Beer, Politics, and How NOT to be a Stupid American

February 6-7

On February 6 and 7 we had some of our CIEE orientation, we met the people in charge as well as the other students going through our program. There are about 35 CIEE, out of about 140 total exchange students this semester. Of the CIEE kids, all go to American universities and all but two are American. Everyone seems to be pretty nice, we are all keeping an open mind. There are 4 of us from Clark University, we're the biggest single school amongst the CIEE group, who come from all over  the U.S.

Along with orientation, we have been assigned mentors, Koç students who have volunteered to be our guide to the university and Turkey. Mine is named Fulya, and she is awesome to put it simply. On the second day of orientation, after taking us into Sarıyer, the northermost district of Istanbul, where Koç to buy cell phones and exchange currency, she took us by ferry to a much more lively part of the city called Beşiktaş (besh-eek-tash). There we met up with Fulya's boyfriend and went to a bar called Beerpoint where we had beer and proceeded to discuss over the course of about two hours issues like religion, politics, and Turkish culture.

One of the boys (who is an proud libertarian-Republican "social darwinist") told Fulya's boyfriend that he shouldn't introduce himself as a Muslim to Americans, because they will have a negative reaction. Not surprisingly, he took offense to this, despite being a secular son of two communists. It is interesting to see how even though many Turks are very nonreligious, they still consider themselves Muslim and take great offense at the stereotypes many Americans have. I just consider it totally rude for someone who is a guest in another country to start telling his hosts how they should act. American exceptionalism at its worst if you ask me. I am so sick of people being terrified of people simply because they are Muslim, clearly most people who are have never met a Muslim before. I can remember last summer when I got into an intense argument with a coworker of mine over whether or not ALL Muslims wanted to kill Americans. At this point I have been in Turkey, a country which is at least 95% Muslim, for over a week and not ONE person had tried to kill me or even tell me how much they hate Americans.

Anyway, after beer, Fulya took us to to a Turkish restaurant where we had kebabs, which actually come in wraps rather than on stakes here. Then we went back to school.