Thursday, July 19, 2012

Travel Information

Oh well lookie here, it appears that in my harried state of doing nothing, I haven't posted much on this blog.  Not that there is much to post at the moment aside from my ramblings.  Anyway.

I got my international travel information!  I would post a lovely little snapshot of my itinerary and tell you the time that I will be jetting away to Turkey....but at the risk of creepy stalkers, I'll resist.  I will say however, that I arrive in Istanbul on September 8 :)  ISN'T THAT EXCITING?!  At the same time though, as soon as I saw that I had been booked on a flight, the actual flight to TURKEY, I felt like I had gotten all the wind knocked out of me.  In a good way.  It's just...shocking really.  I have been plugging away for years trying to reach my goal, and now here I am.  A month and a half away from my exchange.  I must admit, I'm a little nervous.  I don't know Turkish.  I don't know my host family.  I'll be away from home for 10 months.  Of course, my nervousness is being stuffed in a box in the back of my brain by the ever present excitement.  The food.  The people.  The culture.  The more I think about it, the more I realize that Turkey seems like the perfect YES country for me.  It's funny, seeing as I was pulling so hard for Oman.  But now I am comfortable with my country assignment.  I eagerly hop into discussions that include Turkey, and smirk at the packaged lunch meat that sits in the bottom shelf of my refrigerator.  Smoked turkey.

On a side note, I watched a rather horrifying duo of horror movies with my Dad today and yesterday, and I'm mildly ashamed to admit that I may never be the same.  Those things scare the everliving daylights out of me.  Yet I still watch them.  I question my intelligence sometimes.  Anyway.  Now I am jumping at the slightest noise, and last night I stared dully at the TV until 5:30 am, watching old re-runs of The Wizards of Waverly Place and The Suite Life On Deck.  It was either that or watching 30 minute  repeated infomercials on the Slap Chop.  I never quite grew out of the childhood fear of the dark.  At night, the darkness still presses in on me, stifling as a wool blanket.  I resort to looping a movie throughout the night.  The background noise of a funny movie drowning out the silence, and the blue light washing over my eyelids.  Hence the Disney channel marathon that I watched last night, out of fear of seeing the darkness morph into the fears of my imagination.  I'm not quite sure why any of this really needed to be on my blog, but I haven't written in a month (minus the last video post).  Figured I'd give you a little story.

Maybe the infomercials wouldn't have been that bad.

This is my favorite cover of a song, ever.

-Olivia

Sunday, July 8, 2012

YES Abroad PDO!

I'm a bad blogger.  I got back from the PDO over a week and a half ago and I haven't written a single post!  Quite a few other people have though, and their experiences were fairly similar to mine.  So, I am merely going to post a video that I made.  It doesn't give you all the details, but a pictures says a thousand words, right?  How many words does a video count for?


-Olivia