Well, since all my family wants me to keep updating, I guess I will.

So, it's officially been a week since I arrived, and already it feels like I've been here months. I've noticed that every time I do something that requires a lot of people to get to know each other fast, like NYLC, Cho-Yeh, and this, by the end of a week it feels like you've known each other forever. We've been going, going, going all week, and now that it's Saturday night, everyone just wanted to go home and get some rest. I think this is one of two times that I've been in a room without someone in my program for the whole time I've been here. Normally, we all go everywhere in a huge group, but lately we've all been getting a little tired of that, so we've been breaking off more. Being in such a big group makes us all feel stupid, partly because we have to get the Turkish students who are with us almost constantly to speak Turkish for us. I can't wait until we start working on grammar, since all I know right now is vocabulary.

Travel plans keep being made, but we obviously haven't had a chance to carry them out yet. Me and some of the girls are talking about going to Konya next weekend, and maybe to Çatalhöyük since its relatively close. Hung out with a guy last night who's taking exams early and traveling all around the neighboring countries - the relatively safe ones, of course. We're going to Istanbul two weeks from now, but that's with the big group.

It's fun going to all the places we visited last summer - Tunalı, the Museum, etc, and remembering that I thought I might never come back. Now I'm back here only six months later.

So I always dismissed southwestern Asia and the Middle East as a bunch of -stans. They never really interested me until I came here. Now that I'm here, and there are riots in the streets almost every day and policemen with riot gear and tear gas and water cannons and my roommates are from all these countries that I always thought of as just a name and not a country and everyone's talking about terrorists and the PKK and the headscarf issue and I can see Atatürk's face everywhere - now I think this might be the most interesting place in the world. You can get in deep conversations with anyone within an hour of meeting them, and you never run out of things to talk about. Oh, did I mention that my new roommate is from Iraq? Yeah, just over the border. She's Kurdish. Talk about interesting conversations. One thing I'm realizing is that I know so little about anything that matters over here.

Anyway, I don't know if I said this in the last post, but if I did it deserves to be said again: the Turkish people are so nice! Aaah! So nice!

Today we went to Kale (the big Seljuk castle - I think it's Seljuk - up on the hill) and Ulus. Kale was awesome, and the area around it reminded me more of how I saw Turkey last summer - more interesting old buildings and kilims and sitting on the floor and cobblestone streets. I can't wait to get out of the city. I like it here, don't get me wrong, but it's a big, relatively new city with homogeneously ugly architecture. Oh, and did I mention the smog? I'm lucky I don't already have respiratory problems. But hey, at least I'm in Turkey!

Anyway, I think it's time to go. I bought Snow by Pamuk and I'm gonna go read it and go to bed early. I'm so worn out from this week. More later!