Now I’m new to this whole traveling thing and already I’m running into mental battles royale.

After a little over a week in Istanbul, general ideas about Turkish culture have floated through my head causing me to make rather quick judgments on what the people are like and who they really are. I’ve noticed things like many of the people here are trustworthy yet not trusting, passionate as all hell about pretty much everything, and aggressive in their interactions yet extremely helpful. I’ve formed these opinions from different interactions with friends, a lover, and even street vendors, but the truth is I’m finding it exceptionally difficult not to sit at home at night and wonder if I even have the right to come up with so many general assumptions after only being here for a week.

The point of the matter is, I’m sure we’re all pretty judgmental when we travel. We go to a place for a short period of time and say “Oh, the [insert specific nationality here] are so very [insert stereotype formed after a week in the country here]” and assume that we know everything about a culture after meeting one or two locals and listening to their opinions on their own country and people.

Let me ask you this, my fellow Americans, pretend you were some other nationality, taking an exploratory vacation to the United States. Say you coincidentally run into or have conversations with two different Americans: one a businessman in good ol’ NYC who you quickly learn has five, count ‘em FIVE mistresses, and the other a college student at Yale driving around in daddy’s Ferrari. This being said, what assumptions would you go back home with?

If someone judged you strictly on those two encounters with those two American citizens alone, wouldn’t you feel rather pigeonholed and robbed by what you truly believe is your national identity? This is in a nutshell why I’m all of a sudden beginning to feel this constant guilt about making any assumptions about the people here at all. As much as I may have all of these sweeping generalizations about what the Turkish are truly like, I have to mentally slap myself in the face to realize I know absolutely nothing. You can’t make a pattern with only a few interactions.

This does, on the other hand, make me much happier that I chose to travel with the JSO team, as it gives me the opportunity to spend three months in a place rather than make assumptions after a week. It also, unfortunately, makes me thoroughly bummed out that my knowledge of Turkish culture will not be fulfilled anytime in the near future as I merely have a couple weeks left here, and the clock is quickly ticking until my days in Vietnam. The point is, I think everyone travels in hopes of getting a better understanding of the world, but how much time does it really take to get a solid grasp on any culture? And how are our opinions formed on these cultures? By our own encounters, or is a mental picture already in your head due to stories from fellow travelers?