Hello hello!

I've been in Turkey for over 24 hours so I guess it's time to start blogging about my trip. I first left East Lansing by Train for Chicago last Thursday at 8:30 am. That was my first train ride and it was okay but not my favorite. Six of us plus our group leader, Maggie, then got to Chicago around noon and we had to kill time because our flight didn't leave until 10:20 so we roamed around Chicago until then. Chicago was incredibly hot and not fun to walk around in but at least we had some delicious stuffed crust Chicago-style pizza.

We then took the subway to the airport and got to the international terminal. I found it surprising that once we got past security there weren't any restaurants but just a few stands with sandwiches or snacks but I had a delicious raspberry parfait so it was fine. Eventually we got on the plane and the seats were a bright light blue which was different for me because I've only ever been on Delta/Northwest flights. I was impressed by the movie selection and watched 1.5 movies until I was finally able to sleep. I didn't sleep that well though because I couldn't get comfortable. But we were served two meals both of which were pretty good for it being served on an airplane. 13ish ours later we landed and did the whole visa/passport/luggage thing.

We met up with our leader guy from the school, Mehmet, and had to take a very packed subway to the bus station and then we went to get bus tickets to Eskisehir but the earliest we could get on a bus was midnight so we had to wait 4 or so hours for the bus. The bus area was pretty weird. When we went to get food people were constantly telling us to eat their food and we quickly learned the Turkish word for no.

We then had a six hour bus ride to Eskisehir and met up with two more coordinator people, Ezel and Mohamed. We then took a two-minute taxi ride to our apartments and quickly got situated, showered, and slept. I'm in a two bedroom, three person apartment. I'm sharing a room with another girl from MSU, Qianqian and I guess there's a girl from Lithuania that will be here Tuesday that will be our other roommate.

I just realized I haven't taken pictures of the inside of the apartment yet but I don't feel like doing it now so I'll post them later.

We then waited for Mehmet for an hour at 2:00 but he never showed up so we went to grab some food. I think we ate at a bakery-type place and ate a ton of bread with some stuff in it. It seems like the bread-to-other food-ratio is quite crazy. The Turkish people sure like their bread and I'm looking forward to a meal that has more other food than bread. But at least its fresh and still better than American bread.

We eventually met up with Mehmet and toured the city. The city is really nice and has a bunch of cool shops. There's a giant mall with 5 stories that's only a five minute walk from our apartment and the rest of the shops and stuff are just beyond that. We walked around, took a ten minute boat tour and got a feel for the city. The picture below is the start of Bar Street which has a ton of bars and food places. We went to a place called Olympos which Mehmet use to work at and showed the equivalent of America's Funniest Videos on the TVs constantly.

Overall it's been great so far and I'm with some cool people too. Here's a picture of our group below. But Mehmet just got here for us to tour Old Town so I've got to get going.

TTFN!