The Road So Far

Since I'm into my third week in Istanbul it seemed like it was time for an update on how my life here is taking shape. I have settled into the apartment, got over my jet lag, and developed a bit of a routine, which is reminding me of the things I love about living here and the things that can be frustrating, too.

We'll start with the positive bits. The first day Amanda and I arrived, we found our way to a little commercial district not far from our new place that has just about everything we need on a daily basis. Since then I've fallen into the routine of heading down there every two or three days to pick up a bunch of fresh fruits and vegetables, a loaf of fresh-baked bread, and anything else I may need at the time (which too often includes a whole rotisserie chicken from one of the street vendors). On my other trips abroad I've always been able to visit these little markets and pick up some fresh food, but this is the first time that I'm really forced to fend for myself and I'm enjoying getting the hang of it. There's something I really love about going to one store to pick up a bunch of farm-fresh fruit and eggs and then going to the baker next door to get a fresh-baked loaf of bread (especially when it only costs about 35 cents). I'm definitely eating healthier than I ever did in Boston, though I'm sure I'll be trying to convince one of you to mail me a burrito in about a month.

I've also been settling into a daily routine of preparing for my summer language program. After breakfast and a little time trying to entertain the cats, I've been sitting down and going through a chapter or two a day from my Ottoman textbook. I'm still not at the level that I need to be for the program, but I've got a little time left and I think I will get there. Just being immersed in Turkish again is helping a lot, as things that I learned two summers ago are starting to come back to me in waves. Granted, it takes a bit of effort to use what I know of Modern Turkish and figure out that it's mostly there in the Ottoman as well, just in a different alphabet. I'm still at the stage where I feel like I'm doing two sets of translation - from Ottoman to Turkish and then Turkish to English - but the more I practice the more natural it's feeling. I'm still sticking with the Turkish novel as much as I can and using my Turkish whenever I head out of the house, but it's a slow process trying to get back to where I was when I was in Ankara two years ago. One of the most frustrating things about using a language outside of a classroom is that no matter how many times I think I know what I need to say in a given situation, the person I'm talking to always goes off script or has a slightly different way of speaking than I'm used to. I leave the house feeling like I'm really starting to understand the language again and then head home having been knocked down a peg or two. It's all good for me and part of the process of learning, but damn it's frustrating sometimes! But that's also another reason why I'm happy to be living in a smaller neighborhood outside of Taksim or Sultanahmet, where most of the tourists end up. Most of the people I encounter on a daily basis don't speak much English and I'm forced to use my Turkish, even when it would be so much easier to just slip back into English for those really hard to craft phrases. Hopefully by the end of the year it will feel a bit more natural.

Tomorrow I brave the ferry boat to find my way to Sultanahmet and visit the archives for the first time. I am meeting up with a student from Georgetown who was on Fulbright last year and has kindly agreed to share her wisdom about life in the archives with me. I'm hoping to get my research permissions squared away while I'm there and maybe even look around a bit. I will post an update on that when I can.