Ankara

Wow, it's def late here, I should be in bed. Well I am, but I mean sleeping.

Well, today was my second day in Ankara. Yesterday we drove for about 4 hours from Istanbul to Ankara. The ride was pretty uneventful, until at one point we suddenly accelerated (why I don't know. I don't think I'll ever understand Turkish traffic) to 210 kilometers per hour, which is about 130 mph. I tell you the traffic here is insane. One one of my first days in Istanbul, this car behind us suddenly turned on hidden police lights from behind the grill of his car. I asked the mom of the family who I'm staying with (who was driving at the time) what he was doing, or if she was going to pull over or what. She was like no his license plate was not a police one (he had passed us at this point).

So after we got to Ankara, we walked around the town for a bit, and then later that night went to a party (a grownup social gathering thing, not a rave). I met another person from the states there (well, he'd lived there since he was four, and he was about a year older than me), that's the first person I've met from America so far. Although these one girls who were walking behind me the other day were speaking in English to each other, but I'm not sure if they were all from America. And then some tourists today who were behind us I think were from America.

Today we went to the mausoleum of Ataturk. Zomg this guy is like revered. Imagine George Washington, Ben Franklin, Abraham Lincoln, and John F Kennedy all rolled into one. I'm not even joking. Statues and pictures of him are everywhere, kind of like Stalin in the U.S.S.R. except that Ataturk freed his people instead of enslaving them. The guards at the mausoleum were hardcore. The military and police in Turkey are not to be messed with. I've seen police walking down the street with mp5's, and military complexes often have guards only a few feet away from the fence surrounding the complex with assault rifles.

After that we went to this wicked awesome museum, where they had ancient artifacts from the bc days, and lots of cool really old things.

I took over 200 pics today, making that over 700 total so far. One day I will put the best of the best online for you all. Now it is time to go to bed.