I successfully made it from Champaign to New York yesterday. Despite checking half a dozen times, I found time and time again that I had not forgotten my passport, nor my toiletries, nor (checking again) my passport. What is the only thing that I have forgotten? Well, I guess I forgot to learn a single word of Turkish. (I'm still not entirely sure how the title of this blog is pronounced for that matter...) I talked to a friend Mike at the Blind Pig on my last night in Champaign, and he told me what he believed were the three most important phrases in Turkish. These were: "Çok güzelsin" "Çok ilginçsin," and "Çok komiksin."* He translated for me: "You're so beautiful," "You're so interesting," and "You're so funny!" I thought about it for a little bit, and realized that for some intents and purposes these may actually be the most important phrases in the language. But anyway. Luckily, I have Jennie to lean on here... she very diligently started taking lessons in January for about three hours a week, and promises that we'll be doing a Turkish lesson a day for the first two and a half weeks of the trip.
My day in New York is nice. I stay with Christian and Rachel and we meet up with my friend Kate who I haven't seen in almost two years. We head to a great Irish pub in Astoria, where the bartender gives us free shots of Jameson. Somehow, between the combined forces of Kate, Christian, and the free shots, the night ends with pictures of me in compromising situations. As for now, it is off get some lunch with Christian at the Unidentified Frying Chicken, then off to the airport to meet up with Jennie, and then: Istanbul!
*Thanks goes to Pelin, who helped correct an earlier printed butchering of these phrases.
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D.W. is a recovering grad student who has spent the last 3 years researching what it means to be "normal."
Family members sadly note that if this was a personal growth project, it was a dramatic failure.
J.K. made the wise decision to forgo grad school, but then enlisted in the never-ending pursuit of upholding government ethics. At least she's getting paid more...
7 comments:
I love my daughter so much!
Dustin is a sweetheart too!
Dustin is also very funny!
Hi Dustin, hi Jennie!
First of all, welcome to Istanbul or: hoşgeldiniz!
I'm really enjoying this blog and am looking forward to meeting you soon. As the slogan of the Turkish Tourism Ministry goes: Let's meet where the continents meet :-)
At the expense of sounding like a wisecrack, let me give some brief lessons on the Turkish language (and culture) and meanwhile try to answer your questions:
1) raki (the correct spelling is "rakı") is pronounced like "rocker", yet without the r at the very end. The letter "ı" is unique to Turkish and it sounds like the "e" in mother or the "e" in father. The drink (which I personally detest :-) ) is also called "lion's milk" in Turkey. The rumor has it that in the old days, there was a lion figure on the rakı bottles and that's how the drink became known as lion's milk (or "aslan sütü" in Turkish)
2) In Turkey, when someone is speaking a foreign language very poorly and with great difficulty, we call it "Tarzanish" or in the case of the English language, "Tarzan English." I have to admit that if you use the Turkish phrases your friend's thaught you, you'd be close to speaking Tarzan Turkish :-)
Try these phrases if you want to tell someone they are very beautiful, interesting or funny:
Chok guzelsin ("çok güzelsin")
Chok ilginchsin ("çok ilginçsin")
Chok comicsin ("çok komiksin")
Choc (çok) means "very" (or "a lot"). Güzel, ilginç and komik mean beautiful, interesting and funny, respectively, and the suffix "sin" means "you are".
Hope this will help and see you soon! :-)
got your message Jen; glad you arrived safely. Loved the posting by pelin--how interesting! So nice to have someone in Turkey offering his hospitality.
Big Jen said she posted something, but she's new at blogs too and I don't see anything so I'll try to teach her how.
I meant to make the previous posting from Jennie's MOM, not Jennie.
Love, Mom
Good to hear you guys are safe and happy.
... from MagmaChem
Thanks Pelin! This really helped a lot. I'm getting better at this Turkish stuff... but slowly...
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