Tuesday, June 5th, 2012
Class, lunch break where we went off campus and got really
good chicken, rice, and bean mix, class, tiny bit of chill time, and then our
friend from class, Hasancan (pronounced Hass-on-john) had the 6 of us over at
his apartment for dinner and hang out time. Can (pronounced john) from class
was also there, and their friend (I don’t have the right letters to spell his
name) not from class also came. It was nice, and the view of the sunset was amazinngggg,
and Hasan can cook good tooJ.
What was not so nice is that we totally got ripped off for our laundry. We
decided to try it out, because we all brought the wrong sort of clothes, and our
jeans badly needed washing. The guy totally over charged us, so we’re pretty
much not going to do anymore laundry (but Hasan’s friend has a machine he
offered to let us use, and he lives pretty close by I think, so that’s super
nice of him) unless absolutely needed. We’re wearing shorts around campus now,
and not really caring as much, but out and about it’s still better to have more
clothes on.
Wednesday, June 6th, 2012
Class was interesting again, the differences in culture,
location, and religion and how those all interplay into interpretations of
history are fascinating to me. The morning session was lecture, and in the
break we had group work to go over the Johnson/Inonu letters of 1964 (they are
about the Cyprus crisis). The people in my group were pretty nice; after we
were done with the assignment we just talked about Turkish v American culture,
and it was super interesting. In the afternoon, we had a class discussion about
the letters (both the am and pm sessions were led by Feroz Ahmed, the textbook
author who spoke earlier in the week). After class, Hassancan (pronounced
Has-an-john), Ugher (spelled that totally wrong, but it’s pronounced Oar but
with a longerish O sound) and a kid I can’t remember the name of took us out to
the main fancy shopping place this side of the city (about 30 minutes by car.
Some were in a taxi, the 4 girls went in a car driven by the kid whose name I
can’t remember). We just walked around, it was pretty, very much like Aghia
Paraskevi, and we wandered down by the water eventually. The water was not
swimmable (to gross, the color is beeeyooouuuttteeefull, but there is too much
nasty stuff in it, and there isn’t really a beach), sadface, and then we
wandered back. Hassan wanted us to get these special burgers, but they were
like 20 TL each so we were all like nah, let’s just eat at school. So we all
came back, and I went and puked while the others went to dinner and then
Hassan’s apartment. I’m kinda a little bit (by a little bit, I mean almost
deathly) ill, and not really feeling up to doing much of anything. :/ Also, my
atm card has decided not to work in Turkish atms (so far, I’ve tried 4
different brands) and so running out of cash is a very real concern. Luckily, I
have a nice roommate who will lend me some, if my card doesn’t start working. I
bought francs, euros, and usd for the layovers, so I was able to convert that to
tl and not be completely broke, but unless my card starts to work people back
home probably aren’t going to be getting anything awesome from Turkey:/
Thursday June 7, 2012
Class today was another interesting one. The guest lecturer
was Turkish, but attended/taught at 6 american universities, so his English was
excellent and he had some interesting points. The afternoon time was about the
2003 invasion of Iraq, another interesting subject. I’m still sickly, like Peru
bad, which is saving me money because I don’t want to eat lol, but it sucks to
be epic sick when I don’t have a lot of time here. I got to skype with my mom
and O, and it was niceJ
Now I’m chilling out in the study area, with the sucky wifi (start wifi rant:
IT IS THE YEAR OF OUR GOOD LORD TWENTY FREAKING TWELVE, AND RELIABLE WIFI
SHOULD NOT BE THIS HARD TO COME BY/end rant), working on my homework.
Miss and love to my family and friends! xoxoxo
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