First week of classes...?

This past week has been interesting, lots of ups and downs. I'm still mourning Shadow, but I'm trying not to dwell, and as I said before, trying to keep myself busy so I don't get caught up in sorrow. So this week was supposed to be the first week of classes, only three of mine were canceled - read: all of my grad classes - and I went to only Turkish. It's rather nice to be back in an introductory language class; it's been years. My class is split up, two hours on Tuesday, two hours on Wednesday, and is composed of mostly Americans but other several Europeans. So far we've gone over the alphabet/letter sounds (there are 21 consonants and 8 vowels in case you're curious), greetings, numbers, the days of the weeks, months, and seasons. A lot of this vocabulary we've already been using in our everyday interactions with Turks on the street, stores and restaurants. What is interesting is feeling my grad school training kick in almost immediately as I start to silently appraise the professor's teaching style, how her syllabus is written, and how she blends several introductory language teaching methods. (And yes, Dr. Heather, I thought of you several times in doing this! *grin*) When she discussed the eight vowels of Turkish and how vowel harmony works, the fact that the vowels are evenly divided between "front" and "back" made perfect sense. (Vowel harmony btw basically is "matching" the kinds of vowels. If a word has front vowels, then the plural ending will also have a front vowel, and if the word has back, then it's back vowel ending. It's a little more complicated than that, but you get the idea.)

So Turkish looks like it'll be an entertaining class. I may not have the opportunity to use the language very much after I leave Turkey, but it'll definitely be of immediate practical use while I am here, and for that, I appreciate it. It also provides a refreshing opportunity for me to reflect on what I've learned already about teaching language and see it in action for another language. One of the things that I didn't consider in the beginning when I was thinking about coming here to Istanbul, but have since decided is a positive aspect is that fact that Turkish is not related linguistically to Germanic or Romantic languages, so I have little to fall back on with respects to my own past training in both French and German. So this is a linguistic challenge for me, and is at times rewarding and frustrating, both really. It's very neat to be a market, buying fresh produce and making connections with people who only speak a few words of English when I only speak a few words of Turkish, yet with the help of a pocket dictionary and phrase book, we can make ourselves understood and both parties are pleased in the end. Every day more I feel like I can sympathize with my students who are surrounded by a language that they don't speak very well, or even when they do, they still cannot fully express themselves. We're all still at the most basic level, so it's so frustrating not being to communicate in the simplest ways. So it's a lot of give and take. Every word made clear on both sides is a victory. But I still have this overwhelming urge at times to slip into French, just to be able to say *something*. It's hard to explain. So much of the time, they can't understand me, I can't understand them, so I want to switch to a language that's different from both English and Turkish. I'm sure that I'll have plenty to say on this subject. It's ever-present for so many of us.

But yet one of the funny things is that we get through, we manage, we survive. I was just saying this to my roommate, Katie, and my friend, Lessa, when we were sitting at a local pastry shop sharing a couple slices of chocolate cake and tea after having gone to the local Saturday produce market this morning. We were discussing the thought that while we were "strangers in a strange land", surrounded by a different culture, different language, different customs and all, there are certain universal things that we just slip into like slipping into an old glove. We may not be able to speak much Turkish, but yet we can walk into a shop, point to what we want, sit and eat and drink, and then pay for our food and leave - just as though we would back home in the States. The only difference really is that we're in a foreign country, with a foreign language, and foreign people. But really it's about the same thing.

We've all been doing things like this. We figure out the bus routes ("take the 43R and the tram to get to the Spice Market or take the 559C directly to Taksim, etc"), we figure out the currency ("5 lira? That's about $3 American, etc."), we know enough to say "hello, good-bye, please, thank you, etc.", and really, we're good. Yes, I know that we all have plenty to learn, but we're getting by. It's funny - you put yourself in a situation where you're surrounded by *different*, and you just make do. We've been figuring out what we can get at the local grocery stores, what we can pick up at the street markets, and then from there, working with our limited cookware to make old favorites - pasta with cream sauce, stir fry, chili & rice, even chocolate chip pancakes and omelettes. A bunch of us are essentially working together to be sure that the others are well taken care of and well-fed. Lessa is going to do breakfast on the weekends, we've plans to do a dorm potluck of sorts, and if I could get my hands on any board games, I'd love to host some game nights. Already Katie and I have made dinner for other students and had guests at our dorm, and it's just so friendly and nice, it makes it feel more like home. Yes, I know I'm being sappy and sentimental, but at the same time, it's very cool how many people I've getting to know and make friends with.

Oh, more later. Katie and I need to get dinner ready: tuvak, pilav, ve soya sosu ve salatar (chicken, rice and soy sauce and salad), and for dessert, maybe elma ve peynir (apple and cheese). :)