Last Gobble

Pre-post note: So I made it safely to Belgium and am getting settled. This was written in the Istanbul airport. I will post more about Belgium and the like once I get my life together again. Days living out of a suitcase: 39


So I am sitting in the airport waiting for my flight and I figure it might be a good time to reflect on my time here. I love Turkey, in case you haven’t picked up on that in the last month’s worth of posts, and I am truly sad to have to leave. I have learned so much about this country while learning a ton about my own person and the general human condition as well. I have learned that I can rely on myself more than I ever thought. On my own, as a white female that doesn’t speak the language I was able to get to a town an hour and a half away, explore, and come back. I can order food on my own, in Turkish. I can read a map and plan out my day and be on time for things, all acts I never thought were possible in the states. Most importantly I learned how to use a squat toilet; which just goes to show that necessity is, in fact, the mother of invention…or in this case desperation.

I learned that not all people are like big city Americans and that if a crazy looking Turkish dude offers to walk me to the office I needed to go to, to buy my bus ticket, and then translates for me to the guy printing the ticket, that he might NOT be trying to rip me off, con me or rape me. That isn’t always the case but sometimes people are just friendly. I can’t tell you how many times I have been here where people just wanted to help, and show us their country and ask us questions. I feel that in the US we have developed such a sense of paranoia about other people that when we go somewhere else and are offered help that we are already conditioned to be suspicious, questioning and sometimes cruel. I also learned that occasionally these reactions are okay…like when there is a creeper on the subway and he is giving you looks and following you (in which case it is good to have a Turkish dude friend to scare him off.)

I have learned that not every Turk owns a camel and the one that I did see was sitting and getting paid to have tourists sit on him/ her and look silly…I took a picture, but didn’t sit. I have learned that if you stare a vendor directly in the eye, and just take a moment, to stare them down, to let them know that you may be a stupid American who doesn’t speak the language and isn’t used to working for a price of any good, but that damnit, you are not going to pay 45 lyria for that crappy little dagger, that they just might give it to you for 30. I think I am going to try that at Busch’s next time around. I finally understand that food is just food and I am willing to try anything once. Stuff I have eaten in Turkey: fish eyeball, octopus tentacle, yogurt milk drinky thingy, and all sorts of meats and nuts and spices and amazingness. You take the good with the bad, and if the stuff is really weird and freaks you out, you chalk it up to a cultural experience. Its okay, you are going to live.

And I think that would be the last and greatest lesson I have learned here. You can’t be afraid to live. You can’t sit somewhere and do nothing just because it is safe or because it feels better. That scary things can be new and exciting and adventurous, and they are experiences worth having. STOP BEING AFRAID! DON’T JUST SIT THERE, YOU ARE RUNNING OUT OF TIME!!! People are wonderful, culture is beautiful, adventure is exciting and squat toilets may be more sanitary but they will always smell worse. Time to go find myself in Belgium. Love you all.

~Claire