This year, I've spoken more Turkish than English. It is because, I'm lucky enough to have met two Turkish girls at orientation and they turned out to be wonderful friends.

The reason this post is in English, however, is that the thought that inspired the post happened to be in English. I put moisturizer on my hands and it felt so good that I could almost hear my skin soaking up the cream.

Since speaking in Turkish has become a much more major part of my life, it's become easier to switch between the two languages. Last year, for example, I hardly ever spoke Turkish. I wrote in Turkish and I also read in Turkish, but my thought processes were almost always in English. (Except when I count and do math in general. It is almost impossible for me to carry out a calculation in English in my head, the numbers seem so much simpler in Turkish. Switching to Turkish almost automatic when I am stressed out or very tired also.) So when I went home last year, and even before that, it would take some time for me to get the swing of conversing in my own language. I could almost feel the patterns, my vocabulary, the names for things transforming from one language to another. This year, it is different though. Because I never had the chance to lose my ease with Turkish, I never had to struggle to gain it back. Although it makes me wonder if my English speaking skills have deteriorated.

This whole rant (which is, I am aware, in no way a unique experience) reminded me of an incident in my freshman year. It was midterms time in spring and I had a calculus exam as well as a big physics problem set due the next day. I was walking to the campus centre with my friend Indrani, with whom I was studying, and also realizing that there was no way I was going to be able to cover everything before the midterm. I was suggesting we find the professor, and to my horror, for the first, and hopefully the last time in my life, my accent became Turkish! It's not like I don't have an accent, but it is not the typical Turkish accent, except for that night. I wonder how it happens. Does the part of your brain that controls the different sounds and intonations you make shut down under extreme stress?