The Beginning

I have made it to my apartment in Istanbul in one piece, ready to start my hopefully exciting 5 months in this crazy place. I haven't done a whole lot here yet, but the area and the apartment itself are really beautiful. I wish someone would tell Turkey about window screens, though. I haven't seen a single one, anywhere. It's pretty hot overnight, but also pretty buggy, so this is an unfortunate cultural difference.

The journey here was about as planned- long and exhausting, but nothing crazy or unexpected. My first international flight was a very different experience, as I've only ever flown Southwest. Seats were comfy, food was good, booze was free. However, even a Benadryl and a gin and tonic could not knock me out for this flight. Regardless, it was a pretty enjoyable experience. The layover at Amsterdam was stressful, but only because I thought it was much more confusing than it actually was. I was able to walk directly from the gate of my first flight to the gate of my second, without any sort of passport control/customs stuff. I felt for sure that I was doing something wrong, but they didn't throw me in prison, so I suppose I was doing it just fine. Reports of European prices were not exaggerated. I paid $7 for a small drink at Starbucks. Ick.

The flight to Istanbul was fairly uneventful (still no sleep!). At the airport, I had to do do the whole visa/passport/customs stuff, which was lots of standing in lines in a very hot room. Afterward, I tried in vain to contact my mom and my boss, who both wanted a phone call upon my arrival. With no open wifi networks and no idea how to use the payphones, I decide that I should just buy a cellphone at the airport, since I was planning on getting one anyway. I decided to go with Turkcell, which seems to be the most popular and was advertising heavily throughout the passport/visa lines. This did not go so well. The employees spoke English fairly well, but not well enough to understand my exact questions about how to use the phone. I've never used a card with a SIM card before and the phone instructions and menu were in Turkish, so I didn't know when to enter the PIN and when to type the number to dial. The employees were very frustrated with my inability to do this seemingly easy task, and I ended up tearing up in front of them out of embarrassment. I felt completely isolated from the world, particularly the friends and family that I so desperately wanted to contact. Yeah, yeah, that's melodramatic, but I did have a mini-breakdown about my situation and the reality that this is just first of many problems I will encounter with language and cultural barriers. I decided that I needed the internet immediately, and went to a nice sportsbar/restaurant in the airport that had wifi. I had a pretty good meal and a delicious beer (Efes, a local beer), and felt a million times better with the internet at my disposal. I got my phone to work, contacted my loved ones, and saved the business of some young Swiss entrepreneurs who desperately needed to send off an email.

Everything went relatively smoothly from there. I took a shuttle to Taksim Square, where my roommate picked me up and put us on a bus to the apartment. The area is awesome. It's right next to the university, so it has a very college-town feel. It's also right near the strait that runs through Istanbul, which leads to some absolutely breathtaking views. The apartment itself is very nice, and has two adorable cats running around in it. Today I'm hoping to explore the area and find where exactly my lab is.

Protip: SD cards and xD cards, while having almost identical ports, are in fact not the same thing. There will be pictures once I figure out how to fix this fail of mine.