Pre-Trip

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Mass emails are spiffy and all, but not really my style, so I was looking for something different to keep people informed up my travels. I initially thought about starting a blog, decided it was tacky, went to make a website to post pictures and the like, but failed to find a good free site for hosting. Eventually, I ended up here, and it seems like this is a pretty spiffy place. I'll still send out the occasional mass email, but I'll probably end up updating this more frequently, so check back whenever you want, there may be a new entry.

So, for those of you who don't know, I'm going to Turkey, and will be spending Feb-June in Istanbul at Bogazici University. It's an English campus (meaning the classes are in English), which is handy, because I only know a handful of Turkish words/phrases. I'm a history major at St. Olaf College, and decided to go to Turkey last year, as it seemed like a truly unique and spectacular place that stood out amongst the myriad of options available to me through St. Olaf's study abroad programs. I've always been fascinated with castles and the middle ages, and the Byzantines have always seemed really interesting (they were the Eastern half of the Roman Empire, which survived Rome's fall, thriving up until 1453 when the Ottoman Turks conquered Constantinople, now Istanbul). Turkey seemed like a place rich with history, and so I decided to go.

I hit a snag this January with a housing confusion, but after a month of freaking out, it seems that everything has worked out, which is good. That last part is what we like to call an understatement. It's fantastic.

I'm supposed to depart from O'Hare tomorrow afternoon, and so have spent the day traveling through snow/sleet/rain to get to Chicago. There is a fog warning too, and a snowstorm scheduled to hit tomorrow, so the weather is not helping at all. So far, my flight hasn't been delayed or canceled, so hopefully I'm able to find a window in the weather and leave tomorrow.

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