How I Met Your Mother and Other Essentials

I’m always a little bit wary about staying in the houses of people I don’t know. Not that I’m not thankful for it—I would rather not be homeless—but there’s always a little fear inside me that I will do something that’s greatly offensive to that host. What if I burp, and that’s the greatest taboo next to dancing around naked?

In order to experience all sides of Turkish customs and hospitality, staying with a host family for one night is on the agenda. This is an excellent idea, but as I said I was a little bit nervous about it. Not knowing what to expect, I sat in our van as the tour guide and driver navigated to the designated house. I knew that Sara, Julie, and I would be staying with a girl “around our age,” which could have meant 16 or 30. I didn’t know anything else.

So we waited until the driver pulled up to a row of apartments with a young woman standing out front. She was petite, with a kind face and a pretty but casual dress on. We heaved our luggage to her apartment and made ourselves comfortable. The first thing she did was ask us to take off our shoes and place them in a bin, and she gave us slippers to wear around her apartment. The apartment was nice, not very much different from my apartment in the US. It had a little kitchen, three bedrooms, a nice open living room, and a couple balconies. Unfortunately her parents were in a summer house at the time, so we didn’t get the whole “traditional family experience,” but seeing how an ordinary young Turkish person spent her night was just fine by me.

On Sunday, 12 June, the elections for Turkey’s parliament were going on. Our host was glued to the TV, anxiously awaiting the results of the country’s decision. Before the numbers started coming in, we watched some American and British TV shows that had Turkish subtitles. How I Met Your Mother was on, as well as Chuck and Camelot. Luckily the shows were in English, otherwise it would have been a lot less relaxing than it was. Later, when the tallies started being counted up, our host watched with disbelief and disappointment when the AKP (the conservative Islamist party) was getting a majority nationwide, and with even more votes than the last election. She had hoped that maybe the CHP (the democratic party) would get many more votes, but the people had spoken. We discussed the similarities and differences between the election process and politics in the US and Turkey. While whichever party gets the most votes in the US has pretty much all the power, parties in Turkey are represented proportionally, which relieves the power monopoly at least a little.

Our host was nice enough to order and buy us take out food, like pizza and pide. We figured she was a little distracted by the elections to want to take too much time to cook, but a mouthful of pide was completely satisfactory. We read and relaxed, and ultimately we had a nice night talking about what it’s like to live in Izmir and Turkey.

My home stay experience was not at all what I expected, but that’s what made it cool. After a week and a half of living in hotels and going to one historical site after another, it was nice to sit down, order food, and watch TV like the good ol’ times.