Merhaba, friends and family, Iyi günler!

I'm finally settled in Superdorm and have an hour to myself before anything is going on. It seems like between classes, homework, and additional activities that CAORC is providing for us there has hardly been enough time to complete an update about my first week in Turkey.

Needless to say, when you're in another country that speaks a language you're completely unfamiliar with, life can be quite frustrating. As I put it to a friend the other day, I'm getting very good at charades. It's not that Turkish is impossible, it's that it's been so long since I've started a language from scratch, I'm having a hard time not trusting my intuition with words that seem like they could be of a Latin root. Unfortunately, that is not the case at all.

Classes started on Wednesday. I'm enrolled in Bogaziçi (Bosphorus) University's Summer Intensive Language and Culture Program along with around 80 other students mostly from America, but a sprinkling from Israel, Spain, Belgium, Germany, and France. Most are graduate students or PhD candidates some of whom are, get this, learning Turkish to be able to read/translate documents that relate to their thesis. Isn't that incredible? The breakdown of the rest of them: lots are studying Ottoman or early Turkish Republic history, some are political science/international relations students looking to specialize in this area, and then there are the stragglers, who have various (quite fascinating) reasons for coming to Bogaziçi to learn Turkish. Only fourteen of us are sent here with CAORC (Council of American Overseas Research Center), and we're about half beginners, half intermediate level. Another dozen got their funding from ARIT (American Research Insitute in Turkey) and are at "advanced" level. Everyone else at Bogaziçi is either paying for it out-of-pocket or got alternative funding from other grants or organizations. I think I'm the youngest one out of all 80 people, but I haven't met everyone, so that may turn out to be false.

What I mean to say: Classes started on Wednesday. There are nine of us in my beginner class with Didar. We're all trying to be trusting of our professor that she has a method or strategy with which she will teach us the langauge, but the first couple days were painful at times. Sometimes we'd try to get through the book (which is completely in Turkish) and we'd just stop at every sentence and she'd translate the phrases word for word, or she'd try to give us simple directions in Turkish that we just plain didn't understand. So Wednesday and Thursday were both packed with vocabulary. I knew that would be an important part of learning the langauge, but Didar would wave off our questions concerning grammar and verbs, which we still have hardly touched upon, and are both also extremely important to learning the langauge. Finally, Friday we delved more into grammar, compound nouns, and making simple phrases yes or no questions, which was simply fascinating. At this point, that is really the most interesting part of the language that I've learned about, but we're moving quite quickly, and I can't imagine ignoring verbs for all of next week.

Classes last from nine to one, but the Superdorm is about a 15-minute walk from campus uphill until we reach the entrance of the campus, which I think is one of the highest points around. The main campus is all on a steep downhill towards the Bosphorus, so descending it is not a problem. However, the ascention after class is always killer: it's been consistently 90 degrees and sunny for the past week and it's only supposed to get hotter, and the humidity!! I'm definitely paying getting used to hills after Ohio and GW. But the hike is always worth is twofold: for one, halfway up the hill is an INCREDIBLE view of the Bosphorus and the enormous Russian tankers traveling to the Black Sea and the entire Asian side of Istanbul. Two, a couple blocks away from the entrance of the school we've discovered a great lunch restaurant where the woman is always anious to help us practice our Turkish (since she has no English to practice on us). Also, it always takes a while to make the food, so she brings us random tea and salads and tomato dips to tide us over and then refuses to let us pay for them. I'm not complaining! My favorites dishes have so far been Urfa Dürma, a small shwarma-esque wrap with tomatoes, onion, and lettuce (2.25 lira), çorba domates, a delicious tomato soup served in a little saucer (1.5 lira) or çoban salata, which is essentially the Israeli salad that I'm familiar with: tomatoes, cucumbers, onions, olive oil, lemon juice, salt, pepper (1.5 lira). Any combination of two of those three dishes is sure to satisfy. And always under 4 lira, or $3.

I have more to tell, especially about my first night exploring Istanbul and what is going to happen today (we're taking a ferry ride along the Bosphorus) and about a dozen other really interesting facts that I've been meaning to write down but am right now forgetting.

A few interesting facts to leave you with:
Turks are always drinking tea. As much as you hear about Turkish coffee, it's surprisingly not that typical of a drink. Çay (pronounced "chai") is the strong black tea EVERYONE drinks out of these teeny glasses morning, noon, and night, no matter the temperature. I still haven't acclimated myself to drinking boiling liquids in 95-degree weather without sweating up a storm.
Near the University, they're not all that impressed that I'm American and can greet them in Turkish. Because there are so many muulti-lingual students there all year round, I guess we (the summer students) really aren't that much of an anomoly. Really only the restaurant woman is impressed with my sparse vocabulary.
No one runs here. In Spain, it wasn't THAT uncommon. Here, if you're running on the street, it's an emergency. They actually made a new verb in the language that means "jogging" specifically to separate the excercise activity from the "running" that implies running to get help.
Interesting, eh?

Man, this has become like another of my infamous mass emails. Very sorry. I do apologize. Hope this reaches you wherever you may be.

Güle güle! Iyi günler! Hosça kalin!
Goodbye, good day, to your health!