Bayraming in Eşme

At the end of Ramazan, there's a four-day holiday that we all had off of school. Some of my friends went hiking, some went to Istanbul, and some of us went with our host families to see how they celebrate the holidays. I'm in the latter group, and I went to Eşme, a small town outside of the larger town of Uşak, which is about two hours from İzmir. The town looked to be about the size of Davidson, NC, but the population geography is so different that I'm guessing blindly. We're staying with my host grandmother, who is very sweet but also has a dramatic voice that's a lot like my host mother's.

Host mother, grandmother.

My host family's house is pretty suburban. We share walls with neighbors but have a large garden area behind the house, where everything from cucumbers to plums to orchids are growing. The house itself is up some steps from the garden, but on level with the garden there are several storage sheds and a room that's used for cooking with a wood fire. When I woke up Thursday morning (after having crashed almost immediately upon arrival Wednesday night), I found my host mother and grandmother in that room, cooking lokma. The wood fire also was used to roast eggplant and onions for one of our evening meals, which was delicious.

Plums growing in the garden.

On Friday, a number of different groups of people visited my host grandmother's house. I learned the Turkish equivalent of the South-Asian touching an elder's feet to ask for a blessing. Here people kiss the back of an older relative's hand and then press the back of that hand to their forehead. Like the South Asian equivalent there was some ambiguity on who was enough of an elder or a close enough relative. Most of the visitors, for example, didn't seem to expect it.

The inside of a cafe in town, the Saklı Bahçe (hidden garden).

I also got to explore the town a bit, both on my own and with my host relatives. Thursday night my host sister and host uncle took us to go buy the board game Okay, which is basically gin rummy on a Rummikub board, and in the process we ended up seeing a park under construction and a number of çay places. Friday, I borrowed a bike from my host family, and got to bike around and see the area better. It's mostly suburban, but there are also larger fields a little way out from the town center. I made a friend who biked with my for a bit, but then he had to run home to help his mother with something and was busy the next few days, so we didn't actually get to hang out.

Dinner with the fam.

My host grandmother has four daughters, one of whom couldn't make it and another who I met here. The latter has a son, who is around my age and named Baki, who lives in İzmir. On Friday we went out and about for a bit, trying to find a place to play billiards (we ended up not finding one, unfortunately), and I was able to see that despite the size of the town there were quite a few game cafes. I wonder about the economic reasons for so many of those existing, but it might just be as simple as they're cheap and distracting. I could tell that both my host sister and host cousin, as well as my biking friend, felt the town itself was a small place, after being used to larger cities like Bursa, Istanbul, and İzmir. I sort of felt the same way, but it was nice to have the variety. We did manage to see more or less all there was to see, though.

Baki, my host uncle Gökhan, and me.

Each evening, after eating the evening meal (which interestingly moved later after there was no more need for Iftar), my host family and I hung out in the garden, drinking çay, eating sunflower seeds, and playing Okay. I was not really able to follow the conversation when people weren't talking directly to me. I did, however, win two rounds of Okay in a row.

On Friday, I got the chance to pick plums with my host mom for the neighbor across the street. One cool thing about Eşme is that there are gardens and fruit trees everywhere, so it's pretty common for neighbors to help out older neighbors when they can. On Saturday, when the over-25s got back from doing mysterious work in the family's old home village (out in the köy), we also got to enjoy a post-Bayram tradition of chopping up wood and putting it in storage for use when cooking. I picked up a lot of chopped logs and put them into wheelbarrows. All the yard work felt very seasonal and traditional, trying to get a good start on the harvest time or the new year or whatever was starting.

Chopping firewood. Clockwise from left: Host mom, host aunt, host dad, host sister.

Of course, while I did help out with that sort of work, I was also able to relax quite a bit while I was here. I averaged ten hours of sleep per day and read (not just fanfiction either! I downloaded Actual Books before I left Bursa, including a Stephen Hawking book). I was a little alarmed upon arrival to discover that there was no WiFi available (which, in hindsight, should not be surprising), but luckily I was able to find a cafe in town called Saklı Bahçe, where I was able to check email, and my host uncle let me have some WiFi siphoned off his Android.

Shore, river, mountain

This past weekend had a lot more natural beauty than I expected. My past experience with Turkey had been primarily Istanbul, so it was awesome to be able to see a lot more of the natural beauty of the country rather than the city.

Sunset over the Black Sea in Şile, Istanbul district.

This weekend, the program group took a bus to Şile, which is a town on the black sea coast that is part of the Istanbul metropolitan area. I didn't get to take a lot of pictures of Şile, other than one truly incredible sunset over the Black Sea, but it was a fun weekend. I got to climb some rocks, discover nifty coves (well, get shown them by Tommy), play frisbee in the sea (with our friend Deniz catching more shots than we did), visit a lighthouse, try some rakı (which is actually good when mixed with a reasonable amount of water) and see a small-town Ramazan market. We even tried to talk in Turkish most of the time, though it was just us American students. There was a bit of a scare with bedbugs in the hotel, but otherwise it was a blast.

Our friends waving as we depart on a boat.

The day after we arrived, on the way back from Şile, we stopped for a riverboat tour. The river was incredibly green, but since my last experience on a riverboat was in Varanasi on the Ganga, the green seemed a lot more life-affirming than scummy. The river runs right out next to the sea, but apparently runs alongside the coast for a while. When there's a lot of rain and the river floods, it mixes with the Black Sea's water, but most of the time it's freshwater next to a beach. We saw turtles sunning themselves, lovely touristy riverside restaurants where some of us ate gözleme (we had had a big lunch before we left Şile, so I stuck with çay), and then we headed back to Bursa.

Turtles are called kaplumbağa,

On the way there and back our bus took us along mountain roads with incredible green vistas and picturesque small towns with clusters of red-roofed houses gathered around a central cami. (Take standard eastern European town, find/replace religion.) I don't have a lot of good pictures through the bus window, unfortunately.

A small snapshot of the landscape we crossed.

Whenever I don't spend time in altitude-varying places, it can be easy to forget how depth feels. The hills of western Anatolia might be visually beautiful in abstract, but when you're on a bus too big for the road riding along close to the edge of a many-meter drop, the size of the landscape leaves a deeper impression.

Şükrü and Ayberk on the teleferik. Neither are at all fazed by the huge drop or the beautiful vistas.

I had that experience twice this weekend, in fact. On Sunday, the day after we returned from Şile, I went to Uludağ (the giant mountain right outside Bursa) with my language partner Şükrü, my friend Tucker, and his language partner Ayberk (who is besties with Şükrü). To get to the top of the mountain, one takes a cable car (called a teleferik in Turkish) from a base in Bursa up 1500 meters (over 4.5 kilometers, which is a 20 degree average incline) to a landing on top of the mountain.

That big brown blob in the background? That's Bursa. This should give you an idea of the scale of the teleferik.

Which is to say, we were in a mostly glass box dangling a dozen meters above the ground for a good twenty minutes or so. At first, we were able to watch Bursa disappear behind rising forests and rocks, and then we were hovering over a massive trackless forest for a while. Our height above the ground varied somewhat, from more or less even with the treetops to the sort of distance where you just have to trust the cable to hold. According to Tucker, my eyes got really big when the teleferik swung out over one particular instance when a forested valley dropped down beneath us.

It's pretty chilly up on the mountain. More like Seattle in the late fall than a Mediterranean summer.

When we arrived at the top of the mountain, the first thing that we noticed was the weather shift. In Bursa it had been a hot sunny day in the low 30s, but a kilometer and a half up the temperature dropped ten degrees and the humidity approached dew point. When we got moving and hiking it was perfect weather, though.

Friends don't let friends fall into streams. Ayberk and Tucker help Şükrü across river rocks.

Several of our friends were hiking ahead of us, and the four of us spent most of our time following them, even though that meant hiking along a non-path that was where the forest had been cleared for a new teleferik line. We ended up calling Katie, who was in the group ahead of us, half a dozen times to confirm we were going the right direction. Once we even had to follow some electric cables to find our way forward, which was an adventure. We never did meet up the other group, though we did meet Katie as she was returning down the same path, and when we got to the top of the mountain (which was about 3 kilometers away as the crow flies but mostly uphill) we tried to autostop (hitchhike) our way back to the teleferik. We ended up on a dolmuş instead, but that was close enough.

There was a portion where there was no path, but Lauren told us to follow the wires and eventually we found it again!

Overall, this weekend was jampacked with sightseeing excitement. This next week hopefully will be a bit more calm, since I'm planning to stay in Bursa this weekend. I kind of want to return to some of the places I visited during the day over these past couple of weeks, like the Ulu Camii or the Kültürpark. Hadi bakalım!

Note: I was also in Istanbul last week with people from my program. Istanbul is beautiful as always, and we did get to go to pride briefly, though we left before the police violence started. I don't particularly want to talk about it, though.

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!

Bayram

I'm going to write this is English and then try to explain it in Turkish. The Turkish will have pictures.
The end of Ramazan in Turkey is accompanied by a three-day long holiday, which this year fell on July 28-30, a Monday through Wednesday. Thus, we had a five-day long weekend, and many people took the entire week off (especially people affiliated with the university.)
Originally I was going to go to Romania with a couple of my friends, but when that fell through I ended up instead staying in Istanbul. However, that also gave me the chance to do a lot of stuff around the city.
On Friday after class, I went to the Koç Museum with a couple friends from class. The museum is basically the private collection of Rahmi Koç, and includes a large collection of steam engines, boats, trams, planes, factory machines, and other artifacts related to the history of technology. There's also a section with Atatürk's pants and bathrobe, which was interesting.
That evening, I went with two other friends from class and two other friends to Fatih, where there's an old covered bazaar on top of which there is a rooftop area with an amazing view of the Sulimaniye Camii, Yeni Camii, and across the Golden Horn, Beyoğlu and Galata Tower. We hung out, ate cheese, bread, and fruit, and then went to Galata, where we visited another roof.
Saturday, I went to the Saturday Market in my neighborhood but mostly stayed at home all day and rested. In the evening I got dinner with some friends and went to this beautiful spot with a view of the Bosphorus on campus.
Sunday, I went to mass at the Aya Yorgi, which is the Orthodox Church where the Greek Patriarchate is situated. The place is small, but has walls encrusted with gold and dozens of icons. The service itself was mostly in Greek, so I didn't understand anything, and there were many tourists, but it was interesting in how different it is from any other services or masses I'd attended.
Monday, a couple of us went cemetery sight-seeing in Üsküdar, where there are modern graves and Ottoman gravestones side by side. Afterward, we went to Eyüp, where there is a large graveyard on a hill which includes both Ottoman and modern graves. I wish I could read the Ottoman script, because most Ottoman graves are addressed to the reader and set up a dialogue about mortality and such, but instead I could only look at the flowers (which on women's graves represent the number of children they have) and the hats (which on men's graves show their social standing.) It was still fascinating to see how graves are stacked on each other and are so close that it can be hard to navigate from grave to grave. The paths don't make it easy to get to every grave in the graveyard, so visiting family can be a bit of an adventure.
After seeing the graveyards, we went to Sultan Ahmet, in front of the Blue Mosque, to hear the evening call to prayer, because it was the first official day of Bayram so we thought there would be an extra long call to prayer to celebrate. And the call to prayer was noticeably triumphant and beautiful, but it was also quite short, unfortunately.
Tuesday, I wanted to go to Boğaziçi's beach on the Saritepe campus up in Kiliyos. However, I missed a bus and ended up waiting a long time for the next bus, only to miss it because I was waiting in the wrong place. I ended up getting fed up and took a bus to Sarıyer and then from there to Kiliyos, where I walked to Boğaziçi's campus. I had heard there were lots of students hanging out there the last couple of days, but it was completely empty when I got there. I got to read a lot though, and almost finished one of my Kindle books. I also got to play Backgammon with a couple of my friends after I got back, which was fun.
Wednesday afternoon, I went out to lunch in Taksim with a couple friends, and I worked on whatever homework I had left. It was a pretty chill day.

Bayram için Romanya'ya gidecektim ama gidemedim.O yüzden, İstabul'da kaldım. Ayrıca, çok iyidi! Çok ilginç şey yaptım!
Cuma günü, dersten sonra, Andrew ve Taylor'la Koç Müzesine gittim. Orada uçaklar, yapurlar, ve buhar makinesini gördük. Atatürk'ün bornozu de orada olmuştu!

Koç Müzesindeki MINI Mini Cooper

O akşam, Sydney, Britton, ve Britton'un arkadaşlarınla Fatih'e gittim. Orada, eski kapalı bir çarsının çatısında oturup peynir, ekmek, ve meyve yedip güzel bir manzara izledik. Ondan Sülimaniye Camii, Yeni Camii, ve (haliçdan karşı) Galata Külesini görebildik. Sonra, başka Galata yakındaki çatında oturduk.

Çatından manzara

Sülimaniye Camii

Cumartesi günü, kitap okudum. O akşam, ben, Patrick ve Julia akşam yemeği yedip güney kampüsünden boğaz izledik.
Pazar günü, Alex'le Aya Yorgi'ya gittim. Pazar Kitlesine katıldı. O çok ilginç bir kilesi, ve duvarda çok altın ve iconalar vardı. Kitle Rumcada ve hiç bir şey anladım.
Pazartesi günü, Sydney'le Kadıköy'de buluştum. Üsküdar'daki eski (Osmanlı ve yaşıt) bir mezarlığa gezdik, ve ondan sonra Eyüp'de Andrew'le buluştuk. Yokuşda eski bir mezarlik var, ve ona gezdik.

Üsküdar'daki mezarlıkdaki Mevlana şiir

Salı günü, arkadaşımla Kiliyos'a gidecektim. Hiç kimse gitmek istiyorduğu için arkadaşımsız gitmemi karar verdim. Ancak bir otobüs kaçırdım. Ondan sonra, yanlış otobüs durağında bekliyordum. Ağaç olduktan sonra başka Sarıyer'e gidin otobüse bindim ve Sarıyer'de Kilyos'a gidin otobüse bindim. En sonunda Kiliyos'a vardım. Oradan BURC plajına gittim, ama orada hiç kimse yoktu. Arkadaşlarıma göre çok öğrenci olmalı, fakat yoktu. Ondan sonra, Boğaziçi'e gittim. Ancak, eve giderken Julia ve Patrick'ı gördüm. Onlar Kahve Diyari'ndeydiler. Onlarla biraz tavla oynadım ve makarna yedim.
Çarşamba günü, biraz oldu. Oğleden sonra, ben, Andrew, ve Nick Taksim'e gidip oğle yemeği yedik. Ondan sonra, eve döndüm ve biraz ödev yaptım.
Bayram çok iyidi. Eğlendım.

A weekend in the life

This weekend I had no homework because we'd just had our midterm (we're halfway done already!). I spent Friday going to museums (the Mevlevi Lodge and Ottoman Bank Museums near Galatasaray, and the Pera Museum), and Saturday at the Grand Bazar, another bank museum for Republican Turkey (because it was free and we were in the Golden Horn so why not) and Mısır Çarşısı, both days with people from my program. So today was a day to wander on my own.
This afternoon I went to a bilingual (Turkish-English) church service off Istiklal, where we sang in Turkish and Farsi. There were people from the UK and the US (both of us from the US were in my program), from Canada, Iran, Korea, and Bulgaria. The service was led by a bilingual Korean-Turk, and it was a music-prayer Sunday without a sermon. Afterward I met and talked to a guy who's medical student in the Ukraine, where he had met some American missionaries and converted. He's originally from Iran, but his family now lives in Turkey and he is currently visiting them for the summer.
Being in that church reminded how much of an international space The Church has become; earlier today, there had also been morning services in English and a service for East Africans. Evangelical Christianity is no longer the religion of the American South; it has spread across the globe and already contains people from almost everywhere. Every tribe and tongue, I guess.
After the service I went to the Lambda office, where I found out (in Turkish, which may mean something got lost in translation) that basically nothing's happening around there for the rest of the summer.
Then I headed to Cevahir Mall, which is in Şişli (right by the metra stop). It felt a lot like home, like Northlake or South Park. Though I suspect it was the size of the two put together, along with Concord Mills. I wandered around the six stories of the mall, looking for a duffle bag (which I ended up getting from Columbia Sportswear, because I couldn't find it anywhere else). I got a falafel wrap (a la Naf Naf Grill) from a place called "The Upper West Side" that specialized in Philly cheesesteaks and Falafel (which I guess is pretty representative of the mid-Atlantic region, all things considered). I learned there that electronics are actually considerably more expensive in Istanbul than in the US (a small computer that if I were being generous I'd value at $500 was telling for 2500 lira (which means it's more than twice as expensive), but that in general middle class Istanbullus shop at the same price range as American mallgoers. Also, their food court was two-stories high.
Anyway, classes start back tomorrow. This weekend I've done a lot of talking in Turkish (buying things at Cezhavir, talking to the person at Lambda, generally being out and about), so I'm hoping this weekend, in addition to letting me experience both touristy and less touristy things, was helpful on that front. I feel much more confident that I could survive in Istanbul on my own if I had to, and that I have made obviously recognizable progress.

Culture Shock: Expectations versus Reality

First I'd like to establish that Istanbul is actually no harder to adjust to than any other city in Europe or the US, and all of the things I'm talking about are minor.

Second, here are the things that you expect to find shocking but really aren't:

1. The food. Actually, most restaurants have at the very least Italian-style pasta dishes and some vegetarian soups. The worst thing I can say about the food is that if you don't eat meat the food tends to be a bit bland, because all the spices go into the meat. Also, Menemen is amazing. It's literally diced tomatoes with eggs, spices, and peppers cooked in. I've been told it's a good hangover cure, though I just eat it because it's delicious. There's also lots of fresh fruit everywhere.

2. Recitations from mosques several times per day. You kind of tune them out after a bit. No one seems to notice them when they happen.

3. Access to various basic goods. Actually, there are lots of corner stores that sell just about anything I want other than first aid stuff, which I can get from an Eczane. I even found the Turkish version of Claritin.

Now for the things that you don't expect to be shocked by, but are actually pretty strange:

1. Smoking. Everyone here smokes, including most of the people in my program. People don't seem to care if you smoke or not but they have no problem smoking near you. I've gotten used to the smell but it throws me off.

2. Water bottles. Your water comes packed in plastic in Istanbul. There are no reusable bottles in sight because no one likes the taste of the water (though it's usually safe in a newer building, and I've been keeping a water bottle). You can't get water at restaurants except in bottles, so everyone does. In general consumer environmentalism is less of a thing here as well; no one uses canvas bags for groceries.

3. Public transportation. Google maps doesn't know. I can't find any place online that lists stops of various bus routes, let alone times. There doesn't seem to be paper copies either. You basically have to find out how to get places by asking people who have been here longer. Luckily cabs are pretty cheap.
EDIT: http://www.iett.gov.tr/

Finally, the one thing that I can confirm is rather hard to deal with: Language barriers. I mean, I'm learning Turkish, but it can be hard to ask questions if I don't know the words in Turkish. I think that'll get better over time, but it'll takes some work.

On a quick positive note, though: Istanbul has the best night time cityscapes I have ever seen. Seeing Anatolia over the water still makes me stop every time I see it. I hope I can come back at some point in my life. 

Onur haftası ve ikinci hafta

Merhabalar!

A lot has happened in the past several days and I apologize for not posting yet. My computer is experiencing culture shock, I think, so I'm posting from my iPod.

In Turkish class there's been a little more attempt to explain things in English if we're just not getting it, but that's a last resort. We've been going over grammar a lot and some things are coming back to me but being reinforce in different ways (such as the difference between geniş zaman vs future tense).

Outside of class this week has been where the cool stuff has happened, though. I've been to Taksim every day for three days straight, because there have been events (some related to Pride and some not) every day. I haven't been getting as much sleep as I'd've liked, but that's okay because the events have been great.

I went to a meeting of the Istanbul Toastmasters club, which is a public speaking group mostly of professionals practicing giving presentations in English.  The ideas expressed were often pretty standard corporate liberalism but it was amazing to hear so many people striving to better themselves.

One of the Onur Haftası events I went to with my friend Syndey was a music-sharing event. People did everything from body rhythm to a song about animal rights set to the tune of Mad World to TPop songs to contemporary art music that Erin Cameron would have loved. I also met several people there and elsewhere in the community, including Karem, who is involved in a group at Boğaziçi  that does activism and research in the LGBT community here, which is awesome and who I'll hopefully be able to meet this summer.

I'm also going to a picnic this afternoon in Maçka Park, where a lot of my new friends (both from the program and Istanbul more generally) will be. So I'm excited for that too.

Anyway, I'll sign off now. İyi günler!

İkinci hafta başlar

Merhaba friends!
Blogger on my computer is in Turkish now; I've been posting from my phone so I didn't notice until now. It turns out I get computer-compatible Wifi on South Campus and North Campus (including the library), which is nice.
Anyway, classes have begun in earnest. The instructors speak almost entirely in Turkish unless we ask specific vocab questions, which is great for immersion but can be confusing. I'm still unsure what homework is due tomorrow and which questions I'm supposed to do for the reading. It's a bit disconcerting.
Unfortunately, it seems like I'm already behind on work, because instead of sitting in the library doing work I've been hanging out with people from the program, exploring the city, and attempting to talk to people in Turkish. I don't think that's a problem though; there's no reason to stress out about grades that are just going to show up pass-fail, and I have been learning a lot from what I've been doing outside of class. I can more or less ask simple requests and respond politely, even if I can't express complex thoughts while speaking just yet. I think within a couple of weeks I'll be better, because the grammar in class is giving me the tools to be able to think and talk in Turkish.
Also, I should be able to start making research contacts this week, because Istanbul Onur Haftası is this week and I'll be going to the events that don't conflict with required TLCP activities (unfortunately I had to miss a panel today for class). I don't know how hard it will be since I'm not conversant in Turkish, but it seems like there's a lot of English speaking people at least. So, that's exciting. I asked one of the organizers if I could assist but I didn't get a reply; I probably started too late since the preparation mostly happened before I got to Turkey. One of my classmates wants to come to stuff with me, which is great.
I'm still adjusting to the schedule and accommodations, but I think I've already acclimating to Istanbul itself. Other than the language, daily life isn't all that different from living in any city in the US (though with Seattle's hills and New York's crowdedness; I imagine San Francisco is a good comparison). The views, though, I might want to avoid getting used to; there's probably a dozen gorgeous views of the Marmara and Anatolia between my dorm and class each morning. The hills may be a lot of climbing but you can't fault the scenery.
Anyway, I'm going to get back to work now, because I have Things To Do tomorrow evening and I need to get ahead.

First day

Today is the first day of Turkish classes!

I arrived two days ago, and yesterday instead of class we had a placement test. I'm in the "Lower Intermediate" class, which makes sense since I haven't taken any Turkish in over a year, so it shouldn't be too hard. (I have at least seen all the grammar before, even if I forgot most of the vocabulary.)

There are a lot of cats and dogs around. They also don't tend to bother people at all, especially the ones in the street, but on campus at least people feed the cats but not really the dogs.

Istanbul isn't laid out on a grid, so it can be pretty confusing to get around, but I'm learning the nearby area and I'm pretty sure I know the way to and from campus. Google Maps is helpful by looking, but not for searching or figuring out public transit. Yelp helps even less. However, we found a couple of stores and kebapçiler so it's working out pretty well.

For some reason most of my class lives in the same dorm as me, which will be convenient. I've already made lots of friends; all my fellow students speak English, though, which means we haven't been only speaking Turkish. Maybe we will by the end though.

Also, I'm somewhat confused as to where we are, exactly. Google Maps says Sarıyer, but I'm pretty sure that's not right. Still, there's buses from here to Taksim so that should work out well. I more or less know my way around the immediate neighborhood, can get to campus and such pretty easily.

EDIT: I believe I am in Etiler. Also, enough of us have been trying to speak to each other in Turkish that I suspect it's helping. The group of us that was hanging out tonight has enough variety in proficiency that those of us on the lower end can improve from listening.

New summer, new adventures

Hello everyone!
It's summer again, and this year I'll be going to Istanbul to take a language course rather than to do interview research, but while I'm there I'm sure to meet new people and talk to them about things, hopefully in Turkish. At least, that's the plan. We'll see what happens when I get there.
I'm flying out around noon tomorrow and will be landing in the late morning the day after, Istanbul time.

The final post, I suppose? At least, of the summer.

I have finished the interviews. All that remains is to write the write up, pack and clean the room I've been living in the past month, and go home.
I'd like to say that I have learned a lot from this research, but honestly most of what I learned was not about the topic at hand.
The first lesson I learned was that I am uncomfortable with only revealing parts of my purposes to certain people. Just saying "I'm researching testimonies" or "I'm researching coming-out stories" when in reality I'm researching both, while not technically dishonest, made it hard for me to engage with people honestly. The fact that I was there to study people rather than be in genuine community with them was something I don't enjoy. So this will probably my last foray into ethnographic research of any sort.
The second was that it's not easy getting lots of interviews when you need people to contact you (which was how things were set up to prevent accidental outing, primarily). I didn't reach my 10-20 interviews per group goal, though I came close on the evangelical side. Part of that is I probably didn't exhaust all the possibilities when it came to contacting queer people, but the majority of it was just that I didn't really know how to go about it correctly. Perhaps if I had more time to explore the different communities in Asheville I could have found more people to interview; or perhaps if it wasn't summer (a lot of churches have much more limited programming in the summertime). It didn't help that almost all of the groups in both sets met on Sunday, so they often conflicted with each other but still left me with no good way to network for most of the week.
Another thing I learned is that I really need friends and communities. The amount that I've been in my room this summer has been unhealthy for me, and every moment spent with other people, whether interviewing or just hanging out, was worth it. The solo life of an academic in the humanities is not for me. I need daily interaction with multiple people in order to be healthy and productive.
As for the research itself, I do think that there is a lot of interesting comparisons to be made between how people talk about their stories, and there's also a lot to be said about similarities and differences of how communities are structured (there's a lot the queer movement can learn from evangelical groups when it comes to organizing to create social change). I do not think, though, that I have evidence for my original claim that the two narratives are effectively the same. Evangelical Christian testimony is based not just in personal experience but in study and theological quandry. The people who I have talked to (which I'm seeing is a very biased sample composed mostly of middle-aged men) for the most part didn't put the same emphasis on community that all of the queer people I talked to did. Conversions of faith are personal and internal, but coming out is a community process.
So, I guess that's it, then. Thank you for reading! I hope it was educational, or something.

The Home Stretch

The students at the University of North Carolina at Asheville have returned and today is their second day of classes. On one hand, this is great because it means I have an opportunity to interview a lot of highly interconnected people. On the other, this is a warning that my time here is almost up; in 11 days I'll be going home, and I've already spend my last weekend. (I'm going home for Pride this weekend, and I'm going home for good the Saturday after.)
I've finally gotten a little more variety in my interviews. I have interviewed a woman about her testimony (though one person is not enough to identify trends, and there's nothing that jumped out about her story as totally different.) I still need to find queer ladies and nonmonosexual queers if I want to make this fully LGBTQ rather than a bunch of G and one T.
I hope that UNCA students who I interview can have more variety in these areas.
On the subject of my lost data: It looks like I won't be able to recover it for less than $700 dollars (and it's probably more), and then I wouldn't be able to get it in time. I only lost three or four interviews, and I've tried to recall what I could of them.
Interestingly, it's looking like I actually would have been (almost) able to afford it; I've actually been successful at making the grant last, and will have several hundred dollars left over. In part, I think that's a symptom of my failure to get as many interviews as I wished at first, because buying another twenty people Starbucks would have made a dent, but another part of it has been my cheap eating habits. (I don't know how sustainable subsisting primarily off of pasta, rice, Parmesan cheese, and Bolthouse Farms smoothies is health-wise, but it seems to be functioning well enough now.)
I think I'm going to wait on the deep introspection stuff until the next post, though.

On inextricability and seeing Asheville with new eyes.

Interviews have continued to arrive in a trickle, though I have at this point interviewed multiple people from both groups. However, I have yet to interview a woman in either group, and I will be attempting to change that in the future.

Wesserkins is visiting me this week. I was in Charlotte over the weekend to see my parents and go to the Bon Odori Japanese festival, and he needed a ride home. When I mentioned that there was a QUILTBAG-themed open mic Sunday evening (Literature Generated By The Queers In Asheville), he seemed really interested, and so (after he got permission from his parents, obviously) he came with me back to Asheville.

It's interesting watching him react to Asheville, to things like the existence of vegan drive-thrus and the existence of a church (First Congregational United Church of Christ, which is a very liberal church that has a large number of gay members) in which he felt comfortable (despite being a gay man and an atheist). It makes me wonder if I am too cynical, or if the differences between us (age, sexual orientation, religion, home-location, and ethnicity) explain most of the difference in our reaction. Perhaps I'm just forgetting how exciting Asheville seemed when I first arrived and experienced it. It's certainly different from any other place I've been in a lot of wonderful ways.

I also talked to an associate pastor at New Life Community Church in Asheville. I'm finding it's becoming more easy to talk to people about my project honestly while leaving out the other half, and I think it's partly because both parts of the project are important to me individually as well. Hearing people's testimonies is not just about the research project but is a way for me to better understand my own faith, to address doubts and questions I have and demonstrate how other people experience God or the Holy Spirit (or however they describe it) working. And I shared that with the associate pastor, and it's completely true. He suggested a book, "I Once Was Lost: What Postmodern Skeptics Taught Us About Their Path to Jesus", which discusses evangelical Christian testimonies from a sociological rather than narrative perspective, and also a series of sermons.
I do not know if it's because of the specific communities I'm studying or a general property of human sociology, but it continues to strike me that while I'm studying communities they study me back, and move to welcome me.

Hermitage, small groups, and friendships

This week has been mostly uneventful so far. I had one interview with a gay man on Monday, and he had rather intense story. I actually have some reservations toward using his story in the research because of a couple of the details that I can't share, but it was certainly much more difficult for me as an interviewer to process. I do think that interview helped show me a broader range of what I might expect to experience, and problematized the standard It Gets Better narrative in predictable but noteworthy ways. (I'm sorry for the academic speak, but I'm not going to share any details of interview stories here. That's not this blog's function.)

Tuesday was a very stay-at-home day. Other than jogging in the morning I didn't leave the house all day, and I read through a good portion of House of Leaves and futz around on the Internet. I haven't been getting that many emails from interested people through my networking, so I think I will have to try more aggressively to search for especially LGBTQ interviews. I also have been developing the habit of getting up only shortly before noon and going to bed after midnight, and that's partially because I've had late night activities (such as book club last night and Waffle House tonight) and partially because my room doesn't get that much light. I'll need to be working on that a bit if I plan to have interviews not in the evening (though evening is often the easiest time).

This (Wednesday) evening I went to a small group based out of Missio Dei at a home in Weaverville (north of Asheville) that is, during the year, mostly full of students (from UNC Asheville, Western Carolina University, and AB Technical College, for the most part). I had told the couple that led and hosted the group about my project ahead of time, and while I didn't get to make an announcement to the group as a whole, I did get to talk to some of the people and make plans to interview them. I even got one interview with a guy who's going off to seminary in a week. He did the interview right after the small group. It was practiced and we were done in less than five minutes while other people were still around; he seemed completely comfortable in the setting, though. (Also, in general the IRB's restrictions are more worried about the LGBT interviewees because there generally isn't any sort of danger to Christians in this country for sharing their testimonies.)

On a personal level, I had been increasingly aware of my isolation in Asheville since returning from Charlotte, and especially the staying-in on Tuesday made me feel restless and in need of social interaction. When I arrived at the house where the small group was to be held I immediately felt welcomed. The hosts introduced me to the people who were there, and showed me the snacks that were there for a the small group (which included hamburgers, though I was assured this was unusual). They also remembered my email from a few months back explaining why I was in town.

In addition, when I was introduced to some of the people in the group (specifically Samuel, Kat, and Tara), they immediately asked if I was “Wesley's friend”. (Wesley is a friend of mine who goes to UNC Asheville and has helped me out with this project in numerous ways, including letting me crash on his couch for much of spring break and helping me with information about many things including what churches were in the area that might be good places to look. He also told people about my project, including the two of them.) Naturally, that social connection helped me feel more at ease as well. Tara and Kat both volunteered to be interviewed and tell their friends about it as well.

After the small group and my one interview, I went with Tara and Kat to Waffle House. We hung out for about two hours or so and talked about a broad range of topics, ranging from how churches should deal with differing opinions to ceramics to Asheville's underground punk scene. It was a good experience to be able to hang out with people and feel like I have a group of friends in Asheville, since being here as a researcher makes it hard to be comfortable in the settings that I normally can carve a space out for myself in. It's also a reminder that the reason I chose to study stories told by these groups is because I am a person who lives in these communities, not just a person who is interested in them. And while yes, this does mean that I may not be the most objective observer, it does mean that whatever I learn this summer will be something that matters to me.

Everything's coming up roses!

The title sounds optimistic, but that's primarily because things are working out well.

First, I have started interviews! I have interviewed three people so far (all gay men, two of whom are married to each other). I have yet to talk about testimonies though, even though I had an opportunity last night which I will discuss later.

Second, I have moved to a rest-of-the-summer place! The place I was staying, while the people were nice, was quite a bit further from downtown Asheville and wasn't going to be available next week, though it was available August. The new place my parents actually found; my dad posted on Facebook and got directed to them. My hosts recently moved to a new place, and it's a large house up on a mountain in North Asheville. I have a roomy suite on the bottom floor, and the rent isn't bad either! My hosts are extremely nice and I feel right at home, though their dogs are a bit skeptical of me. (I also needed to have a latch on my door because I'm allergic to dogs and didn't want them in my space.)

The location is perfect. I can get downtown (or to parking downtown) in five to ten minutes, and I'm a short jog (through gorgeous green mountain scenery) from a Walgreens, an Ingles, and a Fresh Market. I may even start exercising in the morning!

Third, I went to the dinner in Weaverville that I mentioned last post. It was pretty far out of the city, but the area was beautiful and green and hilly. While there, I met several other guys (Christian guys) who had also been invited, and ate a delicious (if sauceless because I'm vegetarian) spaghetti meal.  At the meal, I was asked to share my testimony (which I did, I guess, though I don't think it was comprehensive), and then the husband/father of the family whose house it was offered to have the other guys share their testimonies. I hadn't brought my recorder and had left my consent forms in the car, and so I demurred. Hopefully that's an open invitation, though.

Afterward, we went outside and swung on a rope swing (which was SO AWESOME; I thought I was afraid of heights but I went ahead and jumped and it was awesome). The husband/father of the family also had a wood workshop in the basement, and we fired an ether-fueled potato gun twice, though we tried many more times and failed to get the right air-to-ether mixture.

There were three guys who were guests there with me; one of them worked with the husband/father of the family in his electrician business, while the other two are business partners who make electric tricycles that are somewhat competitors for motorcycles or mopeds. They all were a couple years out of college and unmarried. They, along with the family, are members of a house church that meets on Saturdays in Weaverville; hopefully next Saturday (July 27) I'll be able to attend.

I'm also going to a community group for the church I went to Sunday, also up in Weaverville, this evening. That should be interesting! I'll be sure to bring the recorder, just in case.

On Saturday-night hostels and Sunday mornings

Last night I stayed at Sweet Peas Hostel in downtown Asheville. It was awesome! I met lots of new people and had some interesting conversations; I made friends with Eleanor (who's on vacation from England) and Scott (who's from the Raleigh/Triangle area), and we talked about politics and existentialism and all the good reasons not to go out on a Saturday night. (The most compelling being "It's almost midnight" for them and "I'm not old enough to be let in anywhere" for me.)

I really like the hostel-living experience. It's a bit more expensive than renting in the long run, but there are loads of people to meet and the place itself was nice. (The shower was gloriously warm.) The people tended to be mostly around my age or a little older (most of them were surprised I wasn't 21 yet), so that made it a lot easier to connect.

One of the guys who was a few years older than the median pointed out that even though there was a flatscreen TV in the common area and he'd been there several nights, he'd never seen it turned on. The people in the hostel read instead. (There was a bookshelf with lots of great books! I didn't get to study it much because I was only there the one night though.)

Downtown Asheville on a Saturday is a pretty hopping place as well. There are people everywhere (families during the day and friend groups of various ages at night). Everyone seemed to be having a good time and I felt comfortable wandering around for no particular reason.

This morning I got up early (before almost everyone) to leave, and after checking out (which consisted of returning the key and putting the linens in the laundry room), I went to a morning service at Missio Dei, which is a nondenominational church that meets in an older church building. The praise band had a banjo in it, and the music as a whole seemed to have a bit more of a folksy feel that I'm going to theorize is an Appalachain thing. The preacher was young (I mean, probably thirties) and preached a message that seemed orthodox-evangelical and drew from historical scholarship for context. The body of the sermon was from Mark 12, where a scribe approaches Jesus and asks what the greatest commandment is.

I met a couple who had been going there for a couple of months, and who told me they actually attended three different churches. They have a house church that meets on Saturday out of their home in Weaverville, they go to Missio Dei in the morning (I went to the 9 o'clock service) and then go to Highland Christian Church later on. (Something I just realized: I ran into a similar name (Highlands) a couple days ago while reading the Jeff Chu book "Does Jesus Really Love Me?" in a section about a church in Denver, CO. I think the two churches aren't related but I'm not sure. I'll need to go there for church some time soon regardless.)

Anyway, the couple told me that they were having a dinner on Tuesday for a men's bible study sort of thing, and they invited me. That sounds like a good opportunity to take advantage of. I may also want to go to their house church the Saturday after next.

I'm going to move into a more permanent place in an hour or two. Currently I'm stealing WiFi from McDonald's and sitting in a Taco Bell in Candler to write this post. I guess I'll have to make sure to go by that McDonald's sometime so I'm not mooching.

Finally here!

Hello everyone!
I'm finally in Asheville!
Travelling here was an adventure. First, I was going to stop by the Best Buy at Northlake to get a USB recorder because I was worried I wouldn't be able to transfer sound files onto my computer (or onto the storage unit, rather) from my iPod. I couldn't find the Best Buy so I went to the SuperTarget. They didn't have one and I realized I hadn't packed my towel (I'd make a horrible hitchiker), so I resolved to go home and get the audio recorder later. However, on the way I found the Best Buy, so I ran in and got one anyway (there was a little confusion with labeling, but I successfully got the one that costed under $60, whew). Then I went home.
From there I re-mapped the route, and I saw that i85-i26 was the simplest route but the shortest route involved highway 74. I took i85...and ended up getting confused and taking 16 to 73 to 27 to 321 instead. But I got here in one piece!
The house, which is owned by a woman named Spyce and occupied by her, her sister, her sister's boyfriend, and the people renting it. It's perched on a hillside (like most houses in Asheville, I suppose) and surrounded by lots of lovely summer greenery. It's also across from a church, which was interesting. A woman was moving out when I got there, and her room's the one I'm going to be renting starting tomorrow. She had a dog, but she also promised to clean so my allergy won't be a problem.
I left and went to try to find a place to get my bearings. I ended up going to UNCA's library because thanks to Welsey I have access to the wifi (Hi everyone!). From here I'm probably going to go check into the hostel downtown, and maybe get something to eat. (Luckily there's lots of lovely places to eat around!)

Institutional Review Boards, looking for places to live, and why I'm still in Charlotte.

Hello everyone!

The original plan was for my project to start on July 1st. That didn't happen; now the plan is to go some time this week.

The first delay was that the funds for the Weinberg Grant ran out because priority was (rightfully) given to people working on senior theses. So I didn't find out I got the grant (which I did, yay!) until after school got out. After that I went ahead with planning things (including sending emails to groups in Asheville, oops). I also sent an email asking if I needed to seek approval from Northwestern's Institutional Review Board (IRB). I do, I found out a week and a half ago.

The biggest hurdle has been the IRB approval. Dr. Kathleen Murphy has been extremely helpful with me in the process, but there's been a lot of revising and rewriting in the process. However, even with that it would have been possible to go earlier to Asheville if it hadn't been for the combined problem that my adviser wasn't IRB-trained and that it was Independence Day-week.

Luckily, this weekend I got an email from Professor Carolyn Chen (who has done research on Evanglicalism among Asian immigrants among lots of other things), and she volunteered to be the Principal Investigator (which is an IRB-required position that basically means she's in charge of making sure the research doesn't cause the people being studied any harm). That means that I just need to finish the IRB application and I should be good. It qualifies for "exempt review" which means that Dr. Murphy is actually the one looking over it.

All of this hopefully means I should be ready to start the project by the end of this week!

Another related hurdle has been finding a place to stay. Luckily, I got a reply on a Craigslist ad for a room in Swannoa, which is relatively close to the city.

It was really looking like things might not work last week, but now everything seems to be going well!

Today

Hello everyone!

This is the blog I'm starting to document my personal experience researching in Asheville this summer. I won't be posting anything about the participants in the study here (because of privacy concerns I will not be posting anything about them anywhere except in my final paper with all the names anonymized) but will relate amusing anecdotes and other tidbits about my life and the process.

This blog may later include tales of my trip abroad to Turkey this September, so be excited for that!

Right, ground rules:
1) This is just my personal experience, so I will invariably say stupid things on this blog. You can comment on them, but just be aware that it will happen.
2) This blog is a safe space. That means that hate speech, threats, and discrimination against people for any reason, including religious belief, gender identity, and sexual orientation, is not allowed in the comments. If I mess up on this, please call me out on it.
3) Feel free to ask me any questions related to anything except about the (confidential, privacy-protected, etc) specifics of my interviews. I love to answer questions and send people links to things!
4) While I have imported posts from my Tumblr, I would prefer if you all avoid Googling around to try and find my tumblog. This Blogger blog may at some point become a professional portfolio component, and I'd prefer if you respect me keeping it separate from my personal internet use. (This is especially true for people in my family, church groups, or university who do not have access to my Tumblr, Twitter, or other accounts in any other way. Please respect my privacy. Thank you.)

If y'all could follow those, that would make you not a horrible person.

Finally, I'm linking this to my Facebook so if any of my friends are interested in reading about my life, they can. So welcome, everyone! Enjoy!