::Our First Trimester::

Sizi çok özleyoruz (We miss you all a lot!)!! Türkiye'de üç hafta kaldık (We have stayed in Turkey three weeks). Bu Türkçe Dili Programı'da, her gün çok öğreniyoruz ama her zaman çok zor (In this Turkish Language Program, every day we are learning so much but it is always difficult)!!...

Well hello again from Istanbul, friends and family! It is true. We have just completed our first trimester (2.5 weeks) of the language program--and I am sure that you have been awaiting an update on us and our activities. Again, thank you all for your consistent, strong prayers and love. We truly love and miss you all.


To start, we have been surprisingly blessed by the simple comforts of our living situation. I mean, we have balconies (see left)! How lovely is that? We have enjoyed many a breakfast and dinner on our balconies--truly believing that having a beautiful view enhances whatever we may be eating at the time! Also, we have been given space and allowed entire bedrooms to ourselves. Not to mention, I (Anneliese) have been blessed by a sweet random roommate. Her name is Sarah and she is a Turkish translator from Austria with a great accent. Our dorm, Uçaksavar, is also quite close to a local market where we can make quick trips for things like fresh fruit and 5L jugs of water.

As for the language program itself, it is much more demanding than we had anticipated. Our scheduled class time is from 9am-1pm every weekday. These 20 hours consist of 8 hours of grammar, 4 hours of Lab (listening and speaking activities), 2 hours of writing, 3 hours of speaking, and 3 hours of reading. Most of are teachers are absolutely amazing and lovable. One of our favorite teachers has been our writing and speaking teacher, Ayşe. She is so petite and cute! Also, our grammar teacher and other favorite, Ceyda, is so knowledgeable and beautifully feminine (she sort of floats around the room and speaks in a high, sweet voice!). Chelsea, Jess, and I have really appreciated how gracious these two teachers are. They are so successful at making the classroom a safe place to learn, take risks, and be challenged. For example, they do not show ANY sign of exasperation or frustration if they need to repeat instructions two or even three times! I can tell they really want us to learn and to them, in order for that to happen--extreme patience is required. Also, after hearing from the other classes and their learning experiences, we feel doubly blessed. God is good and takes care of us in these seemingly small, but significant ways!

And then there is Betül. Betül is our teaching assistant for our class and a true delight. She is a few years older than us and a graduate student at Boğaziçi. We want to be her friend. Pray that we can pursue her intentionally and lovingly. We have been getting caught up in the frustration of not having the daily interaction with Turks as we had expected (since we are in a language program where most of our classmates are Americans). As students, our primary environment is the classroom. Therefore, the Turks that we interact with daily are our teachers and Betül. So, yes, we want to be her friend. We see her so much as she is in charge of holding informal speaking sessions with our class so that we can get some practice. The picture here is of one of these speaking sessions. Betül is sitting behind Chelsea in the striped shirt. We just cannot help but love her. Pray also that we would not be intimidated to initiate friendship with her because of our language barriers. She speaks English fluently, but the three of us feel some pressure to speak to her in Turkish all the time as she is our teacher!

Along with regular classes, we have the opportunity to get a taste of the Turkish culture through this program. Every Monday we get to see some recent movies in Turkish with English subtitles which have been a hit thus far. Also, there are weekly talks on various aspects of culture. Last weekend, we along with about 40 other program attendees went on a excursion to see parts of the old city. If you look in our "Istanbul Gezesi" sub-album on our photobucket site you can see all of the photos from that adventure. Though tiring, we saw many old Ottoman camiis (mosques) and Byzantine architecture which were all stunning.

Another unexpected adventure during our time here has been the process of getting to know our diverse and interesting classmates! Our class consists of 10 Americans and two Israelis. We were not expecting that! They all have unique stories of how they started learning Turkish. Just so you can get a small taste of the kind of people we get to interact with daily, here are some descriptions of our classmates. In the picture, I will start with Lihi, who is in the red at the front left and move clockwise around the table.

Lihi :: Lihi is an Israeli computer engineering grad student who came to start learning Turkish by working here during the summers. She lives in the room across the hall from me. She is very outgoing and not afraid to ask the embarrassing questions in class like "what does that mean?" She also is an avid swimmer...she goes to the pool everyday!

Betül :: Our cute Turkish assistant I mentioned earlier. She got her degree in Foreign Language Education.

Suzy :: Suzy is a real city girl and journalist who is on a fellowship to live and work in Istanbul. She worked for the New York Observer and has great red hair and style. She just started learning Turkish this summer. Before this program, she did a similar beginning program.

Chris :: He is the newest addition to our class. He is a Yale graduate going to Cambridge for his master's in the fall who just picks up language sickeningly well. He just started learning a month ago.

Mike :: Mike is bit of a mystery, but he seems to pick up the language well. He is a grad student in Indiana who went through the beginning level of this program a few years ago.

Berk :: ...is our resident Turkish student and baby of the class. Both of his parents are Turkish and met here, but he has grown up in California his whole life. He picked up casual spoken Turkish while growing up, but he never learned any mechanics like grammar and writing associated with the language. Sometimes he seems light years ahead of us, but then sometimes we appear light years ahead of him. Interesting situation. He is a great addition to our class though as he adds lots of laughs...

Elihai :: He is another Israeli student pursuing the language with us. His English is not as strong as Lihi's, so we have noticed that it is very difficult to communicate in class with him and thus, it is hard to get to know him. We have realized that it must be extremely hard to learn a foreign language in a foreign language (his speaks Hebrew as his mother tongue)!

And then Chelsea, Jessica, and me!!!

Joe :: He is another grad student from Indiana. His degree is in Central Asian Studies (I think!), so he has been studying a variety of languages including Russian. He also has a Turkish girlfriend who lives in Ankara.

Ranin :: Ranin is quite the interesting character. He is Iranian who fled Iran as a teenager with his brother to come the U.S. due to religious persecution. He is currently working on his doctorate at Yale. He knows loads of languages already including Arabic, Persian, and French. He is very funny and makes us laugh a lot.

Kelly :: Kelly is missing in the picture, but she is our resident linguist. I think she is studying in Illinois working on her doctorate. She has done a lot of work with the Albanian language and got into learning Turkish when she engaged with a group of ethnic Albanians in Turkey who had a dialect that interested her.

And that's our class!! We are learning to love them and not be intimidated by their Ivy League, prestigious titles... :-)

As I will soon bid you all farewell, I want to let you know what is in store for us the next few weeks. This upcoming Thursday we are taking our Midterm, which we are all very anxious about. Pray for peace and the wisdom to manage our time well. After we finish our test, we are then going to make our way to the old city of Ephesus (Efes) by overnight bus! We will spend the weekend seeing the ruins and meeting up with Jessica's UA turkish teacher, Deniz. The following weekend we will be meeting the InterVarsity team in the old part of Istanbul and seeing the great Hagia Sophia and Blue Mosque (SultanAhmet)! This means I will get to see my little brother, Seth, and our friends! Praise Jesus for joyful reunions.

Well, everyone...it is evening here. 9:45pm to be exact. So, iyi akşamlar (good evening/night) to you all! We send all of our love and thoughts to you all back home. Keep praying for strength and peace of mind for us during this challenging and sometimes discouraging experience. Our God is a good and gracious God...

peace be to you,
Anneliese