First few days in Turkey!

Hey everybody! Let me just start by saying that I miss you all a lot but the affects of that are wearing off because Turkey is so stinkin' awesome! My very first cultural experience was the highway. The driving is a bit like Mexico if you have been there, so its crazy, lane lines are optional to follow and so are stop lights. The are street vendors on the highway, they stand in between the "lanes" and sell anything from bananas to t.v. remotes. random yes. also police men patrol the highway on foot, it doesn't make much sense but they do. oh yeah and our bus stalled on the highway! lots of angry turkeys! We finally got to campus and it is beautiful, you can all see the pictures on facebook, but it is very secluded. It is in a small corner of the city and we have everything we need on campus, bank, grocery, post office, its impressive but that doesn't mean I wont be going out. The night i got here i introduced some Dutch kids, Greg, Gerkin, and Remen, to PIG (the cue ball and eight ball game on the pool table) they loved it! we almost broke a window too! The next day Louis and I, my roommate, met up with some girls from South Africa, Poland, and Holland. We walked around the neighbor hood near the campus, it was great, lots of markets, bakeries, and cell phone shops. i bought a customized Ethernet cord (meaning they cut the length and made it for me there, i think its awewsome!) That night we went down to Kadikoy, the big business district near our school, there we saw a swan (see picture haha!) and we ate at a restaurant that cook an entire sea bass for us! sooo good. we looked around some more and then headed back because it was getting pretty late and public transit only runs so late. one thing to know about turkey is that they are obsessed with there first elected president Ataturk. His face and statue is everywhere! picture an eight year old girls room covered in Hannah Montana pictures, then change that to a creepy guy and put it all over Istanbul then you have an idea. today was orientation, there are only four Americans here (sweet!) out of 130 international students, a lot of Germany and Holland (Netherlands) kids. Most of them are very nice and we all talk a lot to each other and its in english!!! haha i have been happy to learn that most of the people in our generation speak at least some English and turkey is pretty easy to learn, all of their words sound like ours just they are spelled horribly wrong such as felefase= philosophy. Oh! our campus has dogs! yeah there are like a dozen dogs that just roam campus and we have been told that they are for our safety! and sure enough when it is late at night one dog at least will follow you, during the day they just sleep. also there is normally a pigeon in the cafeteria. haha love it! our classes have been postponed for a week because the new male dorm has not been finished yet and they want us to move in there before they start classes so that means i will be going on a week long trip down to kapadokya and up the Mediterranean coast. also that means that my semester is only 12 weeks long! haha because of religious holidays here we rarely so a week without a break of some kind. so i will be out of touch for the next week or so but leave me something nice to come back to on facebook. ill update you all again after my trip, miss you and i hope all is well!

With love from above,

Brit