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Published: February 16th 2008
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Having dinner the first week with a bunch of Turkish students and the two other Canadians. This last week in Ankara has been crazy busy. All the foreign students go through a week and half long orientation program, which in someways is quite helpful in getting ready and in others quite useless.
There were a few surprises in arriving at METU in Ankara. First, I thought I was going to an English speaking university. That is not the case. While the language of instruction is in English, nothing else is. Everything and everyone who works here only understands Turkish. Which means things like laundry are quite interesting to figure out. Or trying to tell the person who runs your dorm that your wireless doesn't work. But it's really a good thing, because I'll just learn Turkish that much faster!!!
Part of our orientation program consisted of a crash course in basic Turkish (one of the useful things). I now boast the ability to say, hello, how are you, what's your name? It pretty much ends there. I'm picking up vocab really fast but I haven't learned any grammar yet so I can't really translate that into sentences. But I am an expert at one word sentences now, like pointing to a piece of fruit and saying it's
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Hanging out with the guard at Ataturk's Mausoleum. name.
The METU campus is incredibly huge. Many, many times the size of the UofC campus. There's two lakes, one of which you can boat on!! We made a trip to the large lake last week and ate really good fish sandwiches. All the Turkish and other foreign students thought it was such a great experience to walk on the frozen lake. For us three Canadians, it really didn't carry the same novelty, and we stayed off (also in part due to the extremely warm weather here and the ice not seeming so frozen). There is also a shopping mall, 5 banks, a grocery store, etc. My dorm is on the outer edge of the campus, lined by a forest that I have to walk through to get anywhere. The only downer is that there happens to be a lot of wild dogs here that are HUGE (think my size) that you have to watch out for because they do attack sometimes. Don't worry, I have a flashlight that I can shine in their eyes in the case of an attack.
For orientation we also went on a tour of Atatürk's Masoleum, a pretty significant burial ground. It's soo huge.
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Statues lining the walkway the the Mausoleum. Slovenian girl glaring at the camera. It's right on top of a hill so you can see it from almost anywhere in the city. There's also a whole museum devoted to Atatürk, on display they have his clothes, personal effects, even his dog that was stuffed!! Wow. It's incredible how much the Turks love him, you see his photo EVERYWHERE. I know people that carry his photo in their wallet.
Last weekend we went on a trip to Amasra, which is on the coast of the Black Sea. To get there, you have to go through a mountainous region. So we're driving through winding mountain roads with a shoulder of about 3 feet at most, with a drop of a few hundred meters and no guard rail. It was best not to look down. Amasra is a really nice sea town, very idyllic, only about 6000 people in total. I would love to go back in the spring or summer when it's a bit warmer, as the weather was a bit chill. The next day we headed to Safranbolu, another small Turkish village with very classical Ottoman architecture. All the streets were cobblestone. It was a neat place to stay for a while, you really felt
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More statues. transported to the past.
This week I moved into my permanent dorm. It's quite nice, but definitely not the Hilton. But hey, for 95 dollars a month I'm not going to complain! I'll be sharing a room with 3 Turkish girls, but I haven't met them yet as classes don't start until Monday. It's been nice to have my own room for the past couple of days. But that will soon come to an end.
As the campus is so large and we've been so busy getting into the swing of things, I haven't really had much of a chance to see Ankara. On Friday, we had a small tour of the city, that ended with eating lunch in a very traditional Turkish restaurant and visiting the Citadel, an old building from the 9th century. You can see the whole city from the top, and walk along the walls. It was a wee bit scary at the top.
Registering for classes is a bit of a process, apparently I need to get signatures from all these people in the department, then take it back to the Study Abroad Office. I haven't done it yet, but I'm hoping that they'll still
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The walkway is made of irregular sized bricks spaced 5 cm apart. This is to ensure that people have to look down when they approach the mausoleum, which is more 'respectful'. let me attend classes on Monday...
I had a bit of an interesting experience yesterday. As I said before, our campus is pretty much a small town. So they have shuttle buses that run around campus. I was at the shopping mall picking up some stuff and was tired from the city tour and it was getting kind of cold so I decided to take a shuttle back to my dorm (about a half hour walk). As I got on the bus I noticed that there was no other students on it, only people who probably work at the Uni. But I disregarded that. So the bus gets going.... and soon leaves campus!! Then exits onto the freeway. I obviously had picked the wrong bus. So I asked the lady beside me where the bus was headed. Luckily, she spoke English, and told me that it was going to a distant suburb. She asked me where I was going and when I said that I had thought it was a shuttle bus, she had the most alarmed look on her face and told me that the bus didn't return to METU. Not really knowing Ankara or the bus system, and
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Changing of the guards. only having 40 lira in my pocket (not enough for a cab home) I began to wonder how I'd get back. I was running through all my options (not many) when she told me that she'd help me out. So she began speaking Turkish to all the people around her (who all started to stare at me and look at me with interest/pity in their eyes). She then gave me the number and name of a bus that I would need to take to get home. So when our "shuttle" bus finally arrived at our destination (45 minutes later) she told me that the man sitting beside me was going to help me get home. He walked me to the bus station (which was out of his way), waited for me until the bus came (about 20 minutes), gave me a bus ticket, and even spoke to the driver (probably to make sure that the dumb foreign girl didn't get lost again). I even used my elementary Turkish with him (he spoke no English), which seemed to make him very happy. So after an hour and half bus ride, I finally arrived on campus. aAfter 2 hours and 45 minutes,
I made it home. And I still had to walk to my dorm. But I got a really good tour of Ankara.
So now I'm just enjoying my last few days off, getting ready for school and hoping to make a trip this weekend to Hattusa and Amasya. I'll keep you all posted!
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garnet
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love it nicole!!!! keep on writing!!! i'm totally living through you! glad you're enjoying it!