I was on the bus today with Fielding, the Fulbright teaching assistant with me in Isparta. She just arrived two days ago and you have no idea how excited I am to have another American here, let alone a female, let alone a woman who's been here before and speaks better Turkish, and is, to top it all off, a really wonderful person.
Anyway, today we were on the bus, on the way back from exploring the city for the first time by ourselves. I was so proud of us--we didn't get lost, we did everything we wanted to do, scoped out the town, and even bought bus tickets to Ankara (the capitol) for Tuesday morning.
On the bus back to campus, I noticed a girl with long, red hair and very pale skin. Fielding and I launched into a conversation about her. Was she local? Was she a foreign exchange student? There was no way she could be Turkish, right? I mean, her hair was so red! It was impossible, right? I told her that I'd sat on the bus next to a redhead on my bus trip back from Istanbul, and we both were quite surprised. "I could tell she dyed it," I told her. We were baffled by this girl. Who was she? Where was she from?
Suddenly, I realized something. "Oh god," I said, "We're acting like Turks. This must be how they talk about us!"
She laughed and nodded, and told me about times when she had overheard gossip about her. Then I said, "I wonder if they're all talking about us right now?"
We had our answer when we got off the bus at campus. I turned around for just a moment, to see a full bus of students watching our every move as we walked away, talking, nudging each other, smiling, wondering the same things we had wondered about the unusual pale girl with the beautiful red hair.
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