For the past two months I've been living with a brother and sister duo in a peaceful corner of Keçiören, Ankara. One of my classmates lives across the street with their other brother, and another lives up the hill with the fourth sibling, their sister. A few days ago the whole family came over to our house for dinner-- my host mom had made Karniyarak, a wonderful stuffed eggplant dish. Our conversation danced around the dinner table… at least from the side of the siblings, with us trying to jump in with our still very much developing knowledge of Turkish. With the support of his host, my classmate shared a new pun he’d taught him– if he eats too much eggplant (patlıcan) he will explode (patlıyacağım- you can think of the ‘‘ğ’’ as silent). This was a big hit with everyone. If nothing else, I will forever remember the Turkish words for eggplant and explode.
As the evening came to an end, we sipped our Turkish tea and the conversation turned to our flights back home. I realized for the first time that my stay in Türkiye would soon be over. That night I stayed up late, no thanks to the two cups of tea I'd just had, taking stock of my surroundings. I had come into a little life for myself here, and I guess I forgot it would be temporary. I suddenly became conscious of all the little things that had become part of this this little life: the faint sounds of the TV in the other room or of the children playing outside my window, which I’ve gradually begun to understand (although I still have a long ways to go) each night as I try to fall asleep. All of this was hitting me for the first time.
As much as I had prepared for my journey to Turkiye, I hadn't ever really thought about ending the trip. I now realize that this will be the much more difficult undertaking. Before arriving in Turkiye, I would stay up thinking about all the language gains I would make– new grammar concepts I was eager to learn about– and the amazing places I would get to visit- Istanbul, Cappodoccia, Ephesus. And of course I was also excited about the connections I'd form, but I guess I didn't really understand what that would actually mean.
Now when I stay up thinking about this trip, it’s not to take stock of the new words and concepts I’ve learned or magnificent sites I visited, even if I am proud of those experiences. Its about that family dinner, the Patlıcan joke, or the card trick my host taught me, or my teachers favorite Turkish song. It’s the ice-cream-bets we placed on the World Cup (I quite enjoyed my prize) or my daily stops at the market on the walk home from school. And when I do prepare for my next trip here– hopefully it will be soon– I won’t so much be thinking about all the famous places I’ll get to visit or all the individual things I’ll get to learn. Instead I’ll be thinking about fulfilling the promise I made to my host mom that we’ll make Mantı together– which we’ve discovered is my favorite food here.
This, to me, is still a way to measure my language gains, because these people and memories have now become intertwined with my knowledge of Turkish and my further learning endeavors. Before this program, I didn’t really have any personal relationship to this language. While I always really enjoyed learning it, I was learning it for solely academic reasons, and it always felt slightly distant. There was something missing. In these past two months I’ve found what was missing, and developed a meaningful personal connection to the Turkish language.