Istanbul, Turkey

Day Four.

2009-09-11T14:12:00.000-07:00

For the first time since I have been here, I woke up in a bad mood. I couldn’t fall asleep again last night and was very tired this morning. I was getting homesick for sleeping in as much as I want. How sad is that? Plus I thought I was starting to catch a cold. Tugce is taking driving classes, so she was already gone when I woke up. I washed up and went into the kitchen, where Anne asked me to unload the dishes from the dish washer. After I did that she told me to sit down and write vocab like I was last night. I didn’t want to, but I did, of course. I finished the one from last night and then she had me write “nasilsiniz?” a formal way of saying “how are you?” which I already knew. While I was doing that and breakfast was cooking, Anne wrote down the alphabet and had me pronounce everything. I am having a hard time with the accented u and sometimes o. I finished nasilsiniz and copied the alphabet like three times when breakfast was done.

Anne made this very good meal of fresh dough stuffed with cheese and fried. So bad for me, but so very good. I ate like three of them (they’re the size of an Oreo) and tried to tell her I was done. She wouldn’t hear it and made me a HUGE one the size of my hand. I only ate half of it and then stopped. I did have three cups of tea though. (I am so going to be addicted to caffeine by the time I get home.)

We started talking (and by talking I mean her talking very slowly with lots of gestures and me trying to understand) and my bad mood was suddenly gone. She was talking about Tugce and Ayce. About how Ayce is usually the happy one and Tugce is the grumpier of the two, but she has been a lot happier since I came. Apparently she already loves me, which is good because I love her already. (I was sitting last night when it finally dawned on me that I have a SISTER now and that I’m the baby, not the eldest.) She also talked about driving. I think she said they are getting a new car around Christmas because both her and Tugce will be driving, but Baba takes the car to work every day.

After breakfast she took me to the living room and started pulling out games. Without any English, she taught me how to play four board games – one that has tiles and numbers, one having to do with sticks and starts with an M, dominos, and backgammon. Then she showed me some photo albums of her childhood and from when she met Baba on. After that we played backgammon for an hour at least. I won every game but one (but she was helping me).

Then I went and checked my mail. Tawni (another exchange student here) doesn’t think that we are going to change families; she heard that we’re not. I’m kind of glad, because even though the point of having so many families is to get to see the difference between the culture and what is just something the family does, I would like to stay here. They’re so nice. They spoil me.

Anne and I left soon after that. We took the midibus (I had an easier time standing!) to Pendik. From there we took another midibus all the way to Tuzla and then walked to a café where Tugce met us. She ordered both of us a hamburger and Anne had a plate of something that looked like fried bread stuff with meat. I had a couple and they reminded me of one of my favorite Indian foods, Samosas. When we got our food, a cat came over and started meowing. Apparently this isn’t weird because most people ignored it. Tugce, on the other hand, chased it away from us, but it kept coming back. It left me alone after I showed it my empty plate though.

Anne went to a store where you buy things like trays or mini chests and then paint them. Teyze was there too; it is her and Anne’s hobby. While they did that, Tugce took me around and showed me the Marmara Sea – sooooo beautiful! We looked at some stores and she bought a pair of earings. I wanted to buy this pretty necklace but my money is still in US dollars and not Turkish liras. I need to talk to my counselor about that when I meet him Sunday. Hopefully he can set up my bank account so I can just deposit it there and not have to worry. We got some fresh bread and then met Anne and Teyze and rode home in Teyze’s car.

Baba was home by the time we got there and Anne started dinner right away. I wasn’t too hungry because we had a late breakfast and early lunch. I finally had the vine leaves meal, called Dolma (but I’m not sure if that is how you spell it), and it was really good with lemons squeezed on top. Anne made more of the bread, but it wasn’t stuff with cheese, so I only had one.

I had been in my room, practicing Turkish, when I heard a woman come from upstairs (my home is a duplex so we have a door upstairs and downstairs). Tugce and I went upstairs and it turned out to be these two sisters that were friends with Anne. One of them, though, apparently does threading for eyebrows and things. While Anne was getting hers done, Tugce asked if I wanted it. I was a bit nervous, because I have never threaded my eyebrows, (I’ve never plucked, waxed or anything. I have been told it doesn’t look bas so I never bothered) but I decided to give it a try. They said it wouldn’t hurt. They LIED. But it ended up looking really good. The lady tried to tell me something after, but I couldn’t figure out what and Tugce couldn’t translate it. We tried using Google translator, but it came up as “From now on, use a safety blade on your face” and that just confused me even more. So the woman ended up called Can and telling him to translate it. Apparently she was saying “from now on, I will do your eyebrows so don’t do anything to them” and he sounded embarrassed while he said it. We all laughed for like a good five minutes.

After they left, we cleaned up the table in the room. Tugce had brought up some papery chocolate pudding type of thing that was really good, but I was too full to eat too much of it because we had strawberry pudding for dessert earlier. I washed up for bed and noticed that my mp3 player was dying. I plugged it in and luckily it still works while it’s charging (I’ve never checked to try). I fell asleep watching Brokeback Mountain again. I need a new movie. Can told me that downloading is legal in Turkey so if they have internet at the hotel we are staying at for camp, I am SO getting some new ones.

Day Three.

2009-09-11T14:09:00.000-07:00

I had a hard time falling asleep last night, so I watched a movie on my mp3 player for about an hour and a half, before I fell asleep. That being said, I like Brokeback Mountain a lot better the second time. (Random, I know, but it really was much better the second time…that or my tastes in movies has changed, which is very much possible.) I woke up later this morning, at like nine. My home is always quiet, so as soon as I opened my door, Anne heard me from upstairs and asked if I was hungry. I wasn’t too hungry, but it was breakfast time and you always eat with someone in Turkey apparently, so I said yes. She told me to go watch TV while she cooked and I watched some little kid show.

At the same time, it started to rain. It had been raining last night, but it was getting pretty hard. It was so pretty though. I tried taking a picture, but you couldn’t tell. It thundered and the power went out for a bit. It was still kind of light though, so I could see perfectly fine. I went into the kitchen and asked Anne if she wanted help, but she just said “Sonra”, which means later, which means to help clear the table after. The food was still hot because they have gas stoves here or at least this building does. So I sat down and she served me this hash brown type of thing that was red with an egg on top. It looked weird, but it was really good. I also had some fries and some pida bread with jam and Turkish tea, of course. (I swear, I am going to get addicted to it!)

Half way through the meal, Can and Teyze knocked on our door. Can told me that it never rains, so they woke up to it and freaked because all their windows were open. Teyze and Anne talked for a bit in Turkish, so I don’t really know what they were saying, but then Can and Teyze went inside. When I sat back down at the table, Anne, after a couple of attempts, told me that Teyze was coming over for breakfast. When she came, like ten minutes later, I went with Anne to the door and she gave me a hug and kisses on the cheeks. At the table she asked “Nasilsin?” which means “how are you?”. She laughed when I tried to answer because I knew how to say fine in Turkish, but I couldn’t pronounce it. When I finally got it right, I added “sen nasilsin?” which means “and how are you?”. Apparently that really impressed Anne and Teyze because they were high fiving each other and me.

They talked for a lot of breakfast, very fast and in Turkish, so I caught like every tenth or twentieth word. Teyze tried to ask me something about the rain and I tried to tell her that I love rain, but that didn’t work out so well. We both got confused. Tugce came in after ten or fifteen minutes. She had been at her college registering for classes (she wanted me to go with her and meet her friends, but Anne wanted me to stay with her for the week until I got more used to Turkey). She had to climb up all the stairs because the power still wasn’t back and she was already tired from running to the home (we live up a very steep hill) so when Anne asked “Nasilsin?” she said something in Turkish and then “I am not fine!”

Tugce changed clothes and Anne gave her some breakfast too. I was able to get a little more involved in the conversation when she was there because she could understand me and told me what to say in Turkish. I helped Anne and Tugce do the dishes when after breakfast and then went to write my report for Rotary. As soon as I was finished, I saw Tugce vacuuming (I think it was vacuuming; it worked like a vacuum, but also had brushes on it or something) (and even though the house is already spotless and they have a maid that comes once a week, they are always cleaning) and asked if she needed any help. She asked me to vacuum my room, which only took me like five minutes because my room is smaller than in Texas and the floor is wooden.

After that Anne asked me to help her make something. It was vine leaves and we put rice into them and rolled them up. Think of an eggroll made of something like cabbage and filled with rice instead. I don’t know why we made them though, because we didn’t eat them for lunch or dinner today. Anne and Tuge said I did a good job rolling them up, but they were probably just saying that because mine looked horrible compared to theirs. Tugce was probably doing them better than that when she was a kid, haha.

Tugce told me I could use the computer, so I went to check my mail and my Facebook. My dad is working on getting my Blackberry to work here and I talked to some of the other girls who are exchanged here as well. I took pictures of my room and posted them online. Apparently a lot of the girls exchanged into families with guys so they have plain boy rooms and I have a cute, girly room that’s decorated. (Thank you, Ayce!) I got offline just in time to have a light lunch.

Right after that, a lady came to the door. She and Anne and Tugce and Teyze (who had heard us and come outside to see) talked for a bit. When the lady left, Teyze told us to come over and we went into the room where they keep Satzi, their female cat, and her two kittens. Can came in because they wanted him to translate for me again, haha.

He asked how my Turkish was coming and if I needed any help. Why is it that I always blank on what I need help with when someone asks? But we laughed because I am supposed to be learning Turkish, and I have a bit, but Anne and Tugce’s English has gotten like ten times better in these three days. Even Teyze, who usually doesn’t speak to people in other languages because she believes people in Turkey should learn Turkish (which makes sense because if you go to France, you better speak English or prepare to be ignored and the same goes with the US; but then again, I am trying), has gotten better. She was able to tell me that ben means “me” and sen means “you.” Can stared at her for a minute because he was in shock that his mom knew that much, haha.

Once that was over, Can told me that the environment here is that everyone is family. You are never a burden, so if I need something, don’t worry about asking for it. He also told me that he is off of school all of this week so he will be home if I get bored. He then added that he has classes next week, but isn’t going to them because his friends aren’t because of Ramadan. That somehow led to a conversation about the type of Muslim I am and the difference between it and “regular” Muslims. Then, somehow, we got back onto the subject of Texas. Teyze said something about Mexico and then went “Texas! Como estas?” but she has a really thick accent. I couldn’t help it and I completely lost it. I was laughing for a good ten minutes and everyone else was laughing at my reaction.

It was around that time Anne and Tugce said we had to leave because random woman who had come to our door came because she had invited us over for drinks and we had to be there in like five minutes. And, of course, I was sitting there in my PJs with my hair in a messy pony tail, no makeup, and my glasses on instead of contacts. So I got ready really fast (only put on a bit of makeup, not much) and went over.

We had coffee there with her daughter who is 28 but looks 19 or so. The lady and her daughter asked about me, but not to me because they know no English, and Anne and Tugce talked about me to them. (People are always talking about me here and I don’t ever know what they are saying. I hate it. I can pick up a few words here and there, and get a general idea of what they are talking about, but I don’t know exactly and it bothers me.) But by the time we left, after an hour, the lady said that she liked me. That surprised me because all I did was sit there and drink my coffee and nibble on a couple of cookies and pretzels. I thanked them and we left.

When we got back, I got my notebook and some of the English/Turkish books out of my room and sat in the living room. I picked a work (“Tamam” which means “okay”) and wrote it down around 100 times. Yeah, I definitely know that word now. I should Tugce and asked her what I should do next. She said “hos gildizin” which means “welcome.” I was in the middle of that when Baba came home. We greeted him and I was able to say “iyiyim, sen nasilsin?” when he asked how I was. Apparently the thing to do in Turkey when you’re impressed is high fives because he and Tugce high fived each other and then me. I did “hoscakal” (goodbye – informal; the person who is not leaving says this; “gule gule” is what the person who is leaving says), and “tabii” (of course). Then we had dinner, which was leftovers from lunch.

When I went back to it after dinner, I did “cami” (mosque) and “anlamiyorum” (I don’t understand – I did two pages of this instead of one). Tugce served cake (an hour had passed since dinner) and Anne came over and told me to do “Gunaydin” (good morning). I took my shower and blow dried my hair after that. Anne and Tugce served strawberry pudding (I swear, all these people do is eat but they’re still so skinny!) and Anne told me to do “iyi geceler” (good night). I took off half way through that one because my hand was going to fall off. I started writing this and it’s now one in the morning. And watch, I’m going to wonder why I’m so tired in the morning.

Day Two.

2009-09-11T14:06:00.000-07:00

My second day wasn’t quite as eventful as yesterday, but still enjoyable. I woke up at eight and took a shower. By the time I was out, Tugce and Anne had breakfast out and ready. It was similar to yesterday’s dinner – cut hot dogs with tomatoe sauce and spices, pida with cheese, Turkish tea, and tomato slices. After eating, I helped them clean up and Tugce said there was an English movie on TV that we could watch. I tried to pay more attention to the subtitles than the movie. I can recognize words better when I see them than when I hear them because I have been mostly been learning from books and looking at translators.

Later we went to the Pendik market. Tugce kept me very close to her, almost always carrying my arm in hers. I also noticed that she didn’t speak to me in English when there were many a lot of people around; I assume this would point me out as an American and make me vulnerable. Before I left Texas, I would have hated this, but I am very grateful for it now and I have only been here for two days! I would be freaked out now if I wasn’t being protected so well.

While we were at the market, Anne bought me a prepaid SIM card (one that won’t work in my phone for some reason, so I’m borrowing Ayce’s until my parents can get a hold of T-Mobile at home and see what’s up). We went to the store and they bought me some snacks (Turks consider it rude to turn down presents), including some type of Turkish ice cream. We went to the bakery and got a cake with fruit topping. After that headed home. Oh, did I mention that we rode the midibus? It was fun, but it has no AC, is very crowded, and smells weird. The driving in Istanbul is INSANE (take the worst driver you know, multiple it by like 100 and that’s everyone here) and since the bus was crowded, I had to stand. I was holding onto the railings, but I still almost fell onto a small child (who kept his balance better than me!) a couple of times. Still, I had fun on it; I’ll probably love it by the time I have to return.
When we got home, Tugce made burgers. They’re smaller than the ones that I’m used to, but really good. I love the spices. They’re not as hot as I expected, but still full of flavor. After that we went to the living room and watched some TV, but it was in Turkish, so I got lost. I went to my room after a while and read an article that Anne gave me that was written both in English and in Turkish, but I started to fall asleep, so I went back to the living room. After ten minutes, Baba came home from work.

He rang the doorbell from downstairs so that they knew he was coming. Both Anne and Tugce jumped up when they heard it. They opened the door and waited for him with his slippers. Tugce took his shoes and bag and put them away while he greeted Anne and me. After he greeted Tugce, we all went to the living room where Tugce told him everything that had happened that day and last night after he went to sleep. I had always known there was a strong emphasis on family, but knowing and experiencing it were two completely different things. You learn that fast when you’re on an exchange.
After, we loaded pictures onto their computer (my laptop still isn’t connected to the internet) and I tried to email them to some people, but the internet is very slow here. I forgot how much the US takes our fast internet for granted. It’s so easy to when you have easy access to it, but when it takes thirty minutes to upload five pictures, you remember to be grateful.

We ate dinner after the prayers rang from the mosque by our home. Baba is the only one in the family that is fasting. Since Anne and Tugce are not and I spend most of my time with them, I will not either. After dinner, we went to the living room and I took some pictures of the mosque lit up at night. We had slices of the cake we bought earlier while watching TV. We watched some in Turkish and some in English with Turkish subtitles. I tried to pay attention to the subtitles, but it was an interesting crime show (one that I haven’t seen, but I only watched like two at home) and I got really into it. I’ll have to watch out for that.

Anne and Baba went to bed at 10:30 and 11:00 respectively. Tugce and I stayed up for another half hour and watched some show, before we went to bed. I couldn’t fall asleep though, because my body is still adjusting to the time difference. It was 11 at night here, but it was three in the afternoon at home and usually play practice would be starting and I would be getting my energy up. I stayed awake until about one in the morning, watching a movie on my mp3 player.

Day One.

2009-09-11T13:48:00.000-07:00

It took me two weeks longer than planned, but I finally made it to Istanbul, Turkey! I left Houston on a flight to London at 4:35pm and landed in London at 7:30am the next morning. The plane ride itself was only eight hours though. I spent the first hour looking over my Rotary binders and the next like five taking advantage of their free movies. After about two hours of sleep, I then took the 10:30am flight from London to Istanbul and landed at 4:35pm, even though the flight was only a bit over three hours long (most of which I spent sleeping, this time). But once I finally got all my bags together and they checked to make sure my visa was valid (there would have been hell to pay if it wasn’t), I was finally able to meet my host family.

My host sister, Tugce, found me once I walked through. She is only a little taller than me and very skinny, but she almost tackled me down. She gave me flowers and a teddy bear holding a heart filled with chocolate. I then met Anne (“mother” in Turkish) and Baba (“father”), and Denis, a Rotex who had just rebounded from Florida. He helped to translate from the airport until he had to leave to catch his metro back home. (He misses the South and was upset that I don’t have a Southern accent.) At first they wanted to take me to a McDonalds for dinner, but I was able to convince them that I would eat whatever they made. (I have been dying to have real Turkish food for the longest time!) Once Denis left, Tugce had to translate and her English is broken, but not too badly and we managed. I also didn’t talk very much because I was too awed at how beautiful the city is. Pictures (which I forgot to take because I was too busy staring at the time) certainly don’t do it justice! They took me to a shopping strip that was on the way home and bought me some chocolate. It is dark chocolate with a sugar hazelnut filling. Very good, but very heavy. I couldn’t finish it and it is in the fridge waiting to be eaten. After we left there, Baba stopped a store to pick up some pida (a type of Turkish bread).

While he was in there, a woman came up to our car with a stroller. She asked Anne if she could watch her baby while she ran across the street. At first I thought she was a friend of hers. It turns out that she was just some woman. She left her stroller outside our car with a baby that couldn’t be any older than six months and ran across the street. Talk about unexpected!

When Baba came back, we finally went home. Turkish homes are much smaller than the ones from home – not that it’s very surprising, they have almost five times as many people as Houston! My family lives in a duplex on the top floor. The first thing I noticed was that they took off their shoes before they even went inside the house. This wasn’t too surprising, because that’s how they do things in India and Pakistan and we take our shoes off as soon as we walk in, at my home in Houston. But my family also wears house shoes – flip flops! – inside the house everywhere. They immediately took me to my room, which was Ayce, my host sister in Tulsa, before. They had hung HOSGELDINIL (“WELCOME”) on my window. Anne gave me my own set of keys and color coded all my bathroom things orange so that I wouldn’t feel uncomfortable and not know if I was allowed to use them. Tugce showed me the rest of the place after that, including the views of the very big, beautiful mosque. I can see it from Tugce’s room, my room, the living room, and the computer room. It is gorgeous at day, but it’s breath taking at night when it’s lit up! Cok guzel. Very beautiful.

Anne made a breakfast type of meal for dinner, because she thought it would be safest. We had cut up hot dogs (apparently Tugce LOVES hot dogs), eggs, cheese with bread, tomatoes, and Turkish tea. The tea was much better than I expected it to be. When I drink tea at home, it has to have lots of sugar and lots of milk. Tugce did make my tea sweet, but you don’t drink it with milk. It’s so good! I’ll have to remember to bring some home. And the Turks eat bread a LOT. Not that I can blame them, the pida was sooooooooo good. I had like four or five pieces. But they told me that breakfast is usually the most important meal for them. Breakfast for me, on a school day, back home is a health bar and a bottle of water during first period. They can’t believe how people can’t sit down and eat a good meal together every morning.

After I gave them their presents, Tugce laughed and ran around the house in her new blue cowboy hat. Anne was SO excited when I gave her a Southern cookbook. I’ve seen her and Tugce looking through it to see if they can make some of the things. (it didn’t click in my head that she doesn’t know English and would have a hard time with it until after I gave it to her. I felt SO bad, but apparently she’s excited. She’s a housewife and loves to cook/eat.)

We sat down and went over the rules of my being there. But we were having a hard time understanding each other, so Tugce pulled me over to the computer and wrote out her answers on Google Translator so that I could understand them. This is how the family mostly talks to me. I can’t decide if I like this or not, because it helps me to understand everything, but makes me nervous that I won’t be able to pick up Turkish. I can read it a lot better than I can understand it already.

In the middle of answering the Rotary questions, Can (it is pronounced Jon) came over and invited us to his house. He is a good friend of Tugce and his mother is best friends with Anne. His parents are also the landlords, but he lives right across the hall. Can said that he took English for five or six years, and in his school he took all of his classes (math, chemistry, everything) in English. My host family asked him to help translate. (He was glad I don’t have a Southern accent, because he was afraid he wouldn’t be able to understand me if it was too heavy and then would be embarrassed because he couldn’t translate. But apparently I have a melodic voice as far as Turks go.

He did get a bit overwhelmed at times and would accidently talk to me in Turkish or to the others in English. Mostly talk to the others in English. He was really good about keeping me in the conversation though. At one point Anne and Can’s mom, Teyze (“Aunt” what you call older women), asked why I chose Turkey. He said he had read the letter I wrote to my family to Ayce and Tugce about how I want to study Mediterranean history (he had to translate it for them), but he stopped to tell me what they asked before he told them.

Their family has four cats – two of them are two week old kittens named Tugce and Ayce – and two adult cats. I barely saw the Mom cat and I can’t even remember her name, but I saw plenty of their male cat. His name is Osmon and he is a Turkish pureblood cat. (I can’t think of the name at the moment, but it starts with an A. My brother wants one.) He is big, fat, and fluffy. He is pure white and has one red eye and one blue one. Apparently, in the US, he would cost about $3000. And he knows it. He is so spoiled. He goes out when he wants and climbs around in the roof. Apparently he climbed into Anne and Baba’s bed the other night because they had their window open. They told me if I leave mine open, he may come in a and sleep on my bed in the middle of the night.

Teyze kept teasing me about my Turkish. There is one letter that I cannot pronounce. It is the accented u that comes from German. The Turkish word for grape is spelled with uzum with two of the u letters. But then she couldn’t say grape, so then everyone laughed at her. I spent about a good five minutes trying to help her (she got it down to “go-rape”).

Tugce brought Turkish coffee in while we were talking to the parents (and by we, I mean Can was translating what their conversation was to me). It’s really strong and I could only drink half of it and it was small to begin with. I liked it, but I prefer the tea. I’ve never been too big of a coffee person. (If you know me, then you know when I drink coffee I put so much crap in it that you can’t even taste the coffee.)

We somehow got onto the topic about the big cities of Turkey. Can mentioned that Istanbul is the big one and if you go to Ankara, you’re just like “What is this?”. He asked if people really thought Istanbul was still the capital and I told him about 75% of the people I talked to thought it was. I asked him why the capital got changed. It was because Ataturk (the hero of Turkey. He is the one who made it a country. It is a crime to speak against him.) loved the Anatolia. The Anatolia is the Asian peninsula of Turkey. He said that it is the motherland and Ankara is the heart/center of it. When the war was happening, Istanbul was being attacked from every direction, so they had to move the capital. And what better place than the heart of the motherland? I don’t know about you guys, but I really like that story.
It was after that that the parents and Can convinced Tugce to play her violin for us. She is so talented. I’m so jealous. I have no musical talent at all. She is studying it in college, but Can told me she is having a hard time, because they want everyone to learn Western music, but she is interested in Turkish music. I don’t blame her; Turkish is so much prettier!

It was right after that that Tugce noticed I was falling asleep. It was already 12:30. We left Can’s house and went back to ours. I stayed up to write down a couple of notes and unpack a bit more, but once my head hit the pillow, I was out.

Calendar

2009-07-05T12:17:00.000-07:00

I got an email from the Rotary district that is hosting me with my calendar! It's a vague one for the year, but still!

August 22nd --- Arrive
Sept. 11-13 --- Inbound Orientation Camp
Sept. 14-25 --- Turkish Language Classes
September 24 --- School starts
October 31 --- Halloween Party
Novem. 22 --- Thanksgiving Party
December --- Christmas Party
January '10 --- New Inbound students arrive
Jan. 30-Feb 7 --- Semester Holiday (Optional West Anatolia trip)
March 2010 --- Birthday Party
April 24, 2010 --- Anzac Day in Gallipoli
May 2010 --- District Conference
May 15-23 --- Cappadocia & Southern Anatolian Trip (Optional)
June/July --- Depart for home country. =[

No news is bad news.

2009-06-25T19:27:00.000-07:00

I still haven't heard from Turkey as far as my counselors, my school, or guarantee forms. The last one is the most important because I need it to get my Visa and I have less than two months until I leave. I'm getting nervous.

On the upside, I now know how to say a couple of household things in Turkish, like door, wall, mirror, microwave, fridge, cupboard, etc.

Hello.

2009-06-19T21:02:00.001-07:00

So I just realized that I can have more than one blog on here. Hehe, pretty cool. I'm a little new to this (I've never had a blog before this) bare with me here. I'll use my other blog to post random writings and I'll use this one to keep people in touch with what I'm doing in Turkey. =]

63 days and counting.