Show and Tell

When I was in 5th grade, I had to journal my week long vacation to make up for the homework I was missing. I got the journal back with some mediocre grade because, in Ms. Dahl's words, I had "told" but not "shown" what I had done during my vacation. I feel like this blog is verging on only telling what I'm doing which is not only extremely boring, but totally underneath my own expectations and ability. In an effort to curb this problem I think perhaps my lent pledge will be to write at least once a week and not be so boring. Ha. Together we'll see how well this works out and if I can make baby Jesus happy with my Lent 'sacrifice'.

So onto exciting things! I'm back in Ankara (hooray!) and now that I'm looking at the semester from a whole new perspective. I came to Ankara upset about leaving my family, friends, and boyfriend. In retrospect I was totally unprepared to move to a completely different country with totally different norms. In addition, all my other travels were either extremely short (read: Janterm) or they were just so much fun I didn't care about the problems I faced (read: Berlin). Coming to Ankara was neither of those things. I was now living in a very different country for a very long time and there were problems that made me initially hate living here. First off its hard to be the foreigner all the time. People stare, people talk about you while you're standing right there, you wake up and the moment you step out the door people look at your like you're some foreign crazy. You get on the dolmus and again people are staring at the yabani who somehow knows how to ride the dolmus. There is literally no way for me to pretend to be Turkish.

At first this used to really really bother me. I was really upset for constantly being told through social interactions that I was different therefore somehow available to be treated like an alien. In my mind I think about how in US we're all taught not to stare at foreigners, handicapped, or disabled people (granted some people are horrible at this). Its part of our ingrained American identity to try and at least pretend that we don't see differences. This is why to me its rude to be stared at because I've been taught that staring at something that makes people feel uncomfortable and 'different'. While it can be infuriating at times, I think I've just grown accustomed to to being stared at. Also when I went to Istanbul I realized that this is really an Ankara thing. In Istanbul (at least in the touristy places I saw) people could care less if you were foreign. There were so many Germans, Brits, and other Europeans there that no could cared that I was clearly foreign. I don't think I was stared at the whole time I was there. In Ankara, the lovely Ankara, foreigners have no reason visit because there are barely any touristy sites. Ankara has Atatürk's mausoleum, the building in which the first parliament of Turkey was held, and an old ruin of a castle... not exactly enough to make droves of tourists come to Ankara. Even the city itself is relatively new to non-American standards. It sprung up in the 1920's when Ataturk moved the capital of his new nation from Istanbul to Ankara. In sum, getting stared at was seriously hard to cope with at first and like most problems I've encountered, I eventually just realized that its a cultural difference that leads to misunderstandings.

What I've found most amazing about Turkey, and also about traveling in general, is how little people actually need to live and how people just made due with what they have. I live in a nice part of town, but still have had the power go out at least four times and the water has been turned off twice, once for three days. To make the hot water in the shower work you also have to turn on the water in the kitchen so there's enough pressure to heat the water. Then the water drains from the tub into this hole next to the tub and when there's too much water it'll just go all over the bathroom floor. The sidewalks are cracked and there's never enough guard rails. The buses are totally irregular and have no timetable. It's just a sort of 'make-do' attitude and I feel like I've started to accept this mindset because the other day I bought a pair of shoes in two different shoe sizes. They only had the left shoe in my size so to remedy the problem I just got the right shoe one size up. (Okay in my defense it was in European sizes so its not like an American shoe size up, its only an centimeter bigger on the right.) I'm walking around with two different sized shoes. It's hard to explain but silly things like this make Ankara all the more enduring now. I've really grown to live the funny little quirks and even when its frustrating I feel like I still really like living here.

Maybe its the fact that I have friends that I love, a wonderful roommate, and a pretty decent system of interaction with friends from home, but I really like Ankara. Visiting England for such a long time also made me made me miss my friends and home in Ankara. It's really weird when you realized you're getting used to living in a very different place, but that's what's happening and I totally love it. So while living in Ankara can be really hard and in the beginning I had some serious doubts about my happiness here, I can honestly say I really love it and when I have to leave in a few months I am going to be very sad.