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...