My second day in Turkey was one long exercise in flexibility. Never since then have I begun a day so frustrated and confused, and yet never since then have I ended a day so happy with how things turned out.
The first bump in my plans came the night before, when I was asked to take on the unexpected responsibility of staying back at the Dig House for the day, in order to satisfy the Turkish Government representative’s concerns over the area’s safety. As such, I would have to miss out on swimming in the local pirate cove, where Julius Caesar (as tradition has it) was once held for ransom. I would also be unable to go on the first full-site tour, and miss the normal breakfast and lunch (and I would probably have to go into town and buy my own). My only company at the Dig House would be a Turkish graduate student whose name I was having trouble remembering and whose English was just as nonexistent as my Turkish.
But at least I would get to sleep in past 5:00 am, right? That was the plan. But some of my roommates wanted to leave for the dig site early. Others still had to pack up their things in the morning. So with all the banging and rustling and open doors and hall lights, I was up at 5:00, just like every other person who didn’t have to stay at the Dig House all day. Hungry, I walked into town, and it didn’t look like any shop or bakery would be open for at least a couple of hours, so I wandered back to my room, snacked on my small box of dry Turkish cereal, and pouted.
You would perhaps think it sounds silly: here I am in an exotic country, just after a gorgeous sunrise, with the better part of a day to myself, and I’m sulking about it. Well, after going through half of that cereal box, I would agree with you. With calories in my system, I began to feel some confidence that I could make this a good day.
Around 7:30 or 8:00, _______ (shoot, what was her name again???) knocked on my door and asked if I was hungry. I, too ignorant to even remember “yes” in Turkish (“evet,” in case you’re curious), said “yes.” With neither of us grasping 95% of what the other was saying, we somehow managed to come to a mutual understanding of what would be good for breakfast. She cooked a thin omelet-type dish, while I sliced cheese (after learning that it should never, ever, be grated in Turkey) and put some olives in a bowl and got out the bread. Then we had breakfast.
It was at precisely this point of the day that Google Translate started to show its considerable value.
So then it was time for chores. After some initial communicative false leads, I finally understood that I was to sweep the four flights of stairs, and then sweep my room. The first task was accomplished via a malfunctioning broom (the head liked to swivel), the second task via a paintbrush (Dileik (that’s how you spell it, right?) had commandeered the broom).
After we’d finished with the chores, I’d planned to start on the one job that I’d been explicitly told to do that day: sorting and documenting the new-clean pottery outside. Just 10 minutes in, my plans changed once again when Dilek (that’s how you spell it) told me that she was supposed to teach me how to draw pottery that day. After some deliberation, I agreed to let her teach me right then (mistake: it gets sunnier as it gets later). Her estimate of “[about] 30 minutes” proved woefully naïve; two hours later, we could finally put down our pencils and she left to throw something together for lunch (it was somewhere around 12:30 or 1:00) while I worked a little more on the pottery. A little more comfortable with each other, we managed more broken conversation over lunch, and showed each other some of our music preferences. After we’d mostly finished eating, she mentioned the only Turkish word I’ve been able to understand on my own: “selfie.” In desperation, I latched onto this one glimpse of intelligible American culture, and was quick to say, “sure! Uh…evet, evet!” (See selfie below.)
I offered to help wash dishes, but was informed that I had pottery (“ceramic,” I mean, “seramik”) to attend to.
Thus began my first concerted attempt at sorting and classifying pottery by texture and grade. Drawing from my extensive expertise (10 minutes of explanations given about 20 hours before) I processed 764 distinct items before I ran out of paper, and then sorted another two dozen before I was finished.
At this point, it was about 5:00 in the evening. The rest of the day held several more reversals, as Professor Howe cancelled the assigned reading I had started work on (on account of general exhaustion), and as I was asked by the Turkish students to help prepare, serve and clean up dinner. By the end of the day, basically nothing had happened the way I planned it.
And yet, I was happy.
My mostly-alone time at the Dig House made me more comfortable with the place in which I will be staying for the rest of the next month. The work I put into cleaning the Dig House and preparing dinner gave me the chance to communicate (however poorly) with the Turkish students, and to make friends with some that otherwise I never would have gotten to know. So what if I hadn’t gotten to sleep in or go swimming or spend time with the other American students on our team? I had the chance to make connections with unlikely people, to earn their respect, and to become more comfortable with their (and, for now, my) home. It might sound corny, but sometimes what is most fulfilling comes from what is most new and unexpected.
You must be logged in to post a comment.