Home New Home

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I have spent most of the last few days settling into my new apartment. It’s very different from my last little home. I’m on the 10th floor of a giant apartment building in a complex of three buildings (with our own pool, basketball court and park) in a neighborhood of giant apartment complexes and shopping malls.

The shopping mall is Palladium and it has everything from Gap and Banana Republic to Sony and Samsung. The whole building is incredibly huge. I think it’s the biggest mall I’ve ever been in. This is definitely the biggest city I’ve ever lived in!

The neighborhood is all very new and modern. My apartment building is only a few years old and most complexes here are just finishing the construction. I think everything in my apartment is from IKEA and most of it is so new it still has the tags attached. This is very plush compared to what I’ve been used to. My new pad lacks all the homey comforts of 16th Street, but I do have a washing machine, dish washer, microwave and tv, none of which I had in my house in America. Now I just have to make friends with my neighbors and find out how to plant a garden here.

Although I haven’t met my neighbors yet, I have found the community of Americans in the area. Since it’s such a small world, two of them are Returned Peace Corps Volunteers. One was in Senegal as a PCV and has been living in Cairo. The other was in Peace Corps Malawi and lived in Ketchum before that and counts Idaho as home. We talked about how beautiful Redfish Lake is and how much Ketchum has grown. We even found a few people we know in common. It makes me wonder how many Idahoans live in Istanbul. I’ll wear my BSU t-shirt around and see what sort of comments I get.

The area of Istanbul that I live in is on the east side of the Bosporus, so technically I live in Asia. I plan on going to Europe this weekend, which is where all the tourist stuff is. I hope to have more interesting photos for the next blog.

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Photos

The Palladium
I knew Istanbul was a giant cosmopolitan city before I got here, but this mall is still over the top.

Batiatashir
It's been cloudy and rainy since I got here, so the pics aren't spectacular, but here's my new home. My building is the closest of the three round ones, on the left.

My new pool!
From my windows I can see my pool and the park with fountains, a playground and a b-ball court.

The neighbors
Across from my building I also have a view of the pool of a sports complex. They have an outdoor movie screen too!

Comments

[Anisa]

yay!
awesome city! Looks like you'll have plenty to explore in and out of the city!