Tony, take it easy...

As school gets under way I am beginning to feel the pressures of deadlines and commitments. Time moves at a different pace in Istanbul. Textbooks, which should have been available at the start of classes, are finally arriving in the form of a photocopied reproduction. Understand that bookstores only order a handful of textbooks for each class as they will likely be photocopied and made available to the rest of the university at a fraction of the cost. All copy rights aside, I wish they were copied earlier. In my Psychology of Personality and Psychopathology classes I am over 150 pages behind (in both classes) because of the lag in transfer.
My roommate reminds me to relax as all the students are in this same predicament. “If you can’t get caught up with your studies it’s unlikely that anyone else can,” Chris explains. I suppose I feel a greater responsibility for my studies while abroad because I am unsure of the value of my lectures. No one ever goes on exchange trips for the prospect of academics; I’ll have to strike up a happy medium.

Carrefour

Today my roommate Krzysiek, Chris for short, and I did some much needed grocery shopping. The cost of food on campus is astronomical so we thought it would be a wise idea to stock up food for breakfast and maybe lunch or dinner, in an attempt to save some money for travel. Carrefour is a chain of stores much like Wal-Mart, but on roids. It's like a mall, electronics store, grocery store and food service rolled into one. This place is enormous, and has the holding capacity of a small nation. Fortunately for us today there were only 5 billion shoppers today. Shoppers....they are really more like a ruthless, savage, band of rag-tag bikers. Navigating through this place with a cart which performed more like a giant clumsy ice skate, as all four wheels pivoted causing the driver to get a hellatious ab workout attempting to steer this thing in a straight line, would be enough to drive one insane. Apparently no one else has mastered the straight line either because you actually come out of there with bruises due to a misdirected cart into your hip. I actually had one woman driver the front of her cart into both my achilles'. There's no sense in being polite, you actually force you way through crowds using your cart as a battering ram. Shopping nearly brought to my wits end, any lesser of a man and I would have never made it out alive. Oh and need I mention, NO ONE speaks English! What an experience...

The Black Sea

We traveled up to a small city on the coast of the Black Sea last Sunday. Sile, pronounced She-lay was a beautiful little coastal town. The bay was full of weather beaten fishing boats and old men sat out in cafe's and on benches just watching time pass. We had lunch in a local restaurant on a patio which overhung a cliff and gave an amazing panorama of the coast. The beach was beautiful but upon further investigation was littered with trash which was quite disheartening.

RIDDIM

Riddim is the name of a night club in Taksim. Taksim is an area on the European side of Istanbul, teaming with night clubs, bars, and shops. Riddim was my first clubbing experience, which to all the Europeans I went with was ubserd. Located in the basement of an old building made the whole climax to arriving at Riddim quite an unnerving experience. Down three flights of rickety stairs adjacent to cold, cement, graffetied walls a dank thick oder of basment lead us to the entrence where lights and the reverberating tones welcomed us. The ambiance was typical, flashing lights, sweaty people, and loud music which in all made for a quite enjoyable time. However, there was a 20 YTL entry fee which after spending 8 YTL on a beer at a neighboring bar, seemed as though taksim was robbing me blind.
Upon leaving Riddim four of us grabbed a late night snack; Kokorec which is basically shredded cow intestines and discussed international politics.
We arrived back at the dorms way past curfew, which is at midnight, and sighed a sleepy "merhaba" (hello) to the gurads and we where in without any repercussions for our untimely arrival.