Perhaps this blog would be easier to write if a bit of its purpose was established first. For the past thirty days I’ve been living in another country, in another culture, in another family who speak a different language. And yet, other than some photos of me on facebook, I’ve divulged very little information about my life other than a few short emails and some letter that have not yet been mailed. This blog is supposed to cure all of that, to be a controlled way to learn about “What Turkey’s like” and “How I’m doing” without sending out 15,000 emails a month or facebook stalking. But the first thirty day is a lot of ground to cover, so I’ll start with some of the basics.
My apartment is in a neighborhood of Karsiyaka. Karsiyaka is the area of Izmir roughly translating to “across the bay.” My family moved here from Aci, Turkey, where my host father still works as a pediatrician. My host father, Oktay, is a pediatrician from the Black Sea region, while my host mother, Dilek, is a Turkish teacher from the Aegean. When she moved back to Izmir, her two children, Aybars and Ece, came with her. My host brother Aybars is in his 20s and lives with us while he looks for a job. He went to the American high school, and spent a year at SUNY Binghamton, so his English is excellent. He’s been incredibly helpful and very supportive. He keeps explaining Turkey’s political system to be because it’s so different than that of the U.S. My host sister Ece went to one of the French high schools in Izmir, and is now in Seattle, Washington with Rotary.
Tomorrow is my third Monday of school. Due to a combination of an unusually late lunar calendar and a massive political referendum to alter the constitution, school did not start until the 20th of September. I came on the 28th of August, so it seemed like my summer was never going to end. Rotary originally had me going to a school in another neighborhood with one of the other students in Karsiyaka. However, Cihat Kora is a four minute walk from my apartment and has a better English program so my host mother put a stop to that. Every morning I walk with my neighbor, Selen. I met her because our balconies are about 10 feet apart. School is so close I can see my building from the hallway.
The reason my school has such a good English program is they created a thing called “Prep Year.” Turkish students who want to attend college need to take huge exams to see which schools they can qualify for. If they don’t get the right scores, they have to study for a year and try again. Instead of beginning high school after the eighth grade, students spend a year in intensive English programs before entering the normal school. I keep forgetting that my class in year 11 is actually the same age as I am. After meeting with the headmaster, about my schedule (five people in the room and at least three of them talking at the same time), they decided to put me in the only language class. Students here are divided into sections like “Language,” “Social Studies,” and “Math and Science” in preparation for the exams. My classmates take more English than the other students, and take philosophy instead of Physics. Including me, there are ten girls and four guys in the room.
Yes, I wear a uniform to school. However, the strictness of it depends on the day and time of the week. There isn’t actually a written policy about the uniform, you just kind of know what you’re supposed to do, which I don’t. After the first week of school all the students were called into the auditorium where one of the administrators was waiting with a microphone. He then proceeded to thoroughly enunciate into it dramatic Turkish even I could understand. It basically consisted of “Girls are wearing their skirts too short! Boys are not buttoning their shirts! Nobody’s wearing their ties!!!” I asked if this was something I needed to be concerned about, and the girl laughed. Apparently it’s something somebody has to do every year, and this guy was stuck with it because he’s new. My favorite trick to watch is students putting their ties on before the Monday morning flag-raising and national-anthem-singing assembly and taking them off as soon as they’ve walked by the last teacher.
I really want to write about everything I’ve done and all the cultural differences, but that would be longer than the Iliad and the Odyssey combined. Turkey is freakishly beautiful. I know it rains here, but whenever it happens I’ve been sleeping. I have swum in the Mediterranean once and the Aegean three times. My Rotary club holds its meetings at the top floor of the Swiss Hotel with a view of the sea. People seem to be obsessed with going to the beach and my family has a library in their apartment. I’ll write more blog posts recanting some of the things I’ve done, but for now I’ll have to be content with summarizing my situation. I think about everyone from the States a lot, and it’s wonderful to have so many people supporting me.
Love from Izmir,
Eva
P.S. I would love questions or comments about my exchange. If you don't want to comment on my blog here, please send me a message through email or facebook and I'll either reply to you directly or incorporate them into my blog. I don't know what people would like to learn about, but my life here is so full it's easier to write with some prompts. I'll post more about specific activities later on.
