Wow...so after all of this, I'm only in Istanbul for 2 more weeks. I’ve got 5 finals, a 20-page paper, and loads of revisiting my favorite sites around the city to do before I fly home. I’ve gotten pretty accustomed to Istanbul; the traffic, the Bogaz, the Akbils, the random 400-year-old ruins peeking their heads out, so I'm not sure what to expect when I return. It's almost like I have to run through the whole "don't go to America expecting anything...just embrace whatever you find there," thing that I had to do before coming to Istanbul.
Which is funny, because no matter how hard I try, I'm always setting out goals and expectations to fit the stereotype of what I'm planning to experience. Even if I consciously try not to. And don't shake your head at me, you do it to. At least Marco Polo famously went East expecting to see Unicorns and ended up explaining how ugly unicorns are. Our preconceptions form our worldview, no matter how hard we try to run from them.
I think I did a decent job, though, coming to Turkey on a blank slate. I've learned a lot here without just confirming what I always thought (I'm not even sure what I always thought, to be honest. But it wasn't this). I could go into detail here, but I’d rather not bore you. If you really want to know, when I come home ask for the “lets get coffee and talk for a few hours” version of my semester instead of the “5 minute, it was great” one.
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