I'M IN TURKEY!!! Day 1

I've been repeatedly telling myself that in every language I know or can reasonably fake (excluding the "Day 1" part). Nevertheless, the more lucid part of my brain still says "Nope". In fact, it was that part of my brain that dominated the week, with the result that I was transferring laundry out of the dryer and into the suitcase at the time when we had planned to leave the house. I did make it, though. The flights went smoothly. On the flight from Heathrow to Atatürk I chatted with the lovely lady in my row who was en route to do relief work in Afghanistan. She was really inspiring in general, and it was nice to get some last minute tips for traveling in Turkey since she's been before. I used some broken Turkish to make my way by taxi to the hotel and get settled. I was really excited when I remembered how to ask "How much does it cost?" (Ne kadar?) to the taxi driver and even more excited when I understood his answer "Yirmi üç" (twenty three). The neighborhood that the hotel is in looked exactly like Mostoles, El Soto, where my grandpa lives in Madrid. From the sidewalk tiles to the street proportions to the painted metal fences to the funny little cars. The only tip offs that I wasn't in Spain were the Turkish flags (go figure) and presence of green (as opposed to brown) grass. Jet lag, excitement, and fear of not hearing my alarm clock overpowered my exhaustion: it took me a while to fall asleep and I woke up two hours earlier than I meant to. And then I had my first meal in Turkey: scrambled eggs (exotic), some delicious something that was kinda like spanakopita, yogurt (OM NOM NOM), a roll with nutella (YES), and delicious coffee. And then back to the airport. And then I realized that of course the taxi took me to international departures when I was supposed to meet CIEE staff at arrivals. Rosetta Stone hadn't taught me how to say "international arrivals" or "study abroad program staff member" in Turkish. But fortunately arrivals was just a floor down from departures and from there it was just a matter of locating our meeting point of Starbucks (Starbucks nerede?). No problem. Soon after, I met three of my fellow CIEE students, Kathryn, Emily, and Tyler. They're all super sweet and easy to get along with, which makes the whole semester ahead seem tons easier. A Turkish student took us by shuttle to the university, with a soundtrack including Lady Gaga, Beyonce, and even Justin Bieber /:|. The campus is so beautiful!! It's surrounded by lushly-wooded hills and the gorgeous Bosphorus is super close. Since we've arrived here we've just been wandering around campus, getting a feel for it and meeting more CIEE mentors and students. My room seems huge and is super nice. And Kathryn lives in my dorm, which is really nice. Now I'm just waiting until we all meet up for dinner. My body's trying to tell me it's wayyy past my bedtime, but I'm valiantly resisting in the spirit of getting on Turkish time as soon as possible. Our orientation schedule this week looks CRAZY.

Here's my room!!!

My roommate's not here yet, so I chose my side of the room:

And here's the view outside my window. It's not a great photo, but you get the idea that it's gorgeously lush:

A shot of the University from Facebook:

Here's some vocabulary:

• Atatürk -- in this post, it's an airport in Istanbul. The airport is named after the greatly revered revolutionary president of Turkey who founded the Republic of Turkey (no big deal): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ataturk
• nerede? -- where?
• yirmi -- 20
• üç -- 3
• Bosphorus -- the straight that runs through Turkey, connects the Black Sea to the Sea of Marmara, and delineates that part of the border between Europe and Asia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bosphorus
• Justin Bieber -- /:|
• çizburger -- cheeseburger