I survived 24 hours!

I have officially spent 24 hours in Turkey. Last night after hanging out with my roommate I decided I needed to get some sleep. I found it very easy to get sleep, but I woke up often. There are just so many noises here that I’m not used to. It’s like being in New York City. It also doesn’t help that a village of stray cats live next to me. I was warned last night that if I left my window open the cats would eventually find their way into my room during the night. I don’t think I want to risk it, but one of my windows won’t close all the way so I may just have a surprise in my room one of these days. This morning I woke up at 8 and got ready. I left the apartment to go get some water and fruit. I have been advised to not drink the water here which means I need to stock up on bottled water. I came back to the apartment and waited for Ilhan to get ready and we headed to the office. I think I can say hands down that today has been the most unproductive day I have ever had at a job. After I arrived at work they showed me the desk I will be working at and gave me a computer. They also gave me a brief explanation of what I will be doing and set up a Skype account for me. After my “orientation”, I was left to do what I wanted. Well at least I think I was. Everyone here speaks Turkish and only a few people speak English well so a lot gets lost in translation. From what I understand there is not a whole lot for me to do because there aren’t any students that have applied for the program yet. This could be completely wrong, but that is what I am going with. Unfortunately I still have to be at the office despite there being nothing to do. Today I sat at my computer and looked at Reddit, Facebook, NPR, and then Facebook again. I have been updated on all the big news from the debates regarding Syria, to the actors chosen for the film 50 Shades of Grey. Basically I did a lot of hard work and I am pretty sure that this office wouldn’t run without me... Hopefully there will be more for me to do soon. The nice thing about my office is that it is located in the center of the city in what is called Taksim square. I can look out the window and see hundreds of people walking down one of the main roads. There is also a café across the street where I have been doing an impressive ampeople watching. There are over 12 million people that live in Istanbul and quite a few tourists so there is a lot to look at.



I think the biggest struggle I will face here is the language barrier. There are quite a few people who speak English, but not everyone does. At the office Turkish is the only language spoken unless someone wants to speak directly to me. I find myself sitting and listening a lot even though I have no idea what people are saying. I try to see if I can pick up anything, but it’s pretty useless unless they are saying “hello” or “how are you”. Hopefully I will start to pick up some of the language. Apparently the last intern learned very quickly. Today I ate lunch in the office with some other people. It was nice and a little strange to me. They spoke only in Turkish and would look at me to see if I understood, which I obviously didn’t. We had some type of green beans and pasta. The thing to do here is to eat pasta with ketchup and mayonnaise. It seems disgusting but I tried it and was pleasantly surprised. I don’t think I will continue to eat this concoction when I return home, but for now it is okay.