Life in Turkey

Daily life for me has three main places to it.  First is the city of Bursa in general.  I will get out and about in the city, and while I look forward to some travel, I’m pretty tied to the city during the week.  Second is Alaşar where I actually live.  And third is the TÖMER Institute where I study.

Alaşar is a small little town, but I spend time with the family in the home, and it is lovely.  All our food is homemade (cheese; yogurt; the ubiquitous Turkish salad of cucumbers, tomatoes, and spicy peppers; eggs, olives, etc.) and the farm is shady (vital when it’s 40 C like it is every day) and quiet as compared to Bursa.  Plus we are a little less polluted which just feels clean. 

In the evening, we’ll have dinner and then sit around drinking çay (chay or tea) which, contrary to the common perception is the national drink, not kahve (coffee).  I really have a good situation, and I am very glad.  Ahmet – the father – is very curious about very specific aspects of American life (car companies, whether Americans dance at weddings, and what our circumcision parties are like – in Turkey, it takes place around age 10 and is celebrated like a bar mitzvah – are all representative of Ahmet’s interests).  Safiye is more interested in my interest in languages (her son is beginning to learn English, and she wants him to pursue language study.) 

When we sit around, there are several dictionaries (Mehmet’s English is quite good and Yağmur’s is also pretty good.  Safiye can also speak some, but it is limited.  That being said, neither the parents nor grandparents speak English, but I am getting better with them.  In any case, conversations happen at night with çay; and it’s generally just a pleasant way to spend the evening. 

The main part of my life here, though, is the TÖMER (toer-mehr) Institute.  It is a program of Ankara University, and the first of its kind in Turkey, to systematically teach foreign languages.  It is amazing that every day when I walk in, there is another student in our class from another part of the world.  Two Afghanis were in our class today, for example.  Learning Turkish has 3 aspects to it in our program.  The first is class work.  Our CLS group is divided into 4 skill-levels with mine having 8 students.  We spend 4 hours per day in class – 160 hours in 8 weeks.  The second aspect of the program is being partnered with a “buddy,” a Turk who is somewhere between someone paid to be my friend and a tutor.    My buddy is named Favziye (fahfv-zi-ye) and she is a 22 year old student at Uludağ Universitesi, and is very good.  We explore together, and generally expose me to Turkish Culture.  I’ll get into what we do in the next post.  The third aspect of the program is the most obvious: immersion.  By living in Turkey and thinking in Turkish, students use their claas work in real situations. 

TÖMER is a wonderful place that really takes care of us.  We are in class from 9-1 and have programming in the afternoon two days a week.  These can be excursions (Izik, better known as Nicea is nearby), cultural activities such as a paper marbling class, or mini cultural trips like to museums. 

In all, I’m very busy, but enjoying myself!  Please comment and keep reading!