Reflect upon what you have learned about the culture(s) you have been studying.
As I admitted in my first cultural post for this semester, I did not really have as an in depth understanding about Turkish culture as I could have. Most of the aspects of culture that I learned was pretty broad and non-specific to different regions of Turkey (but, at the same time, I think that that was fair considering that I was simultaneously learning a lot of words and grammatical structures that were completely foreign to me). This semester, I believe that I did a fairly good job focusing on different regions of the country. I had several lessons with Gökhan, in which he would tell me some history about different regions of the country in Turkish. He had to speak really slow and repeat a lot of new words for me but I think it worked out for the most part haha.
Of all the cultural topics that we learned, I think my favorite was finding out that there is apparently this honey called deli bal made in northeastern Turkey that can make you high if you take a really small amount!!! It can kill you if you take too much. Isn’t that crazy?! The Turks actually gave some of this honey to some Greeks to stop an invasion at one point. It’s kind of scary but really cool at the same time.
I did not want to bore you with the science behind it, but here is a link for more information about this if you are interested! https://modernfarmer.com/2014/09/strange-history-hallucinogenic-mad-honey/
All in all, it has been a fun semester! Hopefully, I can go to Turkey soon!
Comments