Killer Dogs on Campus!!!

We were about forty-five minutes into our run when we heard them. The barking in the distance; a sound I have learned to fear…

We had received daily warnings from our saint-like host students and the Middle Eastern Technological University’s study abroad office about the starved packs of wild dogs that roamed the several thousand acres of forests and hills that surround our campus; semi-wild beasts just waiting for a foolish student to stray into their wooded domain. Despite these warnings we had decided that this same forest was preferable to the muddy, clay road that we had started our jog on.

It began with a shrill bark that came from somewhere off to our left. It took a moment before I realized what this barking meant; like Sam Nealson in Jurassic Park, we were being tracked. It was at that instant that I saw the pack. I felt like Arrowin racing to get Frodo (in this case Eric Dunford) back to Elvin domain when she sees the ring-wraiths through the trees, the undead servants of evil that she thought she had outwitted. There were eight of them running parallel to us, out about 200 meters. The adrenaline main-lined and we decided that we could out run them if we really pushed it and we cut to our right. However, after a few second we realized the futility in this as the pack ran through the woods to circle in front of us, trying to cut off our potential escape route in classic sweeper formation.

It was then that we started to think that maybe our evolutionary advantage was not our speed but brains that were larger than the size of a walnut. When this light bulb flicked on in my head I turned to Eric, who by this point was armed with a semi-rotten stick in one hand and a large rock in the other (I had been unable to find such suitable weapons and thus stood empty handed), and told him that maybe we should try running back the way we came to confuse them. He agreed that perhaps this made more sense than trying to out run animals that could obviously outpace two out-of-shape Americans. As we ran back up the symmetrically forested hill (all the trees had been planted at the wish of Ataturk who thought that Turkey did not have enough forests) I was grateful that despite Eric’s superior weaponry he had, in the last three days, smoked 4 packs of Turkey’s strongest cigarettes, giving me a distinct advantage should the dogs catch up to us, and the old adage of not having to be faster than the bear, just your friend, come true.

Thankfully it did not come to this. After an exhausting sprint across rocky fields, down eroding sedimentary hillsides, and about six rolled ankles later we finally were able to outsmart the starving canines and make our way back to the wet clay road. From here it was an anxious half-mile down a steep hill to the border of campus, past which these feral killing machines transformed back into man’s best friend.

Coming to Turkey

The first segment of my trip to Turkey began about three and half weeks before I actually left the country. I flew back to Chicago, leaving a on a balmy forty degree Colorado day and arriving to sunny, negative ten degree Chicago evening; weather that even my Michelin Tireman down coat could not insulate me from.

It had been hard decision for me, trying to decide whether or not I wanted to go to Turkey for the semester or return to Beloit College. Though I had been more than ready to leave for a year abroad at the end of my sophomore year, the longer I was away from Beloit the more I missed my college and the people there. However, in the end I decided that while another semester at Beloit would undoubtedly be fun and enjoyable, in the long term a semester studying in Ankara would be a more rewarding experience. My decision was also shaped by the fact that my program at METU (Middle Eastern Technological University) did not start until early February; three weeks after Beloit’s semester began. Thus I figured that I would be able to have my cake and eat it too; I would be able to go spend nearly a month with the people I had missed at a place I loved and I would also be able to spend my semester in Ankara, having what I hoped would be a life changing experience.

The weeks at Beloit were better than I could have hoped and positively flew by. Along with having a great time catching up with wonderful friends, those three weeks also helped me a great deal to figure out and come to terms with the fact that people and places never stay the same as you remember them; a fact you would think I would have realized by now. But somehow the changes that occur in people in my absence always seem to surprise me.


After this relatively brief honeymoon period I was off again back to Chicago O’Hare. This time leaving to Frankfurt, Germany, a city that I feel has become like my second home with the amount of time that I have spent there in the last 9 months during a few several day layovers. This layover, however, only lasted four hours, just time enough for me to grab a bratwurst and beer (when in Rome…) from one of the airport restaurants and to catch up on some of the goings on in the world at a newspaper kiosk.

Through some strange stroke of luck EB, one of the two other Beloit students who was doing this same program with me, ended up on the same flight to as me from Frankfurt to Ankara. We caught up briefly before taking the bus out to some obscure corner of the tarmac to board the Turkish Airlines 777 and once aboard took our seats at opposite ends of the plane.

The interior of the plane looked like something out of a movie from the 1970’s; the upholstery was a light teal highlighted by the kind of pink you see on old women’s hats on Eastern Sunday. The beautiful flight attendants were dressed accordingly and, had they not been constantly moving, serving us drinks and some kind of delicious cheese pastry, would have ran the risk of blending in with the hilarious background and going unnoticed.

We landed and deplaned at Ankara’s beautiful, new international airport, an airport that was surprisingly empty for 7pm on a Sunday night. I said a little prayer of thanks after seeing that my bag had managed to keep up with me (a feat that happens much less often than I would like) and waited for EB to collect her luggage. She was equally lucky and together we left the terminal to meet our hosts.

I was the first to see the three Turkish host students that came to meet us. Three people whom I now have no doubt are reincarnations of the buddha of compassion, so great is their patience and so much have they helped us. Firat, my chain-smoking, Kurdish host student who looks exactly as I would envision a Turkish Raskolnikov, met me with a smile and a handshake but told me that, as he had to wait for another student who would be arriving at 2am, it would be better to for me to drive back to campus with his two friends and he would meet me outside my dorm tomorrow morning. Those two friends were Orkaun and Merve, EB’s host students. They are both engineers and one of the cutest couples I have ever seen. Orkaun took us to his Ford Focus and, after helping us load our bags into the trunk, proceeded to rocket us back to campus doing things with his car I never thought a Ford capable of.

After we had dropped our bags off at our dorms, Orkaun and Merve took us down to the campus shopping center for our first Turkish meal. Over our Beyti Kebabs we got to know a little more about our host students, and by the time I had finished both my kebab and EB’s and Merve’s, I felt sure that if the rest of the Turks I met were anything like the three I had met so far this would be a pretty good semester.

I returned to my empty four-person room, a stark and lonely environment in comparison to the one I left at Beloit, and, too exhausted to care about the lack of sheets on my IKEA-esque bunk, collapsed onto my bare mattress and fell quickly to sleep.


I was in Turkey.