Çok Hızlı Türkçe Öğreniyorum

Not satisfied with wrecking havoc over our weekend, Yusef’s hateful little sedan decided to ruin Monday morning for me as well. This time it wouldn’t even start for us. Andrew’s hypothesis was that the radiator had cracked on Sunday night. I didn’t care. I would never be getting anywhere near that God-forsaken automobile ever again. In order to get into school I sat on a rock in a field for 30 minutes waiting for dolmuş #50 to wander past. I was 50 minutes late for class. Moral of the story: never buy a car, trust the bus.

Speaking of antique equipment breaking down at inconvenient times, our washing machine bit the dust this weekend too. It is refusing to drain the water out of the wash basin, and being a side-load washer, the floor will flood if we open the door. Nuri was made aware of the problem and said he would fix it, but if it is not repaired by Saturday I will be doing my wash in the bathtub.

Despite the rough start, this week has been rather uneventful by Turkish standards. I go to Tömer in the morning, Paul’s Place in the afternoons, and back to çallı for the evening. The Tömer clases thus far have been wildly successful, I am learning Turkish very quickly. (translation: çok hızlı Türkçe öğreniyorum.) I can only hope that I can retain all of this language in the future. When I am not slaving away conjugation Turkish verbs Andrew has me addicted to a new ABC show called “Eli Stone” that we have been watching on his computer.

I have also been making the rounds in Turkish supermarkets. Acre-sized grocery stores are all the rage right now in Antalya. There are around seven of these stores spread across the city and they are essentially the same thing as Family Fare or Kroger. Once I have made it past the metal detector, I feel closer to America than I have felt since I got off the plane. There are two such stores occupying the same city block are about 5 a minute walk from our apartment and Andrew and go there often to scavenge for food. The fresh foods pale in comparison to what you can purchase at the local baazars but it is a great place to go and grab some chips and Schweppes Bitter Lemon to snack on before bed.

The free time has also given me the opportunity to cultivate my Tavela (backgammon) skills. Turkey loves Tavela like Americans like hamburgers. All you need to open a café in Turkey are tables, chairs, çay (tea) and a big stack of Tavela boards. I have discovered that there is a certain finesse involved in playing Tavela. You can tell how good a player is by how quickly and gracefully they rearrange the pieces on the board. Anna Kate Bultema is one such player. Even though I managed to win the one game I played against her, I felt like I had hit a lucky hole-in-one against the Tiger Woods of Tavela. Next time we play I will undoubtedly loose, but at least I won’t look like a novice in process.

This weekend I have nothing planned save a cookout at the Reynold’s place on Sunday. I hear Yusef’s car is still sitting disabled along the road in front of the house. If I keep 10 meters away from it at all times I am hoping it will not cause me any more trouble.

Weekend Adventures

The Reynolds own a hunting business here in Antalya. They take foreigners out into the country to shoot Wild Turkish Boar. They also have two Bloodhounds and lots of houseplants which means that when they want to go on a weekend camping adventure with their five children, someone must come and take care of their beautiful house. The house is located about 15 minutes outside of town in the mountains and above the stifling humidity that suffocates the city. There is no mass transportation way out here in the boonies so Andrew and I needed a vehicle to commute.

Pictured above is the car we ended up with. It is a white Ford Taunus from an unknown year (essentially a watered down Taurus Ford sold in Europe and Argentina in the early 1980’s). I searched around for an owner’s manual but it was missing, along with the proof of insurance and vehicle registration. The car belongs to some retired Turkish police officer named Yusef that the Reynolds know somehow. It has no heat or a/c, no radio, and the key falls out of the ignition occasionally. The body shows signs of multiple traffic incidents. The passenger seat also lacks a spring recoil on the seatbelt so the entire safety restraint sits in my lap like a limp noodle. While this vehicle seems simple and un-interesting from the outside, the secrets lying beneath the hood caused Andrew and I some significant unpleasantness on this weekend.

After a relaxing and uneventful Friday night dining and enjoying the pool, we decided to spice up our day with a trip into town to catch a movie. After a hearty late breakfast we drove down from the mountain, got some gas and headed to the theater. Even when it is running normally the car sounds awful. 1st gear is tricky to get into and the car likes to slip from 1st into reverse so Andrew is forced to start from 3rd gear all the time. However, about 10 minutes from the theater Andrew noticed something was seriously wrong. As we made an illegal u-turn in a busy intersection, the car inexplicably died. Andrew tried to restart it but failed. The light turned and we suddenly found ourselves blocking 2/3 of the eastbound lane on one of the largest roads in Antalya. We were almost immediately surrounded by unhappy Turkish taxis and dolmuş drivers. We leaped from the car and tried to push the it through traffic and up the curb. The curb was to steep to mount so Andrew jumped back into the driver’s seat and I pushed him backwards down a one-way turn lane to a semi-secure parking location. With the car out of immediate danger and no way to contact help we decided to walk three blocks and enjoy our movie.

The movie we decided to see was Transformers 2: Rise of the Fallen (subtitled in Turkish). Entire volumes could be written documenting the plot inconsistencies in this film. While I must admit I was entertained for 117 minutes, the errors were so blatant they were impossible to miss. The issue that annoyed me the most was that the movie assumes the entire Middle East is the size of lower Manhattan and that the Pyramids at Giza, Petra and the Red Sea are all within easy walking distance of one another. In reality they are separated by a collective 253 miles, an international water way, and two closed Israeli boarder crossings. During the film two of the robots are magically resurrected from the dead by shoving chunks of metal into their chests. I could not help wishing that Yusef’s dead Ford Taunus could be similarly revived.

However, God always provides and during the intermission (Yes, Turkish movies have a planned 10 minute intermission) we realized that a friend from the cultural center who likes to fix cars was in the same theater with us. After we had finished watching the film we walked over to the car. Upon closer examination we discovered that we had run out of fuel. When we had filled up in the morning, Andrew had put petrol in the car. Unbeknownst to us Yusef had installed a natural gas fuel tank and now the car was out of natural gas. Our mechanic friend switched us over to petrol, but the car refused to idle properly when it was being fed gasoline. Thus for the next half and hour we desperately searched for a gas station; stalling out every time we encountered a traffic light, roundabout or when a brainless dolmuş driver cut us off. Finally we found an M-OIL, filled up, switched the fuel source back, and ventured back onto the highway.

To celebrate our safe return to the Reynolds we cooked ourselves spaghetti and meatballs and stayed up late watching downloaded TV episodes. The next morning I woke up to our next little adventure. Andrew and I sleep in the master bedroom because it is the only one with a clima. To keep the cool air in the room I shut the door before I passed out on a mattress on the floor. What I had failed to realize is that the master bedroom door lacks a doorknob. Therefore when I got up on Sunday morning I discovered that we were locked into the room. In order to escape our self-created prison I was forced to squeeze through a window and Andrew had to jump off the roof. Getting the door to open again required removing the doorknob from another door and re-installing the entire apparatus on the broken door. It is a good thing that household maintenance is my favorite way to wake up on Sunday morning.

Church was a little sparse and afterwards Renata five of us out into the countryside for an authentic Turkish lunch in a köşk complete with homemade ayran. It was Ruth’s birthday so some of the girls baked a cheesecake and we celebrated back at Renata’s with ice cream and drinks. It was a great day spent with great company. Andrew picked me up in Yusef’s demon mobile at 8 so we could drive up and feed the hounds. Half way home the car overheated and we had to pull over at the same M-OIL that had rescued us less than 36 hours before. Yusef apparently neglected to put any water in the radiator and we had no way of knowing the engine was running hot until we smelled something burning. After about a half hour sipping tea at the service station we filled it with water and made it up the hill to the house. This is my last night here and once the car drops me off at Tömer tomorrow I can wash my hands of it forever.

Tömer

The University of Ankara’s Tömer language school has offices in all the major cities in Turkey. The Antalya office is located about 10 minutes from the cultural center and 50 minutes from my apartment in çallı. My morning commute has the potential to be considerably shorter. There is a brand new tram line that runs directly in front of my apartment building to a market complex about 50 meters from Tömer. Unfortunately, whoever was responsible for building the tramway did a crappy job and after three days of operation in March, the whole system collapsed and shut down; something about bad bricks and trains de-railing. Classes at Tömer start promptly at 9:00 in the morning so I am up and in the shower by 7:30. I follow the abandon tramline for about 2 miles before stopping to buy a büyük simit from a chubby little Turkish man with a white mustache on the side of the road. A simit is essentially a circular breakfast pretzel with no salt drowned in sesame seeds. Best part about them is they cost a whopping 60 kuruş (40 cents).

Tömer is located on the top three floors of an office building on a busy Antalya street. My friend from the Cultural Center, James, and I are the only Americans in our class of 11. The other students are from various Eastern European nations. Our seating arrangement is reminiscent of Cold War Europe. James and I, representing NATO sit on the far right side of the room underneath the clima. On the other side of the Iron Curtain are the three Russians and two Kazak girls. The Germans sit in the middle.

Besides being the only Americans, James and I are also the only men in the room. The class also seems to have an overtly feminine theme to it. In the first 3 days we have learned the words for lipstick (ruj), earring (küpe), hair brush (tarak), mirror (ayna), perfume (parfüm), and hair accessory (toka). Our teacher is an extremely energetic Turkish woman who likes to jump around, wave her arms, and make high pitched chirping noises. Her constant energy keeps the class engaged and focused on the topic.

Tömer is not for the linguistically faint of heart. Because none of us have a common language to communicate in, 100% of the class is conducted in Turkish. Our teacher speaks only Turkish and French fluently. So if James or I have a question about the material, the best way to ask it is in French. If the Germans have questions they ask them in English to James (whose French is better than mine) who then translates the question into French for the teacher.

My Turkish book says that “The Turkish language, like Turkish delight, is sweet and melodious.” If I had to pick a food to describe Turkish it would not be Turkish delight. Turkish is like my mother’s halibut fish tacos; unexpectedly crunchy with lots of hard k’s and j’s. It is missing a few ingredients (W, X, and Q) and has a bunch of extra flavors that I can’t identify mixed in (ç, ş, ğ, ı, ö, and ü). Fish tacos are made from a mix of seemingly unrelated items that would never normally be combined: Alaskan fish, Mexican tortillas and bargain-brand American salsa. Likewise Turkish blends elements of Arabic, Greek, French, and Turkmen into a beautiful and fascinating language. Luckily, unlike the tacos Turkish doesn’t make me gassy.

After 4 hours of Turkish class, we are released from the classroom. I usually head up to the café on the top floor for a low-price student lunch with some of the international students. Then James and I meander over to the cultural center where we spend the afternoon doing homework, reading, and helping Renata with chores around the center. Yesterday I re-organized the fiction section of St. Paul’s library and found a biography of Atatürk which I am now reading. Eventually I pack up my things and walk back to çallı.

This weekend I am helping Andrew house-sit at the Reynolds. They live out in the sticks outside of Antalya. They have two bluish colored French Bloodhounds and a swimming pool. Sunday I am going to a country bazaar on the outside town.

Airing out the Dirty Laundry

Yesterday evening I did laundry up at my apartment in çallı. Ordinarily laundry is a boring and uneventful task. I got to do my laundry by hand for the first time down at Olive Grove and learned what a chore it is going to be when I am in Africa (hopefully). Yet, after a week and a half sweating through my clothes, I was in desperate need of some suds. Vedat insisted I let him know when I was planning to do some laundry and I soon learned why. As I mentioned in a previous post the laundry machine is a sight to behold. My theory is that it is original to the apartment building because it matches the tile and there is no way it could fit in the cramped elevator. It is jammed in the bathroom with curtain-less shower and inoperable toilet. The basin in side of the washer looked only slightly larger than a Quaker Oats container, but Vedat insisted that I smash all my clothes in there. Once the door had been forced shut Vedat began a small ceremony to appease the ancient spirit of the washing machine. He got on his knees and began to fiddle with the big dial on the front. Each time he cranked it around he would delicately jiggle it when the red A was pointed up. He explained to me in broken English that “Sometimes turn 3 or 4 times to work.” After 8 or 9 tries something clicked and the great beast came to life. “And don’t forget put hose here or water flood.” I told him I would be letting him help every time I do laundry.

About 30 minutes later I was working on my computer when someone in the next room decided to turn on an industrial belt sander. It took me a while to realize that the noise was actually the washer on spin cycle. After the beast stopped convulsing violently, I ventured in to remove what was left of my clothes. Amazingly the washer had left my t-shirts intact and had given them the best spin dry I had ever witnessed. I left the bathroom with a big smile and a weeks worth of clean shorts. However, I had one more cultural experience to endure before I could sleep that night. As I hung my laundry out on the porch to dry, I suddenly realized that I was displaying all of my unmentionables in front of four lanes of busy traffic. I am not ashamed of my briefs, it is just I have never had the opportunity to showcase them in front of thousands of passing commuters. I originally tried concealing them behind other shirts but it was too much work and organization so they just ended up front and center flapping in the wind…. When in Rome.

Istanbul in Retrospect

History, unfortunately, is like money. The more of it you have the less it is worth. In the United States, the Betsy Ross house is a historical landmark with its own website and preservation committee. In Istanbul, the Theodosian Walls, a 3 mile stretch of what is widely accepted to be the most impressive medieval fortifications ever constructed (circa 408 AD) provide shelter to homeless Turks and a place for the locals to plant their okra. The problem is not that Istanbulus don’t care about their history; in fact it is illegal to take any artifact much older than a record player out of the country. There is just so too much of it. After the sack of Rome in 410 Istanbul aka Constantinople became The City of the medieval world and was referred to as such as far away as Scandinavia. When barbarian backwaters such as Paris and London supported no more than 30,000 inhabitants, Constantinople boasted over 600,000 people living inside the city walls and over one million in the surrounding suburbs and villages. The remains of all the homes, markets and places of worship for these people are all about a meter down waiting to frustrate anyone who wants to build on the land.

Thus grandiose ruins seem to pop out of the ground like weeds. Workers at the lot next to my hostel appeared to have stumbled across what could be a part of the Great Palace of Byzantium. Widening a street near the Valens aqueduct revealed a massive Basilica the remains of which are now scattered in a public park. To accommodate the ever-expanding number of priceless historical artifacts, the Istanbul Archeological Museum decided to build a massive addition only to discover that a ruined Byzantine monastery already occupied the expansion site. Even the water surrounding the city is not free of historical landmines. Construction on a new subway tunnel under the Bosporus Straits is already months behind schedule because a collection of ancient ships were discovered sunk in Üsküdar’s harbor. The remains of these ships have subsequently filled the museum past capacity once again. It’s a vicious cycle.

It is somewhat ironic that the two things that one cannot avoid on the streets of Istanbul are authentic historical sites and street vendors peddling less-than-authentic designer clothes. For some reason, Dolce & Gabbana appear to be the favorite victim for copyright infringement on the streets of the city. There is probably more counterfeit D&G for sale in Istanbul than the actual company has produced since its founding in 1985. The peddlers are everywhere: in tunnels under the street, on bridges over the streets, on the medians in the middle of the streets, in the bazaars, and at the ferry stops. Even legitimate store owners brazenly market their knock-off products. One of my favorite sightings was a t-shirt with ABERCROMIE screen printed across the front and a tag that read “Hollister.” It was 5 Lira.

Another vivid memory of mine from Istanbul was the driving. Turkish drivers are equally bad no matter what city you are in, but in Istanbul there are more drivers on tighter streets, complicating traffic problems exponentially. Red lights in Turkey are treated more like stop signs and the stop signs like the blinking yellow light you get after midnight in the US. Instead of driving in lanes, Turks drive in globs. If General Motors wants to cut costs they might consider not installing blinkers on the Opals they send to Turkey because no one uses them here anyway. In three weeks I witnessed 5 traffic accidents (none serious) and only gathered up the courage to use a taxi once.

I loved Istanbul. I think my favorite part was that when I walked out of my hostel in the morning, there was no telling what adventure I would encounter that day. Would I be eating something I could pronounce for lunch? Certainly not. Would I run across the ruins of the Sea Walls lost in Fatih? Maybe. Would I be run off the road my a crazed taxi driver before noon? Most definitely. I don’t know how I could grow tired of Istanbul. It constantly surprised me in the most spectacular ways.

I’ll post something about what I am doing in Antalya later this week. Today I started school.

Antalya

Yesterday I got lost in Antalya. I have been lost before, twice before in Antalya and countless other times in Istanbul. Previously, I could always find my way to my destination by sticking to my instincts or finding a landmark. Yesterday night was an exception to the rule. After walking my friend Laura to her apartment at 9:15PM I thought I could trim a few minutes off my hour and half hike back to my place by taking a different road. I was sorely mistaken and walked 45 minutes in the wrong direction in the middle of the night. Luckily I was able to contact a friend who let me crash on his sofa after I had backtracked for an hour. When I woke up the next morning I realized I had spent over 3 hours wandering though the city.

Over the past few days I have been able to get familiar with the city of Antalya (or so I thought). The city is distinctly different than any other city in Turkey and resists categorization. The best way to think about Antalya is Turkey’s version of Miami. The first parallel with America’s magic city is the heat. Antalya is disgustingly hot. My apartment lacks a clima (AC) and my room is the hottest in the flat. Though I keep my fan on all night, I wake up every morning in a pool of my own perspiration promptly at 7:30. Showering in the morning is a completely futile gesture as I completely sweat though my clothing during my 50 minute morning strolls to the Cultural Center. The afternoon is spent jumping between air-conditioned rooms. Today I made the observation that it requires 150 meters of gentle walking to become uncomfortably sweaty. The city does not stop for this heat, the Turks seem somehow immune to excessive sweating and appear un-phased. At 8pm the weather becomes more tolerable and more people appear on the streets. The playgrounds of Antalya are still packed with happy children until well after 10pm.

Antlaya also attracts the same kind of visitor as Miami. In big northern cities like New York, Paris or Istanbul, people come to see the landmarks and buildings. Tourists cram into iconic historical monuments with their cameras and guidebooks. They wander about the city like dumb sheep disrupting and disturbing the every environment enter. People come to Antalya and Miami with a completely different motive. Russians, Germans, and Turks come to this city to sit on the beach and do nothing. The historical significance of the beautiful and quaint downtown city center is not motivating enough to peel these people of the beautiful beaches. Visitors therefore are rarely seen outside of their walled resorts and the rest of the city is left to benefit from the jobs and foreign money. Thus Antalya retains a culture that is distinctly and authentically Turkish, relatively unsoiled by grubby tourist mobs.

The Third major similarity Antalya has with Miami is that it is always ready to party. The city seems full of people who spend their days sunbathing and their nights reveling at the clubs that dot the coast. The atmosphere is looser and more casual than stern Istanbul. The Turks of Antalya seem to have let down their headscarves and spent an extra few hours at the gym. Sometimes it is difficult to hear the call to prayer over a pulsing night-club or an intense beach volleyball game. Last Sunday I saw some middle aged Turkish women on the beach dancing spontaneously as their friends clapped a beat and sang songs. Those women are really the personification of the city: relaxing, smiling, and dancing.

The Krauses and Perge

Yesterday I walked to the Cultural Center to meet Andrew and the Krause family for a day trip to the ancient city of Perge.

I met the Krauses at camp, Julie was assigned to run the super sports elective with Crystal and I. The mother of 5 boys between the ages of 9 and 12, (two are adopted from Russia) Julie knew how to command the attention and respect of even the most uncooperative and stubborn campers. I, on the other hand, came into camp with the same affinity for children as I had for rabid ferrets. Thus Julie was a constant source of guidance and inspiration for me. Over the two weeks she taught me how to be a parent and by the last few days I could get 20 unruly elementary schoolers organized for some rousing capture the flag without too much trouble.

The Krauses are in Turkey because John, an officer in the Airforce, has been stationed in Ankara for the past two years. After Camp, the family planned a trip up to Perge and invited Andrew and I to come along. So on a warm Teusday morning the 9 of us piled into the minivan for the 30 minute drive to the ruins. Perge is home to some of the most well preserved and undisturbed ruins I have yet seen in Turkey. The 8-10 other tourists at the site dispursed quickly leaving us alone with the impressive structures. (Save the elderly Turkish women who divided thier time between herding sheep between the stones and selling trinkets to the occasional tourist.) The baths and the Arcade were particularly impressive, I even managed to crawl under the floor in the caldarium from which the steam would have heated the room. The Arcade concludes with a huge ruined fountain (see picture).

The day was intensely hot and JP, the youngest of the Krause clan who had broken his wrist at camp and began the morning throwing up in the plants outside the hotel began to fade. Soon Dad was carrying him on his back and Julie was encouraging the rest of the boys up the large hill on the outside of the city. The whole experience was very rewarding It was nice to be part of a family again if just for a day. The Krauses work closely with the American Embassy in Ankara and they offered to put me in contact with a few people there. I am hoping to stop by Ankara for a few days and visit the family and the embassy before I fly home.

After that exciting morning with the Krauses and Andrew I attended some English lessons at a Turkish hookah bar in Antalya (We just drank tea). I am playing lots of Tavala aka Backgammon with Turks. My Turkish is improving daily and I am planning a trip to the plaj (beach) tomorrow with a few Turkish guys from the center.

The Start

The main impetus for beginning a blog is because my brother just did. The thought had crossed my mind on previous occasions but I had always dismissed it as something 'other' people do. If my brother, going to school less than a few hours from home needs a blog to keep you all updated on his life, I figure that I should do something considering the places I anticipate being over the next few years.

I am on day 45 of my 90 day adventure to Turkey, and have just begun living in Antalya, a city in Southern Turkey. I am here on the suggestion of one of my high school teachers who gave me the contact information for an American couple who run a Christian cultural center here. The Americans at the center handed me over to a Turkish guy with whom I am now living.

I moved into my apartment yesterday. It is on the 3rd floor of a medium size apartment building in Çallı . There are three Turks and a Russian/American living here each with varying degrees of English proficiency. One of the Turks moved into the living room so I could have one of the three bedrooms to myself. None of the rooms are air-conditioned and it gets up to 95F here on most afternoons.

Our modest balcony overlooks a massive round-about intersection with a huge statue of Ataturk in the middle of it, but the view is usually obscured by laundry hanging on the line. The kitchen is a disaster, we have no oven, only a heat pad hooked up to a propane tank sitting next to the fridge. The faucet leaks incessantly and my roommates have no discernible place to collect garbage besides the floor. The only thing in the fridge is water and coke. No one drinks the water out of the tap because it has high levels of lime in it and it will give you kidney stones real quick.

There are 2 "bathrooms" Bathroom A contains a shower with no curtain, a washing machine that looks older than the republic and toilet that is backed up and unusable. Therefore, if I want to use the 'tulavet' I must go to Bathroom B which contains only a sink and a "squatty potty." I also killed a cockroach the size of a small mammal last night before I went to bed on my fold out futon. The advantage to living here is that I get to live with some of the people I am researching, I can learn lots of Turkish, and the rent is going to be less than 100 TL ($70) for the month. The other advantage is that my roommates, in particular a Turkish guy named Vedat, are extremely friendly and helpful.

My only plans for the next month are to try to get into a course at omer, an intensive Turkish study program. I have already learned allot of Turkish from Andrew, my Russian/American roommate.

Today I went to Perge (see Acts 13:13 and Acts 14:26?) with the Krausse family and Andrew. More on that later.