The Beginning

I have told myself since I got here that I would make a blog. I have procrastinated for a month and a half (big surprise I know), but here it is. Now I can use this to procrastinate on other things now that work for my classes is starting to pick up.

So even though most of you know many of the particulars, I should start from the beginning and work my way through my Turkish experience until now.

The trip over here definitely got off to, shall we say, a rough start. I want to recount my trip over here because it sounds like something you would see out of a movie. Everything I could think of went wrong!

For those of you that don't know, I am a moron. Apparently, passports are required when travelling abroad and when you don't have one with you, they don't like for you to check into your flights. Despite the fact that the flight was delayed, the JAX-PHL flight would not allow me to check in because I did so within 30 mins of the originally schedule departure time. Luckily I had a very nice lady re-route me through Washington DC (DCA for those of you airport nerds who are interested) and then on to PHL. Unfortunately, snow in Philly caused problems. Luckily, I was bumped to an earlier flight that was delayed and ended up making it to Philadelphia at about 3:45pm.

Upon arriving in Philadelphia, I learned that my British Airways flight had been cancelled due to snow in London. Excellent! So I went to the British Airways attendant and they were apparently training a new girl who didn't know what she was doing. The trainer didn't seem to have much of a clue either. After 15 painstaking minutes, of which I was told nothing, I was finally put on an Air France flight to Paris, which was supposed to leave 5 minutes after my original British Airways flight. I got a connecting flight to Turkey that also corresponded nicely to the BA flight.

We boarded the plane on time. After boarding the plane, because it had been sitting outside in the snow, it needed to be deiced. Now why they couldn't have deiced the plane BEFORE we were boarded I will never know. At any rate, there were only two de-icers going. We waited in a line (on the airpline I might add) for 2 hours before we finally took off. (We took off at 9pm instead of the scheduled 6:50pm). As a result, we were 2 hours late to Paris. My layover in Paris was only supposed to be 2 hours. So you guessed it! I missed my flight to Istanbul because of the delay and paid the ticket counter another visit (4th one of the day by this point). I was put on a 12:50pm flight to IST and given a food voucher for my troubles. That was nice of them. So I went to the gate and we boarded and ended up not leaving until about 1:10pm. I finally arrived in Istanbul at 5:05pm after all that trouble! I feel so lucky to have made it here today. But wait! As if that wasn't enough, with all of the flight changes, my luggage did not show up. So I have only the clothes on my back. I have already missed the convenience of a cell phone (I also couldn't call my new roommate for exact directions so the taxi cab driver spent about 30 or so mins asking people in various areas for directions). He charged me 30 Lira on the ride from Taksim to the apartment (about 18 dollars) but he had been so nice and helpful that i gave an extra 10. So after all of that I am here...dead tired. On a happy note, my roommate was VERY nice and accommodating. The apartment is a little rough, but not bad at all for only 350 Lira a month. No microwave, but we have an oven and a stove and wireless internet. I am on the 4th floor and consequently have a WONDERFUL view of the city. He had even cooked dinner and gave me some.