Ankara

     So just a week after the attack on the American Embassy in Ankara, I went to get my passport renewed...at the American Embassy in Ankara. Fortunately, savvy traveler that I am, I was able to avoid both explosions and tedious paperwork. Waiting and disappointment, unfortunately, was inevitable.

     I began my journey at a quarter past nine, Turkish Standard Time. The time-zone is actually completely irrelevant, since I didn’t change time-zones at all. Mehmet drove me over to the Konya High Speed Train (that isn’t a capitalization error, the name of the high speed train company is High Speed Train) station. I got tickets, and got to practice my Turkish to confirm that he’d be back to pick me up.

     I learned the Turkish words for “Departing from” and “Destination,” after giving the chick the wrong ticket...Yes, I should have checked the times, but it was far too early for coherent thought.

     The interior was pretty nice. Like economy class on airplanes before they decided that only First and Business class passengers are likely to travel with femurs (Rumor has it they’re working on a drug that will temporarily liquefy your bones for the flight so they can cram even more people onto crappy domestic flights invariably and inexplicably bound for Atlanta). I guess where I was going with that is that there was actually a bit of leg room. It was as good as sitting in the same place for two hours can get without the addition of expensive electronics, copious amounts of booze or an attractive companion (and a little privacy).

     I elected to spend my time gazing out of the window at the stunning Turkish landscape...at least until I realized the area around Konya looks about like southeast Idaho which I’ve driven through enough times that I know exactly where both of the trees are (perhaps I’m exaggerating). Instead I zoned out and started trying to come up with ideas for the sequel to Twin Suns which I am (supposedly) working on.

     The first disappointment came when I studied the monitors, and noted the train’s speed. It took a while to get up to top speed, but it topped off at 250 km/s. That’s right. As you no doubt just calculated, 559,234 mph. While it’s still only a paltry .08% of speedlight, it’s certainly respectable. The disappointment came when I recalled that "saat" is hour in Turkish, so we’re only talking 250 km/h. About 155 mph. Which is still slower than a 1992 Corvette (top speed 179 mph), which I’ve driven.

     When I got to Ankara, I wandered about in the underground portion of the train station, seeking an exit. Fortunately, the exploring-underground-structures skills I picked up playing Oblivion and Fallout 3 came in handy (though I refrained from killing anyone with an ax/plasma rifle). I found the weird subterranean market section (oddly enough, it's not all that different from how I envisioned the city on New Vladivostok in Twin Suns), and had lunch.

When I finally made my way to the surface it started raining (of course). I hopped in a cab, and made my way to the embassy, where they promptly told me to piss off, since my appointment wasn’t for half an hour. I had wishfully envisioned a dry waiting area where they serve complimentary (overpriced would have been acceptable) bacon-cheeseburgers and ice-cold Budweiser’s. I’ll certainly be writing to the State Department to suggest this. Fortunately there was a bar across the street so I slogged my way there.

The bar was closed (of course), so I trudged back, wondering how water had entered my right shoe. I have yet to find a satisfactory answer to this question. I loitered under the slight overhang afforded by a nearby shop, and waited. Since I didn’t have my iPad, or even a watch, I annoyed those around me by asking for the time every two minutes.

At long last, it was time, so I walked right past the massive line of Turkish people waiting for visas, flashed my blue passport, and went right in. I briefly wondered at the logic of detonating a bomb near the gate. The very prominent signs saying “walk right-in if you’re American,” make it clear that none of the people waiting outside are actually Americans, and all the security personnel are Turkish. You’d have a better chance of actually getting a few Americans if you hit the bar across the street from the Embassy around happy hour. Then again, I suppose most suicide bombers aren’t burdened by an overabundance of logic.

I got in and went straight to the special window for Americans, and got hassled by old people who didn’t get that the big-ass flag and the words “US Citizens Only” (printed in both English and Turkish) meant it was a special line. The person showed up, I signed the forms, paid them, and was in and out in a matter of six minutes. It was by far the shortest amount of time I’ve ever spent in a US government building.

The trip back wasn’t particularly eventful, though I would like to discuss the TV on the train. It cycled through random stuff, including cartoons, commercials and slide-show things that appeared to be compilations of pictures from e-mail forwards. I’m 95% sure my mom has forwarded some of them to me before. I remember some neat custom cars (including a purple double-decker bus turned into a spaceship that looked a bit like Astrotrain mid-transformation) and some weird hairstyles (None were as awesome as my mohawk).

The cartoons featured a penguin and a polar bear. Interesting, as they are the Arctic Circle (where I used to work) mascots, and two species that never ever come into contact with one another. It was moderately funny, and visual enough that you could get it without sound (there was no sound). The most bizarre part was that I heard the middle-aged businessman sitting next to me laugh, not only at each cartoon, but at the same cartoon each time it was played. They only had about twenty-minutes worth of material that they cycled through, and I watched the same cartoons, and heard him laugh at the same bits all four times. It was like clockwork. Weird and confusing clockwork.

I would write some sort of conclusion at this stage, but there isn’t much to conclude. After the trip, I went home, ate some kofte and taught a class. Pretty typical evening. So, yeah, That’s it.

 

New Year, New Country

Happy New Year! Yeah, it’s late. It turns out I’m just as effective at procrastinating when I don’t have a massive hangover. Who could have guessed? (Aside from people who know me, obviously) It’s been awhile, so this is mostly an update on things. I’m in Turkey now (for those of you didn’t know). I’ve got a job teaching ESL at Hasdil, a British Council school, in Konya. It’s pretty much in the dead center of Turkey, so if you point to Turkey on a map, you’re probably pointing at Konya (and also everything in a 100 or so mile radius, depending on the scale).

When I first got here, I almost immediately found that the fan in my laptop had died. I struggled through the process of ordering one (I had to set up a Turkish PayPal account, in Turkish, despite the fact that I couldn’t speak a word of Turkish... It took a while). The fan then took three weeks to get here, so that’s my excuse for not posting anything for a month and a half (I know that didn't add up). So, yeah, now I’m back. Also future posts will be the usual sort, rather the unfocused babbling you’re reading now (they’ll be slightly more focused babbling).

Aside from teaching, writing and eating Adana kebabs, I’m also studying Turkish. It’s a fascinating language (note to self: add teaching and languages to list of blog topics). It’s actually read exactly as it’s written (and rarely uses diphthongs), unlike certain western languages I can think of (Okay, mostly just English). Like most languages that do that, they have more vowels (Thai has 18). They use a, e, i, o, u, (but they each only make one sound) along with Ӧ, ϋ and I (I without a dot is a different vowel than i with a dot). The Ӧ makes a “e” sound, like at the end of “hooker.” The ϋ makes a long “u” sound like at the end of “prostitute,” while the I makes an “ah” sound like at the beginning of “prostitute.”

Turkish also uses the same consonants with a few variations. C and S both also exist with a little swishy thing underneath them (I’m too lazy to scroll through a bunch of symbols again). These make the “Ch” and “Sh” sounds, respectively (Pneumonic device to remember that: Chimpanzee Shit). C inexplicably makes a J sound, and I don’t think they have a J (so if someone asks if you want “to spark up a C” you know what they mean). G comes in both standard form, and with a little curvy thingy over it. That one is silent, but extends the vowel sound. It’s a bit like the silent “gh” in English. They also don’t have a W (as in whore).

In terms of how it works, it’s basically a cross between Japanese, Latin, English and Arabic (Simple, right?). The sentence structure is pretty much the opposite of English. Objects go first, and verbs go last, and everything gets interspersed with particles (usually these particles are suffixes). This is similar to Japanese (according to Karen, who also works here, and speaks Japanese). In Turkish, the particles are usually suffixes, and can change the sentence to a question, make it negative, and probably do other stuff. Prepositions are also suffixes, and get stuck on the object. The subject technically goes before the verb, but it’s often dropped because the verbs are conjugated like in Latinate languages so the subject is often given by the verb ending, so actually saying it is superfluous.

The other tricky bit involves the suffixes (I mentioned those, right?). As in Spanish (and presumably other Latinate languages), the verb ending is partially dependent on the vowel ending with the verb. In Spanish that means -ir, -ar or (this is a word, and not a possible verb ending) -er. In Turkish, a verb can use any vowel, and each changes it to one of four possible endings. Vowel harmony (that's what one website called it) doesn't stop with verbs though. It is also applied to other suffixes, with two possible endings for prepositions. On top of that, any time you modify anything consonants may (USUALLY) change. Fortunately, lots of these are only noticable if you screw up in writing. Turkish is also a bit like English in that some tenses are normally conjugated, (I only know two, so I’m assuming a bit here), while others are just stuck with some form of the verb “to be.” In Turkish this verb is (like most things in Turkish) a suffix. In English we do that for present continuous. In Turkish, they do it with present simple.

According to one of my students (ϋmar) Turkish was originally written with Arabic writing (but spoken the same as it is now), but they switched over to their modern characters later on (This probably explains why their alphabet is so reasonable). They also retained some words from Arabic like “merhaba” (hello) and “portakal” (orange). I can’t really speak Turkish much yet, but I’m learning more and more words from my students, and I’m starting to figure out the grammar. I occasionally catch myself conjugating recreationally (that sounds dirty). I also have my iPad keyboard setup so that I can switch between English and Turkish. Oddly enough, auto-correct is actually useful for a new language. Who knew it was anything other than a scourge on humanity? I have to admit though, if you type a sentance in English on the Turkish keyboard (or vis-versa), auto-correct severely mangles it.

Thanks in part to my Turkish keyboard, I was able to acomplish a task that is a significant milestone for anyone learning a new language: I ordered a pizza (Yes, I did it online, and yes, it took me longer to order it than it took to arrive). If I keep up my current rate of improvement, I should be able to have the language mastered in just 10-12 years (ok, maybe less). So that’s all I'm saying about Turkish for now. Feel free to comment (actually, feel as though you’ve been begged for your comment). The next post will be more timely and all around better (inshalla).