So I'm in Washington D.C.

and I have the navigational skills of Dan McFadden. Suffice to say, I've been very good at turning myself around at Du Pont Circle. But, I have to say there are some things I really like about D.C. so far. Here are what they are:

• There's a lot of cool shops and restaurants and things
• The D.C. Metro System is made out of concrete and looks absolutely ludicrous. I love it. I'll try to post a picture.
• I really love walking past random embassies on the street: Egypt, Argentina, Botswana, Belarus, and Bolivia are a few that immediately come to mind.

But, on to the important stuff. I've met people from the CLS program. What's it all like?

Excellent. The people here are super friendly, helpful, and know what they're doing. I'm in a swanky hotel (picture to follow). So far I've gotten to meet a lot of people, and they're really nice and cool.

Tomorrow is a day full of speeches and stuff and meeting with officials from the State Department and setting goals. I'm looking forward to it.

More information to come!

Hello, World!

Hi. My name is Steve, and I am a participant in the Critical Language Scholarship program for Summer 2013. This scholarship provides university students with the opportunity to intensively and immersively study a language critical to U.S. security interests abroad during the summer term. (For more information on the Critical Language Scholarship, check out their website here: http://clscholarship.org/) I will be studying Turkish in Anakara, Turkey. Theoretically, I'll be able to post things here, and then keep people back home updated as to whatever stuff I'm doing.

Now, you might wonder why I'd study Turkish? What got me into it? As a linguistics major, I was required to study a non-Indo-European language for at least one semester. There were a lot of different languages calling my name, but Turkish was the language I chose to study. For one thing, I thought Turkish would be interesting from a linguistic perspective because of its agglutinative morphology. This means that words are formed primarily by attaching a lot of suffixes. This is very different from English. Here's my favorite example (which I have made up myself):

Şapka  - hat
Şapkasız - hatless (not wearing a hat)
Şapkasızsın - you (informal, singular) are not wearing a hat
Şapkasızmışsın - you (informal, singular) were apparently not (reported past tense) wearing a hat

Suffice to say, a few suffixes go a loooong way. :) I could probably go on about grammar for a bit, but I won't.

Now, if anyone is still reading this post, I'm also interested in Turkish culture and history. I'm interested in the concept of pan-Turkic ties to Central Asia. I find the modern history of Turkey fascinating. (Not that its ancient history isn't rich, too.) And I'm absolutely thrilled to be going abroad. I leave for pre-departure orientation in Washington D.C. tomorrow. Wish me luck!

Steve