Today we had our placement exam in the morning. As we were taking the fifteen-minute walk from the dorms to South Campus, where classes are held, it began to rain. Of course I didn’t bring my umbrella. As I was packing, I thought to myself, I don’t need the extra weight! It hardly ever rains in Turkey in the summer! Maybe my memory is flawed, or maybe this week is an exception. Either way, it’s been pretty rainy. But the view was beautiful nonetheless. Here are pics of the walk back to the dorms after the exam:
The written part of the placement exam lasted from 9:30 to 11:30, and it was pretty hard. There was multiple choice, fill-in-the-blank, reading comprehension, and a writing prompt. We got to chose from one of several prompts, and the one I chose was, “Tell us the plot of a book you like and why you liked it.” I chose The Almost Moon by Alice Sebold because it’s the book I’ve read most recently, and because I know the Turkish word for murder, a central plot point. The book is about a woman who murders her elderly mother, and the exam graders probably thought I was crazy – I was trying to explain in Turkish why I like a book about a woman murdering her mother, and I wasn’t very convincing! Besides, I chose the book mainly out of convenience, although it WAS pretty good, but of course I couldn’t say that in my essay!
A side note about daughters and mothers: it seems to me that in Turkey, grown women have less independence, from both their husbands and parents, than they do in the U.S. I’ve noticed this mainly through firsthand experience, but Tuesday, while watching the season finale of a popular Turkish TV drama called Kaderimin Yazıldığı Gün (The Day My Fate Was Written), I realized that this pattern holds true in pop culture. Based on what I could gather from one episode, this show centers around two grown women who have serious problems with each other. The extent to which these women’s mothers are involved in their daughters lives is unbelievable. Imagine Sex and the City with the womens’ mothers in every episode, every other scene! My knee-jerk reaction is to think that this is a terrible thing, but that is unfair of me. I can see how having one’s mother around often, even in adulthood, could have its benefits. But of course, to me, the beneficial nature of this relationship presupposes that a degree of independence is still granted to the daughter, and how does one measure or judge the ideal amount of independence? That question is not for me to answer here.
Anyway, after the written portion of the exam, half of the 40 or 50 students went upstairs for the oral exam, and the other half of us (me included) took a campus tour and ate lunch. I met a lot of fellow program participants while touring and eating, which made me feel much less lonely. So many interesting people are part of this program! I met a girl from Raleigh, like me, who goes to UNC-Chapel Hill, like many of my high school friends! I met a guy from Duke who also knows my hometown area. The girl from Raleigh, Amanda, spent her last year of high school in Samsun, Turkey, through the US State Department’s National Security Language Initiative for Youth (NSLI-Y). (I am 99% that’s the program she did.) I met several grad students, two of whom did Fulbrights (the English language education one) in Turkey. I met a guy who’s trying to do this program and an internship in Istanbul at the same time! And I met another guy who’s had a book review published by the New York Times. Most participant are undergrad or grad students, but some are middle-aged, and one man looks to be at least 65! I met one man, maybe 50-ish, from Germany who came to Turkey to open a business and is taking 7 weeks off to do this program. I met a PhD student from Stanford whose goal is to be able to read Ottoman Turkish, and her path to that goal involves learning Modern Turkish first. I could go on and on, but I should move on!
At lunch, stray cats tried to eat our food. It was amusing and annoying in equal measure. I should mention something that anyone who’s been to Istanbul, or anywhere in Turkey, really, already knows – there are stray cats and dogs everywhere! I wish I’d taken a picture to post here, but there will be plenty of opportunities for that in the future. After lunch, I went back to the building I was in earlier (Anderson Hall, The Faculty of Arts and Sciences Building) to take my oral exam. They made everybody in the second half show up at 2pm, but they did the interviews in 10-minute segments, and Amanda, who went last, had to wait until 3:30! Although I was done by 2:45, I and this other guy, Eric, waited for her because it was pouring outside and I personally was so tired I didn’t want to walk anywhere. (My jet lag isn’t completely gone yet.) After Amanda finished, she, Eric, and I found a grocery store in a cute square in between South Campus and the Uçaksavar campus. Here is a picture of the square:
Getting food here is not hard, but it’s not what I expected. I expected there to be more dining halls on campus, but there aren’t. There’s one student café where you can get a 3-course lunch for 6.75 TL (Turkish Lira), which is less than $3.50, but the other cafes on campus are pretty much like normal restaurants. Although my suite has a kitchen, it doesn’t have a stove or a microwave, so I think I’m going to be eating out most of the time. Turkey is cheap for Americans because of the conversion rate from USD to TL, but I still don’t want to eat out ALL the time. At the grocery store I bought yogurt, bread, a special brand of Turkish crackers that I love, a Turkish candy bar, fruit, vegetables, and Turkish hazelnut spread (it’s both like and unlike crunchy peanut butter, and it’s absolutely amazing!). After shopping, I went back to my room and crashed – I slept for 1.5 hours. I woke up a little after 7pm and waited for my cousin Ayçe, her husband Bülent, and her mother (my aunt) İdil to come and take me to dinner. While I waited, I found out I placed into upper intermediate. I’m excited because I thought I would be in lower intermediate, but upper has a greater focus on conversation, which is the skill I most want to improve. Then George and I read A Dance of Dragons, the fifth book in A Song of Ice and Fire series (aka Game of Thrones):
When my family arrived, we went to a mantı place for dinner. Mantı is in my top five favorite foods of all time. It is basically Turkish ravioli, but instead of cheese inside little pasta pouches, there is the tiniest bit of meat. The pasta is then covered in yogurt and hot tomato sauce, and you can add oregano flakes and crushed red pepper if you want. It’s delicious! At dinner, the fact that Ayçe Abla (abla=older sister in Turkish, but it basically means any older female relative or close friend who is not old enough to be your mother/aunt) and Bülent Abi (abi=male equivalent of abla) can speak English made the conversation much easier. I tried to speak to İdil Yenge (yenge=aunt, aka father’s brother’s wife) a bit in Turkish, but mostly I just happily stayed in the world of English. İdil Yenge complained to Ayçe , “Ayla’s here to learn Turkish, why are you speaking to her in English?!” but she was (mostly) kidding. İdil Yenge also got excited because she had seen a Turkish TV program all about Chicago, and she was describing to me in Turkish famous Chicago sites, like the Bean, the Marilyn Monroe statue, and the SkyDeck of the Sears (Willis) Tower. It was so cool that she knew about all those places!
After dinner I came home, and I’ve just been blogging and wasting time online. Classes start tomorrow (which is why today was “sort of” the first day), and I don’t know how much time or energy I’ll have for blogging once I have homework, intensive language instruction, etc. But we’ll see how it goes! İyi akşamlar!