General Update

Hey everyone! It’s been a while since I updated this, but I want to let you all know what’s going on with me these days. In the past several weeks, things have gotten busy for me, but I’ve been having a great time. A lot of stuff has been going on, and I could probably write a whole novel about it by now. But instead of writing all of that, I'll just give you a summary:

School

One reason that things have gotten a lot busier for me lately has been the increase in school-work. Towards the beginning of the semester, the workload for all of my courses was pretty light. However, lately, the homework assignments have taken longer to do, more projects have been assigned, and thus, I’ve had to spend more hours per week doing work. However, I’m probably still spending less time overall on school work than I have in the past for Wash U classes, mostly because I’m taking fewer classes here.

This week is probably the busiest week for me yet. Here are the things that I have going on:

• I had an exam for one of my engineering classes (Mass Transfer Operations) on Wednesday, which went somewhere between OK and well.
• I have an exam for another engineering class (Engineering Materials) coming up tonight (Thursday) at 6:00 PM.
• I have a large project for another engineering class (Structure, Function, and Simulation of Biopolymers) due on Friday. Luckily, I completed most of the work for this several weeks ago.

Here are the things that are due next week, which I also have to be working on right now:

• A 5-page paper for my Philosophy of Science class due on Monday, which counts for a large chunk of the grade because it is one of the two assigned papers for the entire class
• Another large project for Mass Transfer Operations, which is due next Friday, and which my group and I have already spent about 8 hours working on

However, the week after next week is our Spring Break!

Traveling

For about half or more of the weekends since I’ve been here, I’ve gone on trips with other exchange students to various parts of Turkey. One trip was to Cappadocia, a place in central Turkey, which you can find out more about here. Another was to Edirne, a place in northwest Turkey, which you can find out more about here.

One thing I have noticed is that people are more curious about my race outside of Istanbul. In Istanbul, people will ask me where I am from sometimes, but mostly, they just treat me like everyone else. However, outside of Istanbul, I get a lot of people coming up to me. Sometimes they just want to meet me, and other times, crazier things happen. For instance, there was this old gypsy woman in Edirne that came up to me and touched my face and kept saying “Çok güzel” (which means “very nice!”) and wanted to dance with me and also, apparently asked me to take her home with me. You kinda had to be there to understand it… but it was the source of many laughs between me and the other exchange students, because we saw her about five times throughout the day as we were walking around.

Here is a picture of us together:

During my trip to Cappodocia, there was one night where we went to this place where there was a belly-dancer. Long story short, I somehow ended up belly-dancing in front of around 100-200 exchange students and native Turks (you can find pictures, and maybe eventually videos, on Facebook). That was surely exciting!

There will no doubt be more weekend-trips in the future. I will also be going to some other places in western Turkey for my Spring Break. I’ve been taking pictures, but I haven’t been able to sort through all of them yet. Hopefully I will get them up here one day!

Language

I’ve still been putting a lot of effort into learning the Turkish language, and you can read about my “strategy” for doing this in the previous post entitled “Language Instruction.” I’ve still been doing most of the things outlined in that post. However, I’ve been using a different textbook from the one that I talked about there.

I think that I’ve been learning very quickly, and I’m at the point where I can understand a lot of written Turkish, and write some very simple Turkish sentences. However, I’m not really at the point where I can understand too much spoken Turkish, or speak very fluently. This is something I will be working on.

I’ve found that I can understand Turkish grammar pretty well by now, but that I lack vocabulary. So I picked up a copy of Harry Potter ve Ölüm Yadigârları (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows) and have started to read it. Needless to say, it is very difficult (I've had the book for a couple of weeks and am only on page 27). However, I’ve read the book twice in English, and if I have a Turkish-English dictionary, I can stumble through almost all of the sentences in the Turkish version. Reading this is helping a lot with both vocabulary and grammar – my ultimate goal is to finish the book by the end of the semester. It is a huge challenge, but I’m setting the bar high for myself!

In my efforts to learn Turkish, I have started to think about language and communication in a different way. Before, it always seemed like English was the only "right" or "natural" language, and that English was the best language to express complicated thoughts in. Of course, it seemed this way to me because English is my first language, and I haven't really learned how to express myself fully and completely in any other languages (except for Spanish, perhaps). But now I'm seeing that other languages are just different, and not necessarily "superior" or "inferior" overall, as far as their ability to express things.

Also, the main way that I'm learning Turkish is by learning the grammatical "rules" and how to apply them (and the same was the case for Spanish). I've always thought of foreign languages in terms of these "rules," but I've never thought about English in this way. In English, if I want to say something, I just say it, and usually don't think about the grammatical rules that went into producing my sentence. But more and more, as I start dissecting foreign languages in terms of these grammatical rules, I have been doing the same to English. This has changed the way that I see English; while before, it was purely a naturally flowing language, I now see that it is fundamentally built upon rules, just as other languages are.

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So, I have bought my plane ticket to fly back home on June 3^rd, which means that I have about a month and a half left here. I will try to make the most of it that I can!

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Football

Some of my friends and family back home will know that in the past, I have not been a huge sports fan. If you ask me which basketball team I support, or who won that game last night, you're just going to get a blank stare. However, I've now found a sport that I think I can get into: football!

OK, so I'm not talking about the American football that is associated with the Superbowl and the NFL (and which I also associate with boringness - sorry folks). I'm talking about what the rest of the world knows as football: what you Americans will know as soccer.

Why do I now like this sport above all others? The simple reason is that football gets Turks more excited than anything I've seen since I've been here. It's all about the environment - Turks really get into the game. I've seen my three Turkish roommates, who are usually very calm people, yelling and screaming at the television nonstop as a game was going on. But when you get Turks together in larger numbers... well, let me tell you the story about the game I watched last night. But first, you need some background information.

In Turkey, one of the most popular things is Nargile, which is this large water pipe smoking device. It is hard to describe in words, so you can go here to see pictures and a better explanation. Anyway, in Istanbul, they have several "Nargile Bars" where you can go with your friends to smoke Nargile, or just hang around. When there is a big football game, the Nargile bars stop everything, put up projector screens, turn off the lights, and show the game.

At the very beginning of my stay in Istanbul, I went with several exchange students to a particular Nargile bar called "Bahçe Nargile." (Bah-chay) I had a great time, because one of the waiters there seemed to especially like me. His name was Aydın (Ay-duhn), and when he first saw me, he came over and shook my hand and wanted to take pictures with me. No one else, just me. It was pretty ridiculous, and extremely funny. He must have thought I was Tiger Woods or something... yeah, me being one of the 10 black people in Istanbul has that affect on people. In case anyone was wondering, I haven't experienced any racism at all since I arrived in Istanbul... just the occasional case of someone thinking I'm a movie star. Needless to say, it is very entertaining sometimes.

OK, so fast forward to last night, when two Istanbul teams, Fenerbahçe (Fe-nehr-bah-chay) and Beşiktaş (Besh-eek-tahsh), were playing. Jen, Brian (these are two of my exchange-student friends) and I wanted to watch this game at Bahçe Nargile, but we were worried, because usually, you need a reservation, and have to pay a 10 lira ($8) cover charge. But, I told them not to worry, because I have VIP status at this particular location.

So we go in, and one of the waiters asks in Turkish if we have a reservation. I tell him we don't, and we stand around for a few seconds, until finally, I see Aydın. He immediately comes over, and shakes my hand, and does the traditional Turkish greeting (a kiss on each cheek), and seems very excited, because it had been a long time since I visited that bar.

Like I said, for football games, they put up projectors around the bar, and set up chairs in front of one large projector screen so that people can watch the game. We had arrived early, and they hadn't set up the chairs in front of the largest projector screen yet. But as soon as Aydın saw me, about five of the waiters immediately rushed to get the chairs set up, and to seat me, Jen, and Brian front-row-center. They were the best seats in the house!

Once the game started, the lights were turned off, and the place was filled with Turks. For most of the game, it was relatively quiet in the room. There was the occasional shout or grunt when the game took a turn, but nothing major. However, there were three goals scored during the game, and after each one, there was mayhem in the bar. Whenever a team scores a goal, that team's supporters jump out of their seats, cheer, holler, clap, sing, hug, and in general, make a lot lot of noise. It's pretty amazing to see, but it's nothing compared to the things that happen in the actual stadium. It gets even crazier over there... and now, I want to try to go see a live game before I leave Istanbul. In the end, Fenerbahçe won the game, and it was a great night.

By the way, I came into this game undecided about which team to support. However, I asked Aydın what his favorite team was, and he told me Fenerbahçe. So yeah... Fenerbahçe is my team now as well!

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Ayasofya (Hagia Sophia)

Hey all, this is the first of the set of pictures that I've taken at various historical landmarks in Istanbul. A few weeks ago, I went with some friends to visit Ayasofya (Hagia Sophia in English). Here is a short description from Wikipedia.com:

Hagia Sophia is a former patriarchal basilica, later a mosque, now a museum, in Istanbul, Turkey. Famous in particular for its massive dome, it is considered the epitome of Byzantine architecture. It was the largest cathedral in the world for nearly a thousand years, until the completion of the Medieval Seville Cathedral in 1520.

The current building was originally constructed as a church between 532 and 537 AD on the orders of the Byzantine Emperor Justinian, and was in fact the third Church of the Holy Wisdom to occupy the site (the previous two had both been destroyed by riots). It was designed by two architects, Isidore of Miletus and Anthemius of Tralles. The Church contained a large collection of holy relics and featured, among other things, a 50 foot (15 m) silver iconostasis. It was the patriarchal church of the Patriarch of Constantinople and the religious focal point of the Eastern Orthodox Church for nearly 1000 years.

In 1453, Constantinople was conquered by the Ottoman Turks and Sultan Mehmed II ordered the building to be converted into a mosque. The bells, altar, iconostasis, and sacrificial vessels were removed, and many of the mosaics were eventually plastered over. The Islamic features - such as the mihrab, the minbar, and the four minarets outside - were added over the course of its history under the Ottomans. It remained as a mosque until 1935, when it was converted into a museum by the secular Republic of Turkey.

For more information, you can go here.

And here are some pictures that I took there:



For more pictures, you can view the full album here.

I think that out of all of the places I've seen so far, this may have been the coolest. The place was huge, and it took probably an hour or so to fully explore everything. If I could have only seen one thing in Istanbul, I would have wanted it to be this.

Check back soon for more updates!

Three Great Meals

It’s been a while since I put any substantive information in this blog, but here’s a description of what I have done over the past weekend.

First, on Saturday, I had lunch with this married couple in Istanbul (the first great meal). I got a scholarship through an organization in the United States to come to Turkey, and I met these two people through that organization. They took me out to lunch at this nearby place, where they just kept bringing out course after course of delicious Turkish food (I’ll have to write another post soon detailing the full excellence of Turkish cuisine). The woman had studied abroad in California and New York when she was younger, and the man is a business person who has traveled to the US frequently. We talked about my reasons for studying in Istanbul, and other things that it seems like everyone asks me. But then we had a good discussion about both American politics and Turkish politics. We talked about some of the issues that are affecting US-Turkish relations… and it was pretty eye opening, because these are things that don’t get discussed in the American media very often.

Later on Saturday, I went to eat dinner at a Turkish family’s house with three other exchange students and two Turkish students (the second great meal). This was organized through the xChange Commission, and was part of a program they have called “A Warm Turkish Home.” And the home I went to was indeed warm, and cozy, and very comfortable. It was the apartment of one of my Turkish friends’ relatives on the Asian side of Istanbul (I am currently living on the European side). My first impression of the apartment was that it was extremely well furnished… and when you enter (after taking off your shoes, which is Turkish custom), you just feel so welcomed… and it’s hard to describe. The owners of this apartment are a fairly old couple – think grandparent age. Sorry Mom and Dad if you’re reading this; I didn’t mean to call you old! And they were so friendly (you’ll hear me describe a lot of Turkish people this way). They didn’t speak very much English, but the Turkish students translated for us.

So the night started off by us sitting around the table and eating some typical, but extremely delicious, Turkish foods (again, I will describe Turkish cuisine in a future post). First there was soup, followed by something like six different Turkish dishes. They kept offering us more food, and I kept taking it, thinking that once we left the table, the meal would be over.

But I was extremely wrong. We did indeed get up from the table to sit on some couches in their living room, and listen to one of the neighbors of this couple play this clarinet-type musical instrument. But the food didn’t stop. Turks drink a LOT of tea, so we had some of that, which I had expected. But then they brought out these desserts, and I thought “OK, this has to be the last course of this meal.” But then they brought out MORE dessert, and I thought “OK, this REALLY has to be the last course of this meal.” And then they brought out MORE tea, and then two large pieces of fruit for each person, which was luckily, the last thing. Keep in mind that I was pretty much stuffed after they had offered us a million different dishes when we were still sitting at the dinner table. But then it seemed like they brought out 10 different courses after that, and each one was excellent, and by the time we were finished, I could barely move! So… lesson number one for entering a Turkish household: don’t go in unless you are really hungry.

And then today, I met up with a new Turkish guy named Hüseyin, a person I found through the xChange Commission’s “Meet a Mate” program. We had lunch in a restaurant around campus (the third great meal), and then went to this place that is 15 minutes away by bus for dessert. After that, he took me to a book store to look at some children’s books that I might be able to start reading in a couple of weeks after I learn some more Turkish.

Hüseyin is one of the friendliest people I’ve met here – and his hospitality was almost overwhelming for me (but in a good way!), because people in the United States are not usually like him. I ended up spending about five hours with him, and he kept taking me to meet different friends of his, and he wouldn’t let me pay for anything, and he seemed interested in meeting up again sometime. I could tell from the time that we spent together that he is a deep person – he will be a high school or primary school math teacher once he graduates in a few months, and he told me that he holds “informal” lessons for some of the people he knows. From what I could gather, he teaches science and math to some younger kids, but also acts as a mentor for a lot of teenagers facing the typical social/emotional questions of growing up. He seems very interested in self-development and becoming the best person that he can be, so I think that I will learn a lot from him.

Other than that, things have been very busy. I will try to hit the highlights in this blog, but time is flying by SO quickly, and I can barely process everything that is going on. In a couple of days, I will also have some pictures of places that I have seen in the past couple of weeks. It’s taking me forever to get this ready, because I have taken over 800 pictures since I got here! Stay tuned.

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Language Instruction

So as I might have mentioned before, not many people in Istanbul speak any English. In fact, the only people that I've encountered that do are students and professors at Boğaziçi, and a very few people around the city. Even the administration at Boğaziçi doesn't speak English. For instance, the people in charge of setting up email addresses only spoke Turkish, as well as the people in charge of distributing student IDs. Communication isn't as hard as you think, because you can usually get your meaning across. But there is still a lot of reason for someone to learn Turkish while they are here.

Before, I had planned to take a course here called "Elementary Turkish for Foreigners," but then I found out that the class meets at the same time as some of the courses that I absolutely need to take while I'm here. So I've decided to take my learning of Turkish into my own hands.

Enter the "Lykes Language Instruction Program (LLIP) ®," a "program" I'm developing that I think could in theory be applied to the learning of any language. LLIP consists of four parts:

1. The Textbook. Before I left the United States, I ordered a book on the Internet called "Elementary Turkish" by Kurtuluş Öztopçu (KUR-too-loosh uz-TOAP-chu). This book is about two inches thick and contains lots of information about the Turkish language. There are CDs you can listen to, chapters describing the grammar, and exercises that you can go through for practice. I will be using this as one of my main references as far as grammar rules goes.
   
2. Conversation Club. Every Tuesday evening, there is this group of Turkish students that hosts a conversation club for the exchange students. I've only been to one meeting so far, but it was extremely helpful. They give you worksheets to go through, and then try to get students to have conversations with each other. One of my American friends who is actually taking "Elementary Turkish for Foreigners" says that one session of the conversation club was much more useful than the entire first two weeks of his class.
3. Questions. Anyone from my immediate family will remember that as a young child, I used to ask LOTS of questions. Well, I will be taking that strategy here too. Right now, I am surrounded by Turkish students, so I will be using them as a resource. I have three Turkish roommates, as well as other Turkish friends that I have made. So I will ask questions about grammar, and what kinds of things you can and can't say. By the end of the semester, I hope to be able to hold real conversations in Turkish with them!
4. Movies. Finally, I think that this is the part of the program that will help me the most. In Istanbul, they have a lot of American-made movies with Turkish subtitles. And after I watched one of these for the first time, I found that I was already picking up on certain things. For instance, I saw "Charlie Wilson's War" in a theater here, and even knowing no Turkish except for words like "yes," "no," and a few numbers, I was able to start at least telling which words were verbs, and which were nouns, which is harder than you might think. Since then, I have bought several DVDs and have been watching them for a few hours each week. I think that watching the movies will serve two main purposes: (1) to learn new vocabulary and grammar, and (2) to reinforce things that I will have already learned. If you think about it, this is one of the most efficient ways to practice understanding a language. It's two hours straight of pure language instruction, but in the end, you're just watching a movie, so it doesn't even feel like you're doing any work. Also, you're picking up on the language that is most commonly used, which is therefore the language that it will be of the most use.

So I'm treating this as a huge experiment to see how fast I can possibly learn a language. I have already pretty much learned to speak Spanish, so I feel that I'm prepared to teach myself a new language.

And so far, I think it's working. I've been on this "program" for about two weeks, and while before, I could understand 1% of the subtitles in the movies that I've watched, it is now around 15-20%. My goal is to spend about an hour or so each day on this, so we'll see how fluent I am at the end of the semester!


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Miniaturk

First of all, I learned how to type Turkish characters on my keyboard. In addition to the English alphabet, Turkish contains other letters, like ı, İ, ü, Ü, ğ, Ğ, and several others. So now, I can spell things correctly. Yay!

So at Boğaziçi (bo-AH-zee-chee) University, there is this group of students called the xChange commission. They are basically a bunch of great guys that helped the exchange students get settled in, and they are also showing us some of the cool things around the city.

This past Saturday, they took us on a trip to several places. First, we went to this mosque where we looked around and then had a huge brunch. The brunch was 16 lira (about $13), but it was definitely worth it! I have to say, Turkish food has not disappointed me yet.

Here are some pictures of the mosque:


After that, we went to this place called Miniaturk, where they had miniature versions of Turkey's best landmarks. Most of my friends here seemed to think it was going to be pretty unexciting (and a lot of them didn't go), but I think it's the best thing that I've seen here so far. Here's an overhead shot:


There were somewhere around 100 different miniature models, and I took at least one picture of each one. However, I have selected some of the best ones to post here:



I like this place (1) because I think miniature models are cool in general and (2) because it gave me a chance to see Turkey's best locations all at the same time in one place. People have said that Turkey has a lot to offer, but up to now, I haven't had a great idea of what they meant.

Furthermore, it makes me think of the United States, and how there aren't nearly as many culturally interesting landmarks. I'm glad that I will be in Turkey for a whole semester and will be able to see a lot of those things here!

Also, in the areas surrounding Miniaturk, there was a great view of some real buildings. I think one of the neatest things about Istanbul is that all of the buildings are very colorful. I took the following picture using my camera's PhotoStitch feature, which allows you to take a whole bunch of pictures in a row and then put them together to form a panorama image:



Finally, we went back to the area around the mosque, where we had started out the day. However, this time we climbed the steps of this large hill, and at the top, there was an outdoor restaurant:


I only had tea there (Turks drink A LOT of tea), but I thought the best part about this area was the view of the Bosphorus:

Overall, it was a great day, and after seeing the miniature versions of all of Turkey's best spots, I want to see them in real life!

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First week of classes

This week, I had classes on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. In a lot of ways, I think that the lectures will be similar to ones I had back at Washington University. In fact, most of the professors here speak better English than some professors I've had back home. There are, however, a couple of interesting differences I've observed:

1. Sometimes students will ask the professor a question in Turkish, and the professor will respond back in Turkish. I'm the only exchange student in almost all of my classes, and in some cases the professor will translate for me, but not always. In one of my classes, the professor went on for about two full minutes in Turkish, and there was lots of laughter (I hope they weren't making fun of me!), but then no one told me what happened. Luckily, all of the vital information is said in English.

2. Each of the classrooms has coat racks in the front, which the students actually use. This is not something I've seen in most American classrooms, and I'm used to having to stuff my jacket under my chair in some classes back at home.

Next week is my first full week of classes, and I'm looking forward to it!

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