Arrival and First Day!

Note to everyone- I just enabled comments on my blog. Whoops I didn’t notice it wasn’t working before!!!

Sorry I haven’t posted anything since I got here, the past two days have been incredibly busy and I’ve been running on about very little sleep. Also my blog randomly chaged to Turkish and I could not, for the life of me, figure out how to post anything! Everything is back to normal, thank god! So expect more posts to come!

I will start from where we last left off: boarding the plane. I was literally pushed through the boarding area by eager Italians who just could not wait to board the plane. When I got on, I was so surprised to see that the person sitting next to me was not, in fact, an old Italian man, but a young girl about my age. She was (amazingly) already asleep when I got board, and actually slept through all of boarding and take off. Talent. Beverages were brought around shortly after take off, and Italian Vino, like the rest of the beverages, was offered free of charge. It was funny to me at the time, but I suppose when wine is so integrated in a culture, it makes sense to serve it on the plane. It wasn’t until after I had finished eating that my seat mate, Rana, and I actually got to talking. Rana explained to me that she is a third year student at University of Toronto studying engineering. She apologized for sleeping when I got on, but was trying to sleep as much as she could because she had to transfer flights. When I inquired further, she said she had to go to Istanbul!

I could not believe it that of all the places I could have sat on the plane, I ended up next to a girl the same age as me traveling home to Istanbul! We got to chatting and found out we had a lot in common. I was so nice having company on the plane ride, I was a little worried I was going to be bored with the inflight entertainment being a small selection of italian movies. Rana told me all about what to see in Istanbul, and explained to me a  little about the culture, politics and traditions of the country. I will definitely be contacting her in the future to find out more places to see in town. The rest of the plane ride was pretty uneventful (aside from my computer dying at the climax of my movie); nevertheless I was unable to sleep.

When we arrived in Rome, we had to take some sort of subway to another terminal. All of the terminals at the Rome airport are disconnected- all placed randomly around the tarmac. Rana guided me to where we had to go. We had about three hours before we had to board the plane to Istanbul, so we happily chatted in a waiting area. 

When I boarded the plane to Istanbul, I was unfortunately not sitting next to Rana. When I arrived at my seat, a newlywed couple had (to my irritation) taken my window seat. They didn’t speak any English, and I decided it wasn’t worth the hassle of asking them to move. Sorry that means no flight pictures for you! Things around here get a pretty hazy, a sudden wave of exhaustion hit me, I fell asleep and before I knew it, the plane as landing. 

Getting my Visa and going through customs wasn’t a hassle, but it took forever. I must have waited over an hour in line before I got to my baggage. Apparently 6 planes got off around the same time and there were only 2 booths open for Visas (which you have to get before passports) and a lot of people were having trouble. This resulted in all of us being bottle necked into the HUGE Visa line. For some reason I got myself into a panic thinking that my host family would leave if they had to wait any longer, I actually considered pushing myself to the front of the line.

One hour later.... when I was finally stamped and able to enter the country I got my baggage and went to leave the airport. 

I was a little worried at this time, I hadn’t been told exactly how I was getting to the house. When I got out the doors, there must have been about 300 people there with signs. I started to panic thinking I would never find my name here. While scanning this huge group of people I made eye contact with a man in a suit holding a Janjulee Ellis  sign. I sighed with relief. I met up with this man, my driver, and he took my bags. He didn’t speak any English, but Zeynep (my host mother) called a couple of minutes later and explained to me that he would be driving me home while she got the kids from school.

I would compare the traffic in Istanbul to that of bigger cities in China. Nobody really uses a blinker, and everyone is weaving back and forth into the smallest cracks between cars. The road lines seem arbitrary, 4 lanes could be 5 lines of traffic. Half of the people seem to be honking their horns, and the other half seem to be ignoring them. The city was pretty interesting. Dilapidated buildings with big gaping holes are spread amongst large glitzy shopping areas and old mosques. Construction is going on everywhere. I got the impression that Istanbul is a city exploding with growth, as the newer areas encroach on the poorer neighborhoods, these buildings are torn down. 

The Turkish Aquaducts near the house- I can see the arches from my window!

As we got further away from the centre of the city, the landscape got greener and larger houses could be seen. It wasn’t long before we entered a gated community and I was walking into my new home. The family was super welcoming and had lots of questions to ask. Lal, the daughter (10), and Can (said like John), the son (5) were excitedly running around the house trying to give me a tour while Zeynep (the mother) was asking me about my travels. 

Dinner was served shortly after, cooked by their in house cook/cleaning lady Sasha. The food was amazing, the dishes consisted of a lot of currie spices and dill. I hope to learn how to cook from Sasha during the daytime when the kids are at school. She doesn’t speak any English, but I’m pretty sure I can communicate with her if I act it out.

That evening I played a bit with the kids. Both Can and Lal are incredibly sweet and had so many questions to ask me. I went to sleep pretty early that night, I was absolutely exhausted.

Today is some sort of national holiday called “Workers Day”, and everyone had it off. We all enjoyed breakfast together. Breakfast is really different. Sasha made some sort of rolled baked philo stuffed with potato and cheese (I think). Different cheeses, apricots, eggs, olives,  and fresh tomato were also served. I will definitely have to get used to breakfast here, but it is all tasty. I was also served traditional Turkish tea. It is steeped really strong first, with the hot water added after. The tea is amazing! Zeynep said they have it everyday at breakfast and that I can look forward to having it everyday.... I could have jumped up and hugged her.

Zeynep, Lal and her father, Cem (pronounced Jem) all left after breakfast to go and play golf. Lal has a tournament this weekend and was going to spend the day practicing, which meant I was going to spend the day at home with Can. 

It was nice to get to know him better. Can is very talkative and had so much to say about football (soccer) and cars- his two favourite things. He has some pretty cool games, including a very elaborate zombie pirate ship. In the afternoon we played Wii and football outside. The Wii match was pretty intense, the more Can played, the closer he got to the screen until his face was almost against the it. Next we went outside to play football (He was Chelsea, I was Manchester United). After out football match, we were both so tired we ended up laying in the grass. Everything was fine until Can noticed he was covered in ants. He started freaking out and we had to run in the house to get them all off of him.

Later in the day Can and I went to the other gated community across the road to the country club where we played with Lal and her friends. Lal gave me a tour of the facilities in between her golf lesson. The country club is massive- it has everything from golf to horseback-riding, spas to tree obstacle courses. Cem drove all the kids around in the golf cart and gave me a tour of the trails. I’m pretty excited to come back here and get a better look around.

The evening was spent back at the house where we enjoyed Lal’s favourite meal- some sort of hand made pasta stuffed with potatoes, dill and meat all covered in some spicy oil. Lal told me that Zeynep owns an big olive farm and produces her own organic oil. We are going to be spending some time here this summer. 

While I am on the topic of olives.. the olives I have at breakfast are the most amazing olives I have every tasted. Have you ever had a perfect olive? Perfectly salted, spiced and firm? These are perfect. So so so so so good. 

Back to earlier in the night. I spent most of the evening with Lal-reading with her, doing hair and drawing. She is so smart. I can tell she is ahead of her peers in class. She has a lot of questions to ask, and she always remembers what we spoke of earlier.

I can already tell I am going to really enjoy spending time with this family! Everyone is so considerate and is really making an effort to make me feel comfortable. Look forward to regular updates now that my blog settings are in English. 

Much Love!