Sorry it's taken me this long to write about this, but I'm on Turkish time. :P Here it goes!
So I left home bright and early on the morning of June 22nd, numb with excitement and anticipation, and headed off to the airport with my parents. After saying goodbye to my mom, my dad, who was also traveling that day for business, came in with me, and graciously came all the way to my gate to say goodbye. After a perfectly uneventful flight to DC, almost the entirety of which I spent journaling, I got off the plane and, after a bit of trouble finding the train to the baggage claim, was greeted by one of the program directors from ACES, our "implementing organization," plus two other Turkey-bound NSLI-Yers named Madeleine and Sophia. After two more named Patrick and Rachel showed up, who were headed to China instead, we got in the shuttle to head over to the hotel, excitedly chatting all the while about our upcoming adventures and all the (many) related hopes and fears.
After arriving at the hotel, we grabbed some lunch, and over the course of that day, leading up to the actual start of the orientation at five. The first part of the orientation was fairly standard. There were two groups of us NSLI-Yers; the 14 of us headed to Turkey, and another 25 heading to Jiaxing, China, which is just outside of Shanghai. The first night of the orientation covered mostly standard protocol of the program (most of it was common sense anyway) - as my now good friend Maddy from Portland, Oregon, said: "Shockingly, running around Bursa at 2 AM drunk and wearing nothing but an American flag isn't a good idea, and it's against program rules to elope, convert religions, or renounce our American citizenship. Bummer, my plans for this trip just went down like a turkey trying to fly." As you can see, she's quite the character (hehehe love you, Maddy ^_^).
The next day included a great deal more of country-specific briefing for both the Turkey and China groups. We were aided in this mainly by Catherine, our resident director, who is American but has lived in Turkey for several years and speaks Turkish fluently, as well as Safa, a representative from ISE World, our "overseas partner organization." We learned a great deal about Turkey as a country, got a half-hour crash course in its language, in which we managed to count to 100 as a group, and even saw a video about Bursa and got super excited to be there. :) And I managed to have a record-breaking conversation of sorts with my amazing new friends Gianna from San Francisco, and Salma from Virginia. We talked a lot at dinner, and then spent much of the rest of the evening chatting in the lobby, talking about our excitement for our experiences, our lives, our hopes, our interests, and much more. We were joined intermittently by my roommate Brendan and our friend Sam from Colorado, and by midnight, we calculated that we had spent a little under seven hours talking together. :) It's nice to find people that can make seven hours just vanish in the blink of an eye, in my opinion.
The next day was the day. A few of my fellow Turkey-bound NSLI-Yers stayed up to see off the China kids at their atrociously early 3:30 AM departure for the airport, but I was not one of them. :P We were (thankfully!) able to ease into our day much more gently; Brendan and I mosied on down to breakfast around 10 or so, and we ate with the others from our group. We were the first down aside from Gianna and Salma, and as the others in our group gradually trickled downstairs from their rooms, carrying their bags, we ate in jittery and ecstatic anticipation, too excited about finally being on our way to taste our food.
At midday, we left for the airport to catch our 4:15 flight to Paris from Dulles Airport. No delays or problems of any kind, fortunately. We reached our gate with an hour and a half to spare until boarding, and after spending most of that time meandering around the airport with Maddy and Safa, I bought myself a vanilla bean frappucino at Starbucks to leave the country with a little slice of Americana, and we then boarded our giant Paris-bound plane (it was a double-decker!) to finally start our grand adventure. Come to think of it, I'm pretty sure it was the biggest commercial airliner in the world. No big deal.
I was seated on the top level of the plane with Gianna, Salma, and Madeleine, as well as Cat. Almost immediately after take-off, the four of us watched Frozen together, since both Gianna and Madeleine hadn't yet seen it, which was a pretty fun little activity to start off our long trip. :)
We also had a cool conversation with a member of a band called "Barefoot Movement;" they were on their way to play at a concert in the U.S. Embassy in Burkina Faso. After that, I spent a while trying to get a little sleep while listening to music, which didn't really work out well, but some shut-eye is better than no sleep at all, I suppose. After "waking up" from my "nap," I watched the movie Remains of the Day, which was adapted from a book I read in my English class last year, and by the time I was done watching, breakfast was served and we had less than an hour left til landing. Eventually, we gently coasted down through the rosy Parisian sunrise and touched down on French soil.
I'd never been in the Charles de Gaulle Airport before, so it was neat we got to connect there. We were there so early for our 10 AM flight to Istanbul that there was a flight to Tunis at our departing gate that hadn't even left yet! We dumped our stuff there, and wandered around for a few hours, buying ourselves some obligatory airport croissants for breakfast, and then Salma, Gianna, and I wandered down all the way to the end of the terminal and just sat there for almost an hour, talking and watching planes take off. We eventually headed back to the gate, and I spent most of the time left until boarding talking to Maddy about our exchange experiences (she was in Spain for a year!). Once we finally got on the plane, I fell asleep pretty soon after takeoff, as I remember, and in spite of how uncomfortable it was, being a plane, I slept most of that flight away. After waking up just in time for a breathtaking descent over the Bosphorus, we touched down to officially begin our Turkish adventure.
After getting over the initial shock and awe of "HOLY CRAP I'M IN A DIFFERENT COUNTRY," I fell asleep once again in the shuttle en route to the hotel (in spite of my head constantly banging against the window throughout the ride). When we finally arrived, we did our best to eat the pizza that they served to us, and most of us headed right back up to our rooms to CRASH.
The next day, we got up feeling rested and somewhat less jet-lagged, ready for our Istanbul city tour! We first headed over to Gülhane Park, which is a park known for being only accessible to sultans back in the Ottoman days, where we stopped in an elegant little restaurant for our first taste of Turkish tea and coffee. Afterwards, we continued on to Sultanahmet, the part of the city where most of the well-known monuments like the Hagia Sophia and the Blue Mosque are located. We unfortunately "didn't have time" to go into the Hagia Sophia, which I was pretty sad (and, to put it colloquially, am still super salty) about, but at least we got to go inside the Blue Mosque - it was absolutely gorgeous both inside and out, with a soothing combination of subtle bluish hues and an elegant air of spiritual grandeur that brought me back to the feelings I experienced visiting the Saladin Citadel in Cairo, in spite of the fact that, as my amusingly sassy new friend Andrea from California put it, "it smelled like barefoot tourist feet." Following that, we breezed quickly through the Spice Bazaar, which apparently is equal to the more hyped Grand Bazaar in all except size, and after that we headed to a lovely neighborhood a little ways away called Ortaköy, where we ate kumpir (baked potato stuffed with various fillings) for dinner, and got a little free time to meet three girls who Safa teaches that are spending the next school year as exchange students in North America, and explore the neighborhood together, getting a chance to have a peak at its small but gorgeous mosque, friendly inhabitants and stray animals, and get an up-close look at both a movie that was being filmed in the vicinity, and a nearby bridge which connects Asia and Europe.
The next day, we woke up early for some more orientation-ing at the hands of a friendly and funny diplomat from the American Consulate in Istanbul, who gave us some great advice and stories about Turkey as well as other countries he had worked in, which was great fun, and then we headed over to the American Consulate itself for an in-person security briefing (we got a good look at the awesome view to be had in the Consulate - it's up on a hill). Afterwards, we headed to a large shopping mall, where we ate lunch and then had some free time, which I spent meandering around the mall with Salma, Gianna, and our friend Ruth from Utah, spending most of it in a bookstore, where I bought a copy of The Fault in Our Stars in Turkish, a CD, and a mini-dictionary. After a few hours, we headed down to the port area to catch our ferry to Bursa; I spent the hour or so we waited to get on the ferry sitting and talking to Maddy on a bench overlooking the sea. Once on the ferry, we spent most of it sleeping, and practicing our Turkish together. Once we got to Bursa, a bus came to get us at the port, and brought us a little ways inland to the Kültürpark, a park located around a small (probably man-made) lake in a lovely natural setting, where we were introduced to our host families at a banquet attended by none other than the mayor of the city!
Meeting my host family was a little awkward at first - knowing as little Turkish as I did on that first night, I was really unable to say much of anything without my host brother Erinç translating for me, but after the minimal yet heartwarming interactions that I was able to have with them, and then seeing how they smiled when I gave them their gifts after we got home, I was able to relax at least some of my worries for a while.
We then got the weekend to spend at home with our families, which was a fun time, to say the least. Erinç has taken me under his wing in all possible ways, and introduced me to a number of his close friends, who have all been extremely sweet and friendly, ask lots of impressively informed questions about the US, and are extremely enthusiastic both to practice their English with me, and to teach me Turkish. That's all there is to say about the weekend, really. It was a super fun time - crazy, fun, and amazing in pretty much all ways possible. :)
Then Pazartesi (Monday) rolled around, and we started our language classes at the TÖMER Center (TÖMER is a cultural organization created by the University of Ankara to promote the teaching of Turkish language and culture to foreigners, as well as the teaching of foreign languages to Turks - it's where all NSLI-Y programs take their language courses in Turkey). We're split into two different classes; I'm with Gianna, Salma, Ruth, our friends Rose from New York and Emily from DC, and Brendan. Our teacher is a very friendly and smart young woman named Yeliz (which has to be one of the most beautiful names I've ever heard before). We've done two days of classes at this point, and we've thankfully started off slow, learning some necessary simplistic, core vocabulary before we dive headfirst into the intricacies of grammar and conjugation. We have classes from 9 am until 1 pm, with a ten-minute break every hour in which we're welcome to go and buy junk food from the canteen downstairs, and then we eat lunch every day in a lokanta (restaurant) just across the street.
Classes have been going pretty well - they're are well paced so far, we're all learning a lot, and it's nice to be able to spend time with the other NSLI-Yers, which is always fun. :) And this morning, I took the metro by myself to the Center for the first time!! :) It's pretty simple - my host family's apartment block is a five-or-so-minute walk from a metro stop, where I take the metro to the center of town and just walk straight (like literally straight) to the TÖMER Center. Today we also went back to Kültürpark after classes, to take part in our "Peer Language Partners" activity, in which all us NSLI-Yers took turns practicing Turkish with each other's host siblings.
Overall, things have been going fantastically so far. Now that I have you guys up to speed as to where I am and what I've been doing, I'll come back to blog about some more general observations and thoughts I'd like to share later this week. For now, I should upload the giant load of pictures to go along with this big long post, do tonight's ödev (homework), and get ready for tomorrow.
(By the way, please excuse the astronomical amount of pictures, but even this hardly does Istanbul any justice.)
Görüşürüz!
-Nico
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So I left home bright and early on the morning of June 22nd, numb with excitement and anticipation, and headed off to the airport with my parents. After saying goodbye to my mom, my dad, who was also traveling that day for business, came in with me, and graciously came all the way to my gate to say goodbye. After a perfectly uneventful flight to DC, almost the entirety of which I spent journaling, I got off the plane and, after a bit of trouble finding the train to the baggage claim, was greeted by one of the program directors from ACES, our "implementing organization," plus two other Turkey-bound NSLI-Yers named Madeleine and Sophia. After two more named Patrick and Rachel showed up, who were headed to China instead, we got in the shuttle to head over to the hotel, excitedly chatting all the while about our upcoming adventures and all the (many) related hopes and fears.
After arriving at the hotel, we grabbed some lunch, and over the course of that day, leading up to the actual start of the orientation at five. The first part of the orientation was fairly standard. There were two groups of us NSLI-Yers; the 14 of us headed to Turkey, and another 25 heading to Jiaxing, China, which is just outside of Shanghai. The first night of the orientation covered mostly standard protocol of the program (most of it was common sense anyway) - as my now good friend Maddy from Portland, Oregon, said: "Shockingly, running around Bursa at 2 AM drunk and wearing nothing but an American flag isn't a good idea, and it's against program rules to elope, convert religions, or renounce our American citizenship. Bummer, my plans for this trip just went down like a turkey trying to fly." As you can see, she's quite the character (hehehe love you, Maddy ^_^).
The next day included a great deal more of country-specific briefing for both the Turkey and China groups. We were aided in this mainly by Catherine, our resident director, who is American but has lived in Turkey for several years and speaks Turkish fluently, as well as Safa, a representative from ISE World, our "overseas partner organization." We learned a great deal about Turkey as a country, got a half-hour crash course in its language, in which we managed to count to 100 as a group, and even saw a video about Bursa and got super excited to be there. :) And I managed to have a record-breaking conversation of sorts with my amazing new friends Gianna from San Francisco, and Salma from Virginia. We talked a lot at dinner, and then spent much of the rest of the evening chatting in the lobby, talking about our excitement for our experiences, our lives, our hopes, our interests, and much more. We were joined intermittently by my roommate Brendan and our friend Sam from Colorado, and by midnight, we calculated that we had spent a little under seven hours talking together. :) It's nice to find people that can make seven hours just vanish in the blink of an eye, in my opinion.
The next day was the day. A few of my fellow Turkey-bound NSLI-Yers stayed up to see off the China kids at their atrociously early 3:30 AM departure for the airport, but I was not one of them. :P We were (thankfully!) able to ease into our day much more gently; Brendan and I mosied on down to breakfast around 10 or so, and we ate with the others from our group. We were the first down aside from Gianna and Salma, and as the others in our group gradually trickled downstairs from their rooms, carrying their bags, we ate in jittery and ecstatic anticipation, too excited about finally being on our way to taste our food.
At midday, we left for the airport to catch our 4:15 flight to Paris from Dulles Airport. No delays or problems of any kind, fortunately. We reached our gate with an hour and a half to spare until boarding, and after spending most of that time meandering around the airport with Maddy and Safa, I bought myself a vanilla bean frappucino at Starbucks to leave the country with a little slice of Americana, and we then boarded our giant Paris-bound plane (it was a double-decker!) to finally start our grand adventure. Come to think of it, I'm pretty sure it was the biggest commercial airliner in the world. No big deal.
I was seated on the top level of the plane with Gianna, Salma, and Madeleine, as well as Cat. Almost immediately after take-off, the four of us watched Frozen together, since both Gianna and Madeleine hadn't yet seen it, which was a pretty fun little activity to start off our long trip. :)
We also had a cool conversation with a member of a band called "Barefoot Movement;" they were on their way to play at a concert in the U.S. Embassy in Burkina Faso. After that, I spent a while trying to get a little sleep while listening to music, which didn't really work out well, but some shut-eye is better than no sleep at all, I suppose. After "waking up" from my "nap," I watched the movie Remains of the Day, which was adapted from a book I read in my English class last year, and by the time I was done watching, breakfast was served and we had less than an hour left til landing. Eventually, we gently coasted down through the rosy Parisian sunrise and touched down on French soil.
I'd never been in the Charles de Gaulle Airport before, so it was neat we got to connect there. We were there so early for our 10 AM flight to Istanbul that there was a flight to Tunis at our departing gate that hadn't even left yet! We dumped our stuff there, and wandered around for a few hours, buying ourselves some obligatory airport croissants for breakfast, and then Salma, Gianna, and I wandered down all the way to the end of the terminal and just sat there for almost an hour, talking and watching planes take off. We eventually headed back to the gate, and I spent most of the time left until boarding talking to Maddy about our exchange experiences (she was in Spain for a year!). Once we finally got on the plane, I fell asleep pretty soon after takeoff, as I remember, and in spite of how uncomfortable it was, being a plane, I slept most of that flight away. After waking up just in time for a breathtaking descent over the Bosphorus, we touched down to officially begin our Turkish adventure.
After getting over the initial shock and awe of "HOLY CRAP I'M IN A DIFFERENT COUNTRY," I fell asleep once again in the shuttle en route to the hotel (in spite of my head constantly banging against the window throughout the ride). When we finally arrived, we did our best to eat the pizza that they served to us, and most of us headed right back up to our rooms to CRASH.
The next day, we got up feeling rested and somewhat less jet-lagged, ready for our Istanbul city tour! We first headed over to Gülhane Park, which is a park known for being only accessible to sultans back in the Ottoman days, where we stopped in an elegant little restaurant for our first taste of Turkish tea and coffee. Afterwards, we continued on to Sultanahmet, the part of the city where most of the well-known monuments like the Hagia Sophia and the Blue Mosque are located. We unfortunately "didn't have time" to go into the Hagia Sophia, which I was pretty sad (and, to put it colloquially, am still super salty) about, but at least we got to go inside the Blue Mosque - it was absolutely gorgeous both inside and out, with a soothing combination of subtle bluish hues and an elegant air of spiritual grandeur that brought me back to the feelings I experienced visiting the Saladin Citadel in Cairo, in spite of the fact that, as my amusingly sassy new friend Andrea from California put it, "it smelled like barefoot tourist feet." Following that, we breezed quickly through the Spice Bazaar, which apparently is equal to the more hyped Grand Bazaar in all except size, and after that we headed to a lovely neighborhood a little ways away called Ortaköy, where we ate kumpir (baked potato stuffed with various fillings) for dinner, and got a little free time to meet three girls who Safa teaches that are spending the next school year as exchange students in North America, and explore the neighborhood together, getting a chance to have a peak at its small but gorgeous mosque, friendly inhabitants and stray animals, and get an up-close look at both a movie that was being filmed in the vicinity, and a nearby bridge which connects Asia and Europe.
The next day, we woke up early for some more orientation-ing at the hands of a friendly and funny diplomat from the American Consulate in Istanbul, who gave us some great advice and stories about Turkey as well as other countries he had worked in, which was great fun, and then we headed over to the American Consulate itself for an in-person security briefing (we got a good look at the awesome view to be had in the Consulate - it's up on a hill). Afterwards, we headed to a large shopping mall, where we ate lunch and then had some free time, which I spent meandering around the mall with Salma, Gianna, and our friend Ruth from Utah, spending most of it in a bookstore, where I bought a copy of The Fault in Our Stars in Turkish, a CD, and a mini-dictionary. After a few hours, we headed down to the port area to catch our ferry to Bursa; I spent the hour or so we waited to get on the ferry sitting and talking to Maddy on a bench overlooking the sea. Once on the ferry, we spent most of it sleeping, and practicing our Turkish together. Once we got to Bursa, a bus came to get us at the port, and brought us a little ways inland to the Kültürpark, a park located around a small (probably man-made) lake in a lovely natural setting, where we were introduced to our host families at a banquet attended by none other than the mayor of the city!
Meeting my host family was a little awkward at first - knowing as little Turkish as I did on that first night, I was really unable to say much of anything without my host brother Erinç translating for me, but after the minimal yet heartwarming interactions that I was able to have with them, and then seeing how they smiled when I gave them their gifts after we got home, I was able to relax at least some of my worries for a while.
We then got the weekend to spend at home with our families, which was a fun time, to say the least. Erinç has taken me under his wing in all possible ways, and introduced me to a number of his close friends, who have all been extremely sweet and friendly, ask lots of impressively informed questions about the US, and are extremely enthusiastic both to practice their English with me, and to teach me Turkish. That's all there is to say about the weekend, really. It was a super fun time - crazy, fun, and amazing in pretty much all ways possible. :)
Then Pazartesi (Monday) rolled around, and we started our language classes at the TÖMER Center (TÖMER is a cultural organization created by the University of Ankara to promote the teaching of Turkish language and culture to foreigners, as well as the teaching of foreign languages to Turks - it's where all NSLI-Y programs take their language courses in Turkey). We're split into two different classes; I'm with Gianna, Salma, Ruth, our friends Rose from New York and Emily from DC, and Brendan. Our teacher is a very friendly and smart young woman named Yeliz (which has to be one of the most beautiful names I've ever heard before). We've done two days of classes at this point, and we've thankfully started off slow, learning some necessary simplistic, core vocabulary before we dive headfirst into the intricacies of grammar and conjugation. We have classes from 9 am until 1 pm, with a ten-minute break every hour in which we're welcome to go and buy junk food from the canteen downstairs, and then we eat lunch every day in a lokanta (restaurant) just across the street.
Classes have been going pretty well - they're are well paced so far, we're all learning a lot, and it's nice to be able to spend time with the other NSLI-Yers, which is always fun. :) And this morning, I took the metro by myself to the Center for the first time!! :) It's pretty simple - my host family's apartment block is a five-or-so-minute walk from a metro stop, where I take the metro to the center of town and just walk straight (like literally straight) to the TÖMER Center. Today we also went back to Kültürpark after classes, to take part in our "Peer Language Partners" activity, in which all us NSLI-Yers took turns practicing Turkish with each other's host siblings.
Overall, things have been going fantastically so far. Now that I have you guys up to speed as to where I am and what I've been doing, I'll come back to blog about some more general observations and thoughts I'd like to share later this week. For now, I should upload the giant load of pictures to go along with this big long post, do tonight's ödev (homework), and get ready for tomorrow.
(By the way, please excuse the astronomical amount of pictures, but even this hardly does Istanbul any justice.)
Görüşürüz!
-Nico
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| Pre-takeoff picture, courtesy of Cat. From right to left: Me, Gianna, Madeleine, and Salma. |
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| The Paris Airport, looking pretty good with the sun rising. |
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| From the descent into Istanbul. |
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| The view from my hotel room. |
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| Our whole group. Standing, from left to right: Safa, Nate, Gianna, Madeleine, Sophia, Rose, Salma, Sam, Cat, and Kat. Sitting, from left to right: Ruth, Andrea, Brendan, me, Maddy, Miles, and Emily. |
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| The little place where we had our coffee/tea in Gülhane. |
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| More Gülhane. |
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| The Hagia Sophia. |
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| The Blue Mosque. |
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| Inside the Blue Mosque. |
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| Inside the Ortaköy Mosque. |
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| From the outside. |
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| A friendly stray kedi (cat) that we befriended, chilling out in our shadows. |
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| Glad I got this one. ^_^ |
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