First Post

Well this is my blog about my time and travels in Turkey, although if you're reading this you're probably already cool enough to know that.

Wow, this place is unlike any I have ever been to, although I was surprised as to how similar it is to the U.S.

Something that separates it from us though is the traffic. It's crazy! In İstanbul, it's perfectly normal for example for there to be 3 cars in a two lane road, with a motorcycle next to them. Two cars going in separate directions will often be heading down the same road; a road that is def only big enough for one. This results in one of them backing up, often causing other side streets to back up as well, until one of the cars can get by. Pedestrians are very alert, as cars WILL NOT STOP for them. I've seen so many near misses it's ridic. Especially the taksis as they're called. The taksis are everywhere, and they're crazy.

Turkish is an interesting language. It kind of sounds like a mix between Russian, Italian and Spanish. One nice thing about it though is the pronunciation. Words are pronounced how they are written. So even though I don't speak turkish, I can still read the signs etc. That's another new experience for me. People have started talking to me in Turkish. İt made me feel really awkward, and I didn't really know what to do. But now I learned how to say I don't speak Turkish: turkçe bilmiyorum.

Another interesting thing is the religion. Turkey is 99.98% Muslim if I remember correctly. The first time I heard the call to prayer it was quite an experience. It happens 5 times a day. Someone on a loudspeaker from a mosque starts chanting/singing in Arabic. Except this happens in all of the mosques. And there are mosques everywhere in İstanbul. You can hear this echoing throughout the whole city. It's pretty intense.

Oh, and the birds here are crazy. I was at a cafe eating lunch, and me and the family I'm staying with suddenly see this bird dive into the water from the sky. So we waited to see if it would surface... it didn't. So we were watching this thing for like 45 seconds to a minute, and finally it reappeared. Only to dive right back. I know that sounds like a lame story, but we had all though it had drowned. Which reminds me of a little kitty that we saw. All of a sudden it darted out into the street (a bad idea in America, a suicidal idea in Istanbul). So this one guy who was outside was trying to block off traffic to let the kitty cross the street. Suddenly the kitty darts under a truck (it was stopped don't worry), but then the cat did something funny. It turned into Professor McGonagal and apparated. You think I'm joking. I'm not, the cat dissappeared. No one could find it, and then the truck started moving again. And still the cat was never found. I say it was professor McGonagal, because their have only been 7 registered animagi in the last century. I'd take those odds to Vegas. Yeah, I am rather looking forward to the 21st.

Anyways though, thus ends my first post. I'll try to get some pics uploaded soon (I'm uploading them online currently), and I'll prolly edit this post and put some back on here. Kthxbye.

From the album of the pics I've taken in İstanbul