Orienting in Ankara

I'm baaack! On this blog, and in Turkey. I haven't quite decided how to utilize this space other than for its main function - Hi Mom and Dad! Yes, I'm alive and staying hydrated - but I suppose we'll see how it evolves over the next 9 months. Thank you for following my journey!

My current location is Ankara, Turkey, specifically at the Ogretmenevi ("Teacher's House") hotel for the Fulbright English Teaching Assistant orientation that will be lasting almost two weeks. Upon arrival to the hotel on Monday, I was greeted by a panoramic view of the city from the balcony of my room, 13 stories up. The day was supposed to be rainy, but the wind that replaced the rain cleared Ankara's lower atmosphere of the layer of smog that usually blankets the city. After 24 hours of recycled air and 16-inch legroom, this view was refreshing and exciting.

Orientation has been generally a beneficial experience. Save the embassy security guards who scared the living daylight out of us (I may never again be able to walk on sidewalks here without imagining my impending gory doom), the lecturers and instructors have been informative and often entertaining. We've had a number of university professors who have spoken about the political and ethnic climate in contemporary Turkey and even had a pseudo-performance from Talat Halman, a Turkish poet, speaking to us about art and literature through the ages. Intermittently throughout, we've also had some Turkish lessons (much appreciated by many ETAs who have never had formal Turkish classes). One of the most helpful (and entertaining) sessions was one that explained the subtleties behind simple greetings and farewells, and few words in between. Very little Turkish can go a long way, our instructor assured us. Simple "please" and "thank you" can easily show yes/no, graciousness, and flattery. Apparently it is Turkish custom to offer house guests food/drink up to three times. We learned what to bring (and what not to bring) if invited into a Turkish household (one kilo of baklava, homemade, never store-bought), and how to greet the rectors of our university when we arrive.

Eight to nine hours cooped up inside all day for the past week has been tough. After the first day of orientation, a few other ETAs and I decided to walk until we were hungry, making turns when we felt like it, and stopping to take pictures at every opportunity. Having been without a camera for so long, I'm still adjusting to having the ability to take a picture. I'm actively trying to reverse this habit... but for now, I've only got a couple images from Ankara. We wandered into the floral neighborhood of Bahçelievler, where Kokoreç (lamb intenstines) joints and fancy clothing stores lined the streets, and finally collapsed at an Iskender Kebap restaurant in Kızılay. On our way back, we noticed a hookah bar just below Maltepe mosque, so we stopped to play a little tavla (backgammon).

Next Saturday we will be heading all over the country to our placements. There are 54 Turkey ETAs, and many of us have been placed in what I call the "Peoria, Illinois" of Turkey. We tell Turks we meet where we'll be teaching, and they respond, "Why are you going there?" I will be with another Fulbrighter, Sarah Lipson, in Bartın, Turkey, a town of 30,000 in the northwest of the country, 18 km from the Black Sea. Sarah is from Arlington, MA. On Thursday, the two of us wandered in a different direction from the hotel and ended up at a tavukçu, a chicken restaurant. The food was... divine. Fresh, spiced, and tasty. Although we were both fairly full from our meals, we ordered the "special" tatlı, dessert. An amazing bed of shredded wheat and pistachios soaked in honey and garnished with peaches and grapes. Needless to say, I'm constantly looking forward to the next meal in this country. Is this enough of a commercial for why you should visit me? I'll take that as a challenge to do better.

Writing about this is making me hungry... which brings me to Yom Kippur a la Turkey. Admittedly, it wasn't the safest decision - not to try to be a Jew in Turkey, but to take a taxi period. A few words on the traffic "laws" in this country: they don't exist. Lanes are optional. Red lights are optional. I think many who have traveled at all can empathize, but each time I'm faced with foreign driving, I'm frightened all over again. Turkish drivers have an incredible spacial sense of their vehicles and are able to come within inches if each other with presumably few accidents. But the few of us who decided to venture to the synagogue made it unscathed - shocking to all of us. As we expected, Turkish police had a large presence in the neighborhood around the shul, prohibiting the taxi from getting within a block of the entrance. We were so warmly welcomed to Kol Nidre, and since we arrived early, we talked for a while with a local Jewish woman and many Israeli security who had been placed in Ankara with the embassy. The building was built in 1906 - amazing to me that Ankara, a city that grew only after 1923 when it became Turkey's capital, had enough Jews at the turn of the century to start a synagogue. Today, the shul only operates when it can find a rabbi - this weekend one from Istanbul came so that they could hold services. The Jewish community of 30 people can hardly form a minyan since women aren't counted - the community in Istanbul is nearly 20,000 - so Sean, the only male of the ETAs who went, had the honor of holding the Torah. Though I found the service itself horribly boring (a mix of being unaccustomed to Sephardic chants and being unable to follow along in meaning in neither the Hebrew nor Turkish), I was pleased that because of the small attendance, the women were able to sit just across the small shul from the men, not banished upstairs as would be customary. There was one moment in the service, around 8:30, when I could hear around us, just below the forceful recitations by the rabbi, the call to prayer, and only then did it hit me that I was observing Yom Kippur in a Muslim country.

We are planning on returning to the shul this afternoon - hoping as well to look hungry enough after the service that we'll be invited to a Turkish breakfast. Turns out the Israeli Ambassador to Turkey was one of the 12 men attending the service last night, and the security around the building was for him. Shul-goers alone would not have been able to afford the appropriate security needed without his presence. I'm also hoping to take some pictures when I go back so that I'll have something to show.

Until then, all my love to everyone at home and abroad. Hope all is well. Feel free to email me sasha.frankel@gmail.com - I don't yet have my address (or living arrangements...agh!), but I will post them as soon as I do. Please share your address if you would like a postcard!