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Merhaba!

Good news, bad news, and more good news.

The good news is I’ve moved into my new apartment! As I’m writing this I’m getting ready for my second night here. I unpacked all my things (not to say they’re organized in any particular way) and even made myself my first homemade Turkish dinner!


My romantic first homemade Turkish dinner in my new home

The place is wonderful. It’s got a nice big kitchen with a gas-burning stove, a dishwasher I don’t know how to use, a nice stove, and tiled floors. It’s connected to my spacious living room, which is about as big by itself as any dorm I lived in at NYU. Plus it’s got this huge window that covers almost all the wall and looks out over Bahçeşehir and lets in all sorts of wonderful natural light for reading and seeing things you’re looking for without turning on lights. There’s a cozy bathroom with a washing machine, which I also don’t know how to use (not that it stops me) and a tiny square shower with a broken door that will be fixed tomorrow. There’s also a bedroom with carpet – carpet! – and plenty of storage space for all the junk I’ve got. Plus I’m fully furnished now with a small couch, a table, 8 chairs (I don’t know why, but they were all provided so I took ‘em), dishes, a bed, a dresser, a bookshelf, a fridge, a couple cheap coffee tables, and other random supplies. Now what I need most of all is a desk and a decent stereo and I’ll be set. Oh, and some decorations. And some visitors, because this place is huge and I’m the only one living in it. That’s right, it’s just me. I need help sitting in all these chairs!


My kitchen is in shambles right now

The other day I spent a good ten minutes opening and closing those giant windows, trying to decide how I liked it better!

The bad news is directly related to the good news: When I moved to the new place I gave up my rights to Internet until at least September 1 (probably meaning much, much later). I’m probably going to post this from a café somewhere – I’m writing it as a Microsoft Word document right now. I’d get it fixed right away if it weren’t for some life’s necessities that need fixing: the shower door, the empty light fixtures that make nighttime pitch black. I’m going to be in sparse contact for a while. I’m hoping it could be fun to try and live without something I’ve taken for granted so much recently. I’ve gone all day without going online, and I’m proud I could make it even if I suffered from withdrawal a couple times throughout the day.

The other good news is that I finished my CELTA training earlier today with a high mark! I think everyone taking the class was ready to be over, but it was still sad to say goodbye to my new friends who will be on their busses to their campuses within the hour. I met a lot of wonderful people working in campuses throughout Turkey. I guess this makes it easier to think about traveling within the country – I have friends wherever I want to go! And I’ve become friends with some of the teachers here at Bahçeşehir, too, so it’s not a total loss. And now that we’re done with training we can get down to business and start thinking about how to make these kids’ lives better! How to enrich them with knowledge about the English language while fostering a love for it at the same time. Hopefully the class helped me with some ways to make that happen, and double-hopefully I had that capacity in myself to begin with.


Bosporus under the clouds

I’m starting to get used to living here. It’s been three weeks now since I’ve moved, and the other day I noticed that the area of town that was once strange to me has now become a part of a routine. I’ve grown so accustomed to people speaking Turkish all around me that I barely even hear it anymore. I don’t feel like I don’t belong anymore – yes, I’m foreign, but this is my home. I’m also learning Turkish as I go, which helps, but I can still barely speak. I’d hoped to be fluent after a month, but that’s obviously not going to be the case (maybe three months?). Still, I belong here. This is my place. This is where I’m going to make a difference in the world. I can feel my ownership of it within my subconsciousness’s assimilation of its differences. And, like my new apartment, I feel for the first time a deep caring for the place I’m in because I want to make a life here. I don’t know how long I’m going to stay in Turkey – my contract is for one year, so it’s going to be some time between that and the rest of my life – but I want to make it home. It’s not like New York, where I knew I was passing through. Here I want to put roots down, even if I leave in the summer of 2011. Istanbul is more to me than just a middle point between me and California, or wherever home is. It’s not home, and it’s not a transitional location. It’s somewhere in the middle.