It seems impossible to believe that it is 30 years ago to the week that I started a grand adventure. A scared 18 year old, I boarded a plane on my own, first to Frankfurt and then on to Istanbul, Turkey. I was headed off on a year-long Rotary Youth Exchange Program, preparing to live with another family and go to high school in a country I had only learned the location of some six months earlier.
The process of being selected to be an exchange student was arduous. The application forms, multiple rounds of interviews with me and my parents, followed by country selections took several months. I learned I had been accepted and then waited some more to find out where I would be going. There were several camps that prepared us for culture shock and gave us a general sense of some of the changes we could expect as “outbounds” to the various countries we were headed to. When I got there, another camp introduced me to several other “inbound” exchange students, mostly from the US, but one other Canadian, who were sharing the same adventure.
My high school wouldn’t accept any credits from Turkey, so before I left, I had accelerated my learning, completing all but one required course to graduate. French, I figured, I’d do by correspondence while I was away. That turned out to be a dreadful decision, but that’s another story!
I spoke absolutely no Turkish – unless you count my mother’s absolute massacring of the word for “goodbye”, which I can assure you now sounds absolutely nothing like “Allah has a mallard duck”, but for our waterfowl-friendly family, it was as close as we could get. The grammar completely confuddled me for the longest time. Between vowel harmonies, consonant shifts, a special G that serves to lengthen the preceding vowel and constructions that were completely out of order to my English-speaking mind, I was readily confused. “House my to go want (insert interrogative syllable here) you” was not an easy thing to wrap my head around; it took a long, long time to become even clumsy with it. I learned, but it was an uphill battle, made harder by people wanting to practice English with me. My second host father spoke only two words of my language – olive oil – so my Turkish learning accelerated in that house, thanks to him and I gained confidence to keep at it and push myself to use it more.
Despite my best efforts though, I could never make out any sense of traffic rules. And I was taken aback (good British upbringing and all) by all the hugging and two-cheek kissing. Everyone wanted to fawn over me, and I had to kiss the hand (and then put it to my forehead) of every older relative I met – and oh, the relatives! I had three host families over the course of the year who all seemed to have a huge array of kin. Keeping up with who was the brother of a mother vs. brother of a father (it was important to remember who was a amca and who was a dayı) was exhausting. Why couldn’t they both just be “uncle”? There were even special words for older brothers and sisters! Depite all the new relationshp words though, my host families were wonderful. They took in a scared non-communicative teenager and showered me with affection, kind concern and caring. They were hard to leave at the end of the year. One of my host fathers even made a special showing of sending me home with the keys to the house, so I knew I’d always have a home there. I still have them, to this day.
School started eventually and it was yet another shock. Uniforms were new to me – as was the gatekeeper at the entrance to the high school. Teachers didn’t always show up, students were two to a desk and the classrooms were very different from what I was used to. It took some time to remember to stand up every time a teacher entered the room. I quickly learned the importance of being a martı – a seagull – which formed part of the school’s emblem.
But friends came with school, and that made everything easier. They introduced me and other exchange students in the school to Turkish pop culture, to the best cheap eats, to great places to hang out, and they took us all over the place. They were happy we were there and we were thrilled to have them as our guides. Through them, I learned that despite our differences, people are much the same the world over.
Many friends’ families made me welcome, shared their own stories and truly enriched my experience. My friends put up with my often muddled attempts to communicate in their language, and cheered me on when I made progress. They didn’t even laugh too much when I made the most hilarious mistakes. Really, it seems so logical that if rain rains, then snow must snow, so I proudly told people that the first day the flakes flew in the air. But I was wrong; snow, it turns out, rains. As students, we shared the drama of everyday teenage life and whispered over boys the same way my Canadian friends and I did. I kept in touch with a few of them in the intervening years, and have reconnected with more thanks to social media. Despite the years and the miles, they will always hold a special place in my heart.
Shopping was an adventure of its own. So many shops were set up so you had to ask for what you wanted at the counter rather than just picking it up and taking it to a checkout – I still remember asking for my first purchase – a defter, or notebook – and the sense of satisfaction that I was finally being able to communicate a little. Bargaining in some of the traditional markets took more time to get used to, and despite practice, it never felt comfortable.
Halloween watermelons!
Holidays were odd. The other exchange students and I carved a watermelon during lunch break at school for Hallowe’en.
We skipped school on Christmas Day – that would have been too much. My own Christmas package didn’t arrive at the “big post office” until March, so my little celebration was a bit delayed! Thankfully, my host mother had prepared a few little treats for me.
Turkish holidays turned out to be major foodfests. Seker Bayramı, perhaps better known here as “one of the Eids”, was an all out three-day food marathon. It comes at the end of the Ramazan, the Muslim month of fasting (which, incidentally, I knew only one person who observed), and I spent a the first day with my host family visiting relatives and friends – my journal from the time says 11 different houses – and the second day hosting relatives and friends at home. I don’t remember what we did on day three, but I imagine it involved a lot of recovering from the vast amount of sweets devoured!
Of course, there was the requisite romance. Feelings run high during exchange programs, when you’re out of your element, and I was no exception. An impressionable young girl, I fell head over heels with a handsome young man. Along with a lovely romance to remember, he showed me a side of Istanbul I wouldn’t have seen otherwise. He introduced me to people with stories I couldn’t imagine existed, and ideas that were “dangerous” in that place at that time. He encouraged me to open my mind to new ideas. I spent many, many hours in his home, and his family was exceptionally kind to me. With kids of my own in this age bracket now, I have a new and special appreciation for exactly how kind.
I had grown up in a very small place. My town had just hundreds of residents, and even the city up the road where I went to high school had just tens of thousands. But Istanbul was huge and full of millions upon millions of people, who lived closer together than I had ever experienced. The city is on two continents and culture was everywhere and accessible. Student deals meant that I saw ballet and opera – none of which I’d yet experienced in Canada – at incredibly low prices. It meant attending festivals with Spanish Flamenco dancing and Japanese tea ceremonies. It meant photography shows, contemporary and classical music, and exhibits of political cartoons. It opened my eyes to things I’d only dreamed of before.
Food. Did I mention the amazing food? With the possible exception of ayran (who likes watered down yogurt as a drink anyway?!) I don’t think there was a single thing I didn’t like. Many kilos were gained that year because it was all amazing. And from both my host mothers and from mothers of friends, I learned some Turkish cooking. My mantı-making lesson stands out as one of the best, as a lady I came to call Teyze (Auntie) taught me how to form the thin dough around morsels of meat and into delicious little dumplings that would be served under a blanket of garlicky yoghurt sprinkled with paprika (my mouth waters, just thinking about it!). In return for these cooking lessons, chocolate chip cookies were the best I could do.
And then there’s tea. If you’ve ever seen tourist photos of Turkey, you’ll see that ubiquitous tulip-shaped tea glass. And it’s there for a reason. Tea punctuated everything there. Over tea, you shared secrets. Over tea, you argued politics. Over tea, you played backgammon. Over tea, you made plans and dreamed dreams. A friend of mine shared a photo on Facebook that said, “I like the pause that tea allows.” And it’s true. The world slows down over a cup of tea.
The Bosphorus was truly amazing. A thin strait separating Europe from Asia, it teemed with life from ferryboats to fishermen to ships heading to and from the Black Sea. My school’s back garden looked over it, and I crossed it twice daily for two thirds of my year. Home in Europe and school in Asia – it sounded exotic back in Canada. And while the daily passage may have become routine, being by the water never did. I spent many hours riding over it, walking beside it, stopping for tea along its shores, and simply enjoying its splendour.
Some pretty significant world events happened that year. The space shuttle Challenger blew up, and just months later the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear plant happened. Who knew that many years later, nuclear power would be part of my communications career.
I did some writing while I was there – both for my local newspaper back home and for a couple of Turkish publications – outlining my experiences about and thoughts on this wonderful strange city that was more and more becoming home, the longer I was there. I was encouraged by a friend’s father, himself an author, among other things. It helped me know that it was right to go back to Canada and pursue my journalism degree when every day my year got closer to ending, it got harder and harder to think about leaving.
My exchange year had a huge impact on me – and those who know me now might say I’m still a little obsessed with it! I’ve been back a few times in the three decades since – once two years later while still in school, with a good friend, once four years ago by myself and most recently this past summer when I got to share it with my teenaged daughter and see it anew through her eyes.
While it’s changed immensely, the city still holds magic for me. Maybe it’s because that’s where I grew I took first steps to adulthood. Where I separated from my parents for the first time. Where I experienced the joys of young love. Where I saw a world larger, and far more complicated, than the one I had been living in. Where I first learned what I was made of. Whatever the reason, three decades later I can’t shake the feeling that I’m not done with the city yet, and that I need to spend more time there, to breathe in the salty sea air, drink tea and just let the world around me slow down and maybe even pause, if only for a moment.
Note: a version of this post appeared on Rotary Voices, a blog featuring stories of how Rotary International has impacted people around the world.
