Okay, so I’ll definitely admit that I thought that I would have a bit more free time to devote to this blog while I am in Turkey. I was told that we would be busy but never thought I would be *this* busy! We usually wake up at 8am, have breakfast with our host families, and are out the door by 9 or 9:30. From there it’s a full day of sight-seeing, eating, meeting people, eating, presentations, eating, tours, eating, eating, and eating (yes, we are eating a lot, but we love it!)! We often get home around midnight and are so tired that we haven’t the strength to do much besides crawl into bed. The drinks imbibed with dinner every night only serve to aggravate our exhausted-ness.

I have actually been trying to get some work done here, with little success. I mean, here I am writing the blog when I should be working on my project… *sigh* –that’s procrastination for you!

I consider myself a pretty worldly person but I am learning a lot about Turkey that I had no idea about before spending time here. I love history, so it’s a thrill to be taken to Roman-era ruins such as the city of Troy or Ephesus (Efes). It’s amazing that you can go right up to the ruins, duck into passages, and touch the same columns that Roman artisans carved by hand two-thousand years ago. I’ve heard that at many of the Archeological sites of Greece and Italy you are very roped off and cannot get nearly as close as you can here. I think I’m being spoiled by this and will be a bit disappointed when I have the chance to visit such sites outside of Turkey.

Our vocational tours are also proving to be very interesting–we visited a hand-made glass factory two cities ago (Denizli) and watched them blow giant vases. We were so close we could feel the sweltering heat from the forges. Yesterday we visited a yacht-building company (Aganlar) and had a chance to tour the inside of the largest (well, now second largest because another company trumped it by one meter) wooden yacht (Gulet-style) in the world (currently under construction and due to be finished in twenty days). These are definitely things that the normal tourist is not able to access and we feel privileged to be able to experience such things.

So, besides a few minor problems and communications mishaps we have been having an excellent time over here. All of us are very happy with everything. We are learning a lot about the country and making life-long friends at every city we stop at. I know that I, for one, will definitely be coming back to Turkey in the near future.

PS: Sorry about the lack of pictures! The picture tool doesn’t seem to be working as well as we had hoped. They’ll be added eventually…for now, here are some of them. Place your mouse cursor over them to see descriptions. If you are using Firefox you must right-click and go to ‘Properties’.