Small Meditations on Nilüfer and Language Learning

I have arrived in Bursa, and am at home with my host family after our third day of classes. We live in a suburban area of the Bursa district, a place called Dimirci in the area of Nilüfer. Every day, I have breakfast at seven and drive to school with my neighbors, who also are hosting a student from our program (N'aber, George!). I'll post more about the downtown area of Bursa later, I'm sure, but for now I want to talk to you about Dimirci and Nilüfer.

These güzel çiçekler greet us on the way to the car each morning.

Basically, we're in hardcore suburbia. The flats were all built in the past couple of decades, and throughout the area new buildings are being built constantly. The people are mostly middle class young families, many of whom commute into the city. When I ride the bus home through Dimirci, there are endlessly repeating color schemes and architecture styles dotted with weed-filled lots that are soon to be built upon.

New apartment buildings. (They're much nicer inside, in my opinion.)

There are convenient stores built on the first floor of many apartment buildings, and individual flats feature multiple balconies (which serve as spaces for interfamilial interaction), beautiful views, and spacious interiors. Other parts of Nilüfer have gated communities and bike paths, hipster coffee shops, and endless daycare options.

Blue skies, less noise, and distant views. It's the great promise of suburban life!

It's a beautiful place, and other than being pretty far from my classes, I'm glad I'm able to live here.

The minaret of our friendly neighborhood cami.

We've also had most of a week of classes so far, and I am learning something about the nature of the process of gaining Turkish skills. I am learning that the language learning process is in large part a matter of mediating my own mental state. When listening to people speak, if I am at all distracted I lose the entire meaning. I often have to ask people to repeat even though when they repeat exactly I can understand. Listening requires practiced, focused concentration. This also explains why I am often far more exhausted after talking to people in Turkish – the mental energy required is just so much greater than communicating in English.

When I'm speaking, too, it becomes much harder to think of words and phrase what I want to say if I get at all frustrated. Of course, if I do, it can be self-reinforcing – I'm frustrated so I can't think how to phrase what I know that I know how to say, and then the inability to communicate makes me more frustrated. That is compounded by having to explain what I'm trying to say in Turkish to someone who doesn't speak English well (like our teachers and Turkish language partners). The good news is that by recognizing this fact, I can also recognize that I already have relevant skills. I can take a step back, take a few breaths, let other people talk, and then try again.

I also can recognize that being far more frustrated and exhausted by ordinary mishaps (not having internet access, losing track of friend on the way to lunch, accidentally deleting the text I was writing on the flip phones) is in part a result of having less mental energy. I can acknowledge that the task I have set out to achieve – improving my ability to understand and speak in Turkish – is a difficult one. I can have compassion with myself when I feel I am less zen about everyday life here than in India, which by most measures was a considerably more difficult situation.

Türkiye, part II

Merhaba arkadaşlarım!

I'm going back to Turkey this summer for more language training, just after finishing my undergraduate life forever (shout-out to my fellow NU 2015 grads!). It's a bit strange because I've ended up missing commencement for orientation, but I think it'll be worth it. It's the Critical Language Scholarship (CLS) Program to Bursa, which is run by the US Department of State, so the obvious disclaimer is that these are my personal views and experiences and don't reflect the United States government. (PS – Vote for Bernie Sanders and for the best local city council member, state representatives, and federal legislators.)

Me and Ashanti, sight-seeing. There is a white building that some people live in behind us.

For the first leg of my trip, we were flown to the exotic capital of the United States, Washington DC. Here we saw all sorts of strange sights, such as brunches and dual-throated guitars painted with the stars and stripes. Apparently in this strange land, it's actually summer in June – the weather was hot and humid, just like home.

In all seriousness though, DC was pretty cool. I met a couple people from my program on the plane (and Fabian, who is in a different CLS program that will be in Vladimir, Russia). We took the DC metro to our hotel (which is in central DC), where we got to meet a bunch of other people from our program and from another three programs, which were going to Vladimir, Beijing, and Gwanjiu, South Korea. The first night we didn't do much other than get dinner at an American place (which luckily had vegetarian soup and green beans), but the second day we had orientation. The biggest highlight was that there was an alumna from the Turkish program who is also a Northwestern alum! She was part of the career panel, as she had recently gotten her PhD from George Washington, and I was able to ask questions about my interests. The twenty of us going to Bursa also got to meet each other, and it seems like a solid group. We have a pretty strong representation of recent graduates and graduate students of various types, studying everything from neurobiology to ethnomusicology to the history of Yugoslavia. There's going to be no shortage of cool perspectives on this trip, I'm sure.

The Mansion on O Street

On Friday after orientation, I met up with my high school friend Ashanti, who goes to Howard University and is interning this summer at the Mansion on O Street. It's this really cool house that's been repurposed as an art space, with tons of donated kitsch and rarities and like seventy secret doorways that are hidden in mirrors and walls. Ashanti is working with the mansion's music department to do things like organize jam sessions and sort the record collection. He showed me around, and there were a lot of really cool historic rooms. Apparently the place is very historic, and all sorts of heads of state and famous people have spent time here, from Rosa Parks to the lead singer of Hootie and the Blowfish.

This room is called the Amnesia room. We visited it first - or was it last?

This stuff is in the Teddy Roosevelt room.

We took a bunch of pictures because it was really cool.

Ashanti in the Log Cabin Room.

This patriotic instrument was probably played by a famous person.

After that, we both headed back to meet up with other people in my program, and we had a blast until early in the morning. We figured that it'd be easier to sleep on the flight if we weren't too well-rested. It didn't work for me, but it worked for a couple other people at least. Now I'm in Frankfurt using the free WiFi (US airports take note!). We were on the same plane as the Russian program, but we split off now. In about 10 hours or so, we're going to be in Bursa!