Plane Rides
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.
OK, well, more for later: yarin!
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.
OK, well, more for later: yarin!
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