Istanbul, Not Constantinople

Written earlier when I had no internet access at 14:00 5 July 2008

I’m sitting in JFK Airport. We left the hotel this morning and took the two hour bus ride through Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and finally Manhattan and Queens to the airport. Security was easy, but I found out later my bag was only checked to Istanbul, I will have to get it in Turkey and recheck it to Bishkek. Hopefully, I will still get a chance to explore the city, I am planning to get out of the airport and look around, maybe get a Donner Kabob if I can. For now, I will sit waiting for my flight and goof around on the computer, annoyingly enough the free wifi won’t connect. Oh well, Turkey bound I am!

Present Time:

Turkey was really cool! While it was a pain in the buttocks to have to get a visa in order to recheck our bags (a $20 fee), it was well worth the price to go out and explore beautiful Turkey/the outskirts of Istanbul. Getting our bags checked was an epic event which seemed relatively leaderless until I took charge and made it happen. Hooah I suppose. After we were squared with our baggage, we figured going around the city was a great idea. I asked a Turkish man where he recommended we go to lunch close by but out of the airport, and in broken English, he told me a relatively simple route on the metro and wrote "go [sic]tree stops on the Metro and then go across bridge the other ways. While I was skeptical how helpful this would be, I was pleasantly surprised both at the friendliness and helpfulness of the Metro attendant and the accuracy of his instructions. Following his advise, we got to a little street complete with a pretty mosque, lots of Turkish people (very few other tourists), and great food eateries. We stopped in one and each had a lot of delicious Turkish Kabobs, cacik sauce, naan, and other Euro-Mediterranean foods.

After eating, we strolled around the street for a while, admiring the quaint cityscape and listening finally to the azan's call to prayer from the mosque before we left. Overall, it was a very enjoyable sojourn and a great way to escape from the airport for a few minutes and add a new country to my list of those visited (it wouldn't count if I had stayed in the airport). I am, however, exhausted. The flight was expectantly long and I didn't sleep nearly as much as I hoped to (and when I did, I dreamed fitfully about Peace Corps). The end result is that unning on very few hours of sleep + Bishkek being 10 or 11 hours ahead (it depends on DST) + flying for 10 hours+ not comfortable = severe jet lag soon. Regardless, we are almost there and then we start our training eight hours after arrival. We will be staying in Hotel Issyk Kul- complete with 1970s Soviet architecture - in Bishkek for three (tree) days and then will leave for our host families in the Kant area. It will probably be a week or so until I can get contact with internet after we get into Bishkek, but so far, so good!