so I'm a liar

Selam everyone and no-one,

I never posted pictures, as you've probably noticed...my bad.

So I'm back in the US, in my apartment, listening to Turkish music - a cd that was made and given to me from my extended host family (2 of the (many) cousins), eating Turkish delights :) and contemplating whether to watch Battlestar Galactica (I'm FINALLY finishing it..and it's pretty epic) or watch a Turkish movie which I've already seen twice, but I think I'm leaning towards that.

about Turkey:

it was awesome.
The people are great, but I should elaborate on that; life is very different over there.  That is still not specific.  I don't know how, because as different as things are it only took a week or two to feel comfortable (as opposed to when I went to Spain it only took a few days) enough to really interact with people on my own, despite my still-lacking language skills.

I should interject that although I'm happy to be back, I miss all my friends from over there, some aspects of life over there, and definitely miss Turkish being everywhere (although understanding everything that is being said around me is kinda nice ;) )


The countryside is beautiful, and Ankara is a very hilly town of about 15 million people. I only realized it was that big when I looked around and counted how many hills it spread over, and how many hills were concealed over which the city continued to sprawl - but I never felt small, it seems to have the feel of a smaller city than that.  The people seemed to be kind to each other from what I saw (but not too kind - don't go smiling at people on the street unless you would like to make a "special" friend) from general courtesies to slightly less common courtesies that I would like to see in the US (especially big cities).

My host family was amazing, and not just the core host parents and 2 siblings I stayed with, but their cousins, aunts, uncles, everyone!  They are probably the main reason why it was not so incredibly hard to adjust to life there.

What was different? I don't know, everything and nothing.  People are generally the same, they seemed more friendly to me maybe because I over there was more talkative to everyone I had an opportunity to interact with there and was clearly a foreigner trying desperately to learn their language and culture in such a short period of time, and here I do not announce my foreign-ness with an accent as soon as I open my mouth ;)

Ankara is a city that has literally been around since the beginning of civilization (give or take a millennia or 2) - not as the capital of Turkey or the Ottoman empire necessarily, but it's been around.  You can venture into the older sections of town (carefully, and preferably with others, and a native, because the older sections of Ankara are also more dangerous sometimes) and see ruins from the 300's AD, and the Ankara Castle is probably from about 1073 (wikipedia, wikipedia in Turkish, and this article in Turkish is where I looked for dates)
But it also grew a lot in the last 50 years, since Ataturk made it the capital of the Republic of Turkey after the revolution, and much of where I went was newer..the new and old is not as integrated here as it was in other places like cities in Spain and Italy.  Although Ankara has had more of a population explosion, and growth in importance in a short period of time than the other places.

I miss walking around over there, and the parks.  I liked taking the bus and metro, the shopping was also nice.  I miss my host family.  I miss literally every day holding some kind of adventure, whether linguistic, social (which includes linguistic), or at least semi-educational.

I miss the food. omg. the food!

I saw Tarkan in concert* with the Fanta Gençlik Festivalı (Fanta Youth Festival) and it was FRACKING LEGENDARY.

*that is not my video..i also took video (lots of video ^____^) but this is not one of mine :)

and on that note, it's dinner time!