Adaptation

Culture Shock is the name of a club I belonged to in high school. Once a month, my sheltered suburban friends and I would take a supervised field trip to an ethnic restaurant or artistic venue around Chicago with the intention of expanding our cultural horizons and temporarily popping the bubble in which we lived. Thanks to Culture Shock, I ate Thai and Ethiopian food and watched profanity filled theatre for the first time. I wasn't fazed. I was inspired. I wanted more than just a culture shock here and here. I wanted permanent cultural electrocution.

A new colleague of mine is experiencing culture shock. Her extreme awe upon the oh-so-many things one must adapt to in order to acclimate to life in Turkey brought me back to the days a lifetime ago when I was a bright-eyed new teacher gung-ho about embarking on the adventure of a lifetime before I went through culture shock myself. As she navigates through the major roadblocks that now appear as anthills in the road here, I began to wonder when exactly I became used to....everything. As I am reminded on a daily basis, being a foreigner here is not always easy. You can always turn to your friends, another colleague advised: efes(Turkish beer) Smirnoff (Russian vodka) and, worst case scenario, raki(it'll grow hair on your chest).

As I tried to give my friend some advice on coping with her new surroundings that did not involve alcohol, the questions nagged at me: how did I ever get past the first semester? What had I done to survive the personally jolting paradigm shifts and schema altering experiences?

Well, that's easy.

I let go of my firm footing on the truth and learned to function in a moral vacuum, where I developed a fluid sense of self in order to cope with the uncertainty of my everyday existence.

But really, its not that bad.

However, writing this post requires that I grab my pint of Ben & Jerry's New York Chocolate Chunk, the one that cost me 15 lira. I'll be back.

*****

I only find myself ruminating on the nature of my existence in situations like this: while eating a plate of salty doner kebap with oily rice and washing it down with ayran, a thick salty yogurt drink that tastes so rich it could've come straight off the cow's teat were it not in a blue plastic bottle.
My thought process goes something like this:
My, what a slippery slope I've traveled from veggie burgers and soy milk to red meat and fatty dairy products.
Not only do I eat this stuff, but its the lunch I look forward to all week.
I've abandoned my principles and everything that defines me as a person.
What's become of me?
Who am I?


If I were define my character by the foods I ate, I just might determine that I am an equivocating flip flopper without much of a backbone. I'd rather not look at myself that way. So instead of taking myself as tried and true 100 percent Alizah, I can't look at external manifestations of my character as diamonds that will last forever. Rather, they are just cheap accessories that I can mix and match to complement my geographical coordinates.

Case in point:

Outside observer #1: "My, your ability to defer to authority and tread lightly across surreptitious social landmines hidden in the ancient history of a nation far below the epidermis of westernization is so becoming on you! That take-it-all-in-stride attitude, your knack for dealing with the unpredictability of everyday life without demanding better customer service or letting your American sense of entitlement get the best of you (because in Turkey, the customer is not always right)is so you! And you refrain from showing cleavage in public to boot! It all goes so well against the backdrop of that second world country still trying to figure itself out under the weight of tradition, the allure of secularism and modernity, and the opposing pulls of extreme nationalism and religious fundamentalism."

Outside observer #2: "But wait a minute, what about your outspoken cavalier attitude and penchant for challenging the status quo? You are a maverick with a desire to think outside the box and define yourself as a unique individual, are you not? Did your progressive liberal arts education mean nothing to you? Plus, that cleavage looks stunning against the backdrop of cultural imperialism, consumerism, and freedom and equality for one and all.

Riddle me this, my multicultural peeps and citizens of the world. How else could I deal with the fact youtube and imeem are blocked by the government due to questionable content? How else could one contend with all that seems completely ludicrous, illogical that leaves you dumbfounded, fuming in frustrating, or on the verge of tears without at the very least changing my character accessories?

So if I sit in the dark because I don't know the word for bulb, or eat the flesh of dead animals as I said I'd never do, or break my budget to buy overpriced gourmet ice cream because it gives me comfort, I try and tell myself its not because I'm lazy, or weak, or a pushover.

Call me flexible, call me a social chameleon, call me a poser if you will. At some point in life you are supposed to call into question everything you believed to be true. That's just par for the course. But still. Being able to adapt and fit in everywhere is a hefty price to pay for never being able to completely fit in anywhere, ever again.