A Year Goes By So Quickly~ Remembering the early days ~~~

I am nearly done with my first academic year here in southeastern Turkey, and I think it is appropriate to just get down some of the images and thoughts that have been painted into my memory... So, compared to my other posts, this one will take on a more list-like format. Maybe in the future I'll "flesh it out" into something more lucid... but for now... I just want to record the random memories and thoughts and images I have still fresh in my mind.

1- Arrival day.  My luggage was still in Istanbul. A representative from my employer met me at the local airport and took me in a car... where he and the driver chatted in Turkish. It sank in. I'm really here. On either side I saw the tall walls of dry, camel and cream colored dried earthen walls... a few stories high on either side...where the road had been carved out in the hills... this was nothing like most of the winding, tree or grass lined highways in New England... It sank in. I was really in a new land, where people speak a new language... and I was about to buy shampoo in a shop where nobody speaks English.  My host took me to his apartment where I met his wife. I was struck by how welcoming and warm they were. She lent me two towels and a pair of tweezers... to help me get through the several days I expected to wait for my luggage. I was so very, very tired. I could barely form complete sentences or think at all. I really needed their help, I realized. Even though I'd prided myself on being self-sufficient, and had most of what I needed in my purse & carry on...  moving straight into an empty apartment is completely different from touring and ending up in a hotel... where there are at least towels. So. In my bleary state... I made  it to the new building.... still being finished. I was one of the first people to inhabit that building, and it felt strange. Everything was modern and new. In New England, everything was old... wood. Here, synthetics and ceramics and tiles and.... surprise... no shower curtain in the bathroom! Woo hoo... it was going to be an adventure trying to figure out how to adapt and build a new nest for myself in a new land.

2. New terrain. My first walk at the university near our apartment was with two colleagues. In semi-sleep deprivation, we ambled around the campus.. uncertain of who we were talking to... uncertain of where we were. The curbs of the sidewalk seemed at least twice (and sometimes 6xs) higher than in the U.S. There were different patterns.. and we marveled that the district's name was painted on all of the trash cans. Yes, I even took a photo of the unique "trash can design" on my first week.

3. Attracting Police Attention. I wandered around my neighborhood wearing an Indian smock.. trying desperately, and misguidedly, to fit in and not stand out...  well, my smock was better than my American tank tops and shorts, but... after about 20 minutes of wandering around the neighborhood and taking a few photos (just a few, I thought discretely) of the unique architecture of all of the modern new high-rise apartments... the police pulled up and started asking me a lot of question. In Turkish. I kept smiling. They found a cell phone at the nearby coffee shop and called someone who knows English. Meanwhile I decided to ask the police to please take my photo in front of the coffee shop so I could send it to my "anne & baba" (mom and dad) using mime to supplement my then 15 or so words of Turkish... they burst out laughing. Suddenly they weren't so official seeming, and they took my picture, which in fact I did send home. The guy they got on the phone spoke English and he figured out that I was there legally, and I wasn't some roaming vagabond for the police to be worried about.  

4.  The wild dogs and the gypsy music in the woods....  these two themes captured my imagination in my early weeks here in 'Antep. I made sound recordings. I was fascinated. There were three kinds of dogs roaming the area. Pets, often with tags in their ears. City street dogs, who stayed often near dumpsters and were harmless if you didn't interfere with their food source or puppies... and then in the woods.. the wilder dogs.. that could sometimes be heard barking and tussling in large packs... this was the early morning soundscape.

Then at night... I heard in the woods outside the window where I stayed for a few of those early weeks... some stringed instruments and drums... this was overlaying the local hotel's wedding performers-- a Turkish-style band featuring a dramatic, soulful woman singing what must most certainly be a very long, sad love story indeed... But when that music ended, from somewhere in the distance I heard what I determined in my imagination was gypsy music. Ah.. the romance of travel... I made more sound recordings from my window of the gypsy music.. narrating in awe...  I couldn't believe it. I told the English-speaking staff member (who befriended me and walked with me.. and got me to work on time the day I almost forgot my computer and missed the bus). He smiled, laughed, and took me on a walk not far from the outdoor lawn area where they served food.. and showed me the speakers.. where I could hear the music... I was embarrassed. He asked me, smiling, if I saw any gypsies. Nope, just speakers.. installed at the edge of their property, next to the woods... It was all just part of the marketing.. and I fell for it!

But then.. several weeks later a miracle happened. I was walking with a new friend in those same woods... just 100 or so yards further in the woods... away from those speakers.. when we saw sitting on the picnic tables.. a bunch of old guys.. with musical instruments.. playing... what sounded to me... like gypsy music!!! So who knows what I heard, but suddenly the romance of travel was back again. And I felt just a little less silly. I learned just a few more Turkish words here and there.. and started to see how the different parts of the city and outlying areas connected. I was starting to make inroads. I had the basics. My luggage had been back in my possession for weeks. I was making 1-step-forward/two-steps backward progress... and sometimes it felt like two-steps forward/1 step backward...

5.  Getting the bike. That was my over-arching concern, worry and goal consuming my first month.. in addition to sorting out my apartment. (I will never forget one morning, while in a state of low-grade fever and mmmm "travelers' sickness" to put it politely.. I purchased my first 10 TL carpet... it was admittedly a bit garish.. but in my on-fire state it exclaimed a sort of Deee-Lite/Groove-Is-In-the-Heart design... with orange and yellow semi-evil eye protection patterns that others later complained made them dizzy... I later replaced it with something subtle, soft and home-ier...)

But back to the bike!!! I couldn't inhabit this earth without one. So after weeks of trying to figure out how to get around the city, and triangulating my way on maps looking for a bike shop.. finally, I found one by chance. I saw the perfect used bike... a hybrid... nothing fancy.  Later, I brought my friend to walk the bike back with me-- and we drank Chai "tea" with the guys as part of the sealing of the deal when I finally rolled it home... complete with a new seat and a lock. The photo you see at the top of this entire blog is the happiness and joy of me finally finding a bicycle--  in Turkish (sort of) in Turkey (definitely).

The beginning of my journey had turned into the middle, as my work load started to get very busy, and those weekend rides became all the more important for maintaining my fitness, balancing my life and finding my perspective.... and transported me beyond this old & new-world city, and into the villages. (See previous posts).