Anyway, hey look, I'm in Turkey! Ankara, specifically, which is the captial of Turkey. I know everyone's really excited to hear about the trip so far, but honestly, there's not a ton to say. Basically we're just in orientation programs all day long, until almost 6:00. Tonight's really the first night that I've gone out an explored. My roommate, Amy, who I'm rooming with here at our hotel, Baskant Ogretmenivi (which roughly translates to "Teacher's House") and I took a taxi to "Old Ankara" to meet up with some other Fulbrighters. Let me just say that two Americans who speak zero Turkish trying to direct a Turkish taxi driver who speaks zero English is a hilarious thing. But I've got a nifty Turkish-English dictionary on my iPod touch, and we just did a lot of pointing and gesturing, and we got where we wanted to go (sort of). I wish I could describe Ankara. A lot of Fulbrighters have commented that the architecture looks a little like Florida... There are definitely lots of pastels. And palm trees. But it's like if a city in Florida were built by an Ottoman sultan with a limited budget. There are also lots of buildings that look a little Art Deco-ish/WPA era, probably because Ankara became the capital sometime in the 1920s or 1930s, after the establishment of the Republic- before that it was just a sleepy backwater.
Anyway, I wish I could comment more on "what Turkey is like," but I've spent about 92% of my time here inside the hotel. So I can tell you what our hotel is like, but no one cares about that... I will say that my flight experience getting over here was a bit harried- we ended up being delayed in New York for 2 hours due to a faulty fuel pump, so our 3 hour layover in Istanbul which we needed to go through passport control, customs, and to get from the international terminal to the domestic terminal turned into about 45 minutes. So imagine a group of about 30 Americans lugging over 100 lbs. of luggage each while they sprint through the Istanbul airport... Ridiculous. We were awarded once we got on to our Turkish Airlines flight to Ankara by the company of Turkey's basketball team [who had just come in second (to the US) in the World Cup of basketball], and the most delicious airplane food I've eaten in ages. Turkey (or Ankara at least) seems to be obsessed with their basketball team- on lightpoles all over the city, there are these giant life like... models? statues? of basketball players dunking basketballs from 10 feet in the air, on a lightpole. It's simultaneously creepy and awesome. Don't worry, there will be pictures...
Oh yeah, and we walked to a mall yesterday near the hotel- AnkaMall! AnkaMall rules. I am pleased to report that Turks are pros at mall culture. I bought a cellphone at the Turkcell store in the AnkaMall, which is functional and teeny tiny and keeps sending me text messages in turkish. I'm going to go back to AnkaMall before we leave next Sunday, so maybe I'll do a separate post about AnkaMall then...
Anyway, the moral of the story is that I'm here, I'm safe, and I'm sleeping decently, but that's about all there is to say. Fortunately the hotel has
