Weekend Update

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Feb. 8 2008

The weekend was ok, and I'm starting to get on a better sleep schedule, so that's a plus.

My roommates still haven't shown up, and talking with other students, that means they're either Turkish, or really late. My Lira says Turkish. The dorm is an odd place. It is a conglomerate of 5 "dorms" with pseudo-apartments with 2-4 people per apartment. It seems that most of the housing is 1 foreign student with the remainder of each apartment being occupied by Turks. Unfortunately, with classes not starting until Friday (who starts classes on a Friday?) most Turks are still on vacation, leaving the 100 or so foreign kids scattered throughout the apartments. It's been hard to meet people... as the only people I ran into at the start were random people in the stairwells. I have yet to see another person on my entire floor. It's still lonely and mildly depressing (I haven't seen the sun yet, and it's been drizzling more or less since I got here, with today being outright rain) but things are starting to pick up. (not weather-wise, it's supposed to be like this all month at least... though once it leaves, the rain and clouds don't come back until next winter)

I had been eating a meal or two in the "caf" in the basement of the campus each day, and on Friday I ordered dinner, and then two other exchange students came in and we ate together. They had heard of a trip going to Taksim (basically Turkey's Time Square) and invited me along. So, at about 8 pm, around 20 of us, led by 2 Turks and a kid who was at Bogazici last semester as well as this semester, wandered over to the bus stop. Taksim was a cool and busy place, filled with bars and nightclubs, and we went to a couple and had a pretty good time.

On the bus ride over, I talked with Mickey, a sophomore from Maryland, who had actually been to Turkey several times to visit a Turkish exchange student who had gone to his high school. He's a cool kid and we've been hanging out and wandering around the city together. He's really good with Turkish food and cafe stuffs, so it's been nice to have him around when dining out.

Saturday night Mickey and I wandered down to Bebek (literally down; Bogazici Campus is kinda at the top of the hills, and Bebek is right near the water, so we had to use switchback roads to get down, and then had to climb up an unbelievably steep road to get back up. Again, I didn't have my camera, but once the weather gets nicer out, I'll go take some cool pictures.

Then we met up with about 10 of the other guys in a Turkish hookah place. The Turks have a special kinda of hookah, and a special name for it, which I don't remember. According to the kid who was at Bogazici last semester, Jeff, basically all anyone needs to know is that the Turkish "hookah" is by far superior to all other kinds.

So yeah, I feel like I'm rambling a bit, but hey, it's my site. I'll hopefully get the internet connection in my room fixed and be able to post some pictures for everyone to see. Thanks for reading.

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