Hana Dingle
ISEP Exchange: Yasar University
Major: Political Science
Pre-departure Post
Merhaba! That’s hello in Turkish, and is currently the limit of my Turkish language abilities. I’m Hana Dingle, a political science student in my final semester at UMBC. I am a UMBC Education Abroad Ambassador this semester, so I’ll be sharing blog posts every 2 weeks.
I leave in a week for Izmir, Turkiye which is a port city on the Aegean Sea. I will be attending Yasar University for International Relations, where I will get to take classes on EU-Turkiye Relations, Rising World Powers, and other specific courses UMBC does not offer. I don’t get to sign up for my classes until I arrive, but I have my eye on the History of Turkish Foreign Policy and the EU’s foreign policy towards the Middle East and North Africa. I’m going through a program called ISEP, where you pay UMBC tuition and room and board instead of paying the host university, and you can keep all your UMBC scholarships. ISEP has made studying abroad much more accessible for me than it would have been otherwise.
I chose Turkiye because I want to learn Turkish and UMBC does not offer it, and immersion is supposed to be the best way to learn a language. I’ve been using an app to increase my language skills before I go, but I haven’t gotten very far. I think it will be easier to learn the language by immersion than through the phone. Further, I am interested in learning more about the politics and international relations in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. If I like the university this semester I will be applying to graduate school in international relations at Yasar so that I can study Turkish more thoroughly while working on my graduate degree. I’m not anticipating much culture shock, but I know it will hit me hard once I get there.
I’m mostly excited, but I’m also a little nervous to go to a country where I don’t know anyone or speak the language. I’m in a group chat with other students who will be at the university, so that helps some. We’ll all be arriving the same day, so I’m hoping I don’t have to figure out how to taxi from the airport to the dorms by myself.
I’ve been abroad numerous times, but never alone. I’m not worried about the flight because I lived in Japan as a kid and flew back and forth a lot, but I’m a little nervous about getting through customs with 6 months’ worth of medication. I’m trying to pack as lightly as I can by only bringing one checked bag and a backpacking backpack as a carry-on. I’ve had to pair down my clothes a lot, and I’m only bringing 2 pairs of shoes. I’m preparing as much as I can by getting portable chargers, an adaptor because of the different voltage there, and a million other things that I might need while I’m abroad. Luckily, the weather in Izmir ranges from 45 degrees F in January to 80 degrees in July. Due to this, I’m mostly packing short sleeves and jackets, as I won’t need any heavy-duty clothing that will take up valuable space.
I also have some travel planned while I’m there. I’ve spent hours researching everything there is to see in Izmir and the surrounding cities. I want to visit some Greek islands nearby throughout the semester, along with Ephesus which is a city of ancient ruins just a few hours away. Navigating my way there using public transportation should be an adventure. Pamukkale is also on my list, and it is a nature preserve made up of thermal pools you can swim in. Additionally, I plan on ferrying over to Greece for a week once my classes are done, so I have had to pack carefully to travel with just a backpack.
I have a friend whose brother lives in Turkey, so I’ve gotten a lot of advice from them. The tip that stands out the most is that morning in Turkey is for tea and cigarettes. I don’t plan on taking up smoking, but I will happily drink my weight in tea. I’m especially excited about finding tea at the bazaar. The bazaar is a huge market in the city center that sells food, jewelry, clothes, and home goods. However, I’m nervous because I think haggling is the expectation, and I don’t think I’d be very good at that. There will also be an artichoke festival and an herb festival in some towns nearby that I’m looking forward to attending.
Overall, I have much to look forward to in Turkiye, and while I’m a little nervous about navigation and culture shock, I think it will be a great experience.
In-Country Post 1
I arrived in Turkiye two days ago and was exhausted. My parents dropped me off at the airport around 3 on Sunday and my flight was supposed to leave at 6, but got delayed and didn’t actually leave until 7:30, which was bad because I only had a two hour layover in Frankfurt before continuing on to Izmir. The flight was seven and a half hours, but I had an empty seat next to me so I could stretch out. When the plane landed I checked my boarding pass and saw that my next plane was supposed to leave in 15 minutes, so I had to sprint across the airport up and down a million flights of stairs and take a train to get to a completely different building where my departure gate was. By the time I got to the gate I was certain I had missed my flight by a solid 20 minutes at least so I asked the desk clerk if I could get on the next flight to Izmir and he said that my flight had not boarded yet. As it turns out, the time on the boarding pass was different from the time of the actual flight so I still made it in time for boarding. While I was waiting to board I ran into another girl from my ISEP program, so I had someone to get a taxi with to the dorms. Once we got to the airport we got our passports stamped and left. There was no customs or anything, which I thought was interesting. I was under the impression there were going to be more hurdles involved in entering the country. Further, the bathroom in the Izmir airport was literally just a hole in the ground, which was an adjustment. When we got to the dorms I couldn’t get in because there was a paperwork issue that had not gone through yet, so I waited for it to go through at the coffee shop across the street and read for a few hours while it was drizzling. It was stressful not knowing when the paperwork would go through and trying to coordinate it with my parents at home on limited service, but it was 60 degrees and there were palm trees and several cats wandering around, so it was overall pretty pleasant though uncertain.
Once we got settled in, we explored some of the city around the dorms. The campus is two blocks away from the dorm buildings, and I had to walk twenty minutes to a photo shop to get passport photos because the photos I had for my original application were the wrong kind. On the way, I passed various food stands with donor kebabs and these special types of rolls I plan on trying in the next few weeks. There were also plenty of stray dogs wandering around or laying on the sidewalk. They were different from American dogs in that they just minded their own business and left me alone completely. They just acted like you weren’t there, and people stepped over or around them if they were in the way. Most people here don’t speak English, but navigating hasn’t been as hard as you would think despite that. I get by mostly with gestures, and I know how to say hello and thank you which actually gets me pretty far in basic interactions like buying things. Even though I cannot read Turkish, I’ve learned that if the sign is blue or yellow it is probably a grocery store, so I can mostly function without the language so far. There is a huge smoking culture here. It seems like every other person out on the street is smoking, and there is generally a smoke smell in the air, but I got used to it pretty quickly and barely notice it now.
The food in the cafeteria is pretty basic but good. The way it works is you get to choose 4 things and then you use a meal swipe. So far I have gotten something different every time to try it out and see what I like. At dinner, there is always a stew or soup option with meat or vegetables in it. That is usually pretty good. Then there is always some type of rice and what I believe is potato soup. I have no idea what the dessert options are made of, but there usually seems to be some sort of coconut or gelatin involved. There is also this yogurt drink that is really popular. It tastes kind of salty and is definitely an acquired taste. For breakfast, there is cereal, along with tomatoes, cucumbers, olives, cheese, and a variety of dressings you can put on the vegetables.
I will say that I’ve made one huge mistake since being here, and that was drinking the water. Apparently the tap water in Izmir is undrinkable and the locals don’t drink it either, but I wasn’t told that until after I had already drank several water bottles full of the tap water. It made me really sick for about a day, but I went to the store and drank clean water and juice constantly for two days until I felt mostly better. I’m still having some stomach issues from the bad water, so I would suggest anyone who studies abroad finds out if the water is safe to drink before trying it because it’s a painful mistake to make, even though it works itself out after a few days.
In-Country Post 2
I have now been in Izmir for a little over two weeks. So far the culture here seems more laid back than at university in the States. A large difference between Turkish and American universities is that the people here dress more fashionably than students do in the States. The women all wear very fashionable coats and scarves, so even when I wear my fanciest clothes, I look underdressed. Teachers are regularly late for their classes, and students spend much of their time hanging out with their friends in coffee shops. Coffee shops are the cornerstone of student life here. I walk past at least 6 on the way to the main campus, 
and they are always full of students. Whenever I meet new people, they ask to get coffee, and it turns into a four or five-hour ordeal where everyone sits around drinking coffee, smoking, and talking. The coffee shops are open until 2 am here and are often full until closing. People stay up very late here in general. The international club threw a welcome party for all of the international students at every university in Izmir to meet each other, and my friends and I did not get back to the dorms until 3 am.
School is a little more disorganized here than it is in America. Everyone picks classes the week before they start and hopes to get into some that fulfill their degree requirements because class sizes are small. I got thrown into a lot of classes that were not on my list, but they still sound interesting. The most notable classes I am taking are Turkish, Migration in the Euro-Mediterranean Space, and Armed War and Conflict. The classes here also meet only once a week for 3 hours at a time, which is completely different from my experience at UMBC. I like that I don’t have useless free time between classes now, but it means I have to lengthen my attention span by a significant amount.
The weather here has been around 55 degrees for the past two weeks, and everyone here still wears heavy coats in that weather. It’s much sunnier here than at home, but there is so much wind, so I have to wear a jacket even when it is warm.
Many people in the dorms feed the cats, so there is always at least one in the hallway right outside my door trying to get in. Sometimes, it meows loudly in the middle of the night and wakes everyone up. One time, I was heading to my room when I got stuck in the corner because two cats started fighting near me, which was a downside, but usually, I am happy about seeing cats everywhere.
Now that I’m settled in, I’ve done a good deal of exploring. I visited Konak, the most downtown part of the city, where there is a huge bazaar full of shops. The bazaar is made up of tons of streets and alleyways and seems impossible to navigate at this point. There is a section of the bazaar for basically anything you could need to buy, and many of the locals do all their shopping there. There is a huge seafood section, restaurant section, jewelry section, and many more. There are also plenty of stands that have sweets and pastries. So far, my favorite is called a simit, which is a circular bread covered in sesame seeds. I regularly go out and find a stand that sells simits, so I can bring one back to my dorm and eat it with the fancy cheese I got from the grocery store. Grocery stores here have huge cheese and yogurt sections with a much bigger selection than at home.
I also visited an open-air museum called the Agora in Konak. The Agora is made up of ruins of an underground marketplace that belonged to the city of Smyrna, which is what Izmir was called when it was a part of ancient Greece. There is a section devoted to an Ottoman cemetery that was on the grounds during that era.
So far, my favorite part of the city is the sidewalk by the ocean. If you look in one direction you can see super far out into the Aegean Sea, and if you turn around you see a huge sprawling city and enormous mountains. There are even stands that sell muscles to eat while you walk along the sea.
Being here for the past two weeks has been mostly full of positives, but the main thing that has been hard is finding time to call my family since there is an eight-hour time difference. By the time they’re all off of work, it is 1 AM here. Usually, I’m someone who would go to bed by 11, but between staying late at coffee shops with new friends I’ve made and calling people back home, I never get to bed before 2 AM. It’s not a great system since I have class at 9:30 several times a week, and I don’t function well on little sleep.
Overall, I’ve seen some really cool places since I’ve been here, and I’m excited to explore more of the city and meet more new people.
In-Country Post 3
I’ve been in Izmir for a month now. I’ve gotten into a routine of going to classes, getting coffee with friends, and going to the grocery store. I have to go get groceries much more often than in America because the food goes bad faster here. I love being here and living so close to the water in such a pretty place, but I do miss some of the unlimited food options I had in America. I found a great donor place that has great fries with a sauce I’ve never had before that is honestly a game-changer. I think there are multiple burger places near my dorm, so I can find classic American food whenever I want, but I especially miss sushi and tacos.
Last week, a friend and I went to visit this historic elevator in the city where you can see the water. We took the metro into a part of the city we’d never been to before and had to walk downhill for 20 minutes to get to the tower. It was so steep that there were stairs instead of a sidewalk next to the road and sometimes we had to just walk in the road instead of along the side. The view was great, and we could see super far. It was incredible watching the sun go down over the water and the city. The walk back up towards the metro was strenuous. It was dark by then and we did not remember the exact way back so we wound up weaving between residential streets. When we were on the metro on the way back to the dorms this older lady sat across from us and started talking to me in rapid Turkish. I tried to explain that I didn’t speak Turkish as best as I could, so she started trying to guess where I was from. We told her where we were from, and she pointed to herself and said she was from Albania. Then she started pointing at things and saying the Turkish word for them, so we joined in and showed her all of the vocabulary we’d picked up. It was fun practicing Turkish with her, and I learned a few new words. She was by far the friendliest person I’ve met so far. Then when we reached a point where we couldn’t say anymore she gestured to a guy sitting across the car from us to come over and sit with us. He spoke some English, so he translated the questions she was trying to ask and we all talked for a few stops until we reached our stop.
I’ve been trying to do as many new things as possible while I’m here. Last week my friends and I went and got our nails done, which I had never done before. I set up the appointments through WhatsApp by using Google Translate to communicate in Turkish, and that was honestly the hardest part. The actual appointment was simple and easy. We used Google Translate to communicate when needed, and I tried to use my minimal conversational skills to ask people’s names and how they were. Ultimately, it was a good experience, and I will go again. The people were super nice, and they giggled every time I tried to speak Turkish, so my pronunciation could probably be better.
One of my favorite pastimes here is sitting by the water at night. There are stands selling muscles, roasted chestnuts, and cotton candy. One night I got a large bag of muscles to sit by the water with, which wound up being a bad move because I was already a little bit sick and I ended up throwing them up, but it was worth it. I stayed sick for around 5 days before I woke up one day feeling much worse and
went to the doctor on campus who told me to go to the hospital. Getting admitted to the hospital was a little bit rough because I didn’t have my residence permit yet, so they didn’t know what to do with me. Once they admitted me though I got a bed immediately and they started running tests, which is much faster than any time I’ve been to the ER in Maryland. I was there for three hours and they gave me medication, ran my bloodwork three times, and determined that I did not have appendicitis. I think some of our communication got lost in translation because we communicated exclusively through Google Translate, and I have no idea what meds they gave me or what teststhey ran. Going to the hospital in a foreign country was a little bit scary. I kept my family in the loop, but ultimately I had to advocate for myself when I did not speak the language, which was difficult.
Overall, I’ve settled into a pretty simple routine and life has gotten easier when I stick to it. That’s why I’ve been trying to explore more and keep doing new hard things even though it’s uncomfortable.