Grabbing the Istan-Bull by the Horns

Hi blog!

I'm almost three weeks into my internship, which is HALF. WAY. DONE. Absolutely unbelievable how quickly time is flying! I thought six weeks was a long time but soon I'll be outta herr and onto Part Two: Eurotrip with Benjamin! We've started a rough outline of where we think we'll go, but the room for spontaneity is one of the most exciting parts! We had some pretty great adventures as kids (like the walnut story, classic) and I can't wait for the shenanigans we'll undoubtedly get ourselves into in Europe.

One the right is one of my favorite pictures in the world,
 left is the first of dozens of tries to recreate it.
 Personally I think my eyes could get MUCH more crazy.

I have way too many things to write about last weekend. It was such a blasty blast! But those of you that have heard me tell stories know that I tend to spend way too long on the mundane parts then accidentally skip important bits and end up going ''WAIT WAIT okay well actually before that...'' It is very annoying. And that's kind of how this blog feels. But let's just keep rolling with it!

On Friday we got to leave work at 12 because they wanted us to come in Saturday morning to help with an alumni event (more on that later...). So we headed downtown and met up with Benjamin, Annalise, and Jessie who are interning in Ankara and came to the bull for the weekend. Seeing them was incredible for so many reasons. They've been in Turkey for a lot longer than we have and seeing how well they've eased themselves into the culture was great. They were some much needed relief for Emily and I who have been fighting an uphill battle to fully understand how some things work around here.

We had lunch then went to see the Hagia Sophia, which was gigantic and magnificent in it's old age! It's wild thinking about all of the people that have walked through it over the course of all that time.

View of Hagia Sophia from a terrace cafe

Enlightened B?

Friday night we were graciously invited to stay at Jessie's friend's apartment on the Asian side, and we knew that would mean that it would be a little harder to get to work the next morning (hours away, and on a different continent, but it's whatever). We have to get to work at 8:30, and we know it takes about an hour once we get on the metro to get to Koc, and we think it'll take about 30 minutes to get from where we are to the metro. SO we get up and leave around 6:30, adding in an extra half hour just to be safe. Long story short it was not enough. We were told the wrong bus number twice (the same wrong bus number! by dudes in an info booth! what?)  and waited around until it came to find out we needed to get on a different one, which we had conveniently just missed. This is when the stress starts. Then we split an expensive cab to the metro, sit in panic on the train as the clock slowly hits 8:20 and we start. Hold on this is getting stupidly long. I know y'all want to hear about my adventures but I'm not going to make you read about every minute about it.
We we late. It was okay. Working the alumni event was pretty dull. Then we headed back to downtown Ist!

For reading that, here's a picture of a kitten. With my awkward hand next to it for comparison.

 Oh gosh. I want to tell the other long story now though! No one is forcing your eye spheres to continue from word to word, so I'm going to write it. It's Saturday night, out on the town bar-hopping near Taksim square and everyone is having a grand ol time. Around 1:30 or 2 our group is approached by a shaggy-haired dude who seems very excited to find people that are around his age and speaking English. His name was Aaron (Erin? Inside joke. Sorry inside jokes aren't for blogs) and he had a one night layover in Istanbul. We obviously adopt him into our group and have a grand old Turkish time. Emily and I tried Raki for the first time (marks off box on imaginary cultural list) and I got my picture taken about 1000 times by random Turkish photography students (?), that sounds legit right? And we paraded around until we realized that the sky was kind of starting to do that thing where it gets all bright.....so we headed back to Asia to enjoy a solid 6 hours of sleep.


 Sunday we took a lovely (and windy) Bosphorus tour. It was super relaxing and a fantastic way to end a great weekend in a great city!

Sidebar: Living in "the Sariyer region of Istanbul" and "downtown Istanbul" are not the same thing at all. It does not feel like the same city at all. Istanbul should probably be a country. Continent-hog.

Winds so powerful you can use an empty bag as a parasail!

Th-th-th-that's all for now folks!

 Thanks for reading!