Kastamonu Office

Trust the Chickens

Tory and I arrived in Kastamonu. Our, sort of contact,(she is from the international office that has no international students) finally came to get us at the bus station. She took us to the faculty guest house, which is no where near the university and there are dead ants all over the floor The shower is a small stream of hot water and not enough to even bath in!. There was no tour of the town, but she took us to the grocery store called Megros. This woman was not the most friendly and said that they were "surprised" that we where coming. She has no idea what we will teach and says that the students, "don't want to take English and may not come to class". Promising, I know!

Anyways, she will come to get us on Monday to see the Wizard of Oz, I mean the Vice Rector......so he can sort this out. The only way I am writing you now is because we found an ethernet wire and I circumvented around the block to get online. This Better get better!

tear count: none yet because at least we have each other

This is what I posted to the Fulbright Turkey Google group about our arrival to our home town of Kastamonu. As you can see, we were alittle worried when we first arrived on Saturday evening. It was dark, and our only contact from the University picked us up and took us to eat and get groceries without much more explanation. She had no idea why were there and only knew that someone told her to pick us up.

Today we are at the University administration building to meet with the Vice Rector and find out our schedule and hopefully more about everyday life for us. Luckly, we have been put in the care of an English lecturer who calls himself Neo (like Matrix he says). He has been great! He sat in on our meeting with the big boss and translated for us. He made sure that we received a laundry service and housekeeping. Thank God! He knew that we were coming from the get go and was the one that translated all of our paperwork for the administration. Things are looking better and our flat(apartment) is being fixed.

At lunch, Neo escorted us to the manager of our residence and had him fix the aformentioned problems and we recieved a house phone. We asked him why are there so many chickens roaming around the grounds of the complex. At first Neo didn’t know what we were talking about, but soon saw. By the way, when I say complex, it is like a little fortress. There is a high fence around the place and security guards 24 hours a day. So, the manager explained to Neo that the chickens where brought in from Ankara to get rid of some killer bugs in the area. What! What bugs? How do we know if we have been bitten by these killer bugs? Neo just said, “Trust the Chickens”, so this is what we will do.

As for our positions at the University. We are still a little unclear as to the exact nature of our positions. We have proposed a speaking tutor sessions or English club that may be possible. It seems that the schedule has already been made and we are not fully teaching classes. I am not too broken up about. I will be able to assist in English classes of the two lecturers that I share an office with. By the way, my office is fabulous. Its in an old building with beautiful large wooden doors and high ceilings. Pictures will be coming soon.

Kemal's Visit

Ok, I anticipated struggles with and uncomfortable situations steming from my lack of knowledge of this language, but still cannot help feeling like a complete idiot living in a country that I have very little grasp of the language. FYI, I am not the only one of the Fulbrighters. Only about a handful have a good grasp of the language.

Anyway, Kemal came to Ankara yesterday and picked my up this morning for breakfast. He brought along a friend, Gozde(which I have met before in Istanbul) and a coworker of his at the World Bank. He then took us all to his grandmother's house in the suburbs, which was beautiful. Her garden was fabulous!

Now, this is the point that I become the elefant in the room so to speak. Grandma asked me how I was doing in Turkish and all 3 words that know went out of the window. I kind of sat there with a smile plastered on my face for about 2 hours as we had breakfast there and the world moved along......in Turkish.

I feel like the older I get, the more socially akward I get. I know this was a special circumstance, but it seems that I need to relearn how to communicate with people I don't know and be alittle more outgoing. Anyways, I am aware of this and this is one of the reasons why I put myself in this predicament.

First Weekend

We have had workshops and planned activities every since we arrived and this weekend offered alittle free time. Friday was a full day of English language teaching workshops and a fablous Turkish language/culture presentation by a professor from Bilkent University. She taught us how to say some greeting like iyi aksamler (good evening), gunyden(good morning) and a few more contemporary sayings that are not taught in standard language classes. We did talk about some important holidays and I found out that I will be off from school for a week in November (16-19th) for Kurban Bayrami (sacrifice holiday). Need to start making plans to do some traveling at that time!:).

At around 730 we went to a BBQ at the ambassador's home. Very nice guy and of course lovely house. I also met the press office director(?) and another guy from the economic office that had recently finished a post in Bagdad(with some great insight). Everything was nice and the food was good (American style of course). Nothing super crazy happened.

FYI, I can not figure out how to get the pictures to be throughout the blog and not just at the top and therefore they are all at the top. Sorry, but they are not in any order. They include a group picture with the Ambassador, getting ready to go into the Turkish bath, the Anatolian museum and Kale resturant.

On Saturday, we had lunch at Kale resturant which is a very old house and many of the furnishings are preserved. The food was good and the view was great! After lunch we went to the Museum of Antatolian Civilization. Great exhibits of reliefs, statues, pottery and etc from ancient times.

Next, a small group of us went to a hamam which are very old bath houses from Ottoman times that people still go to for a good scrub. Let me tell you.....you have to leave your inhibitions at the door! I purchased a body scrub, coffee scrub and massage(aka the whole shabang) for only 35 TL (about $25). We were told to go in a changing room and undress down to our panties and put on a towel. We were then led through a small door almost underground to the hamam. Inside the hamam it was about 150 degrees!!! It is basically rooms of marble slabs and sinks. We dropped towels and had to use little bucks to dowse ourselves with water until we were nice and soft. Then an old Turkish woman grabbed me and took me to the middle marble slab where she literaly scrubed the top layer of skin off and then did the coffee scrub. It was nice and felt like I was in ancient times. The inside was beautiful with stars cut out in the ceiling for light and all the white marble. Will try to get up the courage to go back for a bikini wax, which is supposed to be great and for only about $4! I came out renewed and definitly clean!

Day 1 of Orientation

Merhaba All

Ok, I promise I will not write about each day of my orientation, but today was a little interesting. First we had the President of the Higher Education Council of Turkey give the opening speech and it was kind of crazy. A crowd of press was there to film this and practically talked the whole time he was speaking to us. We were all kind of shocked at the press to start with, but it was an interesting experience. Apparently there is some kind of issue with examinations in Turkish universies and they literally had a press conference about the issues after he spoke with us.

Went on to have political, health and security briefings from various people and an introduction to the Turkish langauge. Yea!!

Oh, FYI Mom- do not worry, I am being well fed.......all I do is eat! I have not yet been cold or hungry :)

Finally, I had my first introduction to the turkish toilet which is pictured here. It's basically a hole in the floor that you must squat over and this is the preferred toilet here and in much of the East. Just had to suck it up......hey, I'm adventurous!

Arrival

Ok, I told some of you that I would blog from the airplane.....got on the plane and there was no wifi, like I was anticipating. So, I am writing from Baskent Ogretmenevi (teachers house) of a Gazi University in Ankara, Turkey....mouthful!


Anyways, 3 planes and a taxi......tada! I finally made it here! And thank God my luggage made it here with me! The flight from NYC to Istanbul was 9 hours, but I had to sit on the tarmac for 2 hours as they fixed the fuel pump......little nervous with that! Then, on the Istanbul to Ankara flight we had the Turkish national basketball team on board! They just played the US team yesterday and lost....oh well.

FYI.....great food on Turkish airways!

So far so good........I've got to get ready for dinner at 630. Yea Turkey!

Where is your tail?

I have always been interested in the topic of diversity issues/affairs…..basically how the people of the world get along with each other. My motto has always been the more we know about each other, the less fear there will be between us. Of course, fear often leads to hate, stereotyping etc….. I was recently told a great story by one of my relatives, Emma Jean, that was so great I have to share!

When Emma was a teenager (I’m guessing this would be in the 1960’s), she won a cooking competition here in NC that took her to the international level, held in Maryland. While in Maryland, she met other young people from around the world. A particular girl from Germany stuck in her memory. This girl “curled up” in fear each time she saw Emma Jean. One piece of background information, Emma was what she says, “a fly in the milk” at this conference. Meaning that she was the most obvious black person there ( relatives that came with her where black , but appeared white as they were light skinned).
At some point during the competition, Emma and the girl met in the bathroom. The girl looked at her again frightened. Emma finally told her that she wouldn’t bite and that there was no reason to be afraid. At that point the girl loosed up and told Emma that she had never seen a black person up close before. Feeling less timid, the girl asked her, “Where is your tail?” She had evidently been told that black people grew tails, like animals. Emma told her, “ I have a hind part with a split down the middle just like you and the only difference between them is that yours is white and mine is black!” Emma and this girl continued on at the competition as good friends and the girl was no longer afraid of her. She even told Emma that she would tell everyone back home in Germany what she had learned.

I just adore this story because it makes a great point and because I love that moment when people find out that certain assumptions and stereotypes that they have held are not what they origionally thought. I welcome discussion about myself for this very reason! It also makes me wonder about other superstitions or folk tales about black people that are commonly held in different parts of the world.......I'll have to do some research about that :)

Countdown to Turkey......5 more days!

Invitation

I knew when I applied for this fellowship that it would come with a certain amount of prestige, but I continue to be amazed at the opportunities that have been presented to me as a result of being chosen for this award. This morning, I accepted an invitation to the home of the US Ambassador to Turkey for a BBQ. Is that not crazy?! Will be sure to get some pictures of that for you all. Countdown......10 more days :)