First Week of Classes!

Hi Everyone,

I had my first full week of classes last week and they were all interesting (for the most part). The classes are a good mix of Turkish students, Americans, and Erasmus students (Europeans). With the exception of the development of contemporary democracies there is at least one other American in all my classes which is nice. The classes range from about 25-35 kids and are a mix of both lectures and discussions. My favorite class thus far is Politics and Society in the Middle East. The professor is really animated and excited about the subject matter. He seems really nice and is very engaging. He wants his class to be more like a laboratory where we question everything including what he says. I actually have a map quiz on Wednesday in that class. We have to memorize the main waterways, cities, countries, deserts, etc. in the Middle East. The amount of work is nothing compared to BU, but it still requires a solid amount of time. My "books" for this semester consist of photocopied packets of all the readings for the semester. These packets are about 700 pages long, but the price of these packets for 4 classes cost about the price of a textbook in price (90$).

I rearranged my schedule so that I now have Mondays completely free of classes. I also picked up a basketball class that meets for two hours on Thursday afternoons. Well, I'm not going to bore you with more details on the classes, but if you want to know ask in the comments and I'll respond with more information.

That pretty much takes care of Monday through Friday. I'm forgetting what day it was, but I think it was Thursday, Yigit came back to the room around 8pm and asked if I wanted to go to the mall with him to look for a pair of shoes he had seen in Paris and desperately wanted. He has a car on campus, so we drove about 20 minutes to one of the largest malls I've ever been to. We couldn't find the shoes, but we walked through the mall. It has two separate sections: One for the normal folks, and one for the really rich people. Walking into the rich section was like night and day. Every designer you could think of (the best of the best) was located here and the cars were ridiculously nice. Just around the entrance there was a Ferrari, Maserati, and Porsche. Friday, my roommate took me out to show me around Istanbul. We went to a couple of bars that were really busy even though it was pretty early. We got back around 10:30 and around 11:30 he came by to ask if I wanted to go to a party with him and his friends. I was sitting in my room in my shorts ready for bed, so I declined. I heard him come back in around 4 am! Saturday was dreary weather if I remember and I did not do much. I got some reading done for class and got involved in a book I brought from home. There's a bookstore about a 15 minute walk from me that has English magazines and books. I only walked through once, but I'll be going back again for some new reading material.

Sunday I had my first big outing since I've been here. I went to Edirne, Turkey with five other people. One of them was Erin, the girl from Windsor and who goes to BC. Also on the trip was my friend Joshua from Oklahoma, two Erasmus students, and an Irishman who was not attending the university, but was couch surfing with Joshua in Istanbul. Speaking of which, have you guys ever heard of couchsurfing.org? I had only heard of it in passing, but apparently its a great way to meet people. Its basically a network of people throughout the world who are willing to offer up a "couch" or spare room for a few days as you travel throughout the country. No money is supposed to be exchanged for your stay and your host will often show you around the city/town that they live in. Anyway, the reason I went to Edirne was to cross the border into Bulgaria to void my student visa and return with a tourist visa. Long story short, getting a residence permit with a student visa requires up to three trips to a police station where they most likely don't speak English and these trips might take up an entire day. So, if you leave the country within a month of arriving you can get a tourist visa that allows unlimited entry for three months and its a lot cheaper than the resident permit. Technically, its not the "right" way to be in the country, but some in the international students office at the university recommended that we don't get a residence permit. So I met Erin at 8am at the starbucks down the street. We took a cab to Taksim (about a 15 minute drive) where we met with the other 4 members of our group. From taksim, we took a bus to the Otogar (bus station) which was about a 45 minute ride. That just gives you an idea of how big istanbul is! From the bus station we were able to choose from about 3 bus lines to go to Edirne. We went with Ulusoy which is like the Mercedes of bus lines. The ticket for a 2.5 hour bus ride was only 10TL (roughly 6.50$). Bus travel is really big in Turkey and is much cheaper than flying or the train, and just about as nice. Our coach to Edirne was a double decker and on each floor there was an attendant (think flight attendant) who came around and passed out free drinks and an assortment of snacks to choose from. Every seat had TV screens (of course, it was in Turkish so I didn't watch). Leaving Istanbul reminded me of leaving Melbourne, Australia. Once you get out of the city, there's nothing... just rolling hills and lots of green grass.

Edirne was fun. We arrived around 12:30 and took a free shuttle from the bus station to the city center. We had lunch at a cafe that was famous for its lamb liver. I tried the liver, and it was okay, but not something I need to have again. We ordered three different dishes, the lamb, a kebab dish with chicken, lamb, and veggies, and something similar to a pizza. After lunch, we visited three different mosques in the area and then walked around the city for a couple hours. After our walk, Erin, myself, and the two Erasmus girls took a bus to the Bulgarian border. Technically, I don't think we ever crossed the border into Bulgaria, but we were able to get our tourist visas after a lot of confusion. I don't think you're supposed to cross the border by foot and so everyone was staring at us. The officials seemed very confused by what we were doing and we kept getting stopped. After about 30-40 minutes we were able to head back to Edirne with our tourist visas. We met backup with Joshua and Alan, the Irishman, at a little cafe. Erin and I, decided to split off and head back to Istanbul as we were both tired and didn't want to wait any longer. Erin and I took a 7:00pm bus back to Istanbul. After arriving at the Bus station in Istanbul we took a 40 minute bus ride back to Taksim and then I took a public bus from Taksim back to the University. All in all, the trip (one way) took about 3.5 to 4 hours. I got back to my room around 11 and went immediately to sleep! I took a few pictures, but not many as nothing really struck me as needing to be documented so I'll post those in a few days.

Tomorrow, I'm back in class and then Thursday night I'm leaving for the Cappadocia region of Turkey with about 50 other exchange students. I'll write more about the trip tomorrow!

Okay, hope everyone is well!

Love and miss you all,

Brett