Turkey is amazing, 2 months in there is like a priceless experience that I unexpected. Various culture, Patriotism and nationalism, religious thinking, heritage art and building from the past mixed with modern way of thinking made Turkey is one of country I recommended to come.
During this program, which is Meet My Friend, I lived in city named Kocaeli, located about one and half hour from Istanbul. It’s not a big city and tourist place, but I love it because this city is not so crowded and quite conservative. Then Kocaeli is one of industrial area but in there a lot of students because it has one of big University called Kocaeli University.
The different EP in Kocaeli and other cities is if they live in host family but us lives in Dormitory. We meet each EP’s almost 24 hours a day, eat the same things, have a same internet connection, and have the same problems but the good thing is we can know each other deeper. Then in the end is like we have a new family from different countries.
I experienced how Turkish people live, they taught us Turkish traditional dance, how to play traditional game called Tavla like a chess but just in Turkey, tried delicious Turkish food that very famous one of the best kitchen in the world, tried nargile or in my country called shisa, watched a Turkish movie, tried Turkish beverage such as Turkish kahve(coffee) and cay(tea), and I am living my life as a Turk.
Turkish people are very nice, warm, and friendly better than I thought. I have one experience; I need to go to Istanbul because some reasons, then two friends from University accompany me to go there, find a difficult street in Istanbul that very huge city, even there English is not so good, sometimes we talk with gestures also mixed with Turkeys language is not obstacle for them to help me purely. In other conditions if I go somewhere, they even won’t let me pay for example for food, transportation or anything else. They said I am a guest so I should happy to live in here (Turkey).
But for me, my culture shock in here quite weird, as I know Turkey is one of Islam country in the world, and 99% of them are a Muslim, but it’s rare to find a people pray five times every day, and they are shocked when I can pray five times. Finally I know the answer; Turkey is the second secular country in the world after France. Then the government didn’t give freedom to women who use veil to work or study in school, they should take off their veil first.
I got an opportunity to see many historical and beautiful places and building, first is in Istanbul I saw, Hagia Sophia, Blue Mosque, Bosporus bridge, Ortakoy, Topkapi and any others, then in Izmir such as House of Virgin Mary, Ephesus, Zeus Cave, Sirince Village, etc. But it’s just a few, two months is not enough to see all the good things in Turkey. Moreover I can meet a lot of people from other countries, share our minds, thoughts, or perception about some issues that happened in the world especially in Turkey.
This internship gave a lot of experience that I can’t forgot, I can learned a lot from this program, how to adapt in new country with have different season, deal with new people from different country, adapt to the new culture, deal with communication problem, and anything. I thanks to God for every moment that I can go through the program. Last word is I want to say a million thanks to committee of Meet My Friends in Kocaeli, all of you guys doing great, your hard work made a good result. Cok tessekurler. Turkiye cok Guzel
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