I feel that I should start this post with a warning: I did not sleep at all during my trek here (Hometown to Minneapolis to Amsterdam to İstanbul), and therefore my recollections of my first day here are sadly a bit fuzzy...

Upon snaking my way out of Turkish customs, I was met in Istanbul by Dr. Mustafa, the Youth Exchange Chairman for my district. He helped me locate my luggage (or what I thought was my luggage), and led me to my family: Baba [father], Anne [mother - pronounced ah-nay], and Abi [brother]. We rendezvoused to the house (en route, I had my first taste of Turkish traffic - ay yi yi. Lanes are more suggestions than anything else), where we discovered that one of the bags I had picked up was not, in fact, mine.

Oops.

This was also the point when we discovered that there was a problem with the gas in the house, namely that there wasn't any. Which meant no hot water - thus: no shower.

So when I attended the party that was being thrown in part for me that evening, it was with no sleep and wearing the same clothes I'd been wearing for roughly 30 hours.

And it was still one of the most amazing experiences of my life.


The party was held on a boat cruising up and down the Bosphorus Straits, which divide the two halves of İstanbul. The boat was the Semiramis, the full significance of which I didn't appreciate at the time - just trust me when I say that it's a really nice boat and that mentioning that you were at a party on it provokes awe in most people I've met here. There were waiters. There was music. There was a lot of really good food: stuffed peppers, various and sundry types of prepared eggplant, dishes with tomatoes and rice and a lot of cheese.

There was İstanbul on either side of us, lighting up as the sun went down; palaces and military schools and discos and millions of people gently packed into a one of the most historically rich places on the planet. Consider that in the US, anything older than, say, one hundred years is dated. I am fond of commenting that we don't have history, we have mythology; as a nation, we're too young to have history yet.

Istanbul does not have these problems. İstanbul has been around far too long to have these problems. It is not unusual to see a Starbucks perched next to one of the original city walls. Seriously, guys, this place was the capital of the Roman Empire from 330-395 AD. It was the capital of the Ottoman Empire from 1453-1922. First settlement in the area is estimated to have occurred around 5500 BC. This place has history in spades.

I'm in the process of trying to figure out the language here. I suppose I'm doing all right; it certainly helps that Anne (my host mom) is an English teacher and thus has experience teaching language. My family favors the immersion system, and repetition of words in order to remember them. Thus I think some of the dinnertime conversation runs something like this (the word I'm trying to memorize here is elma, or apple):

Baba: "My, what excellent bread tonight."
Anne: "Isn't it? Abi, finish your drink. Horrible weather, isn't it?"
Baba: "Terrible. You could fry an egg on the sidewalk."
Me: "Apple...apple...apple..."

I'm hoping to work up to salatalık [cucumber] by tonight...

Love to all,

C