Home in time for the 4th of July

Being abroad so long in a country where anti-Americanism runs rampant does something to your brain after a while. All day long, from all my students and friends, I face questions from people whose knowledge of the USA comes from biased sources, media outlets which pick and choose the negative side of America to teach people about and which demonize the country for its foreign policy and capitalist system. The other main source of knowledge is Hollywood movies or TV shows, a dangerous thing for us to send off as an export to countries where people tend not to think critically about media and assume that what they see is an accurate portrayal of American culture.

This has frustrated me to no end. Ankara is a political city, and for its inhabitants, seeing an American is immediately a chance to talk about US politics. I find it important to have these conversations so I can give them an American perspective and correct a lot of their very wrong assumptions. However, it is exhausting, because unlike the Europeans or Australians I've had the same conversations with, Turkish people's views of politics and culture seem to stem from inaccurate or heavily twisted information. Even more confusing and disappointing is observing how strong prejudices run- the cognitive dissonance of confronting a living, breathing American who tells them the opposite of what they have always heard often leads people to conclude that I'm just a very unusual American and their initial assumptions are still correct.

To take just one example, after the 2012 presidential election there was a news piece saying that a few Southern states were considering secession and a couple petitions had gone around. Somehow this became huge news in Turkey, and even now I am frequently asked about it because people believe this is a serious issue and that the USA is on the brink of separation.

Or people have been very confused when I tell them that charity donation and volunteer work are a huge part of American culture. This assaults their assumption that Americans are all rich and selfish, and I've had students try to explain this away by saying that people must volunteer to keep their image up, so other people will respect them more, not because they just want to help people.

But the weird thing is, after a while this gets into your head. I hear endlessly about racial profiling, about gun violence, conspiracy theories about Zionists assassinating JFK, about how Americans are selfish and only care about money, about how our society is falling apart, and a little part of me had started to become twisted and paranoid and afraid of my own country.

This started to melt away instantly as soon as I got into the country. Even in the stressful environment of an airport, the overwhelming quality of American people is that they're nice. The TSA officer who called me to the check-in desk for a body scan and bag search did so with an apologetic smile, and I was rewarded for the inconvenience with bypassing the boarding line and being one of the first people on the plane. (Side note: yes, I found a loophole to getting free priority boarding!) The flight attendants chatted with passengers about their books and their children. Everyone I ran into at the airport was friendly and helpful, from the guy who helped carry my backpack to the woman who let me borrow her phone to call my sister when we arrived. Yes, Turkish people are usually wrong about this country. I grew up here, I know better than them what it's like. And it's much better than they give it credit for being.

And yes, I arrived. I'm in St. Louis at my sister's house, typing away at 5 am because jet lag woke me up.

Other observations so far, day one when everything is fresh and sunny, and I'm simply happy to be home:

• St. Louis is great in that unless you're smack in central downtown, the buildings tend to be lower and there's green space and sidewalks that cars don't drive on.
• I had started to wonder if Americans really dress so differently from Europeans after all. Yes, we do, and we don't tend to dress well in comparison. Especially men. Yikes, American men.
• Mexican food is incredibly delicious.
• When I'm abroad, it's much easier to tune out the conversations going on around me because it's generally not my native language. My ears have learned to pay attention whenever they hear English because it's so unusual. With my brain tuned this way, it's disconcerting to suddenly hear English all around.
• At the bag claim in St. Louis, I heard a family speaking Turkish on one side of me, and a family speaking Chinese on the other side. It was incredibly weird to hear both those languages at the same time and be able to eavesdrop on both conversations. 
• I really missed coffee shops. Not Starbucks, but the little local corner coffee shop that plays hip music and is full of the sound of coffee beans grinding.
• Istanbul is gorgeous, but Missouri is green, and more importantly it's home. Mmmm.