Türkiye Part 2 : Günlük (Diary)
First, I’m going to warn you that this is only part 1 of a very long diary.
Don’t worry, I’m gonna share you some of my experiences in Turkey, whether it is its culture, its people, its foods or some other things that are different with Indonesia, but for now I’m going to write it in diary format first :D
So sorry friends for abandoning my blog, I guess I’m going to start updating it weekly from now on.
So, where do we start?
I am now in Ankara, studying in Tomer, a Turkish course as a preparation for college (though I’m not planning to take my college courses in Turkish). Actually, I’d studied in Anadolu University taking Economics as my major before I decided to go to Ankara to attend Tomer. It is not my initial intention to attend it, but since I applied and succeeded to get another scholarship from the government (which offers twice of my initial allowance), it is required for me to attend Tomer in the first year.
During the three months of my stay in Turkey, I’ve been moving from one house to another like dozens of times and been moving from one city to another thrice. I’d lived in Eskisehir for one and a half month before I half-heartedly left for Ankara.
Life was good in Eskisehir. My faculty was in English so school’s not much of a problem. My house mates were so nice (though they hardly knew English and it kind of made my life hard when I was there). Once we had to reserve the water because it’s nearly finished and we’d still got 2 days to go, they tried to explain to me that I should pour the water into a bucket before using it and it took me 10 minutes and nearly a teardrop to understand it. I felt so retarded (I can’t help but using this term I’m sorry) because they talked so fast and I couldn’t just understand them in an instant. We made so many good foods in Eskisehir, ate so many kinds of tatli (dessert) and my house mates taught me many Turkish phrases like “Adanalıyık Allah’in adamıyık” or saying “Elirini sağalık” after eating, or other phrases like “Su gibi azis ol” and “ Lop lop et olsun”. I went playing with Aylar (a Turkmenistan-Russian close friend of mine) every weekend and talked with Birdal and Taewoo and Ilknur during the classes.
*The next two paragraphs will be about my Korean friend and Super Junior, you can just pass it if not interested. I’ve warned you.*
One of my most interesting friends on the campus was Taewoo, he’s from South Korea and he’s unexpectedly so updated about Korean entertainment industry. He likes indie music to the root but he knows Super Junior well (not more than know though, he’s not an exact fan boy). At first I hesitated to tell my attraction towards Super Junior cause I was afraid he would accuse me of befriending him only because of Super Junior (lol trust me I am not trying to sound so dramatic, everyone in Eskisehir knows that I like Super Junior, and am willing to use people to fulfill my needs of Super Junior’s newest news), but when he brought some paper with Korean letters written on it, I absentmindedly read it and he put that annoying shocked expression which pretty much meant “HOW COULD YOU?”. And ta-da. I told him I liked Super Junior, like so freaking much, and I admired and cared about Heechul, like so so much I could just describe it by going to Korea in instant if ever I heard news about him collapsing or something, I don’t want it to happen though. Then there came the silence. And a chuckle afterwards. And a big laughter in the end. I was laughed at, just like usual.
Despite him being annoying and all big laughs when I told him about my open secret, I liked being his friend. He practically helped me with everything. Helping me when I was about to choose the classes I was going to take for the semester, giving me information and brochures about the occasions I could attend for the culture class, choosing a group for me in the Research Methods of Social Science (THAT DAMN CLASS I AM FOREVER DEPRESSED IN BECAUSE I CHOSE IT BY ACCIDENT AND IT TURNED OUT TO BE A CLASS FOR STUDENTS IN THEIR 3rd YEAR). Okay, he’s a very nice friend, after all.
Have I told you about Aylar? I met her on my first day in Eskisehir. I called her ‘abla’ because I thought she’s at least 2 years older than me and it was all awkward. She went to Samsun to pack up her things and came back to Eskisehir after three days. We lived in the same room with one other friend (she’s just 16 and she’s a Filipino) and we gradually became closer. Aylar was actually a year older than me, she’s in my class in university and we just clicked. She’s very sensitive girl whose nationality is Turkmenistan but knows Russian better than her native language. I liked talking about Indonesia with her for she always seemed to be interested in visiting my country.
* I mean, to be honest, I’ve been telling about the beauty of Indonesia and the diversity and the tolerance and all to many (neither all nor most of them, just many as like many in my own parameter) Turkish people but most of them just shrugged it off and thought that it’s not a big deal, that their country was better, and in some cases where there were some shallow-minded people (I can’t even..), they thought that Indonesia was a very poor country and when I told them it wasn’t true, they INSISTED that it’s true and began to boast about how they helped Aceh in Tsunami 2004. I mean (I’ve been saying this several times I noticed) it’s not that my country a very rich country either, but my nationalism (I swear nationalism works the best when you are outside your country) refused to acknowledge it as poor. I was both enraged and resisting to burst my anger encouraged by my pride as an Indonesian.
Okay, enough about all the rendezvous and let’s go back to Aylar otherwise I’m not going to stop blabbering about how Indonesia and Turkey this and that. Well then, Aylar is a very nice girl, and a shopaholic one at that, and I swear I’m gonna bring her to Indonesia in relatively near future if not next summer.
My Indonesian friend, Melly and a Turkish friend, Amine picked me up at Ankara Gar just two weeks ago and we immediately headed to MEB to register myself and to get some papers to be handed to Tomer and the dormitory. Of course it’s already autumn at that time and the coldness it caused couldn’t be hindered. In spite of being shivering and all, we kept going to Tomer and took the placement test. Voila, I and Melly were placed in the basic level. But instead of being disappointed, we felt relieved. At the very least, we would get to learn Turkish more thoroughly and would probably understand the language much better.
