I Found Christmas in Turkey!

So Thursday, December 20, I woke up to SNOW!

Then on Friday, December 21, I found this in the mall:

And later at the mall I had this:

It's hot coco and it was delicious! Yummm :)

It definitely got me into the Christmas spirit. Thanks, Turkey!

Istanbul Trip

I went to Istanbul this weekend! I was up bright and early, like, before the first call to prayer early (the first call to prayer is at sunrise).  I took a ferry from Bursa to Istanbul with Riad and his host family, and then after driving around for like half an hour, we finally found our hotel and were able to meet up with the other exchange students!  Ahh, I love my exchange buddies :)

So, on Saturday we went to the Blue Mosque, Topkapi Palace, the Hagia Sophia and a few other museums within the Historical Peninsula of Istanbul, then we went to the Grand Bazaar.  The mosques were so beautiful, and being with my friends was so great.  Like, I was in ISTANBUL, but I was more excited about seeing all of my friends.  At the Topkapi Palace, I met an American couple who is also living abroad, and they said they were going home for the holidays, and then we talked about how much we miss Chipotle and Five Guys, and all of the other delicious foods I haven't had for four months (it's been too long...).  They were so nice.  I love finding other Americans. :)   After going to the Grand Bazaar, my friends and I found a Starbucks, so we went there to get some drinks.  I seriously felt like I was in America standing in Starbucks. It was REALLY strange, but once I left what looked exactly like an American Starbucks, I remembered where I was. 

Saturday night all of the exchange students stayed up talking, but I was crazy tired because of my really long day with little sleep, so I went to my room and just hung out with one of the girls from Brazil.  After a wonderful night's sleep, on Sunday we went to the Spice Bazaar, then we took a tour of the Bosporus. It was my third Bosporus Tour, so nothing was really new.  After that we had free time to walk around shopping then go to a cafe for hot chocolate.  In the evening my friends had to leave to catch their bus to the airport to go back to Izmir, so Riad and I just sat around the hotel lobby until his host family was able to meet us at a bazaar.  We shopped around for a bit, then we headed to the ferry back to Bursa.  We just waited in the parking lot for about an hour, but I was able to sleep during that hour.  I was a very tired girl after a fun filled weekend in Istanbul!  

I had such a great time with all my friends, and I realized that even though I only get to see most of them once or twice a month, I'm really close to them, and we're like a big old exchange family.  I'll attach pictures below, and hopefully get more up on Flickr soon!

Blue Mosque

Spice Bazaar

Turkish Delight in the Spice Bazaar

Hagia Sophia

Inside the Blue Mosque

Me and my friend inside Hagia Sophia

My friends and me inside of a tree. The nice American couple took this picture.

Little Update

IT'S FINALLY FRIDAY!!!!

Yay :)

This week during school I went to various English classes and gave a presentation about the USA and myself.  It was neat to be able to play teacher for a little while, but dang, did my legs hurt after two lessons. JEEZ.  Also, some of the kids in my school have really good English.  I think people who know multiple languages are cool. HATS OFF TO YA'LL.  Andddd.... I also learned there's a girl from Canada going to my school and a boy who lived in the states for six years.  Crazy, right?

During my presentations, I always had time for questions at the end of the period, and literally every single class a girl would raise her hand and ask if I like Vampire Diaries.  I'm not even 100% sure of what that is, but it's apparently a big deal here, but I'm like "No, sorry?" and she would be kind of sad.  Also, every class a boy would raise his hand and ask me what my favorite football (soccer) team is, so I'd say "Galatasaray and Bursaspor."  I would then get a bunch of laughter and applause, and I don't even know anything about soccer.  On the inside I was all like, "GO BUCKS!!"

Moving on from my presentations, today one of my friends was in a really happy mood, and was being silly and said to me, "Annie! I think I'm in love! ...or maybe I'm just hungry..." It is my quote of the day. Thanks Elcin for making me laugh. :)

Okay, next, I'm going to Istanbul (not Constantinople) tomorrow with my exchange friends! I haven't seen them in about three weeks, so I am ecstatic I don't think words can explain.  I feel something like this:

I'M GOING TO ISTANBUL!! AKLDNIEMLG

So, tomorrow I'm getting up bright and early to hit the road at 6:30AM, and then meeting up with my friends to have a fun filled weekend exploring Istanbul.  We'll be visiting The Blue Mosque, Hagia Sophia, doing a Bosporus tour, going to the Grand Bazaar, and a bunch more cool things.  I'll be sure to take lots of photos!

Due to my early rising tomorrow morning, I need to hit the hay soon.  I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend and I'll be posting about Istanbul soon! TTFN

Quotes....

Vincent Van Gogh once said, "I am not an adventurer by choice, but by fate." I found this about a month or so ago, but I really like it because I always feel like this whole "exchange" thing presented itself to me.  It started with an email from my school's principal looking for a host family, which turned into my family hosting Sana, to me doing a short term exchange, to me deciding "hey, I kinda like this," and now, here I am, in Turkey, on a long term exchange.  I really cannot imagine what my life would be like now if my family never hosted Sana because she is my best friend and really encouraged me to become an exchange student.  I like to think there's a reason I became an exchange student, and that there's a reason I came to Turkey, but right now I don't know that reason and like I said in my earlier post, I've just got to wait and be ready for just about anything, because who knows what this adventure will present to me next.

100 Days in Turkey

Today marked the 100th day of my exchange, and it's 12/12/12, cool, right?

This was me 101 days ago before I left my exchange. Notice my "I'm scared to death and have no idea what I'm getting into and I'm going to go get on a plane in half an hour and go thousands of miles away from my friends and family and I'm super scared, but also excited at the same time... GAAH!" face:

Alright, and this is me Day 1 of my exchange, when I first arrived in the airport and met my host family:

And this is me today with my host dad at the Rotary meeting. Notice the extra what seems like gazillion pounds (tehehe):

So, in my opinion, I don't think I look much different, but I'm noticing subtle changes in myself.  Not anything crazy, but I'm definitely more open minded and more flexible then I was before.  I know a bit of Turkish and I'm getting used to Turkish culture.  In my 100 days here, I've been to Istanbul and Izmir on multiple occasions, I've visited a ton of ancient sites, including Ephesus and Mother Mary's house, I've seen Capadoccia, rode in a hot air balloon, and met tons of people who have helped me learn more about myself and the world around me.  It definitely has not been the easiest 100 days of my life, and I've had some of the hardest, but also some of the best days of my life here.  I'm still curious as to what the end product will be, but I guess all I can do about that now is to continue doing what I'm doing, and just kind of hope for the best, and make the best of the 200 some days I have left. :)

Language Lessons

So, I've been attending language lessons with the other exchange student in Bursa, Riad, twice a week for about 5 weeks now, and I absolutely love them! My teacher is really funny, and we have a good time learning Turkish and speaking Turkish.  I've seen my Turkish improve a lot since these courses have started, so I'm really happy we're getting these lessons.

We usually play this game where one of us thinks of a word, then we play something like 20 Questions to find out what the person is thinking of, but we're not very good at the game, so we ask is many questions until we get the right answer.  Today we played a different game!  On a piece of paper, the teacher made spaces for "who," "with whom," "where" and "doing what," so we took turns writing each section on the paper, and covering all the answers, then once all of the blanks were full, someone read the entire sentence aloud.

Based on the sentences we came up with, you'd probably guess that we were a bunch of delinquent kids getting in a bunch of trouble, but that is not the case, we were just having a good time coming up with funny situations.

Here is our paper:

As most of you don't know Turkish, I'll let you know what everything says...

1.  Annie's mom and Justin Bieber are in the toilet smoking cigarettes  (Sorry mom, we learned the possessive today, so "Annie's mom" just made sense)

2.  Britney Spears and her boyfriend are eating dessert in a dark street.

3.  Kobe Bryant and Riad are drinking beer in Cincinnati.

4.  Messi and Edward (from Twilight) are at school drinking vodka.  

Maybe you had to be there, or maybe you have to be as easily entertained as I am, but I thought this game was absolutely hilarious!  Some of them are inside jokes, so whatever.  We think they're fun! And, you can clearly see I'm learning really nice Turkish. Tehehe.  

Anyways, we have very interesting lessons.  For some reason Riad knows just about every slang word in Turkish, so we laugh learning those, and we also get to practice our listening and speaking, so it's always really nice. I feel like at school, people are like "SPEAK TURKISH" and I don't know what to say right on the spot, so I say really simple unimportant things, but in my lessons conversation comes much more naturally and I feel much more confident with my Turkish. 

Well, that's basically what I do every Tuesday and Thursday night... and I love it! Maybe I'll share some more stories about my Turkish course later because I have lots of 'em! 

Turkey Tid Bit #3

GUYS!!!! LOOK WHAT MY HOST DAD FOUND AT THE STORE AND BOUGHT FOR ME:

Yay for American candy! He actually bought it a week ago, I'm surprised I've let it last an entire week.  I've been busy eating Turkish candy, I'm saving my American candy for later :)

I am a happy "little" exchange student!

Turkey Tid Bit #2

Hello everyone, so a few days ago I was walking to school, and nobody stops at the stops signs in Turkey, so there was a little traffic jam outside the school.  The little traffic jam included two pick up trucks and then a normal sedan.  I NEVER SEE PICK UP TRUCKS! I felt like I was back home in little Brown Township where every other car that passes is a pick up truck.  It made me smile :)  I also saw a mini van for the first time in three months last week.  It looked so out of place next to all of the little tiny cars, so I laughed. So, yeah, it's been quite the week for seeing cars that I thought only existed in America... I just thought I'd share. :)

Thanksgiving

I was able to travel to Izmir for Thanksgiving dinner with my fellow exchange students during the weekend after Thanksgiving.  We spent the majority of the afternoon and evening making food, making a mess of one of the host family's home, and having wonderful exchange student bonding time.  It was so brave of one of the host families to let a group of 10 teenagers take over their kitchen for a day, but it was an absolutely beautiful home and they had a huge kitchen for us to cook in, so it was perfect.  We had a turkey IN TURKEY along with a bunch of other traditional Thanksgiving foods, accompanied by tacos and Brazilian food prepared by our Mexican and Brazilian exchange students.  Everything was absolutely wonderful and delicious.  I'm so thankful to have been able to go to Izmir and share this day with my friends because it will be a Thanksgiving I will always remember and I got to share it with some of the best exchange students I know.  So, I guess to answer the question that I got way to many times when I announced to people I would be going to Turkey... Yes, I suppose we do (under special circumstances) celebrate Thanksgiving in Turkey.

Cooking away!

Monica and I made a delicious pie!

This is Torvald.  I really don't know how to caption this picture...

WE FOUND BEN AND JERRY'S ICE CREAM 

Digging in! Yummmmy!

Nearly everyone is in this picture.  I could not have asked for a better group of students to share my exchange with, I love you guys!

I'm Back :)

Alrighty, so my last blog got a virus, so I'm now here at being-annie.blogspot.com. Beingannie.com should just redirect to here at some point, I'm not sure if it does yet or not, so I'm giving the new site just in case. I've done a lot since I last blogged, so I've been posting random pictures and telling you about all of my adventures I've had over the past three or four weeks! See below for my new stories :)