Return.2.First.Love.

It’s been a humbling 2 weeks of depending on people to speak on my behalf, to translate for me, and take me to places.  Any sense of “independence” I had have been stripped down and knowing that there’s no overnight solution, I had to tell myself, “it’s ok” many a times and be thankful for those around me.

The newness of living here is slowly winding down and as I now have some routines in my life, I am faced with the reality of living in a new culture. These are small things, I realize but daily everyday things that I need to adjust to.

• Turkish food thankfully is great and seasonal fresh veggies & fruits are so accessible.  Sadly, however, there’s nearly no variety in cuisines (or ingredients).  So, it’s lines and lines of kebabs, pide, iskender, and doner places.
• As I don’t have a car, I’m walking EVERYWHERE (which is good for me).  It’s been 2 weeks and I think one of my new sandals I’ve bought this spring is facing its end. (It was cheap too).
• There are many interesting social and cultural things I had to QUICKLY learn and the thing I am not liking the most is probably not being able to look at people in the eyes and smile at them.  Apparently, as a foreigner and a woman, it can be misconstrued as flirting which I want to avoid at all cost.  So mostly, I look downward and walk through the streets.  It may be a good thing since the streets are crazy layered with random levels, stairs, and ramps as well as pot-holes. I’ve slipped and fell once thus far and tripped multiple times. 
• Probably the biggest thing I’m learning to deal with is being stared at by others.  People look at me at least one second longer than I feel comfortable being stared at since I’m usually the only Asian walking around in 25 feet radius of wherever I am. 

I just finished my 4th Turkish class (that’s 16 hrs).  I can speaking in present tense either in affirmative or negative.  However, I still can’t talk about yesterday or any days that go back for that matter. =)

children of family i visited

found out about a custom here that people leave out bread to go completely bad in order to throw out. you’re not supposed to throw out bread. at first, i thought people left it out for the homeless people or something.  

My first blog entry.  I’ve decided to keep this pretty casual and visual. =)

Few things in the past few days:

0) It’s been raining almost everyday…and go back to being sunny handful of times. Weird weather but thankful that it’s cool.

1) I’ve visited my ESL school friend & her family & visited her daughters’ school.  It was an experience to spend a whole day (8:30-4:30pm) @ a school where I didn’t understand much, kids were unsupervised, trying to stop a bully from killing a kid w. computer cable.  It was good to listen to Turkish all day but tiring.

2) I’ve moved into my semi-permanent place 2 nights ago with 2 American girls in mid/late 20s. Cool gals.

3) Today, I ate my first Korean meal w. some modifications (i.e. Turkish pepper paste)

4) To do above, I made my first trip alone to the grocery store. Here, they shop at local mom & pop markets and not really at big grocery places.  

5) I’ve registered for my language study 3x a week. It starts tomorrow!