The Hard Part

It's not the beautiful views right outside my window, nor is it the beach just minutes from my front door. It's not my nice, newly joined gym or any of Alanya's other amenities... The hard part is Turkish class, and it started today.

We actually started with chalkboard drills, which many of you might remember from those terrifying elementary school days. Immediately after sitting down we were called to the board one by one and asked to identify Turkish vowels. I suspect our instructor speaks English, but she didn't even one time today, so I was a little confused about the vowels, the agglutination, the words.. etc

We followed that exercise with basic vocabulary. (Sekreter, radyo, televizon -- my favorite cognates), and then another trip to the chalk board. Only minutes before, our instructor had taught us the numbers, except I thought we were just writing down a numbered list of new words. I realized my mistake too late, when, chalk in hand, I knew I was supposed to write a number, but I had no idea which one. "Is this some kind of code, or something," I asked, "Is there a pattern?" She finally took pity on me and gave me the answer.

I spent this evening practicing Turkish in the cafe at the bottom of our dorm's hill. The owner and his family were extremely nice to me, overlooking the fact that the nine-month-old granddaughter spoke far better Turkish than I. :) Wait until week two, though, at that point we will be nearly 25 % done with this accelerated course. I'll be on fire, for sure.