I am sick. After playing basketball with a bunch of friends on Wednesday, my Finnish friend, Sean, told us on Thursday that although he wasn't feeling well, he would still come to the European side with us that night. We asked him why he wasn't feeling well, and he told us that he doesn't think he changed out of his sweaty clothes on Wednesday quickly enough. Thus, he guessed that he got a chill, and thus he got a cold. He had some tea at Chris's flat on the European side. There, we discussed all sorts of topics on Chris's terrace (I was drinking wine, not tea).
Chris talked to us about the German identity and what WWII means to the modern German. Sean mentioned that some hipsters in Finland wear the Confederate Flag in the form of patches. Jess and I immediately talked about how that meant that they really, really didn't understand the meaning behind it (and how could they, really?).
We talked about how Germans think that Frank Zappa is on par with The Beatles (I argued completely otherwise); our Dutch friend, Joost, talked about jumping off a cliff into water and breaking his back, and then he proceeded to show us the video on YouTube.
We then headed to Taksim Square, which is the hip, hop, and happening place to go in Istanbul during the evenings (see below). We were swept away by a group doing a pub crawl.
The first bar we went to played CAKE and Michael Jackson, so I could have happily stayed there, but, as with all pub crawls, there was a time limit. By the third pub, I decided to stop drinking and just enjoy the games others were playing (body shots, German drinking games, etc.). The last destination was a club. It was surreal. At this point, everyone was pretty well smashed (I was doing a lot better than some of them, I can tell you that!). The club we went to was projecting, of all things, cartoon network onto the wall! More people came, the techno beats became increasingly bass-heavy; people were shoving chocolates into other people's mouths, as well as shots, and there were crowd surfers and table-top dancers. Eventually, some of us decided that it was way past our bedtime, so we went home. The next day, my throat was scratchy.... Then, I became congested, feverish, achy, etc.
I am really spacey now, and though my ears are still plugged, as is my nose, I am feeling lots better after a couple of days of drinking sage tea and sucking on tropical Olips (a Turkish cough drop, which is quite tasty!). I am actually going to see some tourist attractions this weekend! Stay tuned...
I don't understand just how far away 500 kilometers is.
I am not accustomed to cleaning ladies barging into my locked dorm room at any given hour of the morning (is there a schedule? Probably. Do I know it? Nope. Could they tell me? Not until I become adequate at Turkish).
The percentage sign comes before the number in Turkey.
Usually, I go to a restaurant to enjoy a relaxed, un-rushed meal. Yesterday, I went to Kadıköy with a group of friends. We stopped to eat outside, and the waiter proceeded to tell us to eat quickly, as the Ramadan dinner rush was to commence within thirty minutes. That was a first.
Suddenly, I am held accountable for my country's actions (or lack there of).
My OCD concerning water has increased ten-fold here, as I cannot simply fill up a canteen at any random faucet. I am constantly thinking ahead; when will I next get water?
Grocery stores are packed with men and women alike at 11 am on weekdays.
Words have become so much more flexible. Can I say, in the words of my Turkish friend, Misra, that a person is a "cinema-worm" and be understood? Yes. Or, in the words of my German friend, Chris, buildings can seem "negatively inspiring." Words, words, words...oh, communication. What a concept!
Dishes that I order at restaurants are always surprising.
Stray dogs and stray cats are everywhere. Dogs are especially prevelant on Yeditepe's campus -- they are accepted, expected. Also, the Turkish government decided to give all stray dogs rabies shots. You know that they have been given this shot if they have a red tag in an ear. Good stuff.
I have never hated ice cream. I hate Turkish ice cream: dondurma. To me, it tastes like sour milk. Of course, considering that Turkish milk can be left unrefrigerated probably means that the ice cream is just a product of such ridiculousness. Hyer dondurma. Teşekkür ederim, sağol.
Three Shakespeare plays in a semester is considered a workload here. Well, OK...
Wow, public transportation is, in fact, useful! Did you hear that, US?
Yesterday night I went to the movies. We walked in, and my friend, Laura, and I decided to use the 'toilet' (that's just how literal Turkish can be sometimes). Across from the toilets was the one projection room, where a beaten-up sofa faced a little hole in the wall (clearly this acted as a screening room as well).
Toilets in Turkey are either holes in the floor (see above, which is the toilet I found on the ferry to Princes Islands), or regularly-sized toilets whose contents refused to be flushed. Also, toilet paper is a rare commodity.
But I digress. After using the restroom, we headed downstairs to the concession area. There, one of our group had ordered popcorn. The Turkish man popped a bag into the microwave and voila! Popcorn. So 'Inglourious Bastards' might not have been the best option. I had seen it before, so I knew what was going on, but a lot of the movie is in French and in German, so the subtitles that were in English when I saw it in the US were in Turkish in Turkey... There was an intermission, which I had never experienced at a movie theatre before, and when the movie ended the credits were not even run -- the movie was simply turned off, and we were led out of the theatre, having to duck under a gate that was half-closed. It was definitely an interesting movie-going experience.
In other news, I finished Laura Hillenbrand's 'Seabiscuit'! It was just great. Every night, Jessica would make fun of me for reading, of all books to read in Istanbul, an account of this great horse. It reads like a work of fiction, drawing from historical references, as well as pop cultural references. My eyes kept straying to the next page to see what would happen. I recommend it enthusiastically! Now, I should look into reading something actually related to Istanbul; most likely I will begin reading some works by the great Turkish writer, Orhan Pamuk.
My first trip took me from Chicago's O'Hare airport to London's Heathrow. I sat next to Mark, a student from the University of Michigan. A music major, he had landed a semester-long gig playing his saxaphone and his clarinet on a London cruisline (groovy, I know). I soon learned that flying on British Airways is really a luxury after many domestic flights with such airlines as: United, or Luftansa. First of all, hearing a British accent coming from the cockpit somehow mollified my incessant worrying about taking off; there is always a moment for me, right before the plane steadies, when I can feel gravity's anger -- its force. For some reason, I am convinced that the plane could easily just fall in those first twenty minutes or so. Also, they give you a package that contains: socks, an eye mask, a toothbrush with toothpaste, and a card to put spare change in for Feed the Children. Everyone gets their own little TV complete with a relatively broad list of movies, shows, and radio stations. I decided to give Notes on a Scandal a try. It was a winner, showcasing Judy Dench and Cate Blanchett at their best.
On the plane ride from London to Turkey I sat next to Efe, a man who grew up in Istanbul and had just departed from his first trip to the US (all to sample the flavor of Washington D.C). He told me that he was afraid I "will get fat" in Istanbul. He taught me how to haggle and laughed at my Western pronunciations of the areas in Istanbul. He then left me to wait in the Visa line for visitors and after a bit of waiting waived at me from beyond the gate: his brother and his uncle needed to leave.
ISTANBUL
I met Jessica at a Starbucks in the Ataturk airport in Turkey (a prearranged meeting, as we both are familiar with that logo, of course). She had been waiting there for a while, getting hit on by random Turkish men, looking at newspapers that better resembled tabloids in their garishess, and soaking up her new surroundings. We left the airport to try to tackle the public transportation to our new home: Yeditepe University. We had a while to wait, all the while a Turkish man was chatting us up, asking for our numbers, dropping names of famous people who had visited his country (obviously a reflection on himself), and trying to get us to hang out with him and his friend that night. He finally had to leave, as did we. We climbed aboard Public Bus number 96K to Kozyatagi. From there, we got a taksi cab (he couldn't close the trunk door because of our luggage, so he just left it open...). That was definitely my first taste of Turkish driving. It's ridiculous. Cars just weave in and out, and honking is expected. I have not yet seen a speed limit sign; I'm not sure if it is enforced. Pedestrians have no rights. Anyway, we arrived, settled into our dorm room, which is complete with two windows and our own bathroom, and went to sleep. I awoke to the prayer being played at around five in the morning. I have since gotten used to it, and I no longer wake up unless I want to then. The next day was a meet and greet session for the Erasmus students and the rest of the international students. I met people from Canada, Holland, Poland, France, Italy, Japan, Finland, the States (though there are only about six of us, luckily), Denmark, Austria, GERMANY (there are SO MANY students from Germany), and the Czech Republic. Whew. The first thing I noticed about this university is that the mentality is completely different than the mentality of many other places. Its administration does not really know the whole story...ever, which means that the international office was only able to offer us basic information about the area. We were then separated into departmental groups, led by Turkish students in the same departments. Another thing: the school is marketed as an English university, but that is simply not the case. Most English spoken here is broken English, and that is when you are lucky! Turkish classes could not come soon enough!
My department, English Literature, is one of the few departments where most of the faculty speaks English and will head their classes in English, so I am set. I ate Kofte for my first meal here: a delightful dish of roasted peppers, eggplant, BEEF, and tomatos. I found it easy to eat the beef, which, by the way, was the first bit of red meat to pass my lips in about seven years.
Our first exscursion off campus was to go to the mall (yes, the mall. We had very good reasons: Jessica and I both needed voltage converters and to look into getting a cheap phone). We were joined by Paul, a silly, outgoing boy from Canada, and Guillaume, a charming person from France who is here to not only BE HERE, but to also improve his very broken English. Communicating with him is never a dull moment -- such a good sport. So Paul didn't really know where to get off from one of the many public buses, so he guessed when he thought he saw the mall. This led to us walking in a gutter along the road, climbing up dusty ravines, and sprinting across the crazy Turkish roads to finally find the entrance.
I had meat again that night: in dolma: cabbage leaves stuffed with beef bits, rice, and bits of vegetables. Yum!
After a day of unpacking, resting, and generally getting a little less jetlagged, we went to Kadikoy: an area on the Asian side (Yeditepe, by the way, is on the Asian side of the Bosphorus in Istanbul). We were joined by Sean, who's half-finnish and half-American, Leja and Nick, a couple from Holland, Guillaume, and Chris from Germany. There, I really experienced just how crowded Istanbul is! You have to experience it to understand what it is like, but it is slightly similar to New York, but the air is heavier, the people are more animated; it's noisier, dirtier, and definitely more chaotic. I loved it. I had my first Turkish beer (Oh, hey! I can order alcohol here!). I had Efes beer, which is very common here. I loved just sitting in an outside patio with my new friends, discussing cultural differences and similarities, laughing at our poor Turkish, laughing at ourselves, at others, and watching the many varieties of people walking by. In Turkey, the same street can host extremely decked out, glamorously dressed women, women covered in traditional religious clothing, clutching beads, modern teenage boys wearing shirts featuring English expressions, cooly standing on street corners, and young children, laughing and skirting around others.
It's crazy and great and refreshing and TOTALLY DIFFERENT.
