Friday, July 27, 2012

So much culture!


So last week on Tuesday a few of us met our friend from our class, Hakan, for baklava and dondurma (ice cream for those who have forgotten) at his apartment. To my surprise, we did not eat these foods separately, but rather spread a generous amount of dondurma on top of the baklava and ate it that way. I guess this is the traditional way to eat these foods together. It was unbelievably delicious, but extremely sweet. We also conversed with Hakan, his friend Gulse, and his roommates about Turkish and American culture. They were all very friendly and even made us some Turkish tea to drink while we talked. During the conversation, Gulse asked if we would be interested in attending a Turkish wedding the following night, and of course, we said yes!

The next day we rallied the troops, met Hakan, and headed for the wedding. After about 45 minutes on a tram and then a bus we made it to the wedding. The wedding took place above a supermarket in a pretty elaborate banquet room (I would compare it to Royal Scot, for those who are familiar, but instead of a bowling alley there was a supermarket). We were a little late, but apparently Turkish weddings are similar open houses where people can come and go “freely,” so it wasn’t a big deal. When we got there we met Gulse’s dad who shook all of our hands and walked us into the wedding. Only to reiterate how kind Turkish people are (as if I haven’t done so already), a group of men gave up their table for all (14) of us to sit at when we got there. Then we were all introduced to the groom and brought on to the dance floor to participate in a traditional Turkish dance. After the song was over, they played an “American” song for us to dance to. All of the Turkish kids loved it and started dancing with us. I guess at one point the DJ even announced us as “the groom’s American friends” (or something to that effect, pretty cool!). Everyone at the wedding seemed to enjoy us and we definitely enjoyed them. For a majority of the people there, I think it was their first encounter with Americans, so I hope we made a good impression! We all had a great time and it was interesting to see the similarities and differences between American and Turkish weddings. Here are some things that I noticed:
  • The dress was more casual than American weddings with hardly anyone wearing ties or even suit coats for that matter.
  • There wasn’t a meal served but just plates of little cookie type things.
  • I don’t think there was a wedding party (or at least not an obvious one).
  • The wedding cake that the bride and groom “cut” was fake but they had an actual cake to feed each other and the guests.
  • Toward the end of the wedding, guests formed a line to give the newly married couple their gifts (as opposed to impersonally putting them on a table).
It is still unbelievable to me that we all went to this wedding and I am very glad we did. I feel that something like this would never happen in the U.S. because we are very inflexible and guided by lists and order. There is no way that an extra 14 people could be invited to a wedding the day before and if they did it would be chaos at the reception. Anyway, I hope that the bride and groom and everyone there had as memorable of a time as I (and I'm sure the rest of us) did.
The venue

Bride and groom

Traditional Turkish dancing

"Cutting" of the fake cake with a sword

Do I need a caption?

Actual cake that was actually delicious

Well, since it is the halfway point of this study abroad, I guess it's a good time to give an update about my classes (that is of course why I am here…right?). Wednesday, I took my first exam in hydrology and I think it went pretty well. We should get the results this next week but nothing on the exam was surprising so that's always a good start. My transportation class is still almost 100% in Turkish. We have an exam next Tuesday (which should be interesting and definitely going to be more difficult than hydrology) and our project is 2/3 done, so that is nice! The project makes me feel like I’m in 2nd grade because it is a bunch of tracing, measuring, and drawing lines (contours, stations, roads, etc.). It’s not hard just very time consuming. The classes here seem to be progressing at a much slower pace than at MSU. The other day however, I learned that it is hard for the Turkish students to understand the technical words that are presented in English (ie. precipitation, infiltration, etc.). So for them it’s like taking two classes in one because they have to learn a new language on top of the new course material. I could not imagine trying to learn an engineering course in another language, so I commend their effort!

This weekend is our free weekend, so I think some of the people in our group and I are going to go Ankara, the capital of Turkey. It should be a good time so stay posted!

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