I can’t believe that it is already December. Time just flies, and then at the same time it doesn’t. A few people have asked me what a typical day/typical week is like for me here; my initial inclination is to respond, well, there is no such thing, because something I don’t expect always happens (such as the fire marring what was scheduled to be a quiet, typical week). But, there is a general schedule, and this particular week has generally followed it thus far.
The basic fixed points in my current schedule are: language class (MWF, 9-1); work at the writing center (MW afternoons, Tuesday all day); and tutoring Yesim, who will turn twelve in January, on Wednesday nights. Thursday tends to be my crash at home day, doing laundry, cleaning the apartment, and catching up on various little things. That’s what’s been consuming me this morning. Laundry tends to take a really long time; there is one machine and one dryer in the basement and you need tokens to operate it. There seems to be a shortage of tokens so I can’t hoard them; if I want to do wash I have to buy tokens from the manager that morning. Today, for instance, he isn’t there; I had one token and the guy taking his place had one, so I was able to do one load. Considering I haven’t done laundry in two weeks, that’s not sufficient. Supposedly the manager will be back at 3 pm (or at least that’s what I understood) and I can get more tokens then. However, when I picked up my laundry from the dryer, someone else had jumped in and was using the machines, so who knows. Also it is rather tiring because I live on the 5th floor and slogging laundry down to the basement and back up again is a workout in and of itself. My neighbor Louis spent $350 and bought a washing machine for his apartment (we all have hookups for a washer but not a dryer). He said the basement would be a hassle (I agree, but for me it isn’t $350 worth of hassle, and the tokens only cost about a dollar each). But he has a maid that comes and works at his place cleaning all day on Thursdays and she does the laundry for him anyway. She works in there all day – I hear her puttering around. It is amazing because our apartments are quite small; hard to imagine, even considering laundry, that she can find enough things to clean for 8 hours! All the other Fulbrighters in Ankara have cleaning ladies who do their laundry.
Anyway, Monday morning always is a rough wake up, because I stay up late watching a tv show I like. I need to be out of my door at 8 am to get down the stairs and out to the bus stop in front of the building to catch the free ODTU service bus downtown. I really enjoy taking that bus; everyone who rides – mostly spouses of people who work and live at the university – are extraordinarily cheerful for the morning. We drive through the city and taking that bus has helped me to get to know a few neighborhoods I wouldn’t have otherwise. Anyway, I get off the bus in Sihhiye, a neighborhood to the north of downtown, and usually I walk to class in Kizilay, which takes about 10 minutes. I like walking that route – lots of people walking around, simit sellers, stores opening up.
Class is going well. We only have a few more weeks of this session, and then I won’t be taking the next one. I am feeling really saturated with information, but I haven’t yet been able to bring what I’m learning into my routine daily interactions. Twelve hours a week is a lot for a class like that, and while I enjoy it, I think I am ready for a break. However, I am a little worried that it will be an adjustment not to have the class. It’s very social, I enjoy the people, and I like having something regular to do like that off campus. Over the next few weeks I’ll need to do some serious thinking about what I want to get out of this experience in Turkey in 2005, and try to make what I want happen. Whether that is finding some community service work, or cultural work, or some other additional job, that remains to be seen. I’m realizing that I really don’t have capitalist instincts at all, as I don’t particularly enjoy making myself and my skills into a commodity. I could easily market myself in writing and editing English language documents for businesses and academics, but I’m just not motivated to do so.
This week in class there were a few interesting stories. Ashraf’s mother had to go back to Iraq to help out with her parents, so he’s a little stressed, although I get the sense that he’s more troubled because she’s not there to cook for the family! She took a bus to Baghdad. Yelena, the Kazakistani Eastern Orthodox woman who was telling me about Christianity last week, came in Monday extremely upset. She went to a Catholic service at the Vatican Embassy, supposedly the only Catholic service in town, and had a terrible experience. None of us really understood what she was saying, as her Turkish speaking ability is really good and she was angry so was talking fast, but the basic gist was the priest gave her a communion wafer and some woman took it away from her and didn’t let her take communion. She was so furious and hurt she was tearing up in class and said that she thought she might start going to worship at a mosque. Ashraf and Cigdem, our teacher, told her that that would be wonderful, because mosques are open to anyone of any religion. That’s fine, but poor Yelena isn’t going to be able to take communion at a mosque! I felt really bad for her. She is so passionate about her faith, and to be spurned like that clearly really shook her. It seems like it was one of those situations of language and cultural barriers leading to an unfortunate end.
Monday night the Fulbright people and the Turkish Fulbright Alumni group had a lecture on the ODTU campus. A professor from Carnegie Mellon came to talk about the planned Turkish nationality room at Pitt’s “Cathedral of Learning” which apparently is the second leading tourist attraction in Pittsburgh (behind Falling Water) and includes rooms from tens of countries. Despite my living in Pennsylvania for 25 years and being there lots since I moved away, I must admit I’d never before heard of the rooms. That probably speaks to the Pittsburgh/Philly east/west split in my home state more than anything else, but I found it difficult to get enthusiastic about the project’s importance since I questioned how truly prestigious the rooms are. The underlying reason for the lecture was to try to generate funds (part of a total $400,000 needed for the room). After the CMU professor spoke, Talat Halman, who is a pillar of culture here apparently – first minister of culture, writer and translator of many books, highly expected, etc, etc, took the podium and began to speak first about his perspective of Pittsburgh’s transformation over the last four decades from grimy industrial wasteland to beautiful, livable city. Then his speech shifted into his frustration that it’s taken so long to raise the money for the room. He became more and more passionate about it – and eventually was, well, ranting about his shame that Turkish Americans had dropped the ball. He said the only time you can get people to donate funds is if there is an earthquake in Turkey. (Of course I was sitting there thinking, “Turkish themed room in Pittsburgh v. earthquake relief for a disaster that killed 40,000 people, like the one in 1999 – which would I donate my money towards!”)
Halman continued (and continued, and continued – ultimately he spoke I think for nearly an hour and a half, extemporaneously) and took his commentary to the subject of the experience being Turkish in the United States over the last 40 years, suggesting that during the Korean war Americans loved their Turkish neighbors because “Mehmetcins” were dying on the front lines of an American war, but as time has progressed, being Turkish in the US became very difficult, with lots of dislike towards Turks. This segued him to an even longer gentle diatribe about how utterly poorly Turkey and Turkish Americans have combated the Armenian lobbies and public campaigns about their “allegations” of genocide. He lambasted everyone for the widespread denials of anything occurring, and suggested that the better tactic would have been to acknowledge a violent, confused, war-torn era in which things went wrong, point out the Armenians raising of arms against the Ottomans, and question the number of dead that the Armenian lobbies allege (from what I understand, Armenian lobbies claim as many as 1.5 million dead; Turkey will acknowledge several hundred thousand; various things I’ve read trying to learn more about it suggest that the number is unknown, but suggest estimates somewhat closer to Turkey’s). He said that Turkish American people should suggest that the same thing could happen in the United States if an ethnic group took up arms against the government.
He then offered many suggestions for “tanitim” a word in Turkish that seems to mean national public relations efforts to encourage better understanding worldwide of the best parts of Turkish culture. He had many suggestions, including increasing programs for Americans to receive grants to come to Turkey.
At the end of the lecture, Louis my neighbor and I walked past him and introduced ourselves as Americans. He looked really surprised and said, “You are Americans! Are you offended by anything that I said?” In my view he didn’t say anything offensive about the US – he was just pretty hard on Turkish people. I guess perhaps he said things that he thought might not be appropriate in front of guests? I don’t know. The next day I was talking about it with Aylin and Defne; Aylin said that perhaps I was surprised at how critical people are in Turkey. My experience thus far, brief to be sure, has been somewhat the opposite, and part of the reason Halman’s comments were so surprising was that I hadn’t yet heard that kind of thing. Or rather, I have heard complaining about things but not a lot of solutions offered, and Halman was making specific suggestions for ways to change. And that I haven’t heard much of when I’ve heard complaints.
At any rate, the next day my typical week continued. Tuesday I rushed up to campus to meet our biggest problem student at the Writing Center. She’s usually there waiting when I come to open up at 9:40. But she didn’t show up. Normally a no-show is annoying, but with this particular student you feel a sense of relief! She really struggles terribly with English both spoken and written, and she also seems to have significant organizational and time management problems, compounded by a tendency towards copying other sources and an overall unwillingness or lack of ability (don’t know which) to accept suggestions for how to make her work better. Last week there was a problem because instead of the outline for her thesis which two of us have been helping her with for the last 4 weeks (with little progress for some unknown reason!), she came in with a take-home exam. After some discussion about it, we decided to help her because she said the professor sent her there. But I felt extremely uncomfortable the whole time, and the double session did not go well. She had a poor understanding of the subject matter on the exam, and we were not communicating at all (in fact I learned after the session that she didn’t want to work with me this time because she wanted someone who spoke Turkish.) So, usually starting Tuesday mornings with her is a bit of a frustration. We keep having meetings about how to handle this student, but we are in a quandary.
Tuesday ended up being quite slow as far as students – I only had one in six sessions. But I did have a visitor, a friend of the woman who invited us for that great dinner a few weeks ago. This guy is a student in our building, and he came looking for me because that woman, Nurdan, and he want to organize a dinner out or an evening listening to live music, or something. He wanted me to decide, and I shirked that responsibility, only vetoing his suggestion that we all go to the ODTU lake and have a picnic. It seems too cold and snowy for that. But otherwise, I said I am happy to do anything social. Nurdan, the woman, I find amusing. She cornered me in the hall at her house and said that wanted to give me advice on Turkish men. She said, “Enjoy them while you are here, but don’t marry one. They are great, and everything is fine for a year or two, but then you are miserable.” Made me laugh. Oddly enough, most of the women I know well here are divorced (several of them after a year or two); if you want to take that as evidence….
And, there was another tutor there on Tuesday. Usually there aren’t. I enjoyed talking to him to some degree – but ultimately I began to become quite frustrated. He is hoping to go to the US for a similar program to mine to work as a TA in a US university. But as he spoke about the US, I found myself getting extremely defensive, which doesn’t usually happen. Usually I either agree with critiques or they roll off me. But he was saying things such as, I won’t be able to eat in the US, because he doesn’t like burgers and fries and people there don’t cook well (that is actually a common perception – at least five or six people have said that to me). But this guy seemed particularly chauvinistic or nationalistic about it, saying that people in the US don’t cook vegetables “properly” and things like that. In my view, it is one thing to say that something is different and it isn’t what you are accustomed to, but to say that the other culture’s cooking is “improper.” It was a good lesson for me, because I feel like the rough last two weeks I’d become somewhat chauvinistic and judgmental about Turkey, and hearing this guy speak about the US in such a way made me hear myself a little bit – and I didn’t like it. When I feel myself going there, I need to step back and remember my internal response to his attitude. Ultimately, though, I felt like if he is already so hostile towards US culture, why is he trying to spend a year or more there?
After talking with that guy for a while, I had a nice lunch with Defne, Aylin and Zelal at the Faculty Club. We started talking about movies and Defne had just seen “The Village” which is in all the theaters here now. I didn’t see it (unfortunately Defne told the ending – switched from Turkish to English right before she gave the surprise twist) but perhaps I’ll go this weekend. But the most interesting thing she said, when I told her that it was filmed near my hometown, was that it looked so dry there. Everything looked so dry, she kept saying. Now I really want to see, because I am curious – Defne’s always lived in Ankara I think, and this is brushy steppe, far more dry than Southeastern PA!
At the end of the day, I went home to chill out for a while, and went for a walk around ODTU Kent, which is a nice housing development for faculty next door. I’ve found that each loop around the outskirts takes about 10 minutes of brisk walking, and I like to circle it 3 times for exercise. Somehow the circular motion is more relaxing than walking in a straight line. Anyway, I hadn’t done it after dark yet, and it was fine for the first two loops, but on my third, near the end, two stray dogs came lunging out of the bushes at me, barking. I screamed and freaked out but didn’t run; I remained calm. I wouldn’t be so jumpy but the stray dogs here are a big problem (especially at night, when often their barking wakes me up), and several people have told me some variation on “be careful of the stray dogs; they may attack.” I’m not sure if it is something that isn’t translating well, or if there really is a chance that I will be attacked by a pack of stray dogs while walking to the gym. At any rate, I just started walking as calmly as possible and they became bored of me quickly and wandered off.
The Ankara Jazz Festival is playing this week, and many of the concerts are being held on the campus. I went to one concert last Friday, and Tuesday night an Italian group was playing. I got there right before it started but I didn’t have a ticket. I went to wait in line and while I was fumbling for money, a man approached me and said something in Turkish that I didn’t understand. I gave my usual “I Don’t speak Turkish” ramble, and he rephrased again in simpler terms what he wanted. He had an extra ticket, and he wanted to give it to me if I didn’t have one. I wanted to give him money but he wouldn’t take it, and then, when I looked at the ticket, it said it was a comp ticket for the Italian Embassy or something – so it was free. But since it was a VIP ticket that meant I was in the 3rd row. (Those front tickets are more expensive, about 18 million). So that was great! The concert turned out to be really fun – the lead was a saxophone player and he was impressive – and amusing to watch as he played for so long at times he was clearly dizzy and spent when he’d finally take a break. I actually liked them so much that I bought the CD on my way home.
Wednesday we had an interesting discussion in class; we were studying superlatives, so we were all sharing our favorite movies, sports, actors, etc. When we got to food, everyone was saying either Turkish foods, their national foods, or typical favorite foods like steak, but when we got to Ashraf, he said “Bamya.” Cigdem reacted with shock, and turned up her nose. She said that was her worst food. We all scrambled for our dictionaries and Melissa cried out, “Okra!” I found it really surprising that a 19 year old boy’s favorite food would be okra!
After class, I hurried back to campus (as usual, I rush from class to campus on the dolmus, and then grab a really fast bite to eat near the writing center.) I decided to go to the Faculty Cafeteria, and I chose their planned menu. Included was fruit, a drink, “firin makarna” which looks like it is mac-n-cheese but seems not to have any cheese – basically baked macaroni without much accompaniment – and a vegetable side dish cooked for a long time and bathed in thin tomato sauce with onions, as is frequent with vegetables here (the only “proper” way to cook them according to the guy the day before.) Anyway, I couldn’t see what the vegetable was for the sauce, but when I got to my table, I saw that it was a huge, overflowing bowl of …Okra! How ironic. It was quite good, actually, which was a surprise as I usually don’t much like it. So maybe Ashraf is onto something.
While I woofed down my food (the typical pace on Mon and Wed as I rush to work), somebody came over to the table and said hello – I was really startled because I know so few people that no one ever talks to me on campus. It was one of the students from the writing center, one of our favorites, Guven. He is working on his thesis project, which has spun out of control into his passionate life’s work. It is a good cause – he’s an urban planner and he wants to rework the planning for urban areas in Earthquake zones based on the case of the Marmara Earthquake in 1999, which killed so many people and damaged and destroyed vast regions. He has some difficulties with his writing, and he is so earnest and wants the paper to be perfect. We’ve already gone through his whole thesis with him (it’s a few hundred pages); I asked him the last time I saw him a few weeks ago if he was almost finished. He exclaimed, “I will not speak the word finished about this project, because as soon as I think it is finished, they will tell me no – start again!” I find him highly amusing. Anyway, he seemed a bit distraught; he said that today was his “judgment day” and the powers that be still have found problems with his English in the finished thesis. He said, “I have told them I acknowledge my problems and have tried very hard, but this is not good enough.” So, he said that he wants to start again at the introduction and go through it again, and, flatteringly, he said he would like to work on it with me because he felt that my comments were more efficient and more in depth than the others. I’m the only native speaker – well, Defne is to some degree, as her mother is British, but she was raised in Turkey – and these thesis projects really hinge on nuance and very careful choice of words. After speaking with a few of the other part-time tutors, I can see where working with me at this point might be more efficient. His grammar is correct – he needs more work I suppose in clarifying his ideas through more subtle kinds of word choices. Unfortunately because of my trip to Germany, I might not be able to help him as much as I’d like, but I will try.
When I got to the writing center, I had a full slate of students, which is great. Two were statements of purpose, which I love to help with. For these, our ethical policy is not to help specifically with grammar (though I sometimes offer word changes etc) because the schools need to see how they write. But we talk about things globally, and often I find that they need to reorder the ideas in the statement. My last session of the day was a thesis project about Turkey’s EU application and its energy sector. That guy’s paper was really good – we were able to move through quickly and did about 10 pages which is a record. It was quite well written (even by native speaker standards). However, he kept using the phrase “most likely” when he was describing the kind of energy policy that Turkey would adopt. After reading it about 3 or 4 times over the course of a few pages towards the end of the introduction, I stopped reading and asked him what he really meant; the sentences were grammatically correct, but I started to wonder if he really meant “most likely.” As he described what he was trying to say, it turns out that instead of meaning, “Turkey will most likely adopt energy strategy X” he was trying to say that after his extensive research, analysis of other EU countries programs, and many interviews with Turkish and international scholars and industry leaders, he – the student – is arguing for Turkey to adopt this particular strategy. He didn’t mean “most likely” at all – his statements sounded like a prediction of what Turkey would do. The energy strategy is his suggestion and the main thrust of his research. So, we went back and altered all the sentences to reflect his actual meaning. I wonder if some of the other tutors would have been able to pick up something like that. I doubt it, as it was really subtle, and usually most people’s papers have such issues that we can’t delve into details like that. But it turned out to be something crucial to making his argument clear. As you can probably tell by this point, I really do enjoy working with the students!
From the writing center I rushed again back to downtown to my tutoring session with Yesim. She’s the 11 year old girl that I’m tutoring in English once a week. She studied English for several years in school, but she switched schools this year and her class is far behind her. So I am providing enrichment. As usual, it was great fun. She’d written a letter to a future penpal, and it was amazing because her personality came through so beautifully. After our session, which lasts about 2 hours, the whole family (which includes the mom Ziba and the older daughter Isik, who is in her first year in an American culture program at a local university) gathers for dinner and we hang out for an hour or so. It’s a highlight of my week. The homecooked food is delicious, and I really enjoy all of them.
Well, I’ve been rambling for a long long time. Tonight I’m going to a state symphony orchestra concert – it’s great – ODTU has blocks of tickets that they give away free to anyone. All you have to do is pick one up at the music office, and show up an hour before the concert at the bus stop and a free service bus will take us to the concert and bring us back. So the whole night is free. And the last CSO concert was great, so it should be good. I didn’t realize that the free ticket deal was open to anyone until this week. I thought it was only students. But they often have opera tickets, ballet, the whole works – for free with free transit! So I’ll have to keep an eye on that.
Time to get the laundry….
