Hello from Türkiye – I am happy to report that my plane ride to Istanbul
was very pleasantly uneventful, no problems with connections or bags or
customs. The most excitement was when I found out that liquor on the
flight was free! With my dinner I had a nice-sized glass of scotch which
made me cheerful and then sleepy, perfect combination. For this reason
alone, I now think TurkishAir is the best airline ever. Also, I got to
sit all by myself. The plane was a 2-4-2 arrangement and I had seat A
with seat B occupied by nobody. What a treat. For two mornings in a row
(Friday morning flying from Rochester to NYC at 6am) and Saturday morning
(flying over Europe) I got to see the sun rise from a plane window.
For my first week in Istanbul I’m staying with a woman who is taking
English classes at the school I am studying at. This is because the room
for me at the hostel is not available for one more week. Before I came, I
thought this would be a difficult week, having to stay with a stranger and
perhaps not have enough time to be by myself, but it has turned out to be
terrific. Gülgün has been so incredibly helpful, everything from picking
me up at the airport to taking me grocery shopping and taking me out to
parties and a cafe, and teaching me useful Turkish words. All so far in
just two days! I will still be happy to move to the hostel where I will
not have to live from my suitcases and it will be easier to get around
(she lives in an area outside of the city where a car is very useful, the
hostel is right in Istanbul in a fun neighborhood and easy to get to the
Metro etc) but I know this week will be very good for getting acclimated.
So blessings are often surprises…
Yesterday evening after I took a long shower and a long nap (I thought I
could stay awake all day, but I failed, the scotch wasn’t quite enough of
a soporific for a really restful sleep on the plane) we went grocery
shopping and bought lots of yummy things. I’ll write more about food
later. After shopping we went to a dinner party in Cihangir, an old
neighborhood in Istanbul, with some teachers and students from the school
I will be at. Seven people total, all very fun and friendly. After dinner we took taxis to Taksim (like Times
Square of Istanbul, without all the advertising, just lively with young
people 24 hours a day) and then walked a short way to another apartment
where another party was happening. The side streets in Istanbul are a lot
like the side streets in Beirut – very steep, very narrow, very twisty,
and people drive on them with no fear. Also Gülgün showed incredible
skill in parallel parking. The street where the 2nd party was is so steep
that halfway down there are stairs that go all the way across the street!
I guess if anyone drove the whole length of the street it would be by
accident. Gülgün said that when she moved to Istanbul (from Izmir) she
switch from a manual car to an automatic because it was just too difficult
to do things like park with a manual. At the party there were lots of
people talking in several different languages and I mostly listened and
chatted with the people I had met earlier. I also turned into a DJ for a
little while because I knew how to work the WinAmp program and get it to
play the more preferred dance music. I’d just take requests and click the
mouse. So being a computer professional has already come in handy!
Gülgün and I got home around 1 am and I went right to sleep. Today, we
had a lovely lazy day, though I only slept until 9. We ate delicious
Turkish white cheese (mildly salty) with olives, bread, quince jam, and
tea for breakfast. Gülgün had turkish coffee but I’m still not interested
in becoming a coffee drinker, it upsets my stomach. For lunch, we just
ate fruit and baklava, yum! And then for dinner Gülgün made green beans
in a tomato sauce and dolma, sweet green peppers stuffed with ground beef
and rice, cooked in tomato sauce also. I could tell she is a good cook
because it came out delicious and it looked like she hardly did any work
at all. We ate the meal with yogurt (like sour cream dolloped on the
dolma) and drank ayran (a liquid yogurt drink that is nicely sour) and
bread. Around 8pm we went out to a cafe on the Bosphorus and drank tea
(çay) and talked for hours.
During the day we played one and a half games of Scrabble! The first
game, which we finished, was in English. I intentionally avoided playing
any words that I didn’t know the meaning of, because this is a tool for
her to learn English and I thought it would be awkward if I couldn’t tell
her the meanings of the words. I also played with a very open style to
make it easy for her to find plays. She has a good vocabulary but
sometimes she would get stuck and show me her tiles. I would think up a
play that she could make which I knew would be a word she knew and then
give her hints to find it. I think she enjoyed that, and she learned some
new words too. So my scrabble tiles have come in handy already!
Afterwards, we played half a game of Turkish scrabble, but that was harder
because I know so many fewer words in Turkish, and also I kept getting
very unsynergistic tiles. But I did learn a few words like sağ (right,
and then to go with it: sol, left) and even one I knew already: çok =
very. Today I also learned the numbers 0-199 which is less impressive
than it sounds because it only requires learning 20 words. Because for
147 you just use 100 (yüz) 40 (kırk) seven (yedi), voila. This actually
works all the way to infinity so I’m good on the numbers. I practiced by
keeping score for the Scrabble games, so I think they’ve really stuck!
Except I can’t remember zero right now…
I have been able to check my email from Gülgün’s computer but I have not
written much email because I am so unfamiliar with the Turkish keyboard
that writing anything takes forever. So I am writing email on my own
computer and sooner or later I will figure out how to connect it to the
internet. Gülgün has ADSL but it is USB-based and I would need to use it
with the Ethernet port so I couldn’t figure it out. Tomorrow I go to the
school so perhaps there I can do something. I have picked up a couple
wireless signals here in the neighborhood, but they’re password protected
- drat! Tomorrow I am just visiting the school to know where it is, and
learn how to get there on the bus from here. Because Tuesday is the first
class at 8:30am and I don’t want to be late because I got lost. There are
12 people total in the class, American, British, Turk, Italian, German,
etc. It should be fun. I learned from someone at the party that at this
school, in addition to classes they offer people 1-1 tutoring (for a
charge) but all the teachers said that they much prefer the classroom
teaching over the individual tutoring, which I find interesting since I am
more accustomed to the latter. They also said they prefer the more
advanced classes, but at this point I think it might be easier to teach
beginner classes. But that’s fine because apparently they have us
beginner teachers teach the beginner students! A good way to learn and
get comfortable without too much pressure I guess 
I learned another Turkish word today playing scrabble: çaba. This means
struggle, in the sense that you are working very hard and very focused on
something for the end purpose of a goal. A good example would be someone
studying for the bar exam, very intense and pressured and driven. I
expect I will have some çaba of my own before this 10-week class is over.
The teachers tell me that about halfway through you think there is more
work than you can possibly finish, so I have that to look forward to.
They also said that there are just three computers at the school, for 12
CELTA students and all the teachers to use, so I am very happy I brought
my own. Apparently there isn’t such good networking there to attach
additional computers, so I am planning to find a good internet cafe in the
area and make friends with the manager. Also, there might be some good
networking ability at the hostel. I will be moving in there one week from
tomorrow. I think everywhere the internet is a little unreliable, they
say because it is only provided by PTT, the government telephone company.
Until next time, whenever that might be.
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