Central Asia: Day One

I love the schedule here! Breakfast is usually eaten between 9 and 10, lunch between 1 and 3, dinner between 7 and 9, and they go to bed around 12.30 to 1. That's like my natural schedule, when left to my own devices, so it's perfect for me.

Breakfast was really good. Bread, cheese, tomato, olives, cucumber, boiled eggs, and juice or çay. The feta is really good - you put it on the bread and I could eat it every meal. We had orientation after breakfast, where we went over some ground rules and did a devotion. Then we split up into three groups and went on our way.





Our city,
as seen
from the
front of
our hotel.







My group, made up of the Instituters, went to the local university. We ate lunch in the cafeteria and then split inot groups of 2's to meet people, asking them to show us around campus a little. The students actually seemed kind of reticent to talk to us or said they couldn't speak English at all. Eventually two of the girls took my partner, Carrie, and me to one of their teachers who spoke English (ironically, our two group leaders showed up there a few minutes later). He called a girl from the International Relations office, Müge, to give us a tour around campus. The professor was a cool guy; he had done a lot of traveling all over the world and seemed really interested in talking to us.

Müge didn't seem that interested in talking to us, as if she had been pulled away from other things to do this. But she was nice, and we kept the conversation going as she showed us around. She took us up to her office,k where we met two of her colleagues, a guy and a girl, whose names I don't remember. They were nice too, and he seemed really interested in talking to us. We talked for a while about Turkey and universities and such things. They also gave us some messenger bags (!!!) with hats and a notebook. I was so excited, because I'd been wanting a messenger bag recently but hadn't gotten one yet, and here was one for free! They also seemed interested in maybe doing a summer exchange program with a university in the US, which would be 1) really cool, and 2) a great platform.




A statue in
honor of
Ataturk, the
father of the
country, on the
university
grounds.






After the university, we went and got the van fixed, so it would stopped beeping all the time. Then we came back to the hotel, freshened up, and walked up the hill in search of a good restaurant for dinner. We had lamb and chicken kebabs and a minced lamb and cheese tortilla thing that's really good. They eat yoghurt (not American-style yoghurt) here with everything, which is cool because it's full of good bacteria that help your stomach. It's a non-flavored, kind of sour sort of yoghurt. It works pretty well with lamb.

We ended the day early since it's our first day here. Our hotel is on a hill overlooking the city, so we got to take some cool pictures of the city at sunset. Then we all just hung out and talked until bedtime. It's cool talking to and getting to know the believers here and the others from the Summit. All in all, a good first day.





Our city
at sunset.