my greatest accomplishment.

Here I am on my last day in Turkey. This morning I woke up early with the morning ezan. The sky was beautiful outside cousin’s apartment, where I spent the night.

Things feel peaceful and calm. I’m disconnected from the world—cell phone, home phone, and internet are kaput. It’s an amazing feeling to realize that if I’m not at my apartment, no one can find me.

It leaves one feeling quite alone, though.

I’m all packed. The apartment has been cleaned. I’ve read all my books. Bills are paid and my bank account is closed. My hair has been cut for the last time at the wonderful old timey Fon Kuafor.

In other words: all the necessary preparations for leaving are complete.

Now, all I can do is wait.

And while I’m waiting, with nothing else to do, I can’t help but reflect on these past nine months. It’s been quite a trip, I’ve done so much and the time has just flown by without giving me a chance to catch my breath. The weather in Ankara has turned from frigid to scorching to frigid again, seemingly overnight. The sky is gray and threatens of rain and snow—it makes the colors outside my window seem that much more vibrant.

It feels like the day I arrived.

Oh, reflection, reflection, reflection. One can’t help but ask “in these nine months, what was my greatest accomplishment?”

After much consideration, I am finally able to answer:

That’s right, my greatest accomplishment lies in this 1-lb box of Frango chocolate mints...

In nine months, I ate them all.

You may think that’s not a big deal. But wait!

I deem this my greatest accomplishment because I had the willpower to not eat the whole box in one sitting! It doesn’t look like a lot, but there were many many many of those little delicious morsels in that box. Somehow, I actually managed to stretch this box out for nine whole months, nearly forgetting the last lovely sweet [oh, how could I?!?] until cleaning out the freezer in final preparation for departure.

Big pat on the back.

Ok, ok. So, that’s an accomplishment—no doubt—but I can’t, in my right or wrong mind, deem it my greatest accomplishment.

That honor would go to this...

Do you remember this project I started at the beginning? My roadmap of Turkey? Here is the first picture of it that I posted.

I remember being so excited then, feeling like it was already packed with pictures, thinking I’d already seen so much. Little did I realize how important this map would become to my time here in Turkey. It has been the prime motivator in getting me out and exploring. Whenever I was bored I’d walk over to the map with my LP in hand and study all the places I hadn’t seen, making it my goal to go go go.

And, I have. I have conquered Turkey. No, that’s not right. I have discovered Turkey? No, not right again. I have learned Turkey.

I have traveled around nearly every region of the country and I’ve had some incredibly good and some incredibly bad experiences. I met and spoke with so many people, which additionally resulted in serious improvement in my Turkish. I learned the systems and tricks to getting around and the best ways to visit or be a tourist. I discovered the nuances of various regions, the social, economic, cultural, and political differences. I’ve made friends and connections; I’ve learned that Turkish hospitality actually does exist outside of guidebook stories. I also learned where and when to trust the guidebook and where and when to just go.

I finally feel like I can talk about Turkey. Moreover, I feel like I can talk about Turkey and have something to say. I feel like I understand Turkey—in all its many hypocrisies—and I can finally speak of it with real authority, with real knowledge to support my statements. So, ask me some questions and we’ll see how incredibly wrong I really am! Oh, fun.

I haven’t even written about all the places I’ve been and all the things I’ve done, but I plan to keep this blog going even after I get back. I still have a lot to say, especially now that things are really heating up in this country. I also have so many pictures, it’s not even funny.

It is, no surprise, a bittersweet day in the life of Ay. I haven’t been feeling well, which unfortunately resulted in canceling a trip to the southeast [with things as they are now, however, that was a good thing in retrospect], and that’s a sad way to end my time here. Nonetheless, in getting ready to leave I’ve gotten to spend more time with my family and it’s been much fun…of course, that just results in making me not want to leave.

Yet, all good things must come to an end—perhaps this is how we can really realize how good it was?—and it’ll be good to start on my next life adventure [booming voice, booming voice].

And, it's not so bad because I know I’ll come back to Turkey. I have family here now—sure, I always had family here but I didn’t know them—and I do, really, truly, deeply love this country.

Sometime in these nine months I started calling Turkey “home.”