Where things stand

I have three full days left stateside, which means time triage and mounting regrets. I imagine I'm feeling something similar to the way a terminally ill person might upon realizing all the things they never got around to saying. However, like said chronically sick person, I also have the promise of going to a new and better place soon, not that expect Istanbul to be heaven per se, but it doesn't make a bad consolation prize for leaving friends, family, and Seattle. But enough of that metaphor.

Things are all coming together well. My student visa arrived in the mail last week, my tuition's been wired, I just bought study abroad life insurance (it is comforting to know that my parents are guaranteed $30,000 to repatriate my tattered remains in the event of "death or dismemberment*"), and my flight is booked. One of the bigger headaches of the process was trying to track down a place to stay. The alluringly titled "Super Dorm" was the only university residence open to "special" (a pithier title than nondegreeseekingundergraduateinternational, which, incidentally, is all one word in Turkish) students. Unfortunately, the Super Dorm people operate independently of the Special Student people, which meant that the dorm was full by the time I applied, which happened to be the day after receiving my acceptance letter. My rejection from the dorms was followed by a nail-biting month of trolling Craig's List Turkey and stretching my inchoate Turkish to the breaking point to decipher message board threads. In my desperation, I nearly wound up with a fellow whose facebook 'about me' reads, "Eat-Drink-Get Drunk-Go Party-Sleep-Wake up-Eat-Drink-Get Drunk :)" Affable guy, but not quite my scene. The second guy was an atheist communist with perfectly sculpted Che hair and gruffbeard. Although he was a fellow history major, I found his prominently displayed personality test, which described him as "a manipulative bully" and hypocrite who "likes to see justice done to others while avoiding justice himself," a bit disconcerting. Also prone to breaking promises. Suffice to say, he didn't seem like someone I ought to forward a sizable deposit to. Anyway, I finally got hooked up with a 25 year old German grad student. He seems like a very solid, down-to-earth fellow. Heck, when I asked if there was anything I could bring him from the states, all he could think of was sour skittles, which are easily my favorite thing about America too. He cemented my love by offering to pick me up from the airport. If he does turn out to be a deranged murderer, at least I will have gotten a free ride for my trouble.

He also has fairly perfect English. This is good because I have a nagging feeling that my Turkish, while functional, isn't quite as hot as I'd like to believe. I mean, it's hard not to get over inflated when you unlock the power of possessives. Suddenly all the things that were floating free in the world are now mine... and yours, and his/her/its. Or the the power of the future. I am no longer constrained to the present or present progressive, but can now describe with absolute certainty things that are going to happen. Granted, this is less about clairvoyance than the fact that all I've learned is the future definite tense and lack the ability to even phrase things in the future conditional or future dubitative. Despite this, and somewhat scarily, I believe my Turkish is rapidly approaching the point where my French would be if it weren't for a couple thousand godsent cognates (William the Conqueror is my hero). The French actually gives my a slight leg up on Turkish because that seems to be where the Turks borrowed most of their Western words, such as kuafür, şofür, and plaj. If worst comes to worst, I think I've established a strong enough Turkish foundation that I will be able to communicate reasonably well with someone who deigns to adress me like they would dull three year old, if they make sure to enunciate every syllable.

Really all of this is to say that I am excited to go and almost feel ready.

*I can't help but wonder what they mean by member in this situation. Because if they're talking about dismemberment of the member I'm thinking of, well, as perversely fear-factor-esque as this sounds, a $30,000 subsidy to become a eunuch might be an offer I can't refuse. I wonder if the Topkapı Palace still needs harem guards...