Mmmmm..... Turkey...

2005-02-01T23:31:00.000-08:00

I know I said I was going to update this thing more often than I am. Well, sometimes people lie. I really meant to update more though, honest. At the moment the combination of taking 4 classes + working 20 hours a week + having a girlfriend and some sort of social life is keeping me quite busy. I also interviewed today for another job. I think the interview went well, but if I get the job that means I'll be working closer to 30 hours a week in addition to everything else. I'm starting to wonder if I've gone completely insane.

HOWEVER, despite being so busy, things are going quite well. I'm finally all moved into my little one-room hovel of an apartment, and it actually looks like someplace where someone lives. That's a plus. I'll probably graduate after this semester. That's a plus. I enjoy my classes for the most part. That's a plus. Work is work but you can't win em all I guess. Most importantly of all I'm quite content with what life is handing me right now. I must admit, though, that when I drift off in my classes I find myself daydreaming about Istanbul. Seems like a much longer time ago than it was.

Let's see, recent happenings. There was a major blizzard (snow storm) a little over a week ago. Most snow I've seen in a long time. Enough that I drove as little as possible to avoid dying. I took some pics (and a movie!), but I'm too lazy/tired to post them right now. Soon, I promise. Basilio, I think you'll like them. We got at least a foot (like 30cm) of snow. Around that time it was really cold, but a couple days after the big storm it got warmer, almost to spring-like temperatures. It's been pretty nice this last week.

I'm tired and can't think of anything else to write about. But hey, at least I updated this thing finally. I'm gonna hit the sack. Later.

2005-01-10T13:44:00.000-08:00

I'm back at work again, sitting about 3 feet from the spot I was when I wrote my very first entry in this thing, almost 5 months ago. And it's still as boring as ever. Actually it's not that bad, especially compared to my job in Istanbul where people would sleep in my office and my boss never said hi to me. Both are interesting in their own way.

I'm kinda sorta moved into my apartment. The main thing is I still need furniture. All I have right now is one chair, so it's not exactly a cool place to hang out just yet. A bunch of my stuff is still at the apartment I was living at last year, so I get to go and rob it sometime this week.

Hey Basilio, good to see somebody is still reading this thing. Just let me know if it gets too boring, and I'll start making up stories. Like how here in Minnesota we ride sheep everywhere. Winter sheep. And in the summer we shave them so they don't explode.

Anyway, I gotta punch out soon. I'll post some pics when I get around to it.

Later goatsuckers.

2005-01-05T23:46:00.000-08:00

Yes, I am in fact alive.

I'm planning on continuing this blog as frequently as I have time for it. Which hasn't been very frequently recently. While I was in Turkey this blog was mostly so that family and friends back home could keep up with my adventures. Sometime a few weeks before I left Turkey, it occurred to me that I could keep it going so that people I met over there can keep track of what I'm up to at home. After all, to most of them the US is a foreign country. So that's what I intend to do. I'll keep up the pictures and everything. I changed the post times back to the local time here in grand ole Minnesota.

I miss all yalls back there in Istanbul. It's been a total world change to come back to "civilization". Both very different and very comfortable and familiar at the same time. Nice to be back where I can read everything. I got back into the states on Christmas eve. I stepped out of the airport into air that was a balmy -13C (like 8 F). Quite the change. I saw some dude in a camouflage snowsuit, and I knew I was finally home.

The week after that was pretty much spent sleeping, mixed with presents and Christmas stuff and catching up with people. Nice to see the fam again. This last week has been spent trying to move into my new apartment (a little one-room hole in the ground), and not sleeping very much at all. As you can see, it's almost 2 in the AM right now. I've got another week and a half or so before classes start again. Fun stuff. Tomorrow I'm goin climbin, which I NEVER DID in Istanbul. Hauled my gear all the way around the world, and never used it. Gotta start gettin into shape now that I have the means.

Right now my only furniture is a single chair. I should probably do something about that. Or just sleep.

Sleep it is.

2004-12-18T16:40:00.000-08:00

Tomorrow (well, later today I guess considering the time) I leave Istanbul. It really hasn't sunk in yet that today was my last day in Turkey. I'll definitely miss this place, as well as the people here (especially the people here). Last night was my farewell party, and it was pretty awesome. Just about everybody came out to wish me farewell. I've seen a lot of goodbyes since I've been in Turkey because trainees come and go all the time, but this was by far the warmest one I've ever been to. Craziness. Everybody's gonna miss me.. sad...

I posted a bunch of pictures from last night to my pictures page, so check it out.

I'll be so happy to be home though. I pulled myself out of bed at the crack of noon today and went shopping for most of the day. I'm bringin stuff back for yalls (as much as I could bring with me anyway).

I should get some shuteye, since I have to get up in 5 hours or so. In 5 days I'll be back in grand ole Minneapolis, freezing my arse off. See you soon.

To those I leave behind: Görüşürüz arkadaşlar.

2004-12-17T03:49:00.000-08:00

This is post number 42, which is a great number. If you don't know why, that's ok.

Anyway, today is my last day at work. I'm not sure they'll notice that I'm gone, since I never see any of them anyway. I'm hoping that my departure is inconsequential enough that they keep paying me. That would rock. Things like that happen in a bureaucracy. I hope.

Last night I uploaded a buttload of pics. Some of them are mine, most of them are Alex's. I let him borrow my camera for a couple days, and he took a total of about 180 pictures. He goes a little nuts when he gets his hands on a camera.

Tonight is my farewell party, which is kinda sad. It would be a lot different if everybody was here for the same length of time and was leaving at the same time, because then everyone's leaving. But here, people come and go whenever they want, so it's just everyone saying goodbye to ME. It'll be sad, but hopefully we'll be able to keep in touch, and I'll have friends all over the world. It really has been a great experience, regardless of some things that were less than perfect.

I might update again tomorrow, guess I'll just have to see. Need to go shopping again tomorrow, and then start the packing process. I'm probably going to have to buy another suitcase, not really sure yet. I'll be happy to be home, no matter what it takes to get there.

Pics:

Alex looks so civilized in this picture. This one he took when he borrowed my cam.

Another of his pics. It worked out pretty well.

He also managed to get a picture of a Christmas tree. I didn't think there were any in Istanbul!

This is an entrance to Istanbul University. I haven't seen many schools in the US that can match this.

A tiny part of the Grand Bazaar. You can see the street signs at the top that help people not get lost.

Megan is the clumsiest person I've ever met. She was trying to get up off the pillow, but couldn't. It was incredible.

This was at Carmen's going away party. The guy in the middle is Sean, from Australia. On the right is Bekir, one of our Turkish friends.

I love my camera. Behind the fountain is the Blue Mosque. I took this when we were showing some people around the city.

The amazing thing is that I've gotten used to beautiful scenes like this. They're everywhere you look in Istanbul. If you look closely you can see part of an ancient aqueduct.

2004-12-13T04:36:00.000-08:00

This is my last week in Turkey. As of Sunday I'm outta here. So I've been trying to figure out who I know deserves a souvenir, things like that. Airlines over here have pretty communist limits for how much baggage I can carry, so I can't get something for everybody like I would like to. Or an elephant. Which sucks.

...two camels wrestling... ...and a partriidge in a pear treeeee...

Anyway.. yesterday some trainees were in Istanbul from out of town, so Alex and I showed them around the old part of the city. The Grand Bazaar wasn't open because it was Sunday, but we took them around the Blue Mosque and Aya Sofya and all that fun stuff. Also got to scope out some gifts. I was wicked cold though after being outside for almost the entire day. So after that I just stayed in the warmthness of the dorms. Took a few pics.

Speaking of pics, I let Alex borrow my camera on Friday. During the course of his workday he took almost 100 pictures, which is nuts. So I'm still putting off going through and naming all of them and whatnot. Someday they'll be up, and you can all see how trigger-happy Alex is when he gets his mitts on a camera.

Respeck.

2004-12-10T01:23:00.000-08:00

I've got some piccies for yalls today. But first, a little bit of good news. I have a place to live when I get back! One of Chris's friends needed someone to take the lease on his studio starting January, so I decided to help us both out. For a studio it's really cheap, and it's in the same area as my old apartment, so I won't have to learn a new neighborhood, and it's close to school. So that's good, one less thing to figure out when I get back.

One week from today is my last day of work here. Pretty crazy. Then a couple days later I fly to Athens, and then a few days after that we fly to Amsterdam, and then the next day we fly to Minneapolis. I've just gotta make sure my luggage weighs as little as possible, so I don't have to pay tons of fees.

Anyway, pics. These I took on my way to work yesterday. Gives you a good idea of what Kasımpaşa looks like:

This mosque is right down the street from the dormitory. Meaning, we can hear the calls to prayer loud and clear.

Not sure what's in this building, but I thought it looked very Turkish so I took a picture.

This is a little park / tea house place. We've never gone there. You can see the minaret of another mosque in the background.

This is by some parking lot. It says beware of dog, but translating directly it's "attention dog there is".

Looking from the poor part of town up the hill to the rich part of town. You can see the dome of another mosque.

These mannequin shops are all over in Kasımpaşa. It's really strange.

I got on the shuttle bus, and decided to take a picture.

That's Paşaland, some old dirty theme park on the way to work. I'm surprised any of these turned out, cuz I couldn't hold the camera still on the bus.

Another way-cool mosque.

Saw this mosque less than 5 seconds later. In case you can't tell, there are lots of them in Istanbul.

There are usually kids out playing here in their blue uniforms.

And life is never really boring around here, so here's a few more random ones for your enjoyment:

This is a pretty common sight at work. You can tell how important the room I work in is.

I laugh so hard inside every time I see this ad. I don't get that happy when I eat chips.. maybe I should switch to Lays.

You can count on Alex to do something photogenic at least every few days. Makes me wonder what Romania is like.

Proof that the trainees don't get payed enough. Poor Basilio has taken to playing 2-string bass for loose change.

2004-12-07T07:09:00.000-08:00

I said I had a funny story from last week, and here it is. When I left for Greece, Martina (Italy) was out of town, in Cappadocia somewhere. Well, when I got back, she was super glad to see me and gave me a hug and stuff. Reason being, when she got back from Cappadocia she noticed at some point that I wasn't around, and asked Greg where I was. He told her I'd LEFT FOR HOME, and gave her a guilt trip for not even saying goodbye to me. So I guess she felt horrible and was trying to get my email address from Greg so she could email me and say how sorry she was that she didn't say bye. After a few hours he told her that I was just in Greece and I'd be coming back. You can tell she's pretty new here, because she hasn't learned not to trust Greg. I think it would've been hilarious if he'd kept it going long enough for her to send me an email though. I would've read it in Athens and thought 'what the hell is going on back there?'.

So that's the funny story. Also, I put all my movies up on my picture site. Only thing is they're all pretty big (average size is 15-20MB), so if you don't have a fast connection they may not finish downloading by the time I get home anyway.

2004-12-04T16:31:00.000-08:00

Boy oh boy, today turned into a long day. But in a really good way. You could almost say it was 'fully sick', which is apparently Aussie surfer slang. Anyway, ever since I got back from Greece, Hilal has been calling me to meet up; (ok, some backstory. hilal is a woman who my dad works with who is turkish, who was a big factor in my decision to come to turkey. her sister is the one i went to the cabin on the black sea with. got it? good.) since she was heading back to the States early Sunday morning, and I didn't have any plans for the weekend, we decided to meet up today for lunch. So, I roused myself at the crack of 11:30 and got ready to head out.

Walked to Eminönü, took the ferry to Kadıköy, blah blah. Halfway there I realized I forgot my camera, but I thought eh, I'm just meeting her for lunch, and then I'll be back at the dorms anyway. But of course it didn't quite work out that way. It was also at around this time that I was sitting on the ferry, crossing the Bosphorus, taking in the scenery of Istanbul and thinking nothing of it. To me it felt pretty routine. But then I thought about how if somebody from home was with me, they'd probably be wide-eyed. Sometimes it hits me that I'm in Turkey, and how that's really not normal despite how used to it I may be.

But I digress. I got to Kadıköy, and Hilal was going to be late because traffic was bad as usual, so I wandered around the waterside for a while. A little ways down from the ferryport I found this little bazaar that sold pets. It was sort of like an open-air petstore. They had some animals that I didn't even recognize. I spose I could've bought something and tried to smuggle it back home, but somehow that didn't seem like a very good idea. Anyway, Hilal eventually came, and it was so good to see her, because I hadn't seen her since before I left for Turkey. She took me to a place that was pretty close by, and it was a nicer place than I'm used to eating. Kasımpaşa is definitely not known for its cuisine. The place served Iskender Kebap, which I'd heard about but never had, and it was excellent. Hilal paid for lunch, which was extremely nice of her. And of course, since she's Turkish, the hospitality didn't stop there. Not even close.

After that we went by taxi to her sister's house for a bit, and after that I decided to tag along with her to visit her cousins in another part of town. One of her cousins runs some company that manufactures small items in bulk for companies. Things like pens with the company logo on them, plaques, keychains, clocks; pretty much anything you can imagine. Her other cousin works there as well. So we headed over to the offices of the company, and I got to look around at all the stuff. There was a big room full of shelves of little gadgets. I think Dan would have wet his pants. Anyway, we had a few rounds of çay while Hilal caught up with her cousins. They were speaking Turkish, obviously, so I couldn't really understand anything. A word here and there. But really I didn't mind, because I know enough about Turkish (grammar and things), that it's interesting to listen to it spoken and try to pick things out. Every once in a while Hilal would explain a funny story or whatever. They were also waiting for some other guy that they were going to have a meeting with about something. I never did find out what it was all about. Once the guy got there, the çay was followed by a few rounds of tequila as they were discussing whatever it was. At some point the guy asked about me, and Hilal told me that he thought I was a relative of hers at first.

Somewhere around 6 or so the meeting broke up, and her cousin dropped us off at Hilal's father's house. It's the house (well, apartment) that Hilal's family has lived in since she was like 10, and all the neighbors in the building are people that have been there for 30 or 40 years and seen them all grow up. So, her father was there, and Tümay (sister) and Reşid and Reha (sister's husband & son), and also Reşid's mother who was visiting from Denmark, and also one of the neighbors. This old neighbor lady really made me wish I could speak Turkish, because she was always talking and telling stories as old people tend to do. She won't reveal her age to anyone, but they figure that since her adopted son is in his 70's, she must be in her 90's at least. Regardless, she still looked very healthy. At some point Hilal translated one of her stories for me, and she was talking about how she recently went to the doctor and they found some acids or something in her abdomen. And she swears that one of her cats knew that there was something wrong, because it kept pawing at her stomach. I thought that was pretty funny, because it's exactly the type of thing that you expect to hear from old people.

Also, some people dropped by who also live in Rochester and work at Mayo, so I got to talk to them a little bit. I guess they're moving to Houston soon. Much of the evening I was just a wallflower, and sat back and just watched everyone interact. It was still interesting for me even though I couldn't understand anything, because sometimes you can tell just by people's body language what's going on. And every once in a while Hilal would explain something or talk to me for a little while. It was very pleasant. Plus I got fed again. Tümay went and got pide for everybody, and after we ate everyone had a few rounds of çay and relaxed. I think I drank more tea today than I usually do in a week. Actually, I'm pretty certain of that. But it's good stuff, I love Turkish tea. I'm gonna learn to make it before I leave.

At around 10:30 or so people started to leave, and I said goodbye to Hilal and everyone and caught a dolmuş back to Taksim. Got back to the dorms at about midnight. So my 'lunch date' ended up turning into a whole day. But it really was a great day. I just wish I hadn't forgotten my camera.

I have a funny story from last week, but this is already super long so I'll save it for later. Time to hit the sack.

2004-12-03T03:58:00.000-08:00

I was way frustrated this morning. First day back at work, and it started with me being locked out of my office for the millionth time, followed by finding out that while I was gone they broke my computer. Took me all morning to figure out what the hell they did to it. Sometimes I just don't understand these people.

But it's ok now, as far as work goes. It may not be the best, but it doesn't really matter since I only have two weeks of work left anyway. Three weeks from today, I'll be landing in Mpls-St Paul International Airport. Doesn't seem like that long ago that I'd only been in Turkey for three weeks. I'll definitely be glad to be back home for the holidays (more than just glad), but in some ways I wish my traineeship had been longer. Three months is really not a very long time when it comes down to it. And I know that I'll miss people here, and people here will miss me. Everybody was so happy to see me when I got back from Athens yesterday, and I was only gone a week! I felt really loved. And I've lost count of the number of times that Alex has told me that I should visit him in Romania. I've made some pretty good friends here, and I just hope we don't lose touch despite the thousands of miles we'll be apart when I leave. Who knows what the future will bring.

In other news, Chris found this UofM roommate finder service online that has turned up a few promising things as far as apartments. It would mean living with a random person I've never met, but in most cases I'd have my own room and could keep to myself if they turned out to be a weirdo. We'll see if anything good pops up from it. Chris already has been talking to some girl that might have a place for her. Good stuff. It would be awesome if I could get that somewhat resolved before I get back, because that's been a big point of worry. For both of us.

I'm writing a lot. But hey, I guess that's the point of this thing, eh? I said I'd post some pictures from my week in Greece, so here's a few. There are many more on the picture site. Also, I'm working now on getting my movies up there. I've got some funny ones, believe you me. No camel wrestling, but I'm working on it.

See, I TOLD you it was cold here when I left. It's a lot nicer now though.

The weather cleared up on the way there. This was the first rest stop.

The sunset on the way out of Turkey was AMAZING. I took lots of pics.

Another one of the sunset.

This is definitely a keeper of Chris. I think she was about to defrost the ice cube tray or something.

She looks like she was glaring at me, but I swear she was having fun. Those are the monkey balls.

Close up of the monkey ball goodness.

There's me in her kitchen. Probably waiting for some hot monkey balls.

Aww.. it looks like she's hugging the camera.

That there is the Parthenon. Chris would destroy me if I identified that wrong.

Chris is giving her trademark smile in front of another old building on the acropolis.

There's Jenn and Anthony in the academic center. Pretty nice place, besides the food.

The food here was really good, but the best part was the name. I love Butt's.

This was in Thessaloniki at 2 in the morning on the way back. I was very very tired.

Jenn wanted me to take a picture of one of these for her for some reason. So there you are.

This cat recently had kittens, and now they all live on the steps of the dorm. Awwww..

2004-12-02T14:29:00.000-08:00

Well hot damn, my blog is getting some action. Fine, I give in, keep naysaying. If nothing else it keeps things interesting. And I'll do my best to find some camel wrestling I can take pictures of. With any luck one of the contenders will be named Master Of The Universe. Ha!

In other news, I'm back in Istanbul. This makes 3 times that I've done the 20-hour bus ride between the two cities, and 3 IS ENOUGH. I'm so glad I'm flying when I finally leave Turkey for real. Also, it's kinda crazy when I actually stop for a minute and think about what I just got back from. I just had a week vacation in Athens, after which I took the bus back to Istanbul where I've been living for 3 months. Somehow that seemed normal until I actually stopped to think about it. Crazy. Also, the road leading out of Athens is a huge toll-highway, and if you ignore the greek characters on the street signs, it seems exactly like you're on I-90 outside Chicago.

Leaving was really hard to do though. I miss Chris more and more every time we have to say goodbye, even if it's only going to be for a couple weeks. The day I left was our anniversary too, which didn't help things very much. And being there was really fun. We made monkey balls, which I don't think I mentioned. We were trying to make monkey bread or something, but we had to use like croissant dough, so we ended up rolling the pieces into little balls. It seemed like a good thing to name them. I have pictures. In fact, I took like 40 pictures this week, which are uploading as I type. So yeah. I'll post a few at work tomorrow maybe. I also have pictures of the tour that Chris gave me of the Acropolis. That was pretty cool.

Also, it was very strange to be in Greece, because all of a sudden I was in Europe again. Greece is WAY more modern and European than Turkey, and it was very obvious. And another big difference were the Christmas trees and lights everywhere. You don't find those so much in Istanbul. Just a very different atmosphere. In my opinion the people in Turkey are friendlier. Greeks are pushy and grumpy, at least so it seemed to me. Maybe I'm biased since I've been living in Istanbul for so long.

Anyway, if I think of anything else I'll post it along with the pictures tomorrow. I should go get some sleep, I didn't get very much on the bus.

2004-11-29T07:14:00.000-08:00

Sure, nobody comments on my blog forever, and then a couple naysayers come out of nowhere and start naysaying. Stupid naysayers.

Anyway, I'm still in Athens, once again killing time while Chris is in class. She has stuff to do while I'm here, which is aight. She's in school and whatnot. We were gonna go up to the acropolis after she's done with class, but I think it closes soon so it'll have to wait until tomorrow or sometime.

I hope everybody had a good Thanksgiving! I was really glad to be in Athens with tons of americans for the holiday, because they obviously don't celebrate it in Turkey. We didn't do the whole traditional thanksgiving meal, instead a bunch of people went out for some Indian food. It was gooooood. I love Indian food, and it's not easy to find in Istanbul. In fact, I don't know of any indian places. Anyway, I think we got some people hooked on Indian food. Good stuff.

Other than that we've been hangin around, haven't really pushed ourselves to see the city or anything yet. Athens is WAY more european than Istanbul, it's been really strange for me to be here in some ways. I'm really used to Turkey. But more on that later.

We're headin out. Later.

2004-11-24T01:36:00.000-08:00

What's up, everybody? I'm in Greece now. I tried to update the night before I left, but it wouldn't let me post anything. Anyway, Monday morning I packed up my stuff and headed off on the long ride to Athens. The bus left two hours behind schedule, so Chris figured it would be 2 hours late getting there. Well, the bus made up the time and arrived on schedule at 5:30am Tuesday, and my phone doesn't work in Greece, so I had to shiver in the metro station until Chris showed up at 8. Only took me a few hours to get warm again, no big deal.

Oh, and in case you're thinking "Come on Nate, it's not cold there you wuss," I'll just point out that it was snowing when I left Istanbul. Snowing with thunder and lightning no less. Nasty weather I must say. It's noticeably warmer in Athens than in Istanbul, but not at 5:30 in the morning.

Right now I'm just killing time for a couple hours while Chris is in class, then she's subjecting me to lunch in their cafeteria. I've heard stories. Wish me luck.

I'll be kickin it here in Athens for another week or so, till the 1st, so I'll probably have another chance to write somethin. Don't worry, I'm taking pictures.

Speaking of which, I took like 50 pictures last week, and I put them all up on my picture site before I left. So check those out.

-Nate

2004-11-19T14:56:00.000-08:00

Sometimes I think I'm gonna have an ulcer by the time I get back home. Being here is great, no doubt about it, but it's really hard to take care of things back home when you're in a different country. Recently I've had to (try to) figure out school stuff, money stuff, apartment stuff, the works. The conclusion that I've come to is that I'll have to figure out a lot of it after I get home. I'm pretty sure I'll be able to pay for school plus everything else, but it's the 'pretty' part of that sentence that gets me worried. I'm going to be very in debt after this semester, and it's pretty certain that I'll have another semester after this one (for only one class, probably). A lot of the money stuff depends on whether I can find a cheap place to live. So far I haven't been able to find a studio apartment for less than $500 a month, which is simply more than I can afford. One-bedroom places that are a little bit bigger start at around $550, meaning that if I split it with someone it would only be $275, which is very cheap. Only problem is, the only person I know who's also looking for a place to live is my girlfriend, and I think our parents would frown on that pretty severely. So, the other options right now are paying $200+ more dollars per month, or finding some random spot with people I don't know. In addition to whatever I pay in rent, I've got monthly payments on my bank loan, plus that stuff they call 'food', and whatever else. I think even if I work as much as possible, I'm still going to be one broke little boy.

And then, in the midst of worrying about all this today, my boss comes in and tells me that the project they gave me is "way over the deadline." My response was: there's a deadline? They gave me a project, sure, but they never told me any sort of deadline, and since they gave it to me they haven't checked in once to see how it's going. They don't even say hi to me the majority of the time, and then they come in and tell me I'm past some deadline that I never knew about. So I didn't get home from work until 9-ish cuz I stayed to work on that, and I'll probably be working on it all weekend. They want it as soon as possible all of a sudden, which is a problem since I'm leaving for Greece on Monday morning and won't be back for over a week (which they've known about for 2 weeks). Sometimes life just likes to hit you with everything at once I guess.

It does feel nice to rant about it for a while though. I'll quit complaining and get back to work.

P.S. I took a lot of pictures in the last week, so I'll post some of those this weekend sometime. I won't turn this into a 'life sucks, cry for me' blog, I swear.

2004-11-17T04:32:00.000-08:00

Well, everybody ended up staying in Istanbul for the entire weekend. It was a combination of laziness, and the fact that no matter where we went it was going to rain, so we figured we might as well not pay to go somewhere else. And rain it has the last couple of days. Here in Istanbul it seems like the pattern is to not rain for a while, and then downpour for a few days straight.

The weekend was fun, though. A few trainees came to Istanbul for the weekend from Adana, so we went out with them and showed them around and whatnot. Lets see, what interesting stories do I have.. Oh yeah. On Mon night, me and Andres (Colombian trainee) were waiting for Henrik (Finland) to come out of the hotel, and Andres saw some turkish guy that he knew (he's been here before a few times). And the guy asked what we were doing, and told us we should come back to his shop with him and have some tea or something. We weren't doing anything, so we went along with it. The guy helps run a carpet shop, and pretty soon after we got in there and got our tea, it started pouring outside. Seeing that he had a captive audience, his cousin the carpet salesman started showing us carpets and asking us which ones we liked and all that. Giving us the whole deal about craftsmanship, and the tradition, and how original they are, the whole sales pitch. None of us were the least bit interested, but we humored the guy for a while. There was one that I thought was nice, but he wanted more than 600 dollars for it. 600 bucks for a carpet. I'm not sure who he thought we were, or what kind of insane budgets he thought we had. So we bugged outta there when the rain stopped.

Then yesterday, I got up at like noon or so, and went wandering around the old city with Andres. The weather was horrible. Cold, windy, and raining. We just randomly ran into this guy Robert that Andres met at the hostel, who's Australian originally, but has been living in Dublin for the last couple years. So the three of us went hiking around in the rain, pretty much all day. Wandered around Topkapı Palace, saw the Aya Sofya, went inside the Blue Mosque, tried to go in the Grand Bazaar but it was closed because it was a holiday. I got some pictures, but I'm not sure how good they are because of the weather. There's something to be said for pictures that aren't postcard perfect, though. Anyway, we wandered back to the dorms soaking wet and tired from walking FOREVER, chilled out for a while and dried off, and then Andres and Robert left to go back to the hostel.

Pretty crazy. And I'm really tired. This weekend was fun but definitely not as lazy and relaxing as it could have been. Oh well. I'll live.

Later.

2004-11-12T13:17:00.000-08:00

Well, no Romania and no island either. The weather is supposed to be pretty crappy, so paying 50 milyon to shiver in the rain on some island didn't appeal to anybody. We'll probably go to the bus station tomorrow and see if there are any tickets available for sunday to go somewhere, then we can at least spend a couple nights outside the city. We'll see. Tonight was pretty fun though, because Juliana's boyfriend came today, and he brought food with him, as is the custom. So we had a big German dinner, which was really good. There was PORK! It's pretty hard to find pork in Turkey, being 99% muslim and all. Go figure. So I hadn't had pork since whenever the last time I ate it in the states was. I forgot how good it was, seriously. Pork is çok güzel.

People are going out to bars/clubs/whatever right now, but I'm in more of a chill/read/sleep mood tonight. It happens. Oh yeah, and we might plan a trip to Romania for the beginning of December, since we didn't get to go this time. Speaking of which, I talked to Basilio, and he's got a pretty crazy story about getting back here. He was on the train, and at the first stop in Bulgaria they checked all the passports. So they came back and said "Venezuela! Baggages!", and just kicked him right off the train. Apparently they've never sold transit visas at the border, and the Bulgarian consulate in Istanbul told him that it wouldn't be a problem to get it there. Stupid people. Anyway, after that he got a ride from Bulgarian police to the Turkish border, at which point they let him out and said good luck. So he wandered to the border patrol on the Bulgarian side to find out how he could get back to Istanbul, but they wouldn't help him and just told him to go to the other side of the border. So on the other side he asked the people if there was a bus or something that he could catch, and they said that no, the nearest Istanbul bus was in the next town. So off he went down the road. A little while later he spotted a line of cars waiting to get through some sort of checkpoint, and found a car that looked like it had some younger people in it, and asked them if they knew where he could catch a bus to Istanbul. As it turned out, they were going to Istanbul, so they ended up giving him a lift all the way back! Not too bad. And he even ended up getting about 2/3 of his money back for the train ticket, so that's not to bad either. And now he's got a crazy story to tell.

I've also been trying to convince Alex and Basilio to come with me to Greece when I go in a week, and they both want to, but they're both really broke. Basilio just paid 600 bucks for a plane ticket to fly his girlfriend to Turkey next month (she's in Norway right now), so he doesn't have a whole lot to spare. And Alex is just plain poor. Oh well, I'll fly solo if I have to.

Aight, I'm gonna go find something to do.

2004-11-12T01:42:00.000-08:00

Well, I obviously didn't go to Romania last night. Basilio wasn't gonna go because the visa would be too much, so me and Alex decided to stay and go somewhere with him. Well, an hour before the train left they convinced Basilio to come along anyway, so he left us here. And today we found out that he couldn't get into Bulgaria, so he's coming back. Serves him right for leaving us here. Anyway, we might still go somewheres. One of the Turkish students told us about an island that's a few hours away by ferry, and it looks pretty nice. Check it out..

Still not sure if we'll go or not, we're trying to figure out when ferries leave, and prices, and whether tickets are left and whatnot. But hopefully we'll get outta this town for the weekend. Seriously.

2004-11-11T02:43:00.000-08:00

I might go to Romania tonight.. pretty crazy, huh? This weekend is a Turkish holiday (it's the end of Ramazan), so everybody gets Mon and Tue off from work. People are going all over the place, and there's a group of guys that are heading to Romania. But right now it all depends on visa stuff, because Basilio needs a visa to travel through Bulgaria, and he's having trouble finding out whether he can get it at the border or not. If he can't get the visa, then some of us will stay and go somewhere in Turkey. Hopefully south, because I haven't been that direction, and I'm pretty sure it's still warm down there.

Alex has been saying that if we go to Romania, he could come with us and take us to his home town and show us around, and we could stay at his house and everything. It would be really fun, but wherever we go I'm sure it'll be a blast.

Anyway, I'll update again when the weekend plans seem like they might be solidified.

2004-11-09T03:26:00.000-08:00

Well, it's been another week since I posted. Sorry for being retarded like that. I've actually been busy, if you can believe it. Or keeping myself busy anyway.

Last weekend was Greg's one year anniversary of coming to Istanbul (and he still has 6 months left!), so we had a party to "celebrate" that. It turned into a pretty crazy long night. I came home earlier than a lot of the guys, but the last group wandered back at 5:30 or so the next morning. Mostly, it was just fun to go out with everybody and have fun. I've always liked everybody here, but it seems like now that I've been here a few months I'm starting to realize how much I'll miss some of these people when I go. Maybe one day we'll meet again.

Turkish class has also been taking up a lot of my time. Usually by the time I'm done with class I have a headache from thinking so intensely for 3 hours. But the good news is that I'm learning Turkish. It's starting to sink in that I can read sentences and write sentences and understand a fair amount. My vocabulary is still fairly limited, but I'm gettin there. The problem with doing well, though, is that the teacher notices and they end up calling on you for the hard questions. Last week, right at the start of class, Atanur (our teacher) called on me and told me to say the number that he writes on the board. Then he proceeded to write a THIRTEEN DIGIT number.. geez. But I got it right, even though it took me a little while.

The other night me and Basilio and a few other people watched Napoleon Dynamite, which I thought was awesome as can be. The more I think about it, the funnier it gets. I know Basilio liked it, but I'm not sure about the others. Sometimes their english isn't good enough to catch everything, and their senses of humor aren't really the same. Basilio's is right on though, which makes him fun to joke with. We're all going to work on bringing our jokes and humor from back home into our group here. It might require some translation and explanation, but I think it will be worth it. I think it'll make the world a better place.

And now, some funny pictures:

Ah, Alex. Who would we laugh at without you around?

He wasn't drunk, and he did this voluntarily. One of a kind.

This one he took when he stole my camera for a little while.

I saw this when I did laundry the other night. At least the floor is gonna get clean.

Yes, that was a plastic bag on his head. Don't ask me why.

2004-11-03T13:31:00.000-08:00

Things continue to go swimmingly in Istanbul. I have something to do at work for a while, so I've been working on that, amid occasionally trying out Rome: Total War, which Tim was good enough to send to me last week. Yeah, I'm a nerd, but I'm fine with that.

Some Turkish student is moving into our room right now. He came in and asked if there were any free beds, and we said yeah, and then he asked if there was a free cupboard, and we said yeah. Five minutes later he's moving in all his stuff. Kinda random, but whatever. Now one of the other Turkish students (one that we're friends with) is thinking of doing the same thing. We'll be one big happy family. There have also been rumors of a bunch of new trainees arriving sometime in the next month or so. A guy from India, and girls from Mexico, Argentina (I think), Italy, and Ukraine. Kinda crazy how fast the people change around here. There's almost nobody left of the people that were here when I got here. Change can be fun though, it means that I get to meet a lot of different people from lots of different places.

I also figured out that some of my pictures are corrupted somehow. They open fine on my computer, but they won't open on here or on my picture site. Kinda sucks, because I put them up there so that everybody can look at them, and then some of them don't work. I'll have to see if I can figure out a way to fix it.

Yup, that's about it for tonight. Laters.

2004-11-01T10:24:00.000-08:00

Looks like some of the pictures I tried to post below are having issues for some reason. But it doesn't matter, because all the ones I posted plus all the ones I didn't are on my picture site, which there's a link to over on the right there.

Oh yeah, and Happy Halloween to everybody yesterday. They don't really have halloween in Turkey, at least not that I saw. Anyway, save some candy for me and whatnot.

Cheers.

2004-11-01T05:21:00.000-08:00

Ok, time for the big update. This last week or so has been 'çok iyi' as they say in Turkish, or 'very good' to the rest of you, possibly even some of the best times I've had yet in Istanbul. So here goes:

Part 1 - Chris Comes To Istanbul

All of last week was a Greek public holiday, meaning that Chris's school in Athens had the week off. So she decided to pack her stuff up and haul herself to Turkey for the week. Two friends of hers from Athens, James and Jenn, decided to come along for the ride, which was nice for her, since it's a loooong bus ride to take by yourself. I know. I did it. Anyway, they got on the bus last Saturday evening, and arrived in Istanbul at like 2pm on Sunday, butts sore and eyes blurry. I led them back the two hours through the city to our hotel, pointing out landmarks and whatever along the way. Once we were all settled in at Hotel Gülşa, I took them out for some Turkish food, dürüm and ayran. It was really fun to be able to show some people around "my" city, as Istanbul has become, I think. And it goes without saying that it was fun to see Chris for the first time since leaving Athens 6 weeks ago. Speaking of whom, here she is:

Taadaaa!!

Anyway, after that we went to the dorms for a while, mostly to take showers because the water in the hotel wasn't working. Chris and the others got to meet a bunch of the trainees and whatever, but everyone was kinda tired so we turned in.

The next day I was at work the whole day, and the rest of them wandered around taking in the city and whatnot. After I was finished we met up for some grub at a cafe that I'd never been to that ended up being good but expensive, and after that we were off to the going away party for Pat. I'm now the only American guy here. Here's a pic from that:

Pat's in Slovenia now.

The next day, in the evening, we were hanging around the hotel after eating some lunch and whatnot. I don't know how it got started exactly, but all of a sudden there was a full-on baby powder war going on. I got out of it mostly unscathed, but nobody else did. I'm not sure why that is, but I was just fine with it. When I wasn't laughing so hard I couldn't shoot straight, I took some pictures of the action:

You can see all the powder in the air.

Bad idea to wear a black shirt today, James.

Chris really likes to make funny faces sometimes.

Jenn got ambushed as she was going into the bathroom.

There's an unofficial tradition with the trainees that if someone comes to visit, you make a meal from your country for all the trianees. Jenn and James like to cook, so on Tuesday evening we cooked a "traditional American" meal for everyone. America doesn't really have its own traditional food, so we figured what could be more American than burgers and coke. So we went to the local supermarket and got all the ingredients, including ingredients for 'tziki', which is a Greek sauce made of yogurt and cucumbers. They decided to Greekify the burgers a little bit since they're living in Greece. We managed to feed about 15 people, and spent about 30 bucks on it. Gotta love Turkey. The ground beef here is about 70 cents per kilo. Here are some pictures from the meal:

The preparation begins.

Looks good makin patties, doesn't she?

Jenn wants me to say that she's not actually as prissy as she looks in this picture.

From left: Greg(Poland), Iva(Czech), Gabbi(Czech), Anastasia(German), Nikki(US), Juliana(German), Andre(Ukraine), Meghan(Australia), Alex(Romania), Netercia(Portugal), Basilio(Venezuela).

It was a very eventful day. We were hanging around the dorms for a while with everybody after the meal, and all of a sudden James and Chris got in a slap fight on one of the pillows. I didn't take any pictures, but I did take a movie, so whenever I figure out how to share my movies with all of you, you'll see something really funny. At some point during the evening, Alex made off with Chris's sunglasses, to try them on or something. He came in a few minutes later with broken sunglasses in his hands, saying how sorry he was, and he didn't know what happened. I think Chris was about ready to jump up and choke him to death, when he pulled out her sunglasses from behind his back. He's a joker, that one! I'm pretty sure he got just about all of us with it, too. Never trust a Romanian, folks. Here he is gloating over his victory with the broken glasses:

Alex is one tricksy Romanian.

After that we went back and watched a movie or something. The next day was pretty cool too. Chris came to work with me in the morning for a few hours, and then after lunch in the cafeteria we met Jenn and James back at the hotel. The consensus was to see some of the old city, so we set off for Sultanahmet. We saw the Blue Mosque from a distance, and then found the Grand Bazaar. Never in my life have I seen two women's eyes light up as much as when I lead Chris and Jenn into the Grand Bazaar. They just stopped and stared for a little while, and then after that they were in the lead, with me and James just trying to keep up. The shopping frenzy went on for a few hours until places started to close, and then we wandered back to the hotel, found something to eat, and went to bed.

The next day we got a pretty late start, we just decided to take it easy and hang around and whatnot. But that evening we headed out to find the Irish pub that I know about, the James Joyce. I'd never been there, so I had no idea what the prices were like. If I'd known, I think we would've found somewhere else to go. Both Chris and James were jonesin' for a Guinness, but because of the import taxes, one little Guinness cost 20 MILLION. That's about 5 times as much as a local beer. The food was kind of expensive too, but we just kinda bit the bullet and went with it. The place had a nice atmosphere at least, very U2-friendly, and the food was good. The bill for the four of us ended up being 81 MILLION, which is like 13 or 14 bucks per person. So I guess we managed to have a meal in Turkey with American prices. Heh.

After that we watched a movie for some reason, and headed to bed way too late, considering we would have to get up at 6:30 the next morning so that I could get them to their 10 o'clock bus. Oh well, you live you learn. Here's a parting shot of Chris and me:

Happy Anniversary! See you in a few weeks, babe.

Part 2 - Weekend At The Black Sea

Ok, this next part needs a little bit of background. My dad works with a Turkish woman named Hilal. Hilal is most of the reason I decided on Turkey for my traineeship, because she told me all about the people and the culture and the city, and all that good stuff. Well, her sister Tümay and family still live in Istanbul. So, at the start of last week, I got an email from Tümay saying that her family was planning on going to their summer house on the black sea for the long weekend, and asking if I would like to come along. I was quite surprised at the hospitality, because I've never even met them before and I don't even know Hilal all that well, but of course I said yes. How could I possibly pass up such a nice offer? And believe me, I'm glad I didn't.

So, after I dropped off my visitors at the bus station on Friday morning, I came straight back to the dorms to start packing for the weekend. I was supposed to meet Tümay in Kadıköy at 2pm, so I set out at like 1, missed the ferry I was shooting for, and ended up getting there a little late. But it wasn't a problem. We found each other eventually, and headed to her house to get everyone else. She made me a sandwich and some tea as we were waiting, and I got to meet her husband Reşid (not sure about the spelling) and their son Reha. Her husband is the guy I was almost working for at Turkcell. Anyway, once we were all packed up we went to pick up Tümay's father, who was also coming with us. After that it was just the 5 of us, as we set off on the 3 hour drive to their summer home.

It was such a nice weekend it's hard to know where to start. Mostly, I was overwhelmed with hospitality. It was like I was adopted into their family for the weekend. I guess I have a Turkish family now. The house was very nice too, it's right on the coast of the black sea, and it's very comfortable. Most of my time was spent either inside by the fireplace, or outside listening to the waves. I also had plenty of time to talk to Reşid and Tümay, although most of what was said that weekend was in Turkish, because neither Tümay's father nor Reha spoke very much english. But that was fine, it was just as I expected. Friday evening I was sitting by the fire reading my book, and Tümay's dad brought be a bowl of peanuts and a bowl of dried apricots.

On saturday, after a big Turkish breakfast, I went on a long drive with the men of the house, and I wish I'd taken my camera along on that part of the trip. The countryside was beautiful and reminded me of home, very hilly and full of trees. Many of the slopes were full of hazelnut trees. I guess 80% of the world's hazelnuts come from Turkey, and most of those are grown on the shore of the black sea. We went driving all over the place, and when we were finally on our way back they stopped to buy some fish for dinner. That was interesting. Normally I don't like fish very much, but these were good. They were small fish, that were fried up with the skin and heads and everything still on, and you just kinda tear into it with your fingers. Definitely one of the most veggie-unfriendly meals I've ever had. But very good, nonetheless.

The next day was daylight savings, but I forgot about it and so unwittingly got up at like 9:15. Ah well, can't win em all. We headed back to Istanbul that evening, and I for one felt very refreshed and relaxed. It's easy to see why they go there.

I have to leave work pretty soon for Turkish class, so here are some quick pictures:

That's Reha, zonked out in the car.

Sunset on the way to the cabin.

They had a really nice house, with a nice fireplace.

I found a funny hat and had to take a picture.

This was my breakfast both mornings.. yum!

This is where I was all weekend.

I really liked this picture I took of some flowers.

Sunset on the way back to Istanbul.

I took way more pictures than I posted on here, so check them out in my picture album.

2004-10-31T12:01:00.000-08:00

Right. It's been a while since I wrote anything. This last week or so has been pret-ty craaazy, but in a really really good way. For starters, Chris was here from Sun till Fri, so that kicked ass. And then towards the beginning of the week, I got invited to a summer house for the weekend. I just got back a few hours ago, and it was amazingly peaceful and relaxing. I have also taken about 40 pictures and 3 videos since last weekend, so I've documented the whole thing. I'm busy getting settled back in here, so my full update will have to wait until tomorrow (and it will be HUGE). Just figured I should let anyone who's been checking here know that I am in fact alive, and doing quite well indeed.

Sayonara till tomorrow.

2004-10-21T07:57:00.000-07:00

I think I'm starting to get way too used to the way things work around here. I'm especially getting too used to Turkish prices. For example, last night I went to a local Kasımpaşa restaurant with some people, and when I found out my bill was almost 4 million, I thought to myself "Man, 4 million, that wasn't a cheap meal." Later on, however, my common sense took back over and I was like "I can't believe I thought that was expensive, I just ate at a restaurant for less than 3 dollars." They also don't tip here. At all. Ever. Not even so much as rounding up to the nearest million (which sounds really funny, I suppose).

Boy is it ever going to be a shock the next time I pay 10 bucks for a burger and coke.

2004-10-20T06:32:00.000-07:00

Things continue to go well here, especially since Chris will be here on Sunday! Hooray! Also, they finally gave me something to work on at work, so that's nice too. Anyway, I've got some pictures for all yall. A few days ago it was a couple people's birthday, so a bunch of trainees got them a birthday cake, and we sang them happy birthday and everything. Mrs. McCann, if you're reading this, I know how much you love taking pictures of cakes, so I took a picture of the birthday cake especially for you:

Mmmmmm.... cakey...

Enjoy. Anyway, now I have a funny picture. But first some background. This is a picture of Alex, a guy who arrived here from Romania a week and a half ago or so. He's a good guy, we joke around a lot and everything. Here's a pic of Alex looking normal so you have some visual context for the next one:

This is Alex. Alex is from Romania.

Ok, the other night Alex went to bed at like 11, long before anyone else. An hour or so later Greg looks over at him sleeping peacefully, and starts laughing at the WEIRD position that he ended up in. We were all trying to hold our laughter long enough to get a picture without waking him up. And here it is:

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHA!!

Seriously, he looks like he splatted down onto his bed from 20 feet in the air. Of course, he hasn't seen this yet, we're keeping it as a blackmail picture in case we need it. So sshhhhhhh..

Anyway, I'm at work, so I guess I'll go do something productive.

2004-10-18T11:11:00.000-07:00

Ok, post number two of the day. I'm fairly tired mentally from Turkish class. It's interesting to learn, but when it's 2 or 3 hours at a time it gets to be too much information to stuff in my head.

Anyway, the main thing that's been going on around here is that on Friday was the start of the month of Ramazan (normally called Ramadan in other countries). Most people are familiar with it, it's the month where Muslims don't eat or drink anything from sunrise to sunset. Practicing Muslims, anyway. Turkey is 99% Muslim, but the cafeteria at lunch time is still just as busy as ever. I spose it's like saying a country is 99% any religion; it doesn't mean that 99% of people participate. For once I've been glad to be stuck in this cave of a room with no view, because back here I can't hear the drums at 4 or 5 in the morning that wake people up for the morning meal. Solitude has it's advantages.

My best wishes go out to Dan and Regina, who got married a couple days ago. I really do wish the best for you guys, you're really great together. I'll try to find a Turkish wedding present. Unfortunately, I can't bring out weapons. Better luck next time, Dan.

Well, I gotta go. My laptop's running out of batteries.

2004-10-18T06:25:00.000-07:00

I haven't updated for a while, so I'll be sure to make a longer post later on. For now though, here's a link to the nifty picture album I made:
Click On This

I'll be putting pictures up on there as I take them. Well, gotta run to Turkish class.

2004-10-14T05:50:00.000-07:00

Last night was a pretty crazy fun night. After getting home from work, I had just enough time to eat a bowl of soup before a bunch of us were off to a bowling tournament that the aiesecers organized. Lots of people came, which made it really fun. We had 5 lanes set up, and then the winners on each of the lanes played in a "championship" match. No prize or anything, just respect I guess. Being the only American guy there, I had a definite advantage. I'm not even that great a bowler, and I tied for first. It was really fun. Here are a few pics:

The sign outside the bowling alley.

This is Mustafa, the aiesecer who's helped me with a lot of stuff.

Ilka winding up.

Celal with Juliane and Ilka, the german girls.

After the bowling was finished, Stefan was asking around to see if anyone wanted to hit some clubs, because his girlfriend has been in town for a week or so and hasn't gotten to see the nightlife. Clubs are free during the week, so I set off with a few others club-hopping. Most of them were pretty dead, but she got to see the views, and listen to the Turkish pop and whatnot. Eventually we ended up at a bar that was pretty packed, so we stayed there. After a while a live band started playing, and they were pretty good, they covered a lot of pretty cool songs. I took a couple videos with my camera (I'll work on getting those up along with the pictures). Megan and I stayed until the band was done, and then wandered back to the dorms. I got washed up and climbed into bed at about 2:15. It's a good thing I don't have to be at work earlier than I do..

2004-10-13T05:48:00.000-07:00

I'm pretty sure it was one month ago today that I got to Istanbul.. crazy how fast the time goes. I'm definitely having a lot of fun here, but at the same time I'm hoping that time continues to fly so that it doesn't feel like a really long time before I come home.

At least a few people are heading off for a trip to Bursa this weekend. It would be really fun to go, but the downside of any trip is that it costs a lot more than staying at home. Heh. I haven't really decided yet, so we'll see. It'd be nice to get out of the city again. If I don't go there this weekend I'll probably go to the Grand Bazaar and see what treasures I can find.

Other than that, not a whole lot has been happening. It's been rainy again, but I suppose that's why they call it the rainy season. Speaking of which, here are some pics:

Looking out the window of the computer lab at the dorms.

These really don't do justice to how soaking wet the weather was.

I'm still working on the picture site. It's coming along nicely, so I expect I'll post a link to it by the end of the week.

Last night I got recruited by some of the Turkish students to help them with their english homework. They had to take 4 or 5 sentences, and use conjunctions to make it into one big sentence that flowed smoothly. I hate those things. It's hard enough for me to do, and english is my first language.. poor saps.

2004-10-11T14:44:00.000-07:00

Today was a pretty typical monday. Well, almost. When I got to the office this morning, I had someone unlock the door for me, and I went in, flipped on the lights, and.. some random person was sleeping on the couch. So I just kinda went about my business, and like 45 minutes later they got up and went to work I guess. And then right after I got back from lunch, this girl about my age came in and was trying to talk to me in Turkish, and I told her I don't speak Turkish, and she kept trying to explain something. I looked her right in the face and said "I have no idea what you're saying." And she left. Five minutes later she was back, again trying to explain something in Turkish. It looked like she was trying to make a delivery of medicine or something, to Andrew somethingorother, and she didn't really get that I wasn't the guy. She tried to get me to sign and pay for it, but I wasn't about to pay for medicine that wasn't for me. A sandwich, maybe. So after a little bit of that I pointed for her to go across the hall and ask someone (they all speak English), and someone came back with her and explained that I wasn't the one the delivery was for, so she should go find them. It was interesting, to say the least. Even with trying to pantomime things, there was almost zero communication happening. Hence the Turkish class.

Speaking of which, I had the first real session of that today. 3 hours worth, with 3 more hours tomorrow. Pretty intensive, but the teacher is nice and everyone is at basically the same skill level, so it's not bad. Maybe I'll speak bad Turkish by the time I come back. After class I headed back to the dorm and tooled around for a bit until tagging along with some guys to get some grub. Geza (hungarian) knew of some little restaurant that turned out to be really good. And cheap. I got soup, a main dish, and dessert, all for a grand total of 6 million. That's 4 bucks, friends. I love this country.

In my spare time at work I've been working on a website that all yalls can go to and look at all my pictures in their full-size glory. There will be more pictures there than I post on the blog, so check it out when it's all ready to go. It will probably be a few days.

Time to turn in. Gnite everybody.

2004-10-10T11:39:00.000-07:00

This weekend has been a pretty good mix of laziness and activity. I slept till almost 2 both days, but I still managed to get out and do stuff. On Saturday it actually turned out to be a nice day, so I wandered up to Istiklal street and found a fairly cheap laptop case, and bought some school supply type stuff that I'll need for the Turkish class. And then that night I went with a bunch of people to a jazz concert. Only cost 10 million, which is way cheap for a concert, so that was good. I took some pictures, so maybe I'll post those while I'm at work tomorrow. I also got to know Alex a little bit, he's a Romanian guy that just got in the other night, and he's pretty cool. I just realized the other day that I'm the only guy here that is a native english speaker. It's really cool to live with people who are from all over the world, but I've started to get used to simplifying my speech so it's easier to understand. Not a bad thing, but my english may be slightly degraded by the time I get home.. heh.

Anyway, today was another lazy day for the most part. This evening Greg (Poland) asked me if I would shave his head with some clippers he has, so I told him I'd do his if he'd do mine. Now we're both shaved pretty short, and Andre (Ukraine) has been joking about how we joined the army, etc. It was starting to be time for a haircut, I was starting to get a little puffy. Anyway, after that a few of us went to Pizza Hut. Very traditional Turkish food, I know, but sometimes you need a break. It's kind of a shame that the only "american" food you can find over here is Pizza Hut, McDonald's, or Burger King. I think one of the first things I'm going to do after I get home is eat some John Hardee's BBQ. Now that is food that I miss..

Back to work in the morning. I'm sure I'll update again soon.

2004-10-08T05:29:00.000-07:00

The rainy season has started with a vengeance. Yesterday it was pouring all day long, so much so that the shuttle buses that I use to get to work weren't running, so I couldn't go in. Istanbul doesn't have gutters, they just trust gravity to figure it out, so when it rains that hard a lot of the streets get flooded, especially the ones at the bottom of the many hills. It was still raining today (but not as much) and it's supposed to keep raining through tomorrow. Yippee.

Here's a picture story of my first day at work:

This is the storage room that they turned into an office for a few people.

It has a blue couch that you can't see very well in this picture.

Nobody knew the password to the computer, so I just sat in my chair looking at this screen.

Someone came in and took the keyboard, so I couldn't even try to figure out the password.

So instead I looked at these extremely current reference books.

And then a random cat wandered in to sit on my couch.

So I played a few rounds of Spin The Cat™

Finally they got my rig all set up and ready to go.

This is the brand that will one day destroy Coca-Cola.

I was happy to be at work!

There's a marathon on Sunday that I might run part of, because it's the only time that pedestrians are allowed on the Bosphorus bridge. It's an 8k I think, so I definitely won't run the whole thing as I haven't run in months, but I'll at least do part of it. If the weather's nice.

In other news, Chris comes to visit in 2 weeks! Can't wait..

2004-10-06T02:57:00.000-07:00

Here comes the continuation of the picture show. I think I left off with the ferry out of Brindisi, so here's the rest.

Greece
The ferry from Brindisi to Patras was absolutely huge. For hours they were loading cars and semi trucks into the cargo hold. The passenger part was basically like a hotel. There was a reception desk where you get and turn in the key to your room, there was a bar/lounge, there was a dining room, there was even a casino. So yeah, very much like a hotel, only this one rocked back and forth, which was a little strange. Only two pics from Greece, since I was only there for one night. Pics:

First sight of land in Greece.

View from the upper deck of the ferry as we were coming into the port at Patras.

We landed and figured out that the train station was literally 100ft from the boat, which was good. The next train to Athens didn't come for 3 hours, so we found an internet cafe, and found someplace to eat. After that we were on the 4 or 5 hour train ride to Athens. The train sucked, because it would rock violently back and forth. None of the locals looked scared, so I just assumed that it was normal. You don't pee standing up on any train, but this one especially. After getting to Athens, I went with Chris to her school orientation stuff, saw her apartment (which is really nice), all that good stuff. The next evening at 7pm I bought a bus ticket and hopped aboard for the looong ride to Istanbul.

Turkey
The trip from Athens to Istanbul took about 22 hours, which is a really long time to sit on a bus. There were a few longer stops of a half hour or so, and a few smaller ones to pick up more passengers or refuel or whatever. I already told this story earlier in my blog, so go back a ways to read it. I also have some pics that I took of the area that I'm living in, which is called Kasımpaşa, and is one of the seedier neighborhoods of Istanbul. Pics:

This was my steed. It's a double decker, and I was on the top. Oh yeah.

This was the view from the first place we stopped on Turkish soil.

Planes give you salted nuts. Turkish buses give you fruitcake. Don't ask me why.

The aiesec office has an amazing view..

This a view from a little plaza that's on top of a hill near where we live.

The dorms are at the bottom of this hill, and we have to walk up it to get anywhere interesting. For that reason, the trainees affectionately call it "the fucking hill".

This is the room the guys stay in. Right now there are 6 of us crammed in here.

Our room has a great view of this wall.

I think that's it for today. The pics I posted aren't all the ones I have, so when I get around to it I'll dump all my pictures online somewhere and put a link here.

I should "work" I guess.

2004-10-05T07:45:00.000-07:00

This post is going to be friggin huge by the time I'm done.

Dublin
Dublin was the starting point for our European adventure. We got in at 10am or so, and couldn't check into the hostel until at least 3, so we set off packs and all on one of the big green tour buses. They stop at all the major sights, so we got to see a lot of them. Not all, because we only had one day, but we did pretty good. Also, the tour bus drivers sing Irish songs. Heh. We got back to the hostel at 6 or 7, totally exhausted. Pics:

Here's Chris in front of the hostel in Dublin.

A lovely view of Christ Church. We had weather like this during the WHOLE trip..

Inside St Patricks Cathedral.

Me outside the Guinness brewery. We took the tour.

The tour ends with a free pint. Here's Chris enjoying hers a little bit TOO much..

We crashed after a loong day sightseeing.

The next morning we got up early and made the mistake of trying to walk to the ferryport rather than take a taxi. BAD IDEA. I'm not kidding when I say that it must have been more than 3 or 4 miles.. we were both wiped by the time we got to the ferryport. Luckily we still got there with plenty of time to catch it.

London
We landed in Holyhead a couple hours later, and started hopping trains to get to London. That didn't quite go as planned. We missed a couple connections, got to London after dark, and our map to the hotel was wrong so we wandered around for a long time until someone helped us find it. By then it was after 11. No sightseeing the first day, but the next couple were jam-packed with it. Pics:

First sight of land in Holyhead.

This is where they keep the crown jewels.

Chris with the Tower Bridge.

St Pauls. We had to circle for a while to find an angle that didn't show any of the restoration scaffolding.

Chris, after taking a picture of St Pauls.

Ya gotta take a picture of Big Ben.

This is Chris with some Parthenon dudes. She was really excited to see them because she's a classics nerd.

Panorama shot of the Tower of London.

After 3 nights in London, we had a quick ride through the channel tunnel to Paris.

Paris
Once again, we had absolutely perfect weather. In fact, it was really warm, which made it pretty tiring to visit places like Versailles that are really exposed. Our hotel was pretty far from a metro station, but it was a really nice, quiet part of town. Lots of small cafes and markets and things. We got a true taste of Paris. Once again we had 3 nights, so we got to see pretty close to everything that we wanted to. Chris's French was good enough to pull us through most of the time. Pics:

We had a pretty good view from our hotel.

The requisite pic of Notre Dame.

Chris on one of the bridges connecting Paris with the island Notre Dame is on.

View from underneath the Eiffel Tower.

It's quite a hike to get up to the Sacre Ceour, but definitely worth it.

Pretty sweet panorama of Montmartre as the sun is starting to go down.

Why do they have to screw with the keyboard this much? Seriously..

It was hotter than blazes at Versailles. Next up, post-crazy guy pics!

This is me, punch-drunk, on the train to Rome. Look at the closeup to see the damage.

He really did a number on my glasses too..

We took an overnight train to Rome, which was fun. Dinner was expensive (it was a 3 course traditional Italian meal) but all in all it was a pretty comfortable ride. 14 hours or something like that.

Rome
We did more sightseeing in Rome than in any other city, by far. That's because Chris has studied so many of the things that are there, so she was dragging me EVERYwhere. The first day we took it a little easier because I wasn't feeling all that great, but after that it was all systems go. Only, I forgot my camera on the second day, which is the day that we saw the most. Oops. I got a lot of pictures anyway. We saw pretty much everything you can see, including Vatican City (aka the pope's lair). We even found a really good Indian restaurant to eat in while we were there. Mmm.. Pics:

The Colosseum, obviously.

Me next to a huge head. I think it's Bob Barker.

Vatican City as seen in Chris's sunglasses.

Some other thing Chris was excited about seeing.

Something I was excited about seeing.

I think I surprised her with this one..

The guy who ran the B&B didn't speak very good english, which made for this funny sign..

..and this one. I'm still not sure what he meant.

My eye after a few days of healing.

Ruins of some ancient baths. Chris tells me they were originally HUGE.

Awwwwwwww....

I tried to make this one an artistic shot.. oooh..

We were pretty beat after this city. While we were on our way to the train station, we felt like 2 drops of rain, which was our only bad weather on the whole trip. Still the only rain I've seen since I left the states, for that matter. We took trains to the port city of Brindisi (didn't miss any this time), took a taxi to the ferry port (learned our lesson from Dublin), and were on the overnight ferry a few hours early.

I need to leave work pretty soon, so I'll continue the picture show tomorrow.

2004-10-04T15:05:00.000-07:00

I've been here for almost 3 weeks, and today was my first real day at work. Not much happened, because they don't have anything for me to work on at the moment. I just sat around and took pictures while they got my computer setup all squared away (geek note - they gave me a P4 2GHz w/1 GB RAM, dual monitors, and some sort of Radeon.. ohhhhh yeahhh). A cat came into my "office" so I played with it. And I ate lunch. And then dad called, which was nice, and I could actually hear the person at the other end of the phone for a change.

I have all the resources I need at work to put up pictures, so my project for tomorrow is getting all the pictures I've taken so far onto my blog somehow. Prepare thyself.

I left work a little early to go to the first meeting of the Turkish language class. Side note - my supervisor is really cool. When I asked him if I could leave early, he told me that I'm free to come and go as I please. If I don't want to start work until 11 or noon, that's totally okay with him. Pretty sweet. I mean, his name's Volkan, so he's obviously gonna be awesome. Anyway, I left work early. The class was a lot to take in, but it was good. Intense is the word. It looks like starting next week, we'll have class on Mon and Tue for 3 hours each day. And he warned us that he's not going to speak english anymore after today. I think it's about time for me to dust off my thinking cap..

In general, things here continue to go quite well. It would be nice to get more emails or calls from stateside, regardless. Familiarity is always nice when I'm in such an unfamiliar place.

I work tomorrow, so I'm out.

2004-10-02T17:07:00.000-07:00

It's like 3 in the morning.. typical weekend around the dorms. Tonight was a pretty low key night, some people smoked şişa, we had some beers, that sort of thing. Just sat around and talked, hung out. It was cool. Very much in the vein of my last couple days, since I haven't had a whole lot to do. It's been boring at times, but I've also gotten a chance to get out and take some pictures of the city, things like that. I'm going to bring them to work on monday so that I can finally post some on here. I've been promising pictures for weeks, and perhaps I'll finally come through.

I actually have a phone that works now. I broke down and bought a new one after all the troubles with the used ones. Managed to get 40 million back for my 75 mil broken phone, so not too bad. My phone number is the same. So, finally, you can call me and I'll actually be able to hear you and everything.

Hard to believe that I've been here almost 3 weeks already. And gone from the states for over a month. Time really has a way of flying by sometimes. I'm starting to really get used to things here. The language barrier is obviously significant, but even still, I'm just getting used to the culture, and the way people do things. Nothing happens fast in Turkey. So it pays to be able to sit back, sip some çay, and just let things happen in their own good time.

G'nite everybody.

2004-09-30T13:03:00.000-07:00

I finally had my first day of work yesterday, sort of. My manager showed me where I'll be sitting, we went over my job description for a little while, and then he told me they needed to get some things ready so I should come back on Monday. Further proof that nothing happens fast in Turkey. It sounds like I could actually be kept busy at my job though, which is a big plus. I didn't travel around the world to surf the internet. Sounds like it'll be something relating to web programming and databases. Splendid. Something I'm interested in, and something I could learn a lot about.

Since I'm still not working until next week, I slept until noon today, and didn't really do too much after that. Hung around the dorms, mostly. Read some of Rainbow Six, which Greg (Polish trainee) is lending me. Tomorrow I plan on getting out more, maybe seeing some of the sights, at the very least taking some pictures of the city that I can post when I get internet access with my laptop. I may try to get a new phone, too, since the one I have is worse than I thought. Now I can't hear anything from the other end.

I'm hoping to go climbing too. This guy Geza (Hungarian student) is interested, as he just started climbing a couple months ago, and possibly Basilio (Venezuela) as well. All in all, even though I'm not working, it could still turn out to be a pretty full day. There's certainly nothing wrong with that.

Turkey is truly a fascinating place. I think by the time I return to the states, I'll be addicted to strong tea, döner, and mayonnaise.

2004-09-28T09:43:00.000-07:00

I finally got my stuff! This trip to the airport only took an hour or so, and after that I took a taxi back to the dorms with my packages. I feel like I can finally get settled in here now that I have my things. And I was finally able to put the pictures from the camera onto my computer. I don't have internet access with my laptop yet, but I should tomorrow, so if all goes well I'll be posting pictures soon.

In light of all the money I gave to Turkish customs, I added a stylish little "Donate" button on the right side of the page. By clicking that, you can use a credit card to give me money. It's fun, trust me. It was my birthday a week ago, remember. Another way to think of it is that money you give me could potentially be used to buy you souvenirs. But enough about that.

I'm also thinking about taking a class to learn Turkish. One of the other trainees and some of the students that live here are taking it. It would be my first language class since high school spanish. But much more useful. I mean, things that I learn I'll probably use within hours of learning them. Also, it would help me stay in a schoolish frame of mind, so that I'm not too shocked when I go back to classes next semester.

I finally start work tomorrow too, and I'm excited for that. Only a week and half behind schedule due to all the customs stuff. I'm hoping that I'll actually be doing something and not just surfing the internet, like at some other jobs I've had. I didn't travel all the way around the world for that, no sir.

As a final note: you have not suffered until you've seen a Mr Bean movie dubbed into Turkish.

2004-09-27T14:45:00.000-07:00

Today has been one huuuuge headache. The project for the day was getting my things through customs. The thickness of bureaucracy I had to slog through today truly amazed me. We got to the airport at 12:30 or 1, and were there until 6 trying to get my things. Still didn't get them, but we got close. We had to sign papers, get other papers, make copies of everything (they wanted everything in triplicate), buy stamps for some reason, take it to some guy to get stamped, who pointed us to some other guy to stamp it, who pointed us back to the original guy who gave us a list of 7 things we needed to do (of which we'd done 1 so far). It involved going back and forth between the customs building and the warehouse having various people sign various things and provide new paperwork that had to be signed by somebody else at the other building. It's turning into a pretty expensive venture too. The day ended with us at the very last step, when I had to pay some fee, and I had to go back to the airport terminal to get money (it's the nearest ATM, and a 10 minute walk from the customs and cargo area), and when I came back they were closed. I'm pretty sure that all I have to do is pay the fee and take my boxes, but it was really frustrating to get so far and not get my stuff. One part of the process was opening up my boxes so they could examine the contents, so I got to see my stuff, I got to hold my stuff, I got to look through my stuff, but I still don't have it. Grrrrr..

And expense-wise, it looks like by the end of this I will have paid 105 mil to FedEx, 170 mil to the customs office, 151 mil to the warehouse people, 20 mil for the stupid stamps, 4 mil for photocopies, and 30 mil for transportation. So total that's 480 million, or 316 dollars, just to RECEIVE my stuff. That's a hell of a lot of money in Turkey, probably enough to purchase the majority of the stuff I sent.

The one nice thing that happened in the midst of all that is I got a call from home. It was pretty short because I didn't have much time, but it's always nice to hear a familiar voice. Or try to. I need a new phone again, this one doesn't have any volume whatsoever. Maybe that can be another project for the next few days.

Anyway, I should probably head to bed so I'm bright-eyed and bushy-tailed for my third trip to the customs office tomorrow.

Take care of each other.

2004-09-25T10:25:00.000-07:00

Well, I think I'm on the upswing as far as health. I feel a lot better than yesterday, probably because I've slept for all but a few hours today. Good stuff, sleep.

Something I forgot to mention about yesterday: I found a climbing gym! While I was searching online before I came, there was only one that I could find in Istanbul, and since I've gotten here I've been trying to figure out where it is on maps and such. Well, yesterday as we were wandering around getting my phone fixed, we happened to walk right by it, so I went in and checked it out. It's pretty small, but it'll be better than nothing. And it's only 2,500,000 an hour to climb. That's only a buck somethin. Once I get my climbing gear out of customs (keeping my fingers crossed), maybe I'll start going once a week or whatever. Fun.

Well, I'm on my way out to get some food and fresh air with Mustafa. Ta ta for now.

2004-09-24T12:56:00.000-07:00

Good news: The person I bought my phone from fixed it for free. Rock. That means I got a phone for 75 million that I saw at other places in similar condition for 125 million. It's a Nokia 8850 in case anyone's curious. Not too shabby.

Not so good news: I've been getting sicker and sicker the past couple days, and I felt horrible today. Once we got my phone fixed and did some other errands, I came back and crashed for a few hours at the dorms. And I figure it's high time I got to bed. If you're gonna call me, do it tomorrow.

I'm out.

2004-09-23T10:32:00.000-07:00

I found out that there's a loose connection in my phone, so that's why it's not working. I'm taking it to a phone shop tomorrow to see if they can fix it. Hopefully so, because it was a pretty decent phone that I got for almost half the price of other places.

Today was spent wandering around with Mustafa and Basilio (he just got here from Venezuela yesterday). Clothes shopping a little bit, because I can't get the rest of my clothes until next week, and looking at phones and stuff. It was good, but lots of walking. And Istanbul is a fairly hilly city, so it can be tiring.

Today Mustafa told me that I look very Turkish. Once I learn a little bit more of the language, I should be able to blend in pretty well, and get lower prices on stuff and such. Not a bad thing by any means.

2004-09-22T12:50:00.000-07:00

Well, I found out that since I bought my phone after the cellphone company's business hours, it might not be activated until tomorrow morning sometime. Sorry, everybody. If it starts working before I go to bed I'll post on here, but otherwise you can try me tomorrow.

All in all it's been a pretty good day. I found out that I probably won't get my packages until the start of next week, but it's not a huge deal. This aiesec guy who's been helping me with a lot of stuff (Mustafa) is going to take me shopping for some cheap clothes, and whatever else I need for the next few days. And now that I have a phone I won't be as cut off from everybody, so I think in the next week I'll be able to settle in. Good stuff.

Peace out.

2004-09-22T09:30:00.000-07:00

Well, today has been a pretty good day so far. The people in the AIESEC office got me a little birthday cake, which was really nice, and they sang happy birthday and everything. Tonight, some of the trainees might go out to eat with me or something. Not sure yet, but whatever happens will be fine.

Also.. I got a cell phone! It's not activated yet or whatever I'm supposed to do with it, so I'm going to figure that out this evening. Here's my number: from the states it's (011) for international, (90) for Turkey, and then my number is 537-813-6180. Obviously I don't know if it works yet or not, but I'll figure it out soon enough. I'm usually up until midnight, so that's like 4 pm in the states. Feel free to call me in a few hours, once I have a chance to figure it all out.

2004-09-21T11:30:00.000-07:00

Well, still no boxes for Nate. I found out yesterday that I first had to go the FedEx offices to get some paperwork before going back to customs. So it took a few hours but somebody helped me find the place. It was pretty much on the other side of the city. FedEx made me pay 105 million (like 70 bucks) just to sign my name and pick up the paperwork. Lame. And they said that I may have trouble getting my stuff out of customs because the declared value is more than some set amount that I didn't know about ahead of time. And they might charge me taxes on stuff. Hopefully they won't once I explain that everything I'm "importing" will also be leaving with me in a few months. I was supposed to go to customs today, but the guy who was supposed to go with me didn't show up. So I guess I have to go sometime in the next few days.

Also, someone is taking me tomorrow afternoon to buy a cellphone. So I will finally have a number where I can be reached, and I'll also be able to call home now and again. I haven't had much luck finding public phones that work here. As it turns out, tomorrow is my birthday, so maybe I'll get some birthday phone calls once I post my phone number? I'm hoping. It's kinda weird to have my birthday already when I haven't even really settled in, and don't know the people around me very well yet.

If you want to send me care packages or anything, this is my address:

Nate Therneau
Istiklal Caddesi Tomtom Mah. Nuruziya Sok. 32/5
Beyoğlu Istanbul
Turkey

It's a mouthful, I know.

Anyway, perhaps I'll be talking to some of you tomorrow.

2004-09-19T12:53:00.000-07:00

Well, it's been an interesting weekend so far. I'm typing on a weird turkish keyboard, so this will be short. Friday night was this girl Andrea's farewell party (she leaves on tuesday), so everybody went out to a couple clubs, and I got my first taste of Istanbul nightlife. It was pretty fun. I have pictures (but no computer to put them up with yet). And then yesterday a bunch of people were heading a couple hours south to a beach town called Şile, and I got convinced to come along. I'm glad I went, because the weather was really nice and I got to swim/pee in the ocean. I got totally fried by the sun though. I was even wearing somebody's sunscreen, but I guess I didn't realize it was like SPF -4. Oh well. Now I'm back, and looking forward to getting my packages tomorrow (keeping my fingers crossed).

But now I sleep.

2004-09-17T10:59:00.000-07:00

It's been a looong day so far. My big project for today was going to the airport to see if I could find my packages. Well, one of the turkish AIESEC guys and I set off at like 2 or 2:30, and didn't get back until 7:30. It took us hours to figure out where you go to get a package passed through customs. People at the airport didn't really know, and directed us around in circles. We found it eventually, but by then it was closed, so I'll have to go again on Monday. That means I probably won't start my job until Tuesday. Fine by me, as long as I can get my packages delivered.

Despite the frustrations, it was a pretty fun day. I got to know the guy who went with me (Stefan) pretty well as we walked miles to try to find everything. And when we got back, we were both hungry, so he took me out for some Turkish food. I really like everything I've eaten here so far, I just don't know what many of the words mean yet, so it's hard to order by myself. Today I had a 'tost burger', which wasn't as much like a burger as it sounds. It had meat, but it was combined with pickles and lettuce and tomato and ketchup and mayo in a toasted bun thing. It was goood, and I think I'll go back to that place sometime soon and try one of the other kinds.

I'm hoping that this weekend I can get a cellphone. None of the phones in the dorm work, and it's not really safe to go outside alone in our neighborhood at night, so that will be a lot easier. And then I'll have a number where you can call me if you're willing to pay the charges. I think it might be cheaper to call from the states than for me to call from here, so yeah. There was also talk of travelling somewhere south of Istanbul this weekend, but nothing's ever organized very far ahead of time around here.

Later all.

2004-09-16T14:18:00.000-07:00

Well, I supposedly start work on monday, so I've got a few more days to kill. On the list for tomorrow is hopefully getting to the airport to get my boxes, and maybe buying some food or pants or something. And a watch. Right now I have no way of telling the time, which could be a problem if I don't get my stuff back before I have to start work. A major one on the list is getting a phone card that will actually work in the phones that I have access to. So far I haven't been able to figure out the phones in the dorm, which has been really frustrating. I'm getting sad, because I haven't been able to call Chris since I've been here.. and home, of course.

I'm slowly getting over the shock of being here. It's really helped to spend more time with the other foreigners who I'm living with. Including me there are 3 from the US, a girl from Australia, a few girls and a guy from Germany, a guy and girl from Russia, a girl from the Czech republic, a guy from Tunisia, a guy from France, a girl from Japan (I think).. and the list goes on. It'll really be an experience to be in such a diverse group for 3 months. Tonight we went down to an area by the Bosphorus (the big river in the center of Istanbul), that has bars and restaurants and food stands, and wandered around there for a while. It was fun.

Anyway, now is time of the sleeping.

2004-09-16T02:33:00.000-07:00

Well, here I am in Istanbul. I changed my blog so that all the times are in the Turkish time zone. It's turkey time! (If you know where that comes from, I feel sorry for you.) If you're in the states, that means I'm 8 hours ahead.

The trip here was pretty nuts. First of all, yesterday I was in Athens running around with Chris trying to figure out how to get the boxes of stuff she shipped to herself, that were stuck in customs somewhere at the airport. Took us like 4 hours to get nowhere, which was really frustrating. And then we gave up, got my stuff, and went to the bus depot. Got there at like 6, and the bus was going to leave at 7. So we said some rushed goodbyes (she cried.. a lot... aww), and I got my ticket and got on the bus. I didn't have time to call the AIESEC office in Istanbul to let them know I was coming, so I wasn't even sure if they'd be around when I got there. The bus was comfortable as far as buses go, it was a double decker and I sat on the top. Only got maybe a couple hours sleep in the whole 22 hour bus ride. Finally got to the main bus terminal in Istanbul, which is huge. It's like a big strip mall and a parking garage all in one, only all coach buses. Anyway, I went inside and asked where I could use a phone, and they saw the piece of paper I had that had AIESEC's address and phone numbers on it, so they called the number for me. Didn't get very far with it (I found out later it was because they weren't expecting anyone at the bus station, so they thought they had the wrong number), and tried calling again and it didn't work. So then they insisted that their free shuttle bus stops really close to the address, so they ushered me onto that and took off. Driving in Istanbul is NUTS. I wanted to take some pictures of it, but I didn't think that would be polite. Anyway, Istanbul is a city of 16 MILLION people. That's TWICE the population of New York City. And apparently at any given time, half the population is driving. Seemed that way, at least.

Finally they dropped me off, and pointed me up this street. I wandered a little bit, didn't see anything that looked right, and showed a guy the address who pointed me in another direction. So I wandered around there for a while not finding anything, and stopped in at this travel agency and got even more directions. Finally I found a street that looked like the right name, and wandered up and down it trying to find the address. By this time it'd been almost an hour and a half, so I finally stopped into a store to ask again, and they ended up calling AIESEC and giving the phone to me, and finally got it explained to them that one of their trainees was here looking for their offic. So they got the address of where I was, told me to stay there, and sent someone to get me. I was really relieved to finally be where I was supposed to be.

Another girl came in a little after I did, turns out she's from MN originally and went to school at Madison. Anyway, they had a little conference with us and then showed us to the dorms where all the trainees live. There are like 25 total or something, and only one is American besides the two of us. The rest are from all over the place. I'll post more about them once I learn names and stuff.

This morning I got up and wandered around for a while. Found an ATM so I could get some money, and now I'm back in the computer lab of the dorms waiting for the Madison girl (Nicki) to wake up. Her luggage is stuck at the airport, and my boxes are stuck in customs at the airport, so we're going to try to get that sorted out soon. Also, I'll probably get a cellphone as soon as I can. That way I'll have a number where I can be reached in case any of you want to call me.

This is way long, so I'll be done now.

2004-09-15T08:24:00.000-07:00

I'm safely in Istanbul, and boy do I have lots to update about. But it'll have to wait until I'm using a computer that doesn't belong to someone else. Soon, I promise.

2004-09-13T03:17:00.000-07:00

Well, we made it to Patras at least. The next train to Athens doesn't leave for another couple hours, so we've been wandering around tryin to find something to do. We made all our trains yesterday, and got to the ferry port plenty early, which was nice. The ferry took about 17 hours, but it was surprisingly comfy. Basically a big hotel, only it tipped back and forth from time to time.

Next up is Athens. Gotta figure out when buses leave for Istanbul (sounds like they're usually only a few times a week), and find somewhere to stay in the meantime. That is gonna be one boring bus ride, let me tell ya. About 20 hours, and I don't even have anything to read. I'll figure somethin out. Sleep is a pretty good option.

2004-09-11T12:55:00.000-07:00

Well, we leave tomorrow for the longest single part of our trip: the trains to Brindisi, and then the 14-17 hour ferry from Brindisi to Patras, and then another train into Athens. Wish us luck.

Can't wait to show all yalls the kick-ass italian sunglasses I got here. Sort of.. Godfather meets Terminator 2. Rock.

Catch ya on the flipside.

2004-09-10T11:40:00.000-07:00

Ok, so remember how in my last post I was talking about how we were safe, and nothing bad had happened, and all that stuff? Well, the day after that I got punched in the face. Before I go any further I'll say that I'm OK, don't worry. So here's the story. We had just gotten back into Paris from a day trip to Versailles, saw the Musee d'Orsee, everything was cool. We had all our stuff with us because we checked out of the hotel that morning, and now that we were done with the museum we figured we'd make our way toward the train station. At this point it was like 5:30, and our train was going to leave at just after 7, so we had plenty of time to get over there, maybe get something to eat, etc. IT WAS NOT TO BE. So we get on the metro to head to the train station, and there's one of those weirdos on the train. He was wearing some type of cloak with a hood or something, standing staring out the window of the train opposite the platform, talking to himself in French. The train was getting pretty crowded, and a few stops after we got on, I had to move a little to make room. As I was moving, my pack brushed against the crazy guy, and he spun around and punched me FULL FORCE on the shoulder. He was shouting stuff in French, I had no idea what his problem was, and because the train was full I couldn't move that far away from him. So he's yelling at me mostly in French, every once in a while screaming in English that he's not a homosexual, and that I touched his ass, and all of a sudden takes a full on swing at my head. I dodged as much as I could, but he still got me REALLY hard at the corner of my right eye. My head flew back, my glasses went flying, and I was left standing there trying to figure out what the hell had just happened. Almost immediately the part that got hit started swelling up, but luckily I wasn't cut or anything. Thankfully the crazy guy stormed off the train at the next stop, and some random guy picked up my glasses for me (which were bent all to hell, but not broken).

Whew, OK, long story part two..

So we're asking if anybody knows what we're supposed to do about this, and this EXTREMELY nice French guy who speaks decent English leads us off the train, out of the metro, and helps us find the nearest police station. So the French police give me an ice pack for my head, and find out what happened, all that stuff. People were swarming around. They called some firemen to come take me to the hospital once we were done at the police station. All this time I couldn't really see, I was obviously disoriented, and we had a train to catch. So finally we got a nice little ride in a French fire truck to the hospital (which was really close, pretty close to Notre Dame too). They got us in pretty fast, and the doctor basically just made sure my eye still worked, and that was pretty much all they could do. So we left. (Keep in mind, I didn't go down, I didn't black out, I wasn't dizzy, I didn't even have a headache. In other words, I took it like a champ.) So then came the crazy run to the train station. We had like 20 mins before our train left, so we were running through metro stations just missing connections, asking people for directions.. it was nuts. All this time I still can't really see because of my glasses. But we MADE IT.

All things considered, it could have been much worse. I have all my teeth, I have both my eyes, and other than some tender bruises around my eye, I'm perfectly fine. I have some pictures that I'll put up later. But anyway, we've been in Rome for a few days now. The first day here we took it easy so I could recuperate a little bit, but since then it's been full speed ahead. Yesterday we stopped at some glasses place and got my glasses fixed up for 3 euro, now they're better than they were before. We've seen tons of stuff here in Rome, mainly because everything here is stuff Chris has been studying for years, so she's going nuts to see all of it, and dragging me along. But it's fun anyway. I can appreciate things, even if I don't know everything about them. Plus, she's like a free tour guide. Bonus.

Not that long now until I'm in Turkey. I'll update as I can until then.

Oh yeah, and comment on my posts so I know people are reading this thing. To do that, just click on the thing right below here that says "x comments", and then follow the instructions. Bye.

2004-09-06T09:29:00.000-07:00

Ok, so it looks like pictures ain't gonna happen until Turkey. Sorry peoples. I'll post a ton, I promise. Including one of the STUPID FRENCH KEYBOARD I'm now using. Seriously, why put the letters in different places? WHY???

Anyway, as you can tell, we're in gay Paris now. London was cool, even though it took us forever to get there (a late ferry, a couple missed trains, no biggie). Saw most of the major sights, had a good time, etc. London has been the most expensive city so far, but it was good times. Then, through the channel tunnel to France. I'm glad Chris took 5 years of french, because I'm pretty lost as far as that goes. And tomorrow we leave on an overnight train to Rome, where neither of us speak the language.

For the time being we're just kickin it and havin fun, but I think it's starting to sink in that we're not comin home fo quite some time. That's both exciting and scary at the same time. I mean, I'll be in Turkey for 3 months, and what the hell do I know about Turkey? Seriously.

Anyway, my time on this machine is running out. If we find a cheap one in Rome I'll update again, but otherwise I'll definitely keep this thing more up to date once I'm finally in Turkey. Later, everybody.

2004-08-26T13:25:00.000-07:00

Well, my supervisor gave me tomorrow off so I can use it to pack or do whatever else I need to do before I leave. So.. that means that I've only got 40 minutes left at this job (until I get back in a few months, of course). Might be nice to finally get some sleep tonight. I don't know when the last time I got to really sleep in was. But we'll see, might have stuff to get up for anyway. I should probably go to the doctor and try to get a prescription for some anti-malaria pills. Hmm.. And figure out what I'm taking with me. And I have to go to St Cloud again tomorrow afternoon (that's the nearest AIESEC office). I guess it's the final pre-departure briefing or whatever. They teach me how to make a weblog (which I obviously already figured out), and talk to me about culture shock (I've already been overseas a couple times), and maybe some other stuff. Shouldn't take too long, and then I'll for sure have the official go-ahead. Everything else is pretty much in place.

Not many people know about this journal thing yet, so I will soon be mass emailing or whatever to let everybody know. Laters.

2004-08-24T07:31:00.000-07:00

This is Chris, my lovely assistant. And by assistant, I mean girlfriend. Her mouth isn't stuck like that, I swear.

I really don't know who will be reading this once it gets going, so I should probably talk about what I'm doing this coming fall, for those of you who don't know. I'm basically taking a semester off from school to work in Turkey. I got an internship through an organization called AIESEC, which arranges internships all over the world for students or whoever. Don't ask me what AIESEC stands for. Anyway, I've got one in Istanbul, Turkey for about three months. I'll be working at Bilgi University, doing something computer science related. I get paid a whopping $250 a month. Oh yeah, baby. Of course, that's about 384 MILLION turkish lira. For the first time in my life, and possibly the last, I will be a millionaire. I don't know a whole lot of details yet, so those will have to come later.

But before I get to Turkey, the girlfriend (above) and I get to take a whirlwind tour of europe. We fly for Dublin on the 30th of this month, and after that spend a few nights each in London, Paris, Rome, and Athens. She's an archaeology nerd, so she's studying in Athens for the semester. I'll try to get to internet cafes or whatever while we're traveling to post pictures and whatnot.

I'm done for now. Feel free to comment on my posts and stuff. If I know that people are reading these, that might convince me to write more often...

Gettin closer

2004-08-17T12:59:00.000-07:00

It really doesn't feel like I'm leaving the country in 13 days.. man.. Well, I'm mostly ready. Loan: check. Plane tickets: check. Train tickets: check. Visa: doin that today. Moving out: hmmmm. As far as the visa goes, I just have to find out how much money they want for this thing and get some passport photos and get it all sent off. Speaking of which, I should be leaving work now.

2004-08-13T07:44:00.000-07:00

Check out this dude we saw coming back from Chicago.. yes, it actually is an old police cruiser. Keep on rockin in the free world, man.

I'm bored, obviously

2004-08-10T13:31:00.000-07:00

Well, it sure didn't take very long for me to decide that I wanted to change the thing around. What can I say, I'm not very busy at work. I'll probably put in more effort to customize everything later. If I feel like it.

Well, here it is..

2004-08-10T07:37:00.000-07:00

I'm deciding to give this whole web journal thing a try. I think I'm required to keep something like this for my AIESEC traineeship, but it's a good idea anyway, so all y'all can see what I'm up to at any given time. I realize it's quite green, but I'll probably use my CSci-ness to customize it before TOO long. Once I get to Turkey I'll try to keep it fairly up to date, and since I have a shiny new digital camera, I can even post pictures as I take them.. joy! So yeah, as for right now, things are (finally) starting to fall into place. Got a job, got plane tickets, almost got a loan, I'll get my visa soon.. not a whole lot left to do. Oh yeah, besides move out of my apartment sometime in the next two and a half weeks before I leave. That'll be fun. Anyhoo, figured I should post something on here so I could start giving out the address for people to bookmark or what have you. So uh, laters.