Istanbul, Day One

(Note to the readers: Just so you can learn some too, Turkish words are italicized with their meaning in parentheses, unless it's blatantly obvious *grin*)

Istanbul.

Oh, where to start?

I could go back about seven months to when I first started looking at study abroad options, but that would be retelling a lot of what folks already know. But it's amazing to me to realize just how far I've come, both physically and metaphorically, and I'm still reeling from that fact that I'm actually here.

I'll start with Tuesday. I started to get the whole Turkish experience right from the plane flight here. I was one of a handful of Americans on the plane, and the rest were Turks, including the flight attendants. Turkish Air is quite lovely too – the seats were more spacious (it was 2-4-2 seating patterns, with 3 sections), there were video screens on the seat backs, so we could pick from a variety of music to listen to as well as TV shows and movies (I watched Carousel), and I was pleasantly surprised by the meals they served (chicken, sautéed spinach, potato purée, salad, a small dish with tomato, eggplant and mozzarella, a roll with olive oil (natch) and butter, juice, water, and an apple tart). Breakfast several hours later (it was a 10 hour flight that was supposed to leave at 6:15pm but we didn't get into the air until 8:45) was equally lovely (eggs, sausage, sautéed tomato, plain yogurt and muesli, a small dish of tomato, cucumber, feta and olive, a roll with butter and jam, and tea). I made friends with the young Turkish guy next to me, Cehangir, and we traded language lessons. I kept having this strange urge to switch over to French, which for me for many years has always been “the other language” in my head. I know that I need to learn and speak Turkish but now that I'm being thrown into a foreign language immersion environment, part of my brain is telling me that I need to use “the other language”. Not surprisingly too though, I'm feeling the need to cling desperately to things that are familiar including my music. So I think I will likely want to listen to American music still a lot. It's natural.

I slept very little on the plan because I couldn't figure out how to get my seat to go back, nor how to turn off the video screen, which while it constantly informed me where we were along our trip via a little plane over the map, I wanted to sleep. I think I managed to eke out about an hour and a half. Breakfast and tea helped wake me, and before I knew it, we were touching down in Istanbul. I kind of got all verklempt when we landed, and I looked out to my first view of Istanbul and the Turkish signs. Oh, my God, y'all. *I'm in Istanbul.* I was very nervous about getting through customs and to the university, but that all went surprisingly smoothly. I breezed through customs, where the officer glanced at my visa, looked significantly at me, and then stamped it and waved me through. Picking up my suitcase took all of 5 minutes, and then I exchanged what American bills I had for lira, picked up more lira at a nearby ATM, and secured a taksi not even 30 seconds after walking out the door.

Istanbul is big. Big. The drive was about 30 minutes or so, I'm not sure, because I spent the whole time gazing out the windows. Everywhere I looked I saw something new. Istanbul is a delightfully chaotic mess of apt buildings, where lines of drying laundry are equally at home with satellite dishes, and Porsches and Audi honk and swerve down the roads along side beat-up Toyota and Hyundai trucks. In almost every neighbor, like churches in many small American towns, there was a mosque, domed buildings with minarets towering over them, their pointed spires piercing the sky. They are very odd and neat to see, and a very clear reminder that I'm no longer in America. The drive to Boğaziҫi cost me 50 lira ($30 American), and before I knew it, I was strolling into the Superdorm. (Just a few facts: the Superdorm is a large building that houses all the international exchange and special students, up to 486 students in 130 suites that each have 2, 3, or 4 individual rooms.) Check-in also took a few minutes, and it was basically “check your room, write on this form if anything is damaged or missing (how would we know if anything was missing?), here are your keys, don't lose them under any circumstances, and let us know if you have any problems. Oh, and the staff here doesn't speak English.” This a frustrating bone of contention, let me tell you. About the only person in the Superdorm who speaks decent English is the dorm manager, who is only in during business hours, so let's hope that no disasters arise between the hours of 5pm and 9am.

The 2-bedroom suite that Katie (I'll tell you more about her later) and I share is rather snug. Austere would be a good descriptor word. There is our kitchenette during your right as you enter, which largely consists of cabinets, a small counter, a sink, and a half fridge, but no utensils, dishes, or cooking appliances. The living room is tiny, with a love seat, an odd-looking two-tiered “coffee table”/counter furniture-thing, a dining table with 2 chairs. A hall goes to the right of the living room, and opens into the bathroom which is divided in the middle with a countered sink and cabinets underneath, and a room to the left with the shower stall and a room to the right with the toilet and storage cabinet. I have the first bedroom and Katie has the second, and both are identical – cabinets and shelves, with a large table to the left, bed to the right, and a narrow wardrobe closet at the foot of the bed. It's snug but it's enough room for one person, and actually more than enough shelf spaces for all my things, including luggage.

So after settling down, plugging in my laptop (the internet worked immediately – yay!), I went out to find Erin. I had met Erin shortly after coming into the Superdorm as I recognized her from being on the same flight with me from NY. If only we knew we were coming to the same place, we could have saved the cab fare! The staff directed me in the right direction after a bit of fumbling and pointing, and I met up with her in her room which she shares with 3 other girls. Turns out Erin is from Portland but is going to UVA – a girl from the city I want to move to going to school in the state I'm from! And to make things even more neat was meeting her roommates, Olivia who also lives in Virginia, also attending UVA and Emily who is from Chantilly and goes to Mary Washington! We all travel thousands of miles, and all of us have a connection to Virginia – how wonderful is that! I also met a family friend of Olivia's, Lucy, who lives a few minutes' drive from the campus, whose husband works for the Foreign Service, and she invites all of us to dinner at their apt. She offered to come get us, so after a shower and a fresh change of clothes, we all met up and rode to Lucy's apt.

Oh, and before I met up with them, I spent a little just gazing out my window. I spotted not one but two European magpies, so needless to say, I feel quite at home here with that! I also heard the call to prayer about 5pm. Nearly thirty years I've lived and I have never before heard the Islamic call to prayer. It echoes from many directions, haunting, exotic, and so beautiful. There's nothing quite like it in Catholicism. The only thing I could compare it to really is the call and response Gregorian chant that the monks sing. This too reminds me that I'm no longer at home. But Lucy's home is close to the real thing. She lives in an expensive and a beautifully decorated apt, a neat little slice of America in Turkey, and there we students were treated to a delicious dinner of steak, pasta and salad, with chocolate-dipped strawberries for desserts. We also met Jessica, who is an intern friend staying with them, and she's currently teaching English at a Berlitz school here, so we had lots to talk about. We all had a lively conversation, and told Lucy and her husband Harold where we were from, what we were studying and why we had come to Istanbul.

Let me tell you that it all felt very surreal. Only hours before, I had landed, nervous about being in an unfamiliar country, surrounded by a language I didn't know, farther away than I have ever been from family and friends, and before I knew it, I had made 6 new friends, and was eating a wonderful dinner in a beautiful apt in Istanbul, Turkey. Lucy went beyond fantastically generous when we started discussing what we wanted to do the next day, and we mentioned that we wanted to buy a few things – pillows, blankets, ethernet cables, etc – and she offered us all these things, digging right into her storage unit to get us what we needed. Oh! And did any of us want to make a phone call to loved ones to let them know that we had arrived? Use her phone, she said. They had a very inexpensive phone plan, so all of us were able to spend a few minutes on the phone. I immediately called Russ and my Mom, and both sounded as clear as a bell, and I was so glad to be able to talk to them. After stuffing us with a delicious meal, loading our arms with needed supplies and offers to have an occasional Sunday night dinner again at the apt, Lucy sent us on our way back to the dorm for some much-needed rest.

So that was my first day, a dizzying whirl of food, new friends, and blessed generosity.