10 Days Left

I can't believe it's almost over! But there's still a lot to be done. Here's what's will be going on with me in my last days here:

• My friend Jen and I are hosting a dinner party for a few of our friends and a few of the Turks who have been especially helpful to us.
  
• I will have a project due for my biopolymers class. It involves running a computer simulation on a fragment of a protein molecule, and then looking at a whole bunch of graphs to see what happened. The simulation itself takes over two days to run on my computer!
• I will have three finals. Unfortunately, all three of them are scheduled for after I leave, so I will be taking them early.
• I will have one paper due. Actually, it's not technically due until after I get back to the states (my professor said that I can email it to him), but I want to get it done before I leave.
• I will be trying my best to finish the Turkish version of Harry Potter 7. Currently, I am on page 298/690. I think it is still possible for me to finish it, though, I might have some left to read on my 14 hour plane-ride home. If all goes according to plan, though, I will be done before my feet touch the ground in the U.S.! See the previous posts entitled "General Update" and "Language Instruction" for details about why I'm reading Harry Potter in Turkish.
  
• I will be putting last minute updates on my blog. I found a much faster way to sort through my pictures using a program called Picasa, and I'm not making any promises, but I hope to get almost all of my pictures online in the next 10 days. I also want to post some stories that I haven't had the chance to tell you all before.
  
• I will have to do some last minute shopping. In particular, I need an additional suitcase, because I'll be going back home with much more than I arrived here with.
  
• And finally... I will be saying my goodbyes to everyone here!
  

Who knows how many of the above things I will get accomplished, but I will definitely be busy. Check back often, because I may be posting more frequently than I have in the past. I'll be seeing some of you soon!


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Fatih Mosque

There are many mosques in Turkey, and to be honest, after you've seen a few of them, it's like you've seen them all. But a particularly cool one that I went to near the beginning of the semester is Fatih Mosque. From Wikipedia,

The Fatih Mosque Complex (in Turkish, the Fati Camii or Conqueror's Mosque) is a large mosque with its many dependencies in the Fatih district of Istanbul, Turkey. Fatih Sultan Mehmed the Conqueror had the complex constructed by the architect Atik Sinan in 1463-1470, on the site of the former Church of the Holy Apostles, which was demolished in favor of it. It was the largest example of Turkish-Islamic architecture to that date and represented an important stage in the development of classic Turkish architecture. The original mosque was destroyed by the earthquake of 1766; the current mosque dates from 1767.

For more information, you can go here. And here are some pictures:



I went to this mosque twice. The first time was when I had to go to the police station in some faraway part of Istanbul at the beginning of the semester to apply for my residence permit. A group of students and I were at the station for the whole morning because it took them so long to process everything! But luckily, during that morning, we were also able to leave the station for a while to see this. Unfortunately, the police had confiscated my camera because they weren't allowed in the station, and I had forgotten to get it back, so I couldn't take pictures at that time. Luckily, though, we ended up visiting the mosque a second time several weeks later. To view the full picture gallery, click here.


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Rumelihisarı (Rumeli Fortress)

Shortly after getting back from my Spring Break trip, I, along with my friend Brian and his friend from back home Dan, went to visit Rumelihisarı, which is very close to the Boğaziçi University campus. Here is a short excerpt from Wikipedia:

Rumelihisarı is a fortress located in Istanbul, Turkey, on a hill at the European side of the Bosporus just north of the Bebek district; giving the name of the quarter around it. It was built by the Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II between 1451 and 1452, before he conquered Constantinople. The three great towers were named after three of Mehmed II's viziers, Sadrazam Çandarlı Halil Pasha, who built the big tower next to the gate, Zağanos Pasha, who built the south tower, and Sarıca Pasha, who built the north tower.

For more information, you can go here. This was another one of my favorite places, because it is basically a huge castle. Even though it is so close to where I live, it took forever for me to finally go there. But I'm glad I did! Here are some pictures:



To view the full album, click here.

Wow, I have basically two weeks left here. I will be seeing some of you soon!


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Spring Break

It's been a long time in the making, but I finally bring you the Spring Break update! I had my Spring Break a couple of weeks ago, and during that time, I traveled all over Turkey with a group of friends. We started out as a group of about 15, and then by the end, there were only three of us left. But we had a great time! First, here is a map showing where we went:

The trail starts in the upper left at Istanbul, and then the green line is the first half of my trip to southeast Turkey (from Saturday to Tuesday or so). It goes in this order: İstanbul, Ankara, Gazientep, Şanlıurfa, Mardin, Diyarbakir, Mt Nemrut, Adiyaman, and then Gazientep again. From Gazientep, the blue line shows the second half of my trip back to western Turkey (from Wednesday to Friday). It goes from Gazientep, to Ankara, İzmir, Selçuk, Denizli, Pamukkale, and then back to İstanbul. Kind of confusing? Well yeah... this was a jam-packed trip!

I took probably something like 500-600 pictures, and after going through all of them, I was able to reduce it to a little over half of that. You can view the entire collection in my online photo galleries, which will be linked to at the end of this post. I also got a lot of requests to see more pictures that have me and other people in them, so you'll definitely be able to find some of those here and in the galleries!


Saturday, April 26th

The trip started out in Istanbul on Saturday afternoon. We all gathered into a van, and set out.

The first stop was Ankara, which was several hours away. I have a friend named Kağan (Kaahn) here in Istanbul, and his family lives in Ankara, so we went to his family's house to eat dinner that night.

It was delicious, and his family lived in a beautiful apartment with a great view of the city. We ended up spending several hours there, and had a great time. After that, we left Ankara, and spent the night in the van on the way to our next destination.


Sunday, April 27th

Early in the morning, we arrived in the city of Gazientep. There, we picked up another passenger (our number increased to about 16 then), and headed to a lake to hang out for a while, and then for Şanlıurfa, another city. When we arrived in the city, we ate lunch, and then wandered around. We found these two nice little kids who were willing to lead us around and show us some of the sights. Among other things, we climbed to the top of this castle, where we had a great view of the entire city.

After seeing some more sights, we jumped back in the van and headed for the next city: Mardin. We didn't end up arriving until very late at night, like 11:30 PM. Instead of staying in the van that night, we stayed in an Öğretmen Evi (Teacher's House), which was more or less a hotel, but apparently, teachers who might be traveling around Turkey get to stay there for free. We had a late night dinner...

... and then went to bed.

Monday, April 28th

We woke up on Monday morning, ready for another day of adventure! We spent most of the first part of the day wandering around the city of Mardin. Much of the city is located on the top of a big hill, and if you go to the top, you can see another great view:

We continued to walk around Mardin, visited a couple of mosques...

... saw a few other sights in Mardin, and then got back in the van. Next stop: Tigris River!

After hanging out there for a while, some Turks wanted to take pictures with me and a few other other exchange students. This wasn't very unusual for me at least - whenever I leave Istanbul, it seems like everyone wants pictures with me, because they haven't seen many foreigners, especially black ones. I'm pretty sure they were just curious... so we took pictures with them, and then back in the van! We headed to a city called Diyarbakir, where we had dinner, and then got back in the van for an overnight ride to our next destination.


Tuesday, April 29th

I woke up pretty cranky that morning, because that had been the second night that we spent sleeping in a van. And it was early - like 5:30 AM - when people were waking up. Why so early? Well, we had planned to go to this mountain called Mount Nemrut to watch the sunrise. We didn't quite arrive in time to see the sun rising, but we still got there pretty early! After getting to the top, we saw the main attraction: some stone statues that some ancient culture had placed there a long time ago:

It was pretty cool to see these statues, and I was a little bit less cranky after we actually made it to the top (it was cold up there though!). We then went back down the mountain, and headed to a city called Adiyaman. After getting some breakfast, we went to visit an old church, and then some of us went to an internet cafe, which was filled with little kids playing video games.

Later on, it was back to Gazientep, where people started parting ways. A couple of people left for Syria, a few left to see other parts of Turkey, and the rest of us stayed in Gazientep for the night and had dinner. The next morning, some of us (me included) would take a plane to head back to the west of Turkey, while others would be going elsewhere.


Wednesday, April 30th

This might have been my favorite day of the entire trip. By this time, we were down to a group of four people, and while I had had a blast with the big group of 16, it was also nice to be in a smaller group. Anyway, we woke up, hopped on a plane, took a cab, and by noon, we had arrived in our next destination: Selçuk. There, we checked into a cozy little hostel called the Kiwi Pension, and then set off for some sightseeing.

First stop: the ruins at Ephesus, which you can find out more about here. These were the first ruins that I had really seen in my life, and they were pretty amazing. Here is a picture of my American travel companions there; from left to right, that's Brian, Sevgi, and Andrea.

After spending an hour or two there, we had some lunch, and then headed for our second major destination for that day: the ruins of the church of St. John. I personally liked this the most out of everything that I saw on the trip!

The evening was approaching, and we decided that it would be nice to find a good place to watch the sunset. We asked around, and were eventually pointed in the direction of a great place to see it. The location was basically this field in the mountains:

After dinner, it was back to the hostel for some sleep!


Thursday, May 1st

After waking up in the cozy Kiwi Pension, it was time to go to our final major destination. Brian had to go straight back to Istanbul to meet with a friend that was coming to visit him, but Andrea, Sevgi, and I took a bus to Pamukkale, which was a few hours away. This place is known for these odd rock formations that have springs pouring down them. It's hard to describe... but maybe you can get a better idea by looking at the pictures:

From far away, it looks like it could be snow, but it's not! Anyway, we climbed to the top, climbed back down, and then headed for the train station, where we would go on an 18-hour overnight train ride back to Istanbul. Luckily, we had beds, but unluckily, the electricity in our car went out during the night, which meant no light or heat! Andrea and I spent a good amount of the night reading and chatting in the restaurant-car, which still had electricity.


Friday, May 2nd

After a few hours of uncomfortable sleep, we were finally back in Istanbul. I have to say, this was probably the most fun I've ever had on a trip! This post is already getting pretty long, but trust me, it would be a LOT longer if I told you about everything that I did. Instead, I'll just link you to the full photo galleries, which document almost everything that I did:

Saturday
Sunday
Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday

OK, take care everyone!

Preparations for Spring Break

Hey! So in about 30 minutes from now, I leave for my Spring Break trip. I think that most of the readers of this blog in the United States are actually getting out of school soon, so it's probably weird to know that I still have several weeks left!

Anyway, originally, my friend Brian and I were going to go to some different cities on the west coast of Turkey. However, at the last minute, we combined our trip with another trip that a group of our friends was planning, and now the trip includes places both in east and west Turkey.

We'll be gone from today (Saturday) to next Saturday - and I'll update you about it when I get back. Take care everyone.

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Sultanahmet Camii (Blue Mosque)

Hey everyone, here is another set of pictures that I've taken here in Turkey. This time, they're of the Sultanahmet Camii in Istanbul - here is a short description, adapted from a Wikipedia article:

The Sultan Ahmed Mosque (Turkish: Sultanahmet Camii) is a historical mosque in Istanbul, the largest city in Turkey. The mosque is one of several mosques known as the Blue Mosque for the blue tiles adorning the walls of its interior. It was built between 1609 and 1616, during the rule of Ahmed I. Like many other mosques, it also comprises a tomb of the founder, a madrasah and a hospice. The Sultan Ahmed Mosque has become one of the greatest tourist attractions of Istanbul.

You can read more about it here. And now, here are some pictures that I took while I was there:




You can see the full gallery here.

Blue Mosque is actually one of the places that my friends and I visited on the same day that we saw Hagia Sophia... so it's probably been nearly two months since I took these pictures. I'm still waaaaay behind in sorting through the pictures I've taken, but I'll get through them all eventually!

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General Update

Hey everyone! It’s been a while since I updated this, but I want to let you all know what’s going on with me these days. In the past several weeks, things have gotten busy for me, but I’ve been having a great time. A lot of stuff has been going on, and I could probably write a whole novel about it by now. But instead of writing all of that, I'll just give you a summary:

School

One reason that things have gotten a lot busier for me lately has been the increase in school-work. Towards the beginning of the semester, the workload for all of my courses was pretty light. However, lately, the homework assignments have taken longer to do, more projects have been assigned, and thus, I’ve had to spend more hours per week doing work. However, I’m probably still spending less time overall on school work than I have in the past for Wash U classes, mostly because I’m taking fewer classes here.

This week is probably the busiest week for me yet. Here are the things that I have going on:

• I had an exam for one of my engineering classes (Mass Transfer Operations) on Wednesday, which went somewhere between OK and well.
• I have an exam for another engineering class (Engineering Materials) coming up tonight (Thursday) at 6:00 PM.
• I have a large project for another engineering class (Structure, Function, and Simulation of Biopolymers) due on Friday. Luckily, I completed most of the work for this several weeks ago.

Here are the things that are due next week, which I also have to be working on right now:

• A 5-page paper for my Philosophy of Science class due on Monday, which counts for a large chunk of the grade because it is one of the two assigned papers for the entire class
• Another large project for Mass Transfer Operations, which is due next Friday, and which my group and I have already spent about 8 hours working on

However, the week after next week is our Spring Break!

Traveling

For about half or more of the weekends since I’ve been here, I’ve gone on trips with other exchange students to various parts of Turkey. One trip was to Cappadocia, a place in central Turkey, which you can find out more about here. Another was to Edirne, a place in northwest Turkey, which you can find out more about here.

One thing I have noticed is that people are more curious about my race outside of Istanbul. In Istanbul, people will ask me where I am from sometimes, but mostly, they just treat me like everyone else. However, outside of Istanbul, I get a lot of people coming up to me. Sometimes they just want to meet me, and other times, crazier things happen. For instance, there was this old gypsy woman in Edirne that came up to me and touched my face and kept saying “Çok güzel” (which means “very nice!”) and wanted to dance with me and also, apparently asked me to take her home with me. You kinda had to be there to understand it… but it was the source of many laughs between me and the other exchange students, because we saw her about five times throughout the day as we were walking around.

Here is a picture of us together:

During my trip to Cappodocia, there was one night where we went to this place where there was a belly-dancer. Long story short, I somehow ended up belly-dancing in front of around 100-200 exchange students and native Turks (you can find pictures, and maybe eventually videos, on Facebook). That was surely exciting!

There will no doubt be more weekend-trips in the future. I will also be going to some other places in western Turkey for my Spring Break. I’ve been taking pictures, but I haven’t been able to sort through all of them yet. Hopefully I will get them up here one day!

Language

I’ve still been putting a lot of effort into learning the Turkish language, and you can read about my “strategy” for doing this in the previous post entitled “Language Instruction.” I’ve still been doing most of the things outlined in that post. However, I’ve been using a different textbook from the one that I talked about there.

I think that I’ve been learning very quickly, and I’m at the point where I can understand a lot of written Turkish, and write some very simple Turkish sentences. However, I’m not really at the point where I can understand too much spoken Turkish, or speak very fluently. This is something I will be working on.

I’ve found that I can understand Turkish grammar pretty well by now, but that I lack vocabulary. So I picked up a copy of Harry Potter ve Ölüm Yadigârları (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows) and have started to read it. Needless to say, it is very difficult (I've had the book for a couple of weeks and am only on page 27). However, I’ve read the book twice in English, and if I have a Turkish-English dictionary, I can stumble through almost all of the sentences in the Turkish version. Reading this is helping a lot with both vocabulary and grammar – my ultimate goal is to finish the book by the end of the semester. It is a huge challenge, but I’m setting the bar high for myself!

In my efforts to learn Turkish, I have started to think about language and communication in a different way. Before, it always seemed like English was the only "right" or "natural" language, and that English was the best language to express complicated thoughts in. Of course, it seemed this way to me because English is my first language, and I haven't really learned how to express myself fully and completely in any other languages (except for Spanish, perhaps). But now I'm seeing that other languages are just different, and not necessarily "superior" or "inferior" overall, as far as their ability to express things.

Also, the main way that I'm learning Turkish is by learning the grammatical "rules" and how to apply them (and the same was the case for Spanish). I've always thought of foreign languages in terms of these "rules," but I've never thought about English in this way. In English, if I want to say something, I just say it, and usually don't think about the grammatical rules that went into producing my sentence. But more and more, as I start dissecting foreign languages in terms of these grammatical rules, I have been doing the same to English. This has changed the way that I see English; while before, it was purely a naturally flowing language, I now see that it is fundamentally built upon rules, just as other languages are.

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So, I have bought my plane ticket to fly back home on June 3^rd, which means that I have about a month and a half left here. I will try to make the most of it that I can!

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