Istanbul!

We arrived in Istanbul yesterday, after many hours of travel: 7 hours from Dulles to Frankfurt and then 2 and a half to Istanbul. Lufthansa is by far a better airline than United. Or at least more fun. We are currently staying at Yeditepe University on the Asian side of Istanbul and will be leaving Monday for Bursa to join our host families. We've been doing orientation activities and will have a tour of the city tomorrow. The tour should be more fun than orientation stuff; we've had three days so far, and there hasn't been much new since the first. Tonight we're going to some sort of restaurant that has traditional dancing. One of the coordinators said these few days will be last time we'll be doing such touristy stuff.

Staying at the University is interesting, though a disconcerting way to enter in to Turkey. It seems to be at a far corner of the city and the campus is bordered on one side by tree covered hills (complete with a large picture of Ataturk, facing the campus) and on the other by neighborhoods. The campus itself is pretty nice. It's only ten years old and is apparently built, as I learned this morning, based on the Seljuk style. It's on the side of a hill and so a walk from one end of the other, requires several steep inclines. There's lots of nice greenery, but the buildings are a little odd. They have this sort of cold, impersonal monumental vibe, like something out of the Soviet Union. This may be due, however, to the fact that I haven't spent time anywhere else in Turkey and the coldness of the buildings is rather just my own unfamiliarity. I'm definitely looking forward to the home stay and am glad I'm not spending the summer here.

I was able to get off campus twice yesterday. Once to get food (my first time using Turkish in a real life situation!) and the second just to wander around. That was quite the experience. The streets are all very narrow, with three or four story appartments and lots of children running around. I had never seen anything remotely like it in my life. One of the people I was with said it resembled Portugal or Spain. We'll see our outing tonight goes.