Monday, 12 August, 2012: 8:21 PM, Turkey time; Oriental Hostel
We made it without dying, getting hurt, or any other type of malady! WOOHOO! (I did have a weird dream, but whatever).
Istanbul is so cool. We passed through a bunch of different neighborhoods - the run-down areas where you can see that there once was a second floor that no longer exists, to the super-swanky office building areas - as well as several eras of history, from aqueducts to the Hagia Sophia (from the outside) (not actually sure that what we saw was, in fact, the Aya Sophia, but whatever) to various forts and modern architecture. It's a lot of history to cram into one city.
The scenery, as a result, is amazing. When we were heading to the hostel from the AFS offices, we crossed one of the rivers as the sun set. There weren't any clouds, so it was simply a perfect orange circle hanging over hills covered in buildings reflecting off of the water in a warm glow. The mosques, backlit, are so pretty.
The flight over was very uneventful. They fed us at maybe 1 AM, as previously mentioned, and again at 7:30 AM (eastern time). I was able to get an okay amount of sleep. Nobody in front of me was leaning back, and I was able to lean my chair back because there was nobody behind me. I had a weird dream about swimming in clear blue water and teddy bears that change color based on one's celebrity status.
When we landed, we spent an hour (maybe) after the touchdown waiting to get through the passport checkpoint. Then we went to the AFS office with Jon, a returned student who had spent a year in Michigan.
Right, I nee to go unpack and brush my teeth and such. We're going to explore (maybe), so I'll write after that.
A/N: So the Turks spell some things differently from Americans. Jon's name is technically spelled Can, because C has a J sort of sound. That's not the only thing - รง is 'ch' and my computer can't type the "s" with the squiggly thing under that; it's pronounced as 'sh.'
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