Turks equated school size with importance. I wasn’t sure why, but exponential scholastic growth was considered a very good thing.

I was often reminded of the old riddle: is it better to receive $5 a day for a month, or to receive a penny the first day, two cents the next day, and so on, the amount doubling for thirty days? I’d figured out as a child that one cent quickly became enormous. Now I imagined the student population at ÖzU doubling over and over, eventually taking over the world. How big—and how prestigious—was our university going to get?

In the fall of 2011, most ÖzU departments decamped to a newly built, vastly larger campus in Çekmeköy, a largely undeveloped part of Asian Istanbul. The School of English Language Instruction (SELI) was, for now, staying put. Thank goodness. Getting to and from Çekmeköy would have added at least an hour to my intercontinental commute.

SELI classes quickly filled the space left by other departments. Every classroom on two floors was jammed with students both morning and afternoon, and the teaching staff ballooned to over fifty. I liked to get to work early simply to think, because otherwise I didn’t have this chance. I would buy a poğaca (a savory pastry) and a cup of strong tea at the canteen and walk both floors, my heels echoing in the empty hallways.

One way to cope with rapid growth was to exert control. In the fall of 2011, I prepared to teach Level Four, Advanced English, under a new supervisor, Ceren, who was known as highly organized. Each Monday morning we eight Level Four teachers met with Ceren to discuss the upcoming week. Afterwards, we emerged with lengthy to-do lists, from evaluating extra teaching materials to downloading Turnitin, plagiarism-detecting software, to arranging library visits for our classes.

“Make sure to get your students’ topics this week,” Ceren told us as the module began. She wanted our students, during the initial week of class, to choose topics for required presentations they would give at the end of the eight-week module. We had already agreed on a list of acceptable meta-topics (psychology, transportation, etc.) based on chapters in our textbook. Ceren now asked us to give this list to our students, allow them five or ten minutes to think, and then have each select a specific topic.

I wasn’t sure why we needed to accomplish this task during the first week, but I was eager to comply with my new boss. As I went around my new classroom, however, stopping in front of each student and waiting to write down his or her topic, the exercise felt forced. Many students were finding it difficult to think all the way to the end of the module. Some couldn’t come up with any ideas at all, but instead wanted me to tell them what to choose. It would have been more useful to spend this early time building rapport rather than exerting my authority.

Level Four students were a few months more mature, and significantly more advanced in English, as there was quite a jump from Level Three to Four. Because we were better able to communicate with each other, it looked like we would get along better.

I needed to establish class rules on the use of electronic devices. On the first day I asked students not to use their ÖzU -provided Netbooks unless a classroom activity required it, and not to take phone calls in class—even from their helicopter-ish parents, whom they found difficult to refuse. That request seemed acceptable, but after class, one girl approached me and, near tears, explained that her aunt was dying and that a call could come at any time. Taken aback, I gave her an exemption.

ÖzU students received a ten-minute break each hour. At that time, I generally headed back to my office to relax and perhaps drink a cup of tea. But I quickly learned not to dismiss my students early. On the few occasions I’d done so, other teachers had heard their voices in the hallway and complained, asking me to please wait until the exact break time to avoid disrupting their students. Thereafter, if our lesson finished early, we all remained in the classroom, our eyes fixed on the clock.

When I left the class for breaks, students often commandeered the room’s sound system, connecting one of their Netbooks to it and broadcasting their favorite songs. When I returned, the room would be full of Western pop music or perhaps a mournful arabesque ballad. This was probably a no-no, but it didn’t seem important enough to forbid. Was I being hip and friendly—or simply a weary pushover?

One day I walked in to the song, Airplanes, by B.O.B., with its catchy refrain, “I could really use a wish right now . . . wish right now.” Airplanes happened to have been written by two of Greg’s college friends and I quickly pulled up Facebook pages of the two songwriters. The students were duly impressed. Another day it was simply a generic Western pop song, but as it ended, handsome, diminutive Sercan walked up to me at the board and confided, “Teacher, that song was supposed to be for my girlfriend and me at our wedding. But I wasn’t nice to her and she broke up with me.” I was touched that he felt comfortable enough with me to share this personal anecdote.

I had criticized Gülcan, my early Turkish teacher, for not understanding my Turkish. Now I often had difficulty understanding my students’ English. And it was awkward to say, “Can you repeat that?” over and over, even though (unlike Gülcan) I wore a pleasant expression.

I decided that, after a student had repeated a word a couple of times with no success, I’d ask him or her to write it down. Or I’d write it on the board and check to see if I had it right.

During the second week of the term, we started a unit on Architecture. I began by showing students slides of a number of diverse buildings, the concept being that architecture can create emotions in the observer.

“How do you feel when you look at this building?” I asked, displaying a photo of a concrete skyscraper.

“Rainforest,” answered a girl who didn’t usually speak up.

“Rainforest?” I asked, not sure I’d understood her. “You think of a rainforest when you look at this building?”

“Yes.”

Surprised, I nevertheless wrote the word on the board along with others students were giving me. A few minutes later the girl raised her hand again.

“No, teacher, I didn’t mean ‘rainforest.’ I meant rainforct.”

“Hmmm?” I replied.

“Rayinforced,” she repeated. And again, slower, “re-in-forced.”

On another occasion, the large number of expatriates in Istanbul came up, and several students suddenly wanted hear my answer to their question, “Is your husband show?”

“What?”

“Is your husband show?”

“Huh?”

Impatient, one of them went up and wrote it down on the board: “CEO.” Ah, they were trying to gauge how important Sankar—and I—were. “No,” I replied, “he is not a See Eee Ohh.”

“I’ve just finished writing the midterm exam, and I want you to give me your comments,” Ceren announced at our weekly meeting. She proceeded to hand out copies of the twelve-page Level Four exam we would give our students. Ceren’s English was excellent, and her draft looked good. Nevertheless several questions needed work. One simply needed a grammar fix, but two others were not written clearly. When everyone was finished reading, I brought these issues up, careful to first compliment Ceren.

It was only after the words were out of my mouth that I realized none of the other teachers, Turks all, were offering any suggestions. They were sitting silently, their faces impassive. And although Ceren was nodding at me, her face was stony. Well, there was nothing to do; I could hardly withdraw what I’d just said. We discussed the questions as a group, resolved them, and the meeting ended.

As I walked away, I chided myself for having irritated my boss. Why had I taken her request literally? Why hadn’t I waited to see what others did before I jumped in? It seemed I had failed to properly respect authority, and that superseded the accuracy of the exam itself. Well, one way to learn unspoken rules is to break them.

I wondered how we expatriate teachers, hired for our pronunciation and comprehensive English, were viewed by our supervisors. Most of us were only temporarily in Turkey, so we posed little threat to the hierarchy. But our tendency to think independently made us unpredictable. It was a case of Turkish control versus American independence, and I now began to notice that Big Nergis and her supervisors often ended directives with pointed looks in the direction of our foreign faces.

Due to the sheer volume of work, however, none of my supervisors ever had the time to come into my classroom to observe. And occasionally, Turks themselves broke rules. SELI was on a different schedule than the rest of the university, which didn’t allow for the short breaks between modules we teachers needed. So, every time a module ended, Big Nergis would, without permission from her higher-ups, grant us days off. I was delighted with this glimpse of Turkish disobedience; the hierarchy wasn’t seamless after all. But Nergis had to be careful, and the upshot for us teachers was that she granted these vacation days at the last minute, making planning nearly impossible.

During the third week of classes, we teachers put together the listening section of the midterm exam. This involved recording passages taken from written material—interviews or lectures. Native speakers were usually asked to make the recordings, and prior to one exam, I recorded a ten-minute “Interview with a Tennis Champion” in which I played the interviewer and Jane, a British colleague, played the tennis star. The students would listen to these recordings on exam day and answer questions about them.

“How did you progress to the top of your field?”

“Well, I showed lots of effort and perseverance. I was diligent in my practice habits. . .”

“Do you have any advice for others who want to succeed?”

In an incident that became notorious among us expatriate teachers, Charlotte, a newly hired teacher close to my age, was recording a lecture on architecture with her young Turkish supervisor, Tulin. As Charlotte read the script, she came upon a word that didn’t make sense. The passage was about how architects use lighting as a design element, but the word “lightning” was written on the page instead of “lighting.”

Charlotte corrected the error as she read, but Tulin stopped her. “Why did you say that? Why didn’t you say ‘lightning?’”

“Because it’s wrong,” Charlotte explained. “They mean ‘lighting.’”

Tulin spoke good English, so it puzzled me to hear that she hadn’t also caught the mistake. Perhaps her slip-up embarrassed her. “I want you to read the passage just as it is written,” Tulin directed.

I would have fought back instinctively and with little thought of consequences. If Tulin had continued to disagree, I would have insisted we march straight into Big Nergis’ office with the issue. Only later might I have regretted damaging my relationship with my supervisor.

But Charlotte didn’t do this. She simply reread the passage as Tulin wished.

With student issues taking up the majority of my time, these administrative conflicts were actually few and far between, Most days, I had nothing but admiration for the department’s precise organization, finding SELI a comforting, predictable place to work. But I sometimes wondered if it wasn’t just a little too sure of itself, too blind to other ways and possibilities. Might our students respond better if they saw their teachers as authentic thinking, searching human beings, rather than all-knowing enforcers?

In late fall, 2011, ÖzU admitted five Somalis, part of a larger group of international refugees the country had recently accepted. I had one of them, Abdi, a serious, attentive young man of about 23, in my class. On the first day of the module, Abdi asked me if he could come five minutes late to class on Fridays, the Islamic day of prayer. He and several other Somalis wanted to catch a bus to a nearby mosque.

I had never been asked that question by a Turkish student, not even the few covered female students I’d had who were presumably religiously conservative.

“Of course,” I replied. I wouldn’t think of getting in the way of his—or anyone’s—religious observance.

SELI was strict about attendance, however: we teachers took it at the beginning of every class hour. Allowing a student to regularly arrive late seemed like something I should mention to Ceren. When I did, she rolled her eyes, “It will be more than five minutes.”

“Don’t let him take advantage of this,” another Turkish colleague warned. “He’ll probably come later and later to class, and then other students will start showing up late, too.” How strange: here I was, a Christian in the middle of a Muslim dispute about mosque attendance.

I didn’t go back on my word to Abdi, but his compatriots in other classrooms, with whom he would have attended prayers, failed to get permission. And perhaps Abdi learned something about the Turkish culture: he ended up dropping the idea.

These situations provided rich dinnertime conversation material for Sankar and me, and it was gratifying that, both expatriates working in Asia Minor, we could now compare notes as equals.

Sankar had told me early on that Turks respected bosses with an authoritarian style, and strived to project an image of strength.

“They certainly seem to have trouble admitting mistakes,” I commented.

“Yes. I find them less humble than people I work with in India or China,” he mused. “They think they know stuff beyond what they really know.”

I thought of all of Turkey’s misspelled and mis-worded tourist signs.

“Part of it is that they’re afraid of harsh consequences from their bosses,” he added.

Hmm. Last summer, another supervisor had chewed me out in front of my office mates for not videotaping my students’ presentations, something I was supposed to do. I had noticed that nobody ever watched those tapes, and I didn’t want my students to see me fumbling with the equipment. And I recalled Umit proclaiming early on, “No more Turkish bosses.”

“They have a need to project pride and confidence. So they’re not self-critical,” Sankar continued. “And they really dislike being challenged in public.”

Ah yes. Ceren’s exam and my well-meaning comments.

“I’ve found that in private, Turks are much more flexible about taking criticism,” he went on.

“So I should have kept quiet at the meeting, but then maybe given Ceren a few suggestions when I had her alone?”

“Exactly.”

“Aren’t we kind of stereotyping Turks? They can’t all be alike.”

“Well, yes, but remember they’ve been brought up in a very standardized system here, whereas we foreigners come from all over the place.”

ÖzU was a business- and engineering-focused university, and in every hallway closed-circuit televisions hung, playing a continuous loop of science and business news. On October 5, 2011, those televisions informed us that Steve Jobs had died of cancer.

Although I’d known the Apple leader was ill, the news was unexpected. I felt sad—and also a little homesick. Whenever a major national event happened—I had been overseas during the Iran hostage crisis, the OJ Simpson trial, and the Oklahoma City bombings—I missed home. I longed for the NBC Night News, my local newspaper, and the chance to sit down with American friends for consolation.

But I had underestimated Jobs’ worldwide impact. Turkey is a highly connected country with a large percentage of computer-savvy young people. And even though Turks have a cultural reverence for control, Jobs’ unconventional creativity had captured their youthful imaginations. For over a week, business television ran retrospectives of his life. In class, my students asked me over and over again what I knew about Steve Jobs, and on Facebook they shared and re-shared photos, including the Apple logo brilliantly altered into Jobs’ bespectacled profile. Their grief was so heartfelt it seemed to speak to a deep yearning.

Within two weeks, the shiny white biography, Jobs by Walter Isaacson, appeared on tables in Istanbul bookstores. I peeked inside one copy, expecting it to be in English, but it had already been translated into Turkish.

My students had chosen topics for their oral presentations weeks before, and Ceren had the master list. Now several students approached me and asked if they could change their topics. Why? They wanted to talk about Steve Jobs.

I considered their requests. It really didn’t make any difference to me what they talked about. The important thing was that they developed an English PowerPoint and spoke in English for five minutes. I loved that they felt comfortable enough with me to ask for a change. So I told them it was fine. I simply asked them to confer with each other to make sure they weren’t all covering exactly the same aspect of the man’s life.

This breach in rules quickly produced another request. Suleyman, dreamy, fair-haired, and artistic, approached me and asked if he could also change his topic. He wanted to talk about Stan Lee, the nonagenarian American comic book writer and publisher. I hadn’t heard the name Stan Lee since my brothers collected Superman and Spiderman comics as young boys, and was amazed the man was still alive. I agreed, pleased my students would be working on topics they enjoyed. I hoped Ceren wouldn’t find out.

Students asking to change the rules. Teacher modeling American flexibility and independence. I was rocking to the Apple vibe: think different.

The post Think Different appeared first on Sue's Turkish Adventures.

What are we going to do for the next two plus days? We’ve been to Istanbul’s major tourist sites more than once, and we either don’t yet know about or aren’t confident in our ability to get to the lesser ones. We don’t even have errands to do; I’ve already completed them with Umit.

Thankfully this August weekend is different: we have an invitation! Sankar’s Turkish colleague and his wife, both in their mid-thirties, have invited us to Bozcaada (Boz = earth-brown; Ada = island), just off Turkey’s Aegean coast. It will be a four-day weekend as Turks are observing the Zafer Bayram, Victory Day, commemorating the reclamation of Turkey from Allied Forces in 1922. We’ll leave for Bozcaada early Saturday morning, stay in accommodations on the island, and return to Istanbul on Tuesday. Even tonight we’ll be filled with purpose: packing our bags, throwing our Insight Guides in, and setting our alarms.

The term “Greek Islands” comes off the tongue with such familiarity it sounds like a single word. But the existence of Turkish islands is little known. Triangular-shaped, and fifteen square miles in size, Bozcaada is the smaller of two Aegean islands granted to Turkey in the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne. This finalized Turkey’s settlement with the World War I allies.

Bozcaada was called Tenedos by the Greeks and was long important because of its location at the entrance of the Dardanelles (known in ancient times as the Hellespont), the strait of water linking the Aegean to the Sea of Marmara, the Bosphorus and the Black Sea. Tenedos was where the Greeks hid their fleet in order to convince the Trojans that the war had ended—and thus to accept the Trojan horse. The island was involved in the 14th century Venetian-Ottoman conflict and served as a staging place during World War I.

With a year-round population of about 2,000, Bozcaada’s economy has been based on fishing, fruit, and wine since classical antiquity. 17th century travel writer Evliya Celebi, writing about Constantinople, commented, “The taverns are celebrated for the wine from Ancona, Sargossa, Mudanya, and Tenedos.” The island is also known for its strong northern winds.

The plan is for Sankar’s colleague to meet us on Saturday morning at a point on the E-80 highway just west of the Second Bridge. He and his wife have also invited two of their Turkish friends to join us. The four of them will be parked in a black Passat alongside the road. We will see them and pull over, and then our two cars will take off together.

I am flattered we are being included; this group is younger and would surely have a good time without us. It is an example of receiving a kindness here that I don’t know if I’d give: I would probably not invite a foreign couple along if I was going out of town with friends.

The highway meet-up goes as planned. After we pull up, Sankar’s colleague, trim and dark-haired, dressed in jeans and a sport shirt, gets out of his car and approaches ours. He hands Sankar a bag that includes fresh poğacas (savory, scone-like breakfast treats) and two bottles of orange juice. Another instance of kindness, and I think fast and pull out a bag of homemade chocolate chip cookies and give them to him. Guessing that chocolate chips wouldn’t be available in Turkey, I brought a large supply from home as well as two bags of brown sugar. Our hosts will comment on the cookies’ exotic flavor and ask for the recipe.

Our two-car caravan sets out, driving west through Istanbul’s diminishing sprawl and then along the Sea of Marmara. We are heading toward Greece and Bulgaria, but we will turn south before reaching international borders.

The piece of land we are on, wedged between the Balkans, the Aegean, and the Black Sea, is a historical area called Thrace. It is sometimes referred to as Rumeli, a word evocative of Rome, whose Eastern Empire flourished in Turkey for a thousand years.

Fields of sunflowers (for some reason, Turks call them ayçiçeği, moonflowers), grown for both oil and seeds, appear as soon as we leave the city. Soon both sides of the road are carpeted in yellow. The flowers stretch up gentle hills and into the horizon, their faces looking toward us as we move with the sun from east to west. I want to take a picture, but hesitate to stop both cars, and content myself with numerous shots from the car window, most of which turn out as yellow blurs.

After an hour, we pull over at a rest stop, a low, pastel-colored outlet mall with twenty or so shops, spic and span restrooms and, sitting on a new cement slab with spindly trees for shade, an outdoor tea garden. Sankar and I chuckle at the concept of an outlet mall, which we have heretofore considered solely an American phenomenon.

We sit down with tulip glasses of hot tea and meet our other two traveling companions, a divorcee in her forties with long chestnut hair, and her bearded, pleasant-looking 22-year-old son.

Then we continue south, through Şarkoy and onto the long Gallipoli peninsula that forms the western barrier to the Dardanelles. Fields of sunflowers continue, now on smaller plots slanting down to the Aegean.

This land was the site of World War I’s Gallipoli campaign, an intense naval and amphibious attempt by the Allies to capture Constantinople so as to gain a sea route to Russia. Many thousands of troops from Australia and New Zealand (referred to as Anzac forces) were sent to fight in this campaign, and over eleven thousand lost their lives under the hot Aegean sun.

Under the command of Mustafa Kemal, who would rename himself Ataturk, the Turks repelled both the naval and the land attack in a major defeat for the Allies. It was a defining moment in Turkish history as the motherland was saved, and it was also the beginning of national consciousness for colonial Australia and New Zealand.

Memorials to soldiers from both sides dot the peninsula, and each April 25, families from Australia and New Zealand arrive to observe Anzac Day. In 1934, Ataturk sent the following message to Anzac mothers:

To those heroes that shed their blood and lost their lives . . . You are now lying in the soil of a friendly country. Therefore rest in peace. There is no difference between the Johnnies and the Mehmets to us where they lie side by side now here in this country of ours . . . you, the mothers, who sent their sons from faraway countries wipe away your tears; your sons are now lying in our bosom and are in peace. After having lost their lives on this land they have become our sons as well.

Near Çanakkale (çana = friendly; kale = castle), the peninsula’s largest town, we catch a ferry east across the strait to the mainland, and then drive south to Geyikli, where another ferry will take us out to the island. This convoluted route is hard to understand without a map, and as we drive Sankar and I reflect that, with our landlocked Midwestern sensibilities, we wouldn’t have been able to manage it on our own.

Now we simply follow our friends’ car without thinking. Our hosts are also relaxed, and we make a couple more stops, eating a magnificent “mixed grill” lunch at the Troia Palace restaurant, and stopping by the ruins of Troy, a World Heritage site grandly proclaimed by an impressive sign and a faux wooden horse representing the one the Greeks hid in, but actually not much more than a rectangular mound of earth and several large clay amphorae.

Still, it is Troy, and we walk around hoping to catch the mood of ancient warfare and treachery. Finally we look at our watches and exclaim at the time. Only a half hour until the ferry leaves! We get back in our cars and zigzag with alarming speed through a series of tiny Aegean villages, making sharp turns on narrow, paved roads.

When we finally arrive at the pier, a white sedan we’ve been following hesitates, and our two cars edge past it and into the line of cars waiting to board. We end up being the last two vehicles allowed on this, the last ferry of the day, and for the entire weekend we joke about how “the guy in the white car” is surely angry and coming after us for revenge.

We received the invitation late, and this is a holiday weekend, so we are not able to stay with the group at their hotel. No problem; we’ve reserved a room at Hotel Katina only a few cobbled blocks away in Bozcaada Town—a picturesque grid of whitewashed one- and two-story dwellings with shallow-pitched red roofs and brightly-painted doors. We walk with our bags through its miniature streets. Alongside each dwelling sit wooden tables covered with tablecloths: instant family cafes, waiting for dinner occupants.

Hotel Katina is a two-story, hundred-year-old residence. Its windows feature blue grillwork and hanging flower baskets, and one of its outside walls is covered with grapevines that wind their way via an electrical line across the street and down the wall of a smaller building. Inside, the rooms are decorated in an incongruously sleek Euro-modern style that we will discover is quite typical in Turkey.

The six of us reconvene for a dinner of grilled fish at tables set up just a few feet from the wharf. The weather is warm and the sky a deepening violet. We are so close we can almost touch the colorful fishing boats that bump and jostle each other, making the silvery water splash upward. The physical separation of the island is facilitating our mental separation, and Sankar and I can finally relax. We will sleep well here, and wake feeling none of the jarring unfamiliarity that has been our companion all summer.

Each morning after breakfast, our four companions head to the beach. They return at lunchtime, only to set out for the beach again in the afternoon.

Two beach trips in one day seem like a lot of sun to Sankar and me, and we don’t want to overburden our hosts who, without us, can chatter away in Turkish. So we decide to stay back in the mornings. We have brought a couple of Turkish language textbooks written by a UCLA professor named Kurtuluş Öztopçu, his very name seeming to embody the difficulty of Turkish. The two of us sit at a little wooden folding table outside the hotel’s front entrance taking notes, watching the few passersby and smiling at the hotel’s namesake, Katina, as she bustles from the hotel proper to the vine-covered breakfast room across the street. This middle-aged dynamo is definitely the family powerhouse; her husband spends mornings at a teahouse down the street, sauntering home only at lunchtime.

Perhaps Katina senses our watchful neediness—despite some kind friends, we feel bereft, marooned here in Turkey—because she frequently stops her work to chat or to ask us if we want a pastry her bake staff is pulling from the oven. And one morning she walks up to us with an emphatic story in rapid Turkish that finishes with a laugh. Thanks to the timely arrival of an English/Turkish-speaking couple, we get the translation. Katina has had a dream about us—and in Turkish lore, that apparently means we are thinking about our mothers. Sankar melts, “We have the same saying in south India!”

Late Sunday morning we leave our books and set off by ourselves to explore the gray stone castle/fort that guards the harbor. It is long and relatively low, with crenellated walls interrupted by squat, hexagonal towers. We walk through weeds around it, reading in our guidebook that the Ottomans built it on a spot formerly used by Phoenicians, Genovese and Venetians. We reflect on Turks’ reputation for ferocity and decide that, with 5,000 miles of exquisite, strategic shoreline, it is fully justified.

A bored guard ignores us as we duck under a stone arch and enter the keep. We climb to a balustrade for a view of the tiny, curving harbor, feeling the gusts of wind the island is known for.

On Monday morning, our companions take us to breakfast at a nearby inn called Maya. The place, hidden behind an ordinary façade on a nearby street, offers a typical Turkish breakfast—olives, tomato slices, white cheese, boiled eggs—served in an enclosed outdoor garden, but is well-known for its extensive variety of homemade fruit preserves, eaten on bread pulled fresh from a wood oven. Indeed, several tables in the middle of the courtyard groan with a sticky paradise that includes standbys like strawberry and cherry, but also tomato, fig, lemon, rose, sweet pepper, mulberry, and ayva (quince) jams.

I don’t care deeply about jams and jellies, but pride in homemade preserves is “a thing” here, a cultural tidbit we are picking up thanks to our companions. Their eagerness to teach us about Turkey is one part an effort to deepen our friendship and two or three parts an expression of their intense love for their country.

I am beginning to see that, while some countries modernize and leave old customs behind, Turkey maintains a firm sense of its historical self. We are learning that Turks have a distinctive cuisine for every meal of the day and we will soon encounter peculiar beverages such as sahlep, a hot drink made from dried orchid roots, and boza, a fermented bulgur brew sold in the evenings by men who walk the streets with copper pots yelling, “boza.”

Each region in Turkey has distinct songs; indeed one evening soon we will poke our heads into a traditional Turkish meyhane, tavern, and listen to a chorus of Turkish men lifting cups of rakı, anise-flavored liquor, and singing mournful-sounding Arabesque folk songs.

Most of these customs, though different, do not seem strange; indeed they seem to echo our own culture’s past, which also contained preserved foods, folk songs and root-based drinks. Perhaps by getting to know Turkey, we will come to know ourselves better. At this point, I want to know everything.

In the afternoons, tubes of sun cream in hand, we head with our hosts to the beach. We pay a small fee to enter and occupy spots under charming pale blue wicker umbrellas. The water is warm and shallow, the sand soft, and the sea deep azure blue. In the distance we can see the craggy hills of the mainland.

In contrast to my female companions who wear bikinis, I wear a sturdy one-piece suit. Sankar wears some new trunks he’s had to buy from a shop near the wharf. They are long and droopy, their fabric patterned with beach scenes, and we tease him about his “partay” duds. We sit with our friends  in the sun, reading and dozing.

Leaving the beach, we drive the long way around the island, noting its barrenness and modest-sized rocky cliffs—were the Greek ships hidden behind these?—and stop at one of twelve wind farms, pausing to read signs describing how much power is being produced for Turkey. Then at the southern coast, we stop in at Corvus, the most prestigious winery in Turkey. It is startling to walk into a large, modern tasting establishment and realize that the gentlemen standing at the long counter, ready to pour, are all Muslims. We sample the same cabernet sauvignon that President Obama was served on his 2009 trip to Turkey, and purchase a few bottles to go.

Sun-dazed, after a rest, we reconvene in the early evening, and walk to one of the island’s restaurants. Under the shade of a huge plane tree, we eat pasta and more grilled fish, and sample deniz borulcesi or sea beans, long green segmented stems, not much thicker than cooked spaghetti. For dessert, a local delicacy: poppy syrup sorbet, tart and gingery, made with red poppy petals.

With the loneliness and challenge of Istanbul far away, Sankar and I can shine in our role as grateful guests, new kids in town to whom much can be explained. We ask questions in tandem, nodding to each other as we take note of new information. We exclaim our interest in future trips: one to southeastern Turkey is mentioned and will materialize in the fall. When something challenging is said—a comment that Turkey’s Kurds “. . . don’t want to work”–we remain silent, saving any analysis or re-hash for when we are alone.

These newly discovered social skills—questioning attitudes, intent listening—are both pleasing to us and promising.

One evening after dinner, I bring up the topic of our surprise at Turkey’s gleaming prosperity. “I don’t claim to know much about Turkey,” I start. “But it has a reputation for being—well, poor—and I’m guessing that reputation was true not too many years ago. What happened here to change all of that?”

Our companions are quick to answer: “Turgut Özal. He opened up the economy in the nineties, allowing more foreign investment.” They go on with specifics. I have heard the man’s name before and will look it up when I get back to Istanbul.

All too soon Tuesday morning arrives and we pack up for the trip back to Istanbul, hugging Katina goodbye, driving our two cars onto the ferry, and watching the little island recede as the boat approaches the mainland. We head back up the Hellespont, the water first on our left and then, after the second ferry, on our right.

Ever the good host, Sankar’s colleague has planned a final treat, a dinner stop at Tekirdağ, a town renowned for its kebabs. The six of us enjoy delicious, salty grilled lamb and peppers at the town’s best restaurant, our skin still flushed from the island sun. Then we glide east alongside the Sea of Marmara, the setting sun blending sea and sky together into a pale blue haze.

The trip has been unique. It has refreshed us and readied us for another run at Istanbul. It has given us some glimpses of Turkish culture—and Turkish hospitality. I am beginning to see that the Turks are wise and charitable in the ways of friendship, and I wonder if something in their upbringing, perhaps something more communal than ours, gives them this ease.

The sky is black as we approach Istanbul, but the city lights set the entire horizon aglow.

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Life continues here, an uphill climb of Things To Learn. Today is my three-month anniversary and, although we are nicely settled in an apartment and neighborhood, I sometimes find myself losing heart. The problem is not homesickness, nor is it quite culture shock. It actually stems from my growing engagement, my interest in learning to function well in this huge, sophisticated, foreign place. A few personal characteristics stand firmly in my way.

At my age, I have built up a great deal of pride, and I dislike being wrong. Faced with this enormous new challenge, it has been easy to convince myself that by simply watching and observing, I can learn how to master it. After an observation period, I will surely be able to proceed smoothly and seamlessly, maintaining my reputation for competence.

But gradually I’ve come to realize that what I’ve really been doing is hesitating, hanging back, putting off any true adjustment. For example, in my first two months here, I drove a car only twice.

So I resolved to dive in and start doing things for myself. This past Friday afternoon I gathered my courage, walked down to The Boss, and hopped on a bus, my first ride alone here. My destination: historic Istiklal Avenue in the heart of the city, formerly an elegant embassy boulevard, now a vibrant shopping venue.

As the bus made its way south along the sea road, we passed the Four Seasons Hotel, where 3M put us up this past January, and I felt a surge of pride. Only nine months ago I was cushioned in luxury, quite timid about venturing out to peek at the neighborhood surrounding the hotel. Now I am learning to navigate the city on my own.

I reached Istiklal feeling relaxed and confident, spent a few hours shopping, and made it almost all the way home via bus before switching to a cab (from now on, it will be a game to come and go solely by public transport. Giving up and taking a taxi will be considered cheating!)

That outing boosted my confidence, but I know that while trying to make progress, I will have to make some mistakes. Yesterday, I was on my own again and, despite riding the Old City tram several times with others, a long line of people formed behind me as I struggled to put 1 ½ Turkish Lira into the machine and push the right buttons to produce a token. But I finally know how to do it!

After I returned, I did something else I’ve been pushing myself to do lately: read and decipher as many words as possible on packaging and signs. Standing in the small corner of my kitchen that serves as a laundry room and squinting at a white plastic bottle, it dawned on me that the product I’ve been using for the past two months to bleach clothing (same color packaging as Chlorox; found next to laundry detergent at the grocery store; fairly effective) is actually a cleanser meant for countertops and toilet seats.

I hate being so stupid!

I also dislike asking for help. Something in me feels that doing so at age 55 is shameful, a sign of failure. I know it’s illogical, but constantly being in need of assistance plays into my worst fears about becoming old and incompetent.

After three months, what do I long for back home? I knew being away from friends and family would be difficult, but email has gone a long way toward staving off the “bottom-has-dropped-out-of-my-life” culture shock I felt during my other, pre-computer, years overseas.

I miss television, especially Project Runway. We do get CNN and the BBC here, but little other English programming, and there are problems streaming U.S. programs to a foreign country. My laptop “knows” I am in Turkey and refuses to let me download most American TV shows.

I miss having Mexico next door. I miss donuts, danishes, pies and cakes; desserts are the sole area in which Turkish cooks don’t seem to excel. I miss losing myself in a movie, and I miss having a large number of books at my fingertips. I miss reading a morning paper with my coffee. Oh, for the Sunday New York Times!

I miss getting in my car and zipping around, although driving with Umit often lifts my spirits. I end up smiling because I’ve had to be pleasant to someone else, and we’ve found things to laugh about.

“You have helped me a lot,” Umit commented the other day. He was referring to his English capabilities, improved through our daily talks. His announcement shouldn’t have surprised me, but it did. Apparently in my stumbling and bumbling first months here, I have made a positive impact on someone. His words made my day.

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With less than three days until takeoff, I’m not thinking in complete sentences, thus another list. Here are some things that are worrying me today, in no special order:

Will I get to know my Turkish neighbors?

Apartment hunting last January in Istanbul, Sankar and I took advantage of a generous 3M housing allowance, choosing a place that featured a Bosphorus view and several guest rooms. The other tenants are locals, and Turks have a reputation for warmth and hospitality, but I am wondering whether more affluent might mean less friendly.

Will we be able to see the indie films we love?

First of all, are those smaller movies shown in Istanbul? Second, given that Friday and Saturday nights are peak traffic times, will we be able to get to them? And what about television? newspapers? magazines? Are we going to feel cut off?

Will I be able to adjust to being stupid for the next six months to a year?

I take a great deal of pride in my competence, but upon arrival at Istanbul Ataturk Airport, most of my know-how will vanish. Frustration will rise as I misunderstand directions; commit language errors, some possibly offensive; and come home with orange juice (suyu) when I wanted milk (sut). I have learned that taking life less seriously, taking myself less seriously, is the key to succeeding in a new culture. Wisdom can be a stand-in for expertise. But can I develop the necessary flexibility at such an advanced age? I will let you know.

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