Becoming Home

I have been away from Istanbul almost a month--it was a wonderful Christmas holiday, reuniting with family and reconnecting with friends. I quickly fell into my old lifestyle, stayed busy and felt happy and comfortable the entire time. By the end of the trip I realized that I really didn't want to go back to Istanbul. It's a great place to visit, but......it really isn't home.

However, knowing Jim would probably not appreciate my new insight, and Devlin really needed to go to school, I boarded the plane anyway. An odd thing happened when we touched down and deplaned. Suddenly, it all wasn't new anymore. I knew which coin to insert for the baggage trolley. I knew what "cikis" meant. (exit) Of course, Jim was waiting outside customs for us, and his was the first smiling face I saw. But the second was Gokan's, our driver. And it seemed perfectly natural, after greeting him with affection, to hand him all the baggage to carry, while Jim and I walked hand in hand to the car. 

So it has been, these past two weeks. Nothing has seemed as hard as it did before Christmas. Coming back renewed, I enrolled in Turkish language classes, and attend twice weekly. I am enthused about learning it, and spend a good deal of time outside of class studying. It's a completely different language base than anything I have ever known, and the grammar structure is odd compared to ours. For example, in English, the sentence, " I would like a taxi, please", would be, "a taxi would I like, please". But just a few lessons have made a difference, since now I can actually say that sentence into the phone and a taxi actually comes.

I realized that Istanbul is becoming home. Entirely different than the one I left behind, but one that is every bit as real. It's an awakening, to realize that. It makes me feel much more at ease, much more contented, and much more confident. Much more like my old self.