vacation time

i am off for a week long vacation with no internet. when i get back i will have less than two weeks left in turkey. look for me stateside june 17th :)

sorry...

first off, sorry for lack of postings lately. a lot has happened in recent weeks.

main event: i moved. i am now living in a dormitory in the middle of the city. long story short, my host mom got angry with me because i "refused" to speak english with her and she repeatedly "directly" asked me to help her speak english. she ignored me for about two weeks. my theory that she was angry at me was confirmed when i told her i got followed home by two men and she said nothing. (no worries, nothing happened) anyways, that is when i got my director involved. my host mom claimed to have not understood me when i told her about being followed, yet she didnt see the connection between that misunderstanding and my misunderstanding her. she claimed that if i had really wanted to help her, then i would have understood her "clues." and her ignoring me was a) her revenge on me and b) her way of showing me that i am like a daughter to her because that is how she treats her own daughter... so i moved.

other events:

classes are finished. i finished my university class last week. i dropped my last turkish class today because i cannot concentrate anymore.

i went to istanbul one last time this past week to shop for souvenirs. my friend and i bought 25 scarves between the two of us. we walked around the grand bazaar for about two hours trying to bargain for a good price. we finally found a guy that agreed to 7 ytl a piece. thats about 5.50 or 6 dollars. so we picked the ones we wanted, then he gave us a price of 185ytl. for those math wizards, you know those two numbers do not match. "you said 175 ytl..." "no i said 7.5 ytl a piece and you said 'ok'" ........... jerk. that was still the best price we had gotten the whole day. i also saw the new indiana jones movie while in istanbul. wasnt too impressed though.

my favorite band here is called Soul Project. they play at local clubs four times a week. my friend is the saxophone player. they play a mix of american classics such as "mustang sally" and james brown and even some justin timberlake and santana. i went to see them last sunday and they played "geek in the pink" which is a song by Jason Mraz, who graduated from lee-davis. pretty crazy coincidence. shows how small the world is getting when someone from mechanicsville, va can make a pretty big impact in turkey.

what else...

i am going on vacation on saturday. there is a beach that i keep seeing on tourism posters here. it looks like it could be in the bahamas, but i havent figured out its name yet. if i can find it, ill go there. otherwise, i will just have to settle for one of the many other beaches on the Mediterranean or Aegean seas.. yeh, pretty hard decisions to make :)

i may or may not post here again over the next couple of weeks. the internet connection in this dorm is not very good. so my magicjack is unusable here. ill try to go to a cafe with wireless or something so i can make some calls, but if i dont call, dont worry too much. ill be home in less than three weeks.

ps. the day i get back is free chicken sandwich at chick-fil-a day :)