Turkey, Part II

Hello everyone and welcome back to my attempt at sharing my summer in Turkey! As you could probably tell, I fell off a bit in updating the site near the end of my trip last year. However, since I was given a second chance to explore this country and devote two solid months to learning its language I figured I should record and share my experiences the second time around as well. This year I was placed in Ankara, which is great but quite a bit different from Izmir. Apparently, some of our complaints that we went to the beach too often last year were registered and now there appears to be a policy of not allowing the program directors to take us to the beach at all! Given that Ankara is pretty landlocked we're not feeling the effects much here but I wonder if the same is in effect in Bursa and Istanbul where there are many more coastal options of which to partake! Despite that little detail, we have a pretty great trip planned, with stops in Cappadoccia, Konya, Istanbul (inshallah) and several other local spots planned for the next several months. So, look forward to many more pictures and hopefully some narratives to accompany them.

At this point, we arrived in Ankara two days ago and have been busy pretty much every minute since. After a long plane ride we were treated to dinner by the program directors and sent off to our hotel rooms to try and sleep off the hours of jetlag we had accumulated. After a pretty valiant attempt at sleeping it all off in one night (complete with my ability to sleep through breakfast and require an unscheduled wake-up call from the front desk) we were sent off for our first day of orientation. Overall, the program seems very different from last year in several pretty exciting ways. We will be living with local host families (more on that in a bit) and sticking to a pledge to only speak Turkish at official events starting from the first day of class. We also learned about a few of the trips we have planned, received the cell phones the program provided to us this year, and enjoyed a long, two-hour lunch that wasn't listed in the original schedule for the day (in true Turkish fashion). Later that evening we were treated to another welcome dinner at the Ankara Kulesi (Castle of Ankara) which had one of the best views of the city that I've seen so far. Now, of course I forgot to charge the batteries in my camera so there are no pictures to document this, but it's hardly the last great view we will have during our stay so I'll have to make up for it later.

That brings us to today, the second day of orientation before we start classes tomorrow. We started the day with a long and very filling brunch (can you see a pattern here?) and then were sent off with our peer tutors to complete a scavenger hunt that took us all around Ankara trying to find various items and places. Our peer tutors are students at Ankara University who have been assigned for the summer to help us practice our language skills and navigate the city as best we can. The scavenger hunt was a little tiring but did help me orient myself around the campus and the metro system, which I will need to find my way to campus every morning. The final destination was one of the university's satellite campuses where we were introduced to our host families and sent off to our newly adopted homes. My family consists of the father, Mustafa, the mother, Cemile, and their two sons who are seventeen years and 16 months old. They have been very helpful so far and served a great dinner of yogurt soup, chicken, salad, and pasta that was a great welcome to the house. The language pledge applies to both my classmates and to my host family, which will ensure that my somewhat limited Turkish vocabulary will continue to grow throughout the two month stay, inshallah. Given that I feel like I've had about twelve hours of lessons today and we haven't started class yet, I have no doubt my speaking ability will improve this summer. For now, though, it's time to relax and get some rest before I make my first commute tomorrow for another placement test and presumably an introduction to our teacher. I will try to provide some more updates as the week goes on and maybe even provide some pictures, assuming we have some photo opportunities in the near future.