Merhaba

Well, so far Turkey has been pretty much fantastic. Our trip started out pretty shakily with many problems in airports and such. A short summary of our travels goes like this: our flight from Columbus to Detroit was delayed 2 hours so we were rerouted to Memphis and didn't end up leaving Columbus until 2 ish hours after we were supposed to. Then our flight to Memphis was delayed even more and we landed in Memphis 15 minutes before our flight to Amsterdam was to leave...then we taxied for 10 minutes while Ang and I became very nervous. When we got off the plane a lady was waiting to tell us where to go and when we said Amsterdam she responded with ''Oh Lord, run...gate 47.'' I looked up to see gate 3 and stared running like crazy. We arrived at our gate with one minute to spare and got on the plane very out of breath. We had an unexpected 10 hour layover in Amsterdam, so we ventured on into the city for a while. We finally arrived in Istanbul at 1:30 am on the 2nd, 12 hours after we were originally supposed to arrive. All in all a very exciting trip to say the least.

So far our time in Istanbul has been amazing. Joanna is fantastic and pretty much a master of the Turkish language...pretty much everyone here loves her because she's so good at Turkish and she gets us good prices on things! We have done exciting things like see the Ayasofya, Topkapı Palace, the Grand Bazaar and other touristy things. We met some friends of Joanna from the university, we ate wonderful Turkish food and have drunk rakı and efes, and we have enjoyed the wonders of the nargile. We only have 2 more days in the city before we head for the southeast and we are trying to cram as much fun in as possible. So, until later.