Merhaba!

I'm picking up a few Turkish words!  Merhaba is just hello.  Wow, it already feels like so long since I've been on American soil!  The past few days have been nothing short of an amazing experience.  I'm going to give a day by day overview but will bold key words in case you want to skim :) (**in order of most recent day first) For more pictures, click here

Sunday (06/02)
     This morning we left our hostel at 4:00 AM!  We were sharing our hostel room (also I should mention that there are 9 of us including Adele) with other travelers.  One girl who was from Australia has been traveling all over since November 2012! And a Canadian guy has been traveling since February of this year!  Can you imagine?  Anyway, we were SO loud trying to get our millions of bags out of there and down the stairs.  
     Our taxi ride to the airport was interesting.  We drove through some messy streets where the protestors had been.  We were dodging blocks and rubble on fire and boxes of fruit thrown out... etc.  Once we hit the interstate our driver hit 160 mph.. yes, MPH, and stayed between that and 130 all the way to the airport.  Luckily, he slowed down to go through the toll.. slowed down to 80 mph, haha!
     So then we flew to Ankara, swapped planes and made it to Adiyaman.  This is where our host families met us!  Nisa is my host sister and she is 16.  I am living with her and her mom and dad while I am in Turkey.  They were so so sweet and greeted me with a beautiful bouquet of flowers!  We drove home, I unpacked and took the greatest 2 hour nap ever!  Then we went to meet the other LE teachers and their host brothers/sisters for tea and to figure out a plan for tomorrow.  The students in our classes are still in Turkish school this week so just for this week we will be having our English classes 5:00 PM-9:00 PM so that the students can attend both.  Then the next week we will go from 9:00 AM-1:00 PM.  We walked most of the way home and I got to see a goot bit of the city.  There aren't any other Americans here (it's definitely not a tourist city) so sometimes people stare.
     Nisa's mom had dinner ready for us when we got home and it was the best spread I've ever seen!  It was like Thanksgiving in America!  We were watching the news while eating the protests look like they're getting really out of hand but everything is in Turkish so I have no clue, haha.  Also, this flashed across the screen: "taş ... Gaz ... su..."and I knew two of the words!  The last two are gas and water.  Nisa told me the first one is stones.  They were showing footage of the struggles between the people and the police with stones, tear gas and firefighter sort of water hoses.  I sure am glad to be in Adiyaman now :) 

     SO excited to finally meet my students tomorrow, I will be teaching a high school class! I'll post again in a few days with some of those details!

Saturday (06/01)
     So then we got up and went to check things out, all the while avoiding the protests.  Without boring you too much we went to see the Blue Mosque, the Hagia Sophia, some Mausoleums, the Grand Bazaar and the Spice Market.  Of course, I have plenty of pictures to share!  I will put a few up on here and change them out now and then.  But I will try to set up an album on Facebook soon. 

     Animals in Turkey are so bizarre.  There are cats just everywhere!  We stopped in the Grand Bazaar (an unbelievably huge market) to get some tea and a cat walked up and confidently curled up under my chair.  They aren't skiddish at all!  And dogs.  I'm a little concerned with the dogs.  I never see one moving.  I saw three on Saturday that were all just laying in a shady spot.  They didn't look like they were breathing but I guess they were just super hot!

     Food.  I think Turkish food deserves a whole picture album just to itself!  I haven't had anything I haven't liked yet!  My mom asked if I've had anything really different from American food yet.  How about--I haven't had ANYthing the same as American food here.  And, of course, I've had baklava and Turkish delights by now too!  I'm actually not a huge fan of either but maybe they will grow on me.  Why the boy in Narnia traded his soul for Turkish delights beats me.  Hahaha.  I'm more into the heartier home cooking that we've had. 

Friday (05/31)
     After my last post on here I was heading to Vienna.  That was literally the worst flight I've ever been on.  And it was about a 9 hour flight!  I love kids, but man... if I had kids like the ones that were sitting around me on that flight I would probably just sail across the Atlantic instead of putting others through that misery.  Prime example: Some parents moved so that a 2 year old and a 6 year old could have the entire row behind us by themselves.  Crazy!  They were kicking and screaming.  Running up and down the aisle and only stopping right beside my aisle seat to scream at the top of their lungs.  And then more kicking and screaming behind us.  My neighbor and I were finally fed up so we asked the moms to calm their children.  The 2 year old mom's response?  "Well, she's only 2..there's not much I can do."  And then nothing.  WOW.  Later the flight attendant asked the same lady to keep her child seated because everyone was trying to sleep.  Her response: "It's not really her bedtime so she's not tired."  And then the last 2 hours was of the child just howling behind us.  Only Maroon 5 can describe my Misery.
     Vienna = Leona!!!!! I had an almost 5 hour layover so I got to leave the airport with her for about 3 hours.  Just my luck that it was cold and raining!  I felt ridiculous because I was wearing a thin dress and sandals walking around Vienna.  The Austrians probably thought I was nuts.  I got to see Leona's apartment where she has been living all this semester.  Then we got something from the bakery and kakao (hot chocolate)!  And back to the airport.  I spent more time in underground Vienna than above it but it was so great to see my LeLe!  She's going to kill me, but here's the link to her FB, add her, she's great!  Hahaha

     Off to Istanbul.  The flight here was great!  Adele (the Turkey country coordinator for LE) met me when I came out with my luggage and the rest of the group was in a cafe in the airport.  Once everyone was there we took off for the hostel!  At this point I only knew that there were demonstrations in Istanbul near our hostel so we had to take a different and MUCH more difficult route to get there.  We metro'd, trolly'd and then walked.  I had to drag my 57.5 lb bag up the steepest hill I've probably ever been on.  Along with my 20/30 lb backpack and another 10 lb bag I was carrying.  It was tough but I made it!!  I wish I had gotten a picture.  Here's my description: the hill was hard enough to walk down, much less up and with 75+ lbs of luggage!  (Btw, I have so much because I am leaving a ton of school supplies behind).  Probably a 30 or 35 degree incline.  Dropped our stuff off at World House Hostel and went out to dinner.  We did a little teacher training that night but the rest of us wanted to go to bed afterward. 

     Only a half hour after I fell asleep, I woke up to protestors walking by and chanting and tear gas coming through the open window I was sleeping under.  My nose just started burning so so badly all at once and part of our group had already run into tear gas thrown out by the police earlier that day so I figured it was the same.  Plus it smelled bad too.  Quick rundown of the demonstrations: Greenpeace was against them building tearing down trees in Taksim Square (for them to build a mall?) in Istanbul so they started protests.  The police overreacted and starting throwing out water bombs and tear gas.  The Turks are now upset at their reaction and the protests have evolved into a movement against the government in general...which has spread to all over Turkey, not just Istanbul.  The worst of it is in Istanbul though.