I seem to be at the midway point with just about everything now. Five months have passed since I left my little town. It sounds like such a long time, and also such a short time, for all that has happened, and all that has changed. Five months left now. My school has just begun its second semester, I am about to move in with a second family, and a definite shift has begun to occur. I don’t know why, but I feel certain this next half will be even better than the last. I also know it’s going to go by really, really fast.
While I’m feeling all reflective, I figured I would try writing down all the things that I’ve learned so far. So here it is:
In my first five months in Turkey, I have learned:
that ‘strange’ is a very relative term, and the term ‘normal’ is utterly non-existent.
that in order to find what is most important, simply leave behind everything and see what you miss the most.
that I had didn’t have much idea what the truly important things were.
that deep honesty is much easier in a foreign language, especially to oneself.
that that condition applies, even when the foreign language in question is harder to learn than Japanese, and more closely related to Korean, Mongolian and Hungarian than any other language I’ve ever heard.
that there is a morphologic process of partial reduplication to enhance the meaning of Turkish adjectives and adverbs, but absolutely no pattern for predicting this, unless the adjective starts with a vowel, in which case the last letter of the suffix will be p. Unless extra random letters are added. Of course.
the material for a small book of such grammar.
that even with all of that, I am still at a loss to understand the overly-dramatic Turkish soap operas.
that I really should have paid more attention to Ms. Knecktel when learning 7th grade grammar. (Knowing what an operative clause is would be very helpful now.)
I have learned
how to take care of myself in one of the biggest cities of the world.
what everyone always found so remarkable about the fact that I lived in a town of about 2000.
the order of every stop along the main İstanbul metro line, even though I had never set foot on a metro by myself before.
that the best way to figure out how where you are, is to get utterly and completely lost, and then find your way home.
that after doing this several times, being asked for directions yourself (and being able to give them) becomes incredibly satisfying.
I learned
that just because you’ve been stick-thin all your life doesn’t mean you can’t put on as much weight as anyone when faced with full force of Turkish cuisine.
how to iron.
how to play hockey on the second floor of a mall, in a square rink with no zambonis to be found for kilometers.
how to think in the metric system.
how to manage my own finances.
how to be a big sister.
I’ve learned
how to pick foreigners out of a crowd in a second’s glance.
to hear an English conversation from the other side of the bus amidst a loud chorus of Turkish.
what being an American means, to me and to the rest of the world.
that actually, I’m prouder of my country than I thought I was.
that being a ‘crazy foreigner’ is incredibly liberating.
that sometimes the best thing one can do is simply shrug and see how things work out.
the value of family.
that family is what you make of it, not what you’re born with.
independence.
interdependence.
how very much I don’t know.
that gratitude is the single best thing one can have in life’s pursuit of ever-elusive happiness.
that there is no way I can put all I’ve learned into words.
