First few Days

July 4th -6th

Hey everyone i am safely here and doing fine. Here are my experiences so far.....

From JFK to Istanbul (which was 9 hours) Sat next to a group of twenty teenagers from the country of Azerbaijan where they speak interestingly enough speak Turkish ( The country borders Armenia and Turkey. Have some fun and Google map it). They taught me some Turkish and i taught them some English. Overall though they were very annoying and were screaming and bumping my chair constantly. This led to me not getting any sleep (bummer!).

As soon as i landed in Istanbul got my visa and dropped off my luggage at the airport so i could travel and see the city. After all my next flight to Erzurum was about a 9 hour wait. So i went to pay for a cab but found 100 lira to be way too expensive (1 lira = 1.5 dollars). I therefore i took the metro into town. It was only 6 lira both ways and took about 45 min to the tourist section of town.

Some observations about Istanbul.

1. It is a lot like Israel/the middle east in that it is pretty dirty, traffic is hectic, and most of the shops are open and built in to these mid size apartment buildings.

2. Euro Trash hair cuts are everywhere ( I call it the "stylish mullet")

3. The culture is fascinating. Turkey is a secular country. However there is a strong Muslim presence. On the train I saw women completely covered except their face sitting next to girls in miniskirts.

I arrived at my destination safely and didn't get lost. The directions on how to get around the metro system were pretty intuitive and labeled in English.

So for the next four hours i was on foot! Here is what i saw:

The Blue Mosque:







The Aya Sofia: This is a palace that was destroyed and rebuilt three times. It was made into a museum by Ataturk. For more info wiki it. I didn't get to look at the history in detail.



Here is a video of Inside the Aya sofia:




I also got a haircut (thanks Avi!) from this old man who spoke no English. The sign said massage, haircut, and shave. But i didn't get a massage (unfortunate) i think the guy didn't want to touch a sweaty American who hadn't showered all day. However he did try to light my ears on fire!! No but seriously he did take a lighter and brought it close to my ear to light the hair on fire (Dont get grossed out everyone has ear hair). Here is a pic of the shop (sorry its kinda lame)



After i was done touring i headed back to catch my flight to Erzurum which was delayed an hour. Needless to say i got to my destination. However let me say that i had about 3 hours of sleep up to this point and had been in traveling for close to two days. Exhaustion was setting in.

When i arrived i was greeted by the University students who then took us to our guest house at the University. There are people from various countries in the program. Taiwan, Italy, Malaysia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia. Most people are from Thailand (like 25 of them). My roommate is Jacobopa from Italy. We are getting along well and had a very special bonding experience. As soon as we walked into our room we were greeted by what seemed to be 20 black moths. Since our hosts were trying to set up rooms for 20 Taiwanese students they could not be of assistance. Therefore we took matters into our own hands. The mass murder that ensued lasted for at least an hour. We took our complimentary slippers and started the execution. In the end we killed around 50 moths and left many stains on our walls. It now looks like a moth graveyard. I would put pictures but i am afraid some of you would not be able to stomach it.

The next day we received a tour of the campus and were taught a lesson in the turkish language.

Teshekur ederim - Thank you

So far i am having a great time and cant wait for the coming days! I will keep you posted on the coming days.




Jacobopa and me Ataturk University (They ski on those mountains)



The whole gang



Take care

Ben-G