Central Asia: Travel to

Our flight left Sunday afternoon. Short flight to DC, layover, 7ish-hour flight to Europe, layover, and another short flight to get to Turkey. our seats were all randomly assigned, but I did get to sit next to two Instituters during the long flight, which was nice. Overall, the flights were pretty uneventful; only one person had a bag that didn't make it, and he should be getting it in the next few days.



Me and
Julie at
the RDU
airport!
She did
my hair.








Once we landed, we got our 90-day visas, met up with our three guides for the week, and set off on a 6-hour drive to our city. In my van it was only myself, Carrie, and one of our Guides, Sam. Poor Sam! I asked him question after random questions for six hours straight. I don't think there was more than a 7-minute silence the entire trip. We would pass random things that would evoke a question in my mind, and I just asked whatever came to mind, so the poor guy was stuck answering random questions about the ambulance system, ice cream, television, etc, for six hours. Also, our van decided about halfway through the drive that it wanted to beep at us every time Sam hit the breaks, so that was a fun thing to listen to for a few hours, too.




The mountains
were gorgeous.
Some of them
were off in the
distance, but
some of them
were right up
against the road.










We stopped at a local mall for dinner once we reached our city (I had Burger King), then we went to our hotel and dropped into bed around 11. Most of us had averaged about four hours of sleep during the 32-ish hour trip, so we were pretty tired.

Initial impressions about Turkey
Turkey is beautiful! The terrain is magnificent and the culture is fascinating. I feel as though I have never ending questions about it just because it's so interesting to learn about. The people are very friendly and welcomeing and very gracious to foreigners. Most of them seem excited to have us here and eager to talk to us. Even though most of them don't agree with our politics, they say they love American people, and they are very proud of their own country, often calling it "perfect." There's so muct culture and history here; I love it! The Turkish also have this thing about tea, which they call çay (pronounced chai, though it's very different from American chai tea). Whenever you enter a shop or someone's home, you'll be offered çay, and it's considered rude not to accept. They drink it from these little glasses, and it's a big social thing. Our guides say sometimes they'll drink 10 glasses of it a day, so it's something hopefully we'll be able to get used to!



I don't know
what body
of water this
is, but I love
water, and it
was beautiful!








Initial impressions about our city
Our city is gorgeous! It has a population of about 2 million and is built up into the side of a mountain. We haven't gotten to see a ton of it yet, but I think I'm already falling in love iwth it! It's also very safe. Our guides say they very very rarely here of much significant crime, with the main one being stealing. But it's a pretty safe place to be out and about, even after dark. The Turkish people are all gorgeous, men and women alike. I love the Turkish language and am working on learning a few words, though our guides say it takes about 2 years for a person to become functionally fluent in Turkish. For comparison purposes, for most romance languages (French, Spanish, Italian, etc), it takes about six months. So it's a pretty intense language, but I love hearing and seeing it around. I think it'd be a really cool language to learn. I can't wait to get out and start meeting some people and getting to know them!