First impressions

When I decided to come to Turkey, a lot of people were concerned about the "single Christian American Female living in a Muslim country" aspect of this thing. To be honest, that was one of my first thoughts too.

It seems to be helpful that we have three SCAFs all in the same boat. Ankara is a big city, and as such does have certain risks. Walking alone at night is not smart, nor is dressing immodestly and calling lots of attention to the fact that you're alone. I wouldn't do those things living in a city in the United States. As in most places, if you look like you know where you're going, nobody's going to mess with you. Part of these first few weeks is to help us get to the point where we can look like we know where we're going. It probably helps that all three of us have lived alone overseas before and have developed a heightened sense of vigilance and instincts in dealing with people.

We felt a lot better about this after our exploring the other day, particularly in our interactions with Turkish men. We were collectively a little nervous at first, with vestiges of American stereotypes of the Middle East roaming through our thoughts, despite the fact that American stereotypes are largely skewed and that Turkey doesn't consider itself part of the Middle East.

While riding the bus, all three of us took turns sitting by ourselves, which didn't last very long because we were each soon joined by men, usually older guys in suits. This was a little surprising at first, especially since there were other seats available and we'd been told that on inter-city buses there is no mixed-gender seating. However, we learned later that sometimes men on city buses will sit next to young women traveling alone as a form of protection. So if a man views himself as safe, he'll just plop himself next to a woman to prevent creepers from sitting next to her. And it was a rather safe feeling, as they all just minded their own business and didn't say a word to us. I'm praying that this sense of protection extends to a scenario where friendly people would intercede should a real creep try to bother one of us.

We were also pleasantly surprised at our interactions with the waiters at a cafe we tried in the city. It was embarrassing enough to try ordering from a restaurant for the first time. We had no idea of procedures, what was on the menu, how to go about any of this. Our servers picked up pretty quickly that our Turkish was limited almost to the point of nonexistence, but that only increased their friendliness and care. They did give us a bit of a hard time about our lack of Turkish ability, but they were smiling the whole time and, honestly, they were nicer than most American servers would be to a non-English speaking foreigner. They joked with us, tried to teach us a few words, and laughed at our pronunciation while still giving us all the help they could. In short, it seemed completely normal.

Sometimes we get stares, but usually from children. We're blessed in two ways.
1) This is a big city, and it's the capital, so foreigners aren't unusual anyway.
2) We all have darker hair and don't dress like tourists, so we don't really stick out that much.

Here's hoping that this isn't only my naivete speaking and that our sense of security continues throughout our term here.