Sorry about the wait....

It’s been a while since I last blogged. I have a couple of reasons for that.

The first reason is that I simply haven’t felt like blogging very much. School is draining, and by the time I get home usually all I want to do is sleep or eat, and frequently both. I’m no longer the celebrity at school I once was. Random people still wave hello to me, but a wave is where it stops. I’m no longer invited to people’s homes at every turn, or constantly followed wherever I go.

In my mind, there are a lot of random people at school. There are thirty-one people in my class, and I probably know about six names. Turkish names are very hard for me to remember, so I see the same people every day and recognize their faces, but I never have names to associate with them. Asking for people’s names makes me feel really stupid, because usually it’s someone I see every single day, and frequently have conversations with. Occasionally people realize this and ask “do you know what my name is?” It’s really embarrassing, but at least they usually tell me what their name is. Today a girl who rides my bus asked me her name, and I muttered “oh, shit” before finding another friend (whose name I do remember), and getting him to tell me. Catastrophe averted.

Another reason is that I was actually gone for a week. AFS Turkey had a camp in Izmir, ostensibly to learn Turkish but actually just a great excuse to see all the other exchange students. There are 35 of us, and it was hard to leave them. The day we all left was incredibly hard – nearly everyone was in tears. I’m not sure whether that’s because we all genuinely liked each other, or just because 4 more unbroken months with our host families is really, really scary.

The camp in Izmir was jam-packed with AFS sessions. They’re the kind of activities that seem really corny and stupid when volunteers in the US try and do them with students before they depart. Now that we’re here, however, they make much more sense. It also helps that all of the volunteers at the camp were younger than 25, whereas in the US nearly all the AFS volunteers are 40-ish or older. Most of the volunteers, in fact, skipped a week of university to go to the camp.

The camp was interesting, yet also frustrating. We’d stay up until 2 or 3 in the morning talking about things that seem ridiculous when brought up over breakfast the next day.

“What did you talk about last night?”
“God.”
“Uh-huh… anything interesting?”
“Yeah, kinda… I don’t really remember what I said.”

I could write for days about the camp, but… this looks like a good segue into another reason I haven’t updated my blog as often. College apps are still going on, and they’re stressful (surprise, surprise). I’m writing this instead of working on college essays, which, I am now promising myself, I will work on tomorrow or Sunday. I’m not sure which, because on the weekends my host family usually decides to surprise me with plans. Things aren’t planed ahead in Turkey.

And finally, the reason I’ve been saving for last. Blogger (the website that hosts this blog) was banned in Turkey for a few days. I don’t really know why – all I was able to glean from the Turkish notice posted in place of the site was that there was/is a court injunction against ISPs displaying the webpage.

This isn’t that uncommon in Turkey. YouTube is also blocked, although everyone has ways of getting around it. There are also knock-off Turkish versions of YouTube. If you’re interested, you can always read articles in the English press about this, but keep in mind that you aren’t getting 100% of the facts. I read an article in the New York Times (online) about Turkey three weeks ago, and it seemed almost designed to make Turks angry. Three months ago, I wouldn’t have thought twice if I had read the article, but I can now appreciate how hard it is to write impartially about Turkey for a non-Turkish audience.

I was thinking about explaining Atatürk and what he means to the Turkish people, but I’m a little tired. If I decide I get tired of writing college essays tomorrow, maybe I’ll post about him. Anyways… sorry about the wait, and I hope everyone is enjoying myself, wherever they may be right now.