Day One.

It took me two weeks longer than planned, but I finally made it to Istanbul, Turkey! I left Houston on a flight to London at 4:35pm and landed in London at 7:30am the next morning. The plane ride itself was only eight hours though. I spent the first hour looking over my Rotary binders and the next like five taking advantage of their free movies. After about two hours of sleep, I then took the 10:30am flight from London to Istanbul and landed at 4:35pm, even though the flight was only a bit over three hours long (most of which I spent sleeping, this time). But once I finally got all my bags together and they checked to make sure my visa was valid (there would have been hell to pay if it wasn’t), I was finally able to meet my host family.

My host sister, Tugce, found me once I walked through. She is only a little taller than me and very skinny, but she almost tackled me down. She gave me flowers and a teddy bear holding a heart filled with chocolate. I then met Anne (“mother” in Turkish) and Baba (“father”), and Denis, a Rotex who had just rebounded from Florida. He helped to translate from the airport until he had to leave to catch his metro back home. (He misses the South and was upset that I don’t have a Southern accent.) At first they wanted to take me to a McDonalds for dinner, but I was able to convince them that I would eat whatever they made. (I have been dying to have real Turkish food for the longest time!) Once Denis left, Tugce had to translate and her English is broken, but not too badly and we managed. I also didn’t talk very much because I was too awed at how beautiful the city is. Pictures (which I forgot to take because I was too busy staring at the time) certainly don’t do it justice! They took me to a shopping strip that was on the way home and bought me some chocolate. It is dark chocolate with a sugar hazelnut filling. Very good, but very heavy. I couldn’t finish it and it is in the fridge waiting to be eaten. After we left there, Baba stopped a store to pick up some pida (a type of Turkish bread).

While he was in there, a woman came up to our car with a stroller. She asked Anne if she could watch her baby while she ran across the street. At first I thought she was a friend of hers. It turns out that she was just some woman. She left her stroller outside our car with a baby that couldn’t be any older than six months and ran across the street. Talk about unexpected!

When Baba came back, we finally went home. Turkish homes are much smaller than the ones from home – not that it’s very surprising, they have almost five times as many people as Houston! My family lives in a duplex on the top floor. The first thing I noticed was that they took off their shoes before they even went inside the house. This wasn’t too surprising, because that’s how they do things in India and Pakistan and we take our shoes off as soon as we walk in, at my home in Houston. But my family also wears house shoes – flip flops! – inside the house everywhere. They immediately took me to my room, which was Ayce, my host sister in Tulsa, before. They had hung HOSGELDINIL (“WELCOME”) on my window. Anne gave me my own set of keys and color coded all my bathroom things orange so that I wouldn’t feel uncomfortable and not know if I was allowed to use them. Tugce showed me the rest of the place after that, including the views of the very big, beautiful mosque. I can see it from Tugce’s room, my room, the living room, and the computer room. It is gorgeous at day, but it’s breath taking at night when it’s lit up! Cok guzel. Very beautiful.

Anne made a breakfast type of meal for dinner, because she thought it would be safest. We had cut up hot dogs (apparently Tugce LOVES hot dogs), eggs, cheese with bread, tomatoes, and Turkish tea. The tea was much better than I expected it to be. When I drink tea at home, it has to have lots of sugar and lots of milk. Tugce did make my tea sweet, but you don’t drink it with milk. It’s so good! I’ll have to remember to bring some home. And the Turks eat bread a LOT. Not that I can blame them, the pida was sooooooooo good. I had like four or five pieces. But they told me that breakfast is usually the most important meal for them. Breakfast for me, on a school day, back home is a health bar and a bottle of water during first period. They can’t believe how people can’t sit down and eat a good meal together every morning.

After I gave them their presents, Tugce laughed and ran around the house in her new blue cowboy hat. Anne was SO excited when I gave her a Southern cookbook. I’ve seen her and Tugce looking through it to see if they can make some of the things. (it didn’t click in my head that she doesn’t know English and would have a hard time with it until after I gave it to her. I felt SO bad, but apparently she’s excited. She’s a housewife and loves to cook/eat.)

We sat down and went over the rules of my being there. But we were having a hard time understanding each other, so Tugce pulled me over to the computer and wrote out her answers on Google Translator so that I could understand them. This is how the family mostly talks to me. I can’t decide if I like this or not, because it helps me to understand everything, but makes me nervous that I won’t be able to pick up Turkish. I can read it a lot better than I can understand it already.

In the middle of answering the Rotary questions, Can (it is pronounced Jon) came over and invited us to his house. He is a good friend of Tugce and his mother is best friends with Anne. His parents are also the landlords, but he lives right across the hall. Can said that he took English for five or six years, and in his school he took all of his classes (math, chemistry, everything) in English. My host family asked him to help translate. (He was glad I don’t have a Southern accent, because he was afraid he wouldn’t be able to understand me if it was too heavy and then would be embarrassed because he couldn’t translate. But apparently I have a melodic voice as far as Turks go.

He did get a bit overwhelmed at times and would accidently talk to me in Turkish or to the others in English. Mostly talk to the others in English. He was really good about keeping me in the conversation though. At one point Anne and Can’s mom, Teyze (“Aunt” what you call older women), asked why I chose Turkey. He said he had read the letter I wrote to my family to Ayce and Tugce about how I want to study Mediterranean history (he had to translate it for them), but he stopped to tell me what they asked before he told them.

Their family has four cats – two of them are two week old kittens named Tugce and Ayce – and two adult cats. I barely saw the Mom cat and I can’t even remember her name, but I saw plenty of their male cat. His name is Osmon and he is a Turkish pureblood cat. (I can’t think of the name at the moment, but it starts with an A. My brother wants one.) He is big, fat, and fluffy. He is pure white and has one red eye and one blue one. Apparently, in the US, he would cost about $3000. And he knows it. He is so spoiled. He goes out when he wants and climbs around in the roof. Apparently he climbed into Anne and Baba’s bed the other night because they had their window open. They told me if I leave mine open, he may come in a and sleep on my bed in the middle of the night.

Teyze kept teasing me about my Turkish. There is one letter that I cannot pronounce. It is the accented u that comes from German. The Turkish word for grape is spelled with uzum with two of the u letters. But then she couldn’t say grape, so then everyone laughed at her. I spent about a good five minutes trying to help her (she got it down to “go-rape”).

Tugce brought Turkish coffee in while we were talking to the parents (and by we, I mean Can was translating what their conversation was to me). It’s really strong and I could only drink half of it and it was small to begin with. I liked it, but I prefer the tea. I’ve never been too big of a coffee person. (If you know me, then you know when I drink coffee I put so much crap in it that you can’t even taste the coffee.)

We somehow got onto the topic about the big cities of Turkey. Can mentioned that Istanbul is the big one and if you go to Ankara, you’re just like “What is this?”. He asked if people really thought Istanbul was still the capital and I told him about 75% of the people I talked to thought it was. I asked him why the capital got changed. It was because Ataturk (the hero of Turkey. He is the one who made it a country. It is a crime to speak against him.) loved the Anatolia. The Anatolia is the Asian peninsula of Turkey. He said that it is the motherland and Ankara is the heart/center of it. When the war was happening, Istanbul was being attacked from every direction, so they had to move the capital. And what better place than the heart of the motherland? I don’t know about you guys, but I really like that story.
It was after that that the parents and Can convinced Tugce to play her violin for us. She is so talented. I’m so jealous. I have no musical talent at all. She is studying it in college, but Can told me she is having a hard time, because they want everyone to learn Western music, but she is interested in Turkish music. I don’t blame her; Turkish is so much prettier!

It was right after that that Tugce noticed I was falling asleep. It was already 12:30. We left Can’s house and went back to ours. I stayed up to write down a couple of notes and unpack a bit more, but once my head hit the pillow, I was out.