's scary to set of to live with a family that I've never met before, and be gone for so long, most of all right now I am feeling prepared.
I have been dreaming about going abroad for about a year, have been seriously considering it for about 9 months, and have known for sure that I was going for about 5. I've been to workshops, meetings and orientations about being an AFS exchange student, and have been so grateful and amazed with the number of resources that my community has dug up for me. It's incredible how many friends or friends-of-friends I've gotten to contact about Turkey- who knew there would be so many? So right now, I feel very ready to leave home, and have somewhat of an idea of what to expect when I arrive, as well as about a month's worth of Turkish language lessons in my head.
A note on packing-
AFS has given us guidelines on the amount of baggage that we are allowed to bring; 1 suitcase, 44 lbs (20 kilos), and one carry-on, 22 lbs (10 kilos). At first, this was a bit of a shocker. Everything I would need for an entire year, going into one suitcase and one backpack? No way!
But the more I thought about it, the more I warmed up to the idea. After all, it won't be EVERYTHING I need for 10 months, it will be just the essentials- what I need to get myself established. The point of an exchange isn't to go camping for a year, or even to 'go on a trip' for a year; the point is to up and move to somewhere new and different, and spend a year transforming until that place is a home. When I look at it like this, I don't really need to bring much. In fact, it has been recommended to me that I bring only enough clothes for about two weeks, and focus more on bringing gifts and things to represent my home city and where I come from. Also, I will be wearing a uniform to school, so I really only need weekend clothes. Turns out, all of the clothes I'm bringing don't even take up that much room.
Basically, everything that seemed absurd at first has had so much time to settle in that none of the craziness of being an exchange student seems the slightest bit strange anymore.
I have been dreaming about going abroad for about a year, have been seriously considering it for about 9 months, and have known for sure that I was going for about 5. I've been to workshops, meetings and orientations about being an AFS exchange student, and have been so grateful and amazed with the number of resources that my community has dug up for me. It's incredible how many friends or friends-of-friends I've gotten to contact about Turkey- who knew there would be so many? So right now, I feel very ready to leave home, and have somewhat of an idea of what to expect when I arrive, as well as about a month's worth of Turkish language lessons in my head.
A note on packing-
AFS has given us guidelines on the amount of baggage that we are allowed to bring; 1 suitcase, 44 lbs (20 kilos), and one carry-on, 22 lbs (10 kilos). At first, this was a bit of a shocker. Everything I would need for an entire year, going into one suitcase and one backpack? No way!
But the more I thought about it, the more I warmed up to the idea. After all, it won't be EVERYTHING I need for 10 months, it will be just the essentials- what I need to get myself established. The point of an exchange isn't to go camping for a year, or even to 'go on a trip' for a year; the point is to up and move to somewhere new and different, and spend a year transforming until that place is a home. When I look at it like this, I don't really need to bring much. In fact, it has been recommended to me that I bring only enough clothes for about two weeks, and focus more on bringing gifts and things to represent my home city and where I come from. Also, I will be wearing a uniform to school, so I really only need weekend clothes. Turns out, all of the clothes I'm bringing don't even take up that much room.
Basically, everything that seemed absurd at first has had so much time to settle in that none of the craziness of being an exchange student seems the slightest bit strange anymore.
Sunday, July 22, 2012
Things Are Gettin' Real!
This week I booked my plane tickets, got an e-mail from my host family, started researching my host city of Kayseri, and realized that the next time I visit an airport, it will be to leave for 10 months!
My Tickets
On the morning of September 5th, I will fly to New York City to meet up with the other Turkey YES Abroad girls for a gateway Orientation, and then fly from NYC to Istanbul on the night of September 6th. In Istanbul, we will have a few days for our Gateway Orientation, before we break off to our respective host cities.
Two weeks ago, Rya and Hana (other YES Abroad girls) got their host family information, and found out that they would be living in Kayseri, making the rest of us anxious to hear! This week, I received news that my host family is also in Kayseri, and yesterday Bridget found out that she will be hosted in Gaziantep. We weren't sure how many of us would be together in a city, or how spread out we would be. So far, we have three in Kayseri, one in Gaziantep and three that have yet to hear.
My family sounds very nice, and also very excited to host me! I have a mom and a dad, a sister that is nine, and a brother that is fourteen, they are not religious, and live in an apartment. My brother Onur e-mailed some pictures of their family, along with a friendly note about how much they are looking forward to having me. The note was in English, but very basic and short, and I've been informed that my host family may not speak any English, or only a small amount, but that I should absolutely try and communicate with them before I go. I've e-mailed him back, but not gotten a response yet.
My Host City
I've started reading a little bit about Kayseri. It is located pretty much right in the center of the country, and Google says that by car, it is about 476 miles (766 km) from Istanbul (Turkey's largest city), and about 198 miles (319 km) from Ankara (Turkey's capitol, and second largest city).
Kayseri itself has a population of 844,656 and a metropolitan area population of 977,240, making it Turkey's 9th largest city. I'm especially interested in learning about the history of Kayseri, because it has been continuously inhabited since 3,000 BCE! We sure don't have history like that in Seattle!
I've also been told that Kayseri is the birthplace of a food called pastirma, a kind of seasoned cured beef that is eaten with eggs, and is quite delicious.
I've also been told that Kayseri is the birthplace of a food called pastirma, a kind of seasoned cured beef that is eaten with eggs, and is quite delicious.
In addition, Kayseri is not too far from a place called Cappadocia, where houses are carved into the sides of rock faces. I haven't had a chance to read up on it too much, but I'd really like to; it has a recorded history dating back to the 6th Century BCE, but people have been living there since the Bronze Age. Some family friends of mine that lived in Turkey for a few years and have traveled all throughout the country say that it is their all time favorite place in Turkey. Hopefully I will be able to visit it!
One thing I remember from my interview trip to Denver is that I was sitting next to Cara (another semi-finalist from Seattle), and as we were flying over Seattle about to land, she looked at me and said "What if this is the last time we fly into Seattle until we are returning from our exchange?" The thought scared me! I sort of brushed her off with an "Oh no no, even if we get the scholarship we will surely fly somewhere before then." It ended up not being the last flight home for either of us; Cara is in Oman right now for the summer with NSLI-Y instead of YES (see her blog here), and flew somewhere else on a school trip beforehand anyway, and I have already been to DC and back. However, this past week I was visiting my grandparents in Pennsylvania, and had a little cheesy sentimental moment this morning when I was flying over my city and realized it really would be my last time in an airport before I leave for a year.
Overall
Overall
Things are coming right up, and beginning to feel very, very real. This is happening! Only 45 days until departure!
Görüşürüz.
Görüşürüz.
Friday, July 20, 2012
Check out this article in our local paper!
The West Seattle Herald, the local newspaper for West Seattle and White Center, generously published this article about me and the YES Abroad program, to help spread the word! Check it out!
National Pre-Departure Orientation
At the end of last month (June 26-29th) all of the YES Abroad students were flown to Washington DC to attend a National Pre-Departure Orientation. We had workshops from early in the morning until late at night, and on one day went to the U.S. State Department building and the embassy of the country that we will be traveling to. After the orientation, students going abroad to Malaysia, India and Thailand went to an additional workshop in another DC hotel, before departing directly for their exchange.
The workshops were super interesting and informative, we learned more about culture shock and how to deal with it, (it's not good, its not bad, it's just different), how to communicate about our own culture and dispel stereotypes of Americans, how to effectively communicate about the YES Abroad Program, and what it means to be an ambassador. We had a brief history and outline of Islam and Muslim Faith Cultures, learned what things will get you sent home from the program (drugs/driving/hitchhiking/pregnancies being the main ones) and the common stages of ups and downs that go along with homesickness and being an exchange student (showed graphically on "Allen's chart of sadness", a sine wave). We learned about the importance of documenting your exchange and journaling for growth, health and safety while abroad, and the support and organizational structures of AFS. Afterwards, I felt boatloads more prepared on all sorts of levels.
On Thursday, we had a morning workshop, before taking buses to the State Department. There we met with AFS and YES Inbound students from Turkey (students from abroad who were on their tail end of an exchange in the states), and got on a bus with them to the Turkish embassy. It was really fun because there are only seven of us YES Abroaders going to Turkey, but there were over 30 Turkish students. They were all SO excited for us! We walked through the embassy and briefly sat chatting with the students in a conference room. I was asking different people where they were hosted, and what things they were most surprised to find out about the United States. They were hosted all over, from Juneau, Alaska to rural Vermont, and I even found one girl who lived just across the Puget Sound from me, on Bainbridge Island! One main difference between cultures that a lot of the students brought up was being affectionate with friends: in Turkey I heard, it is much more common to hold hands, link arms, and kiss cheeks in greeting. Also you have to pay for public restrooms, and most people think that the U.S. is all like New York City, or that is the only fun place to go (which they found to be not true on both accounts). I would have loved to stay and talk for hours with the students about their exchanges, but we were on a tight schedule to go back to the U.S. State Department.
At the State Department, we met back up with the other YES Abroad 2012-2013 students and received a congratulatory speech from Tara D. Soneshine, the Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs. We then got to ask her questions about citizen diplomacy and international relations. Afterwards, we asked more extensive questions to a panel of five experts that focused on East Asian and Pacific Affairs, African Affairs, Near East Affairs, South and Central Asian Affairs, and the Affairs in the Balkan Region (covering all of the regions that YES Abroad students are traveling to). There was supposed to be an additional person focusing on Southern European Affairs, but they weren’t there, so questions concerning Turkey were shared between the Balkans and Near Eastern specialists. We discussed relations between the U.S. and Turkey, as well as Turkey’s responses to the situation in Syria, and specifically the plane that was shot down a few days before the orientation.
Afterwards, we all made a brief tourist stop at the Lincoln Memorial, before heading back to the hotel.
We had needed our passports to get into the State Department Building, so AFS gave us these fancy name tag necklaces with a passport sized pouch in them. They worked great for storing passports and hotel room keys until nearly all 53 of us couldn’t unlock our rooms because we wiped our keys by walking through a metal detector… Oops.
Can was our group leader who came for the orientation from college in Ankara, to tell us about his home country. Three years ago he was part of the YES Inbound Program, and spent a year in Austin, Texas. He is now an AFS Turkey volunteer. He was so patient with all of our incessant questions about all things Turkish!
As a result overall, I am feeling much more prepared, and know far more of what to expect on my exchange. I also really got to know my fellow YES Abroad students traveling to Turkey, and many more specifics about Turkish culture from Can. Some honey is so strong it can kill you! Your host mom will probably read your diary! Your host family probably won’t speak very much English! People don’t have dryers, they just hang their clothes! Everyone drinks lots and lots of black tea! Don’t put the Turkish flag on the ground! One of the longest Turkish words is Çekoslovakyalılaştıramadıklarımızdansınız! There are lots of dramatic Turkish soap operas!
See you later in Turkish is görüşürüz!
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