Working out in Asia

I'm sorry for the amount of time it has been since I last wrote. Our last few weeks in Ciro were incredibly busy. My computer decided to crash about a week or so before we left and I had to rewrite all of the papers I had finished. It was frustrating but it's over now. After finishing all of our papers we headed to the airport for a
3:00 am flight to Istanbul. We've been in Turkey now for 5 days now and it has been so nice. I didn't know what to expect but I have really enjoyed my time here. I can definently see myself returning to Istanbul at some point We've been able to do quite a bit of exploring--we've seen the Haggia Sophia, Blue Mosque, and the Grand Bazaar. We also have had several speakers including pretty big political people.

Yesterday, a few of my friends and I hopped on the ferry and went to the Asian side of Turkey. We wanted to go to this tower that one of our Turkish friends told us about but it was closed. So instead of the tower we went across the way to a park/excercise facility. It was this really random park area that had both slides for children and then excercise machines for adults. After excercising and taking photos we went to eat at this really good Turkish restaraunt. After getting back to the European side I went exploring with one of my friends. We walked all around before stopping at a little cafe. The cafe wasn't what we were thinking so we ended up going to another one for dinner. We ended up staying at the cafe a little longer than we planned and had to run to be on time for the speaker. After the speaker I hung out in my room. Some people went out but I was too tired to do anything but just rest.

After lounging around this morning I joined around 11 or so MESPers to go to Taksim square. We met up with friends from Koc University (an elite private college where we discussed politics with some students a few days earlier). They were so impressed with me (and I guess the others) that they wanted to hang out again. They wanted to take us out to a bar and were very surprised when we couldn't drink! After explaining, they still took us to a bar but we just didn't drink any alcohol! We walked around for a bit after, got coffee and then split up. I went with the group that went to sit down at a coffeeshop. We had a nice time talking and will hopefully be able to stay in contact with them.

We will be in Istanbul for another day and then we will head to Ankara. From there we will fly to Damascus (well, from Istanbul) and then to Jordan. After Jordan we will stay in Israel-Palestine for two weeks.

Well we're going to the U.S. Consulate tomorrow and have to wake up early so I better be off. I'll try to update again soon.