Keşke... (If only...)

(Just so you know, this post includes a song!)
[It may also have a few really good photos I don't have right now added to it at some point.]

I would like to open with a quick trivia question:
What word is used in Turkish to refer to 'six-pack abs?'
Hint: It is a food...

You'll get the answer at the same point when I learned it. Part-way through the week this post covers...

So, let's ask a different question.
How is my home life?

A picture is worth a thousand words, apparently.
Here's a picture.

Tuçe on the left, Ece on the right, and it only took me this long to remember which one is which.

Okay, now it's click to read more time, because there will be a lot more pictures.

Yeni ve Eski arkadaşlara! (ve diğer konular....)

My blog, my blog, how I've been neglecting you.
It's been a week without a post, right?
Which means I obviously must have done enough things that I'd be front page news in a newspaper....
Speaking of which....

But I'll get to that in a bit.

Gelecek Tarkan (The next Tarkan)

In this post: Steve tries a (probably only found in Bursa) Turkish food... and a Turkish drink that is new to him. What makes me extremely American according to my teacher. And, perhaps some poetry.

But, let's begin with some omissions from yesterday.

In Ulu Cami (the mosque) two things happened that I did not mention.

One thing is that my American friend John met a Turkish man, and a very good photo for the CLS home page was taken by Johanna.

The second is that I met this group of people.

Or rather, I took their picture as they were standing in a group, and afterwards they all wanted to talk to me. They were missionaries, or something like that, and they had wanted to give me a copy of Said Nursi's Gençlik Rehberi (Guide for Youth), which I accepted. Free and interesting reading material. Yay! They were missionaries, and they made sure to let me know that if I didn't understand it, I could write to an address on the inside and then they would mail it to me.

(I probably did a bad job mentioning it, but I was near the supposed site of Said Nursi's grave last year when I was near İsparta with Allison.)

Also, here's a waffle stand.

Right. And now on for Wednesday's actions.

After finally uploading all of the pictures for last night's post, updating my set of digital flashcard thingies, and staying up a bit late intentionally, I went to bed at around 12:30-1:00ish. I've been waking up around 4-5, and I figured that if I stayed up later I'd pop right onto the right schedule. Nope. 

Therefore, when I walked into class with one bardak of çay and iki tane kola turka, I was banking on not being dead today. Due to the presence of my soda, our teacher insisted I was overly America. After all, Americans drink quite a lot of soda. (Especially if they happen to be named Spencer.)

Class is going really slowly for me, and I wish there was a higher one. However, during class I worked on writing a poem, and unlike last summer, I can actually write stuff in class that is in Turkish and not English when I'm not paying attention. I've also started learning the Georgian alphabet, but that'll be going a bit slowly. Never the less, any language capable of having a cluster of eight consonants is worth my attention. I'm sure it will also be worth the pain. (Here's an example from wikipedia:  /prt͡skvna/ peeling)

After class, I decided to take the plunge and drink an important Turkish drink for the first time.

Can anyone guess what this is?

(If you're on the front page, you will need to click "Read More" to find out... though the answer should be obvious.)

Limon gibi limon (Lemon-like lemons)

I really took way too many pictures, so if you're on the front page of this blog, you need to click "read more" to see this entire post. (you probably won't see this many pictures again because the wifi here is really slow...)

Quite a lot of us needed to get photos taken in order to obtain reduced price transit cards. At the photographer's, this beautiful picture frame was available. Hopefully it comes with the picture of the baby.

Hoş Geldiniz! ("Welcome")

I believe this is somewhere above Serbia.

From Washington D.C. to Bursa was a 22-hour trip, beginning with the shuttle to the airport, and ending with the car to my host family's house. In between I somehow slept enough to not be a complete wreck right now. I don't really understand how either. The most interesting part of that trip, hands down, was the brief layover in a Swiss airport, which was spent mostly going from one gate to another. The train between gates played cow sound effects and had a stereotypical film of a swiss woman in the mountains printed on the tunnel walls so that it animated as we flew by.

Unsuprisingly, the Istanbul airport was way busier than the one in Ankara!

After the airport, the bus drove past this stadium, which is where Galata Saray, my favorite Turkish football (soccer for heathens who don't use the metric system) team plays.

One of İstanbul's many bridges

The ferry was a much needed opportunity to stretch, get some air, and make sure I wasn't confusing the words for 'certain' and 'doubtful.'

The other interesting thing that happened is that on the bus/ferryboat to Bursa, Mesut, director of our program and a thoroughly likeable individual gave us all cookies that he and his wife baked specially for us with our names on them. Adorable and delicious!

:))

After arrival, I met my host family, and got acquanited with my new digs for the summer. The surrounding apartment complexes share a swimming pool. I have a TV in my room. Etc. More importantly, the food is delicious, everyone is super nice, and I believe only my host mom speaks a little English. The language pledge is mad legit. I also know and understand so many more things than at the beginning of last summer. This is absolutely fantastic for my Turkish learning, and means that whenever I'm writing these things I'm really taking away from my many opportunities to speak and study Turkish! (It's ok, I love you all. And you can use google translate, right?)

 Me and my host family upon first meeting. They are grandmother, mother, and two kids.

Additionally, there is also a host nanny who is from Georgia (not pictured), and yes I am going to take this as an opportunity to try and learn a bit of Georgian too. It sounds a bit difficult.But, if I have any success I'm sure I'll make my phonology professor proud.

On my second day, I had a traditional Turkish breakfast of tomato, cheese, bread, egg, and olives (well, ok, skipped the olives.) Went to class, took the hideous Tömer placement test... and took forever doing it. Hopefully I will be in the right class this time....

After that, there was some uninteresting orientation Q&A, and then I met Uğur, my conversation partner, who studies German language education even though he doesn't like German as there are jobs availible. Together, we were supposed to go on a "scavenger hunt" around Bursa, which really was an excuse for him to show me useful things, like where to change money, where to put money on my phone, and where his favorite çiğ köfteci is (sadly closed for a month).

I got to see a lot of Bursa, and I love what I've seen so far.
Here are some pictures for you to love too:

View from classroom building window #1

Part of the market in the old part of the city (which is beautiful!)

Extremely good statue of Atatürk

That's all for now. I may or may not update this post with more pictures. For now, it is time for me to study... or go swimming. Hmm. Difficult choice.

Brooke... the Thank YOU Fairy (Aka CLS Pre-Departure Orientation in DC)

This is a pretty pointless post, except that I need to kill time at the moment. I don't have much news to report... other than that I'm in Washington D.C., and I've just done all the pre-departure orientation stuff for Turkey which was surprisingly entertaining, because even if a lot of the content was almost identical, the anecdotes were refreshingly different (for the most part.) I was briefly on an alumni panel. Hooray.

Here in brief is the important news to report:

• I will be living with two three-year-old girls.
• My program-mates seem pretty cool.
• I will be taking a bus that goes on a ferry. Ahhhh!!!
• Bursa sounds pretty legit. 
• I have narrowly avoided being pressured into making a song about people's anecdotes, and successfully told another 46 people that I like waffles.
• My program-mates are nice, and unlike last year there is a definite skew towards females (over half.)
• I AM SUPER EXCITED TO BE RETURNING TO TURKEY

"Asian restaurant" right next to "Mexican food." Naturally I instead had dinner at an establishment called "We the Pizza."

I also got to wander around D.C. a bit, you know, walk to the White House and around Capital Hill and the like. Ironically, I went to the White House when I didn't plan on it, and failed to return to it when I actually tried. Something about being on Pennsylvania Avenue SW which goes across a river between the 1500 and 1600 block. I won't bore you with a picture of the White House, so I'll only include a picture of my good friend from high school, Mr. Daveberg, standing in front of the river.

Dr. Fivehead is familiar not only with the importance of nuclear physics, but also sunglasses.

Heading back to the hotel, we encountered a number of odd vehicles including the Oscar Meyer weinermobile (not pictured)

This friends, is an eight foot wide fake nutella container carried by the nutella truck

And (apologies for quality) this is Brooke... the Thank YOU Fairy, as printed on the Give Thanks to God BBQ Competition Truck. Your guess is as good as mine.

Washington DC is a cool place, and I look forward to when I see it again. For now, onwards to Turkey!

I guess, what I can say about Turkey going into it is that I really want to hit the ground running and improve my Turkish proficiency to the greatest extent possible. I'm not saying that that isn't something I've been trying to do before, but in the US with competition from other classes and only so many (completely wonderful) class hours a week, it's hard to stick with it. I've got some Turkish films to watch on the plane, just to make sure I refresh my vocab before I get there and then am half-asleep anyway. But, I really want to improve my vocabulary and all around communication skills. I have been studying Turkish for a while. It's time I get really, really serious so I can become as proficient as I want to be.

End of Ankara (Hoş Cekal!) >>> Return to Turkey (Döneceğim)

So, I sorta stopped posting at July 31st after saying I felt slightly sick, leaving all the numerous readers of this blog who never met me to conclude that I had died of some horrible disease. Not true. What actually happened will be appended to the end of this post.

To make a long story short, the Critical Language Scholarship is an awesome program, and I loved spending last summer in Ankara! I made a lot of really good friends, and did a lot of cool stuff. In addition to improving my Turkish, I definitely feel that I really grew as a person thanks to my interactions with so many cool people!

As a result of my experiences, I have continued studying Turkish at the University of Pittsburgh through the Less-Commonly-Taught Language Center,. Pitt has a fantastic Turkish program, with a truly passionate instructor, and I am truly grateful that I have been able to continue studying Turkish on an independent study basis over the last year. I recommend anyone to take Turkish (not that I've ever convinced anyone, but I sure have talked people's heads off about how much I love the language.)

So, anyway, having completely loved studying Turkish and being in Turkey, I applied for the 2014 Critical Language Scholarship program, and have been accepted to study Turkish in Bursa! I leave for orientation on Thursday. Yay.

But, before I talk about Bursa, I really should finish up talking about my time in Ankara, which I can do pretty non-briefly here...