Turkiye! Eh, eh?

I'm in Turkey!  I've been here for...oh...I'm already losing track of the days.  6 days I think.  Almost 7.  All of them have been spent in two separate hotels.  The first one we only stayed at for a night, and I spent the majority of it sniveling to myself, and pining about being homesick.  That was mostly due to extreme jet lag and lack of wifi.  I really do like my creature comforts.  Luckily the next hotel (the one I am currently at) has spotty wifi (it's best on the roof) and the rooms are a bit more updated.  However, I am thankful for what we have.  It's really a nice place.  Our surroundings are gorgeous.  We are in the Turkish countryside (we weren't in Istanbul like we thought we would be), and are surrounded by hordes of bunnies, peahens, peacocks, llamas, ducks, sheep, and the omnipresent rooster that likes waking me up at 5 in the morning.  The llamas like to chase me as well.

Things I have noticed about Turkey

-Everyone smokes.  Literally.
-The feral bunnies look like pet rabbits
-Everything is modern fused with old.  Or nearly ancient.
-You only drink from water bottles, and I haven't seen a recycling bin yet.
-Guys like to stare at you.  I'm learning to ignore them.
-The call to prayer is one of the most beautiful things I have ever heard.  I scramble onto the roof to hear it every night.
-We eat a lot of bread.  I've eaten something like 30 pieces of bread in the past week.
-We eat a lot of cheese.  There's lots of different types of cheese.
-Turkish is incredibly complicated, even after hours and hours of intensive Turkish classes.
-If you even attempt to speak Turkish, people will simply beam at you.
-As it turns out, the showers aren't a tub/shower combination.  Even if you plug the drain with a towel.

I have noticed more things, but we are only in the countryside of Istanbul.  However, we will be with our host families by Friday!  I look forward to that immensely.  It will be a bit difficult to leave my new friends though.  Some of my best YES buddies are in Kayseri, but we'll see each other throughout the year.

Now, it's PICTURE TIME!!!

 Istanbul

 Typical breakfast so far

 Peacock in the trees.

View from our hotel roof.

I hope you have all have had a wonderful week, and I love you <3  Yes.  Yes I do.  

Love,

Olivia

The song we learned and sang during our Turkish lessons.

WRITE ABOUT ALL THE THINGS

Well haven't I just been a busy little bee who hasn't updated their blog like a bad person.  BAD OLIVIA, BAD!  Okay.  Now that I've adequately scolded myself, moving on.

I leave in THREE DAYS.  AHHHHHHH.  Freaking out a little bit.  Not going to lie.  Honestly, it still doesn't feel real.  I'm sure it will as soon as I get on the plane, but right now it just feels like I'm packing for some cool trip.  Which in a way I guess I am.  I've had my going away party.  Said most of my goodbyes.  Given many hugs and promises for postcards.  Now I just have to savor my last few days in the place I call home.  All too soon it will be ten months before I step foot back inside my house.  Crazy.

A few weeks ago I finally got my HOST FAMILY!!!  Well, welcome family, but same thing.  I will be living in Gaziantep, Turkey which I am thrilled about.  It's where I really wanted to be.  I have two host parents, and two little sisters.  One 8, one 4.  I have exchanged emails with my host mom a few times, and they seem wonderful.  I can't wait to meet them :)

I don't really know how to feel right now.  Excited.  Terrified.  Mystified.  This is something that I have been dreaming of for years, and now it is finally becoming real.  It took a ridiculous amount of work to get here, but I wouldn't have it any other way.  I can't even begin to say how grateful I am for this scholarship.  If it wasn't for YES, I wouldn't be going anywhere.  I would be wallowing in a generic american high school, plodding through my day to day classes.  But now, I get to see a wonderful country.  Learn a new language.  Try new foods.  Go face to face with a misunderstood religion.  I know the year ahead is going to be challenging.  I will be homesick.  I will get frustrated.  But at the same time, it will be so incredibly rewarding.  I can't wait to begin my journey.  So with that, I will leave this be.  Most likely, my next post will be from Turkey.  Istanbul probably.  Unless I don't have time that first week with settling in and whatnot.

With love,

Olivia

I thought this was very fitting.

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

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

Warped Tour, Pride, and Stolen Wallets

Hello everyone!

Today is exactly one week from the YES Abroad PDO...and I still have no idea what to wear.  And my wallet got stolen with my driver's license in it.  So that's fun.  Here's another mad scramble for identification this time.  Oh people and their greed.  So you got $40, an unusable driver's license, a school ID, and a cancelled debit card.  Ooooh, you're cool.  Sorry.  I'm irritated.

Anyway.  This weekend has been CRAZY hectic.  First I went to Pride Fest with a couple of my buddies, and we decked ourselves out in anything rainbow that the vendors gave us.  I think I have around 10 rainbow themed stickers.

Isn't he amazing?!  I absolutely adore his hair.

My lovely rainbow nails painted for the event.

Next up, the absolutely fantastic and amazing WARPED TOUR!  It was insanely hot and exhausting, but worth every minute.  Except for the stolen wallet part.  I was with my kin.  So many people had colored hair.  I saw Ten Second Epic (a Canadian band that I had never heard of that is wonderful), Yellowcard, We The Kings, part of All Time Low, and Of Mice & Men.  I would have really liked to have seen Sleeping With Sirens and Falling In Reverse, but they conflicted with some of the bands both my friend and I wanted to see.  Then the best part of the day was the signing with Of Mice & Men.  I got in line 10 minutes before it was set to start...and figured out that my wallet was gone.  With my ticket in it.  Freaking out, I booked it halfway across the entire festival to the merch booth and pleaded with the merch guy in near tears to help me get in.  To my extreme relief, he wrote on my arm in sharpie that it was okay if I got to meet them.  They signed my shirt, and added various facial features to it and we made casual conversation.  At the end I got to Austin Carlile, who is ranked up there as one of my idols.  I asked for a hug.  And got one.  It was a fantastic hug.  During the hug, he said "Thank you.  I love you." All I managed to blubber out was thank you, then I tottered away grinning like a mad person.  

Two and a half hours later, after braving a horde of people, I was one person away from the stage which Of Mice & Men was performing on.  Needless to say I got mildly beat up from crowd surfers and the four man mosh pit going on beside me, but I have never been so inspired by a show.  Merely four years ago, Austin (lead singer) was at Warped Tour (in Colorado) watching everyone perform.  He decided that one day, he would be up there performing himself.  And now he is.  I'm just as determined to be up there myself one day.

I didn't take this, I was to the far left in the front somewhere.  I don't think you can see me.

This is mine.  It's crappy quality, but I was very close to the stage!  Sorry it's so jumpy, I was being bumped around a bit.

Well, that's really all I have for now.  I might have one more post before the PDO, but who knows.  

-Olivia

Two videos today!

The lesson of the moth

i was talking to a moth
the other evening
he was trying to break into
an electric light bulb
and fry himself on the wires

why do you fellows
pull this stunt i asked him
because it is the conventional
thing for moths or why
if that had been an uncovered
candle instead of an electric
light bulb you would
now be a small unsightly cinder
have you no sense

plenty of it he answered
but at times we get tired
of using it
we get bored with the routine
and crave beauty
and excitement
fire is beautiful
and we know that if we get
too close it will kill us
but what does that matter
it is better to be happy
for a moment
and be burned up with beauty
than to live a long time
and be bored all the while
so we wad all our life up
into one little roll
and then we shoot the roll
that is what life is for
it is better to be a part of beauty
for one instant and then cease to
exist than to exist forever
and never be a part of beauty
our attitude toward life
is come easy go easy
we are like human beings
used to be before they became
too civilized to enjoy themselves

and before i could argue him
out of his philosophy
he went and immolated himself
on a patent cigar lighter
i do not agree with him
myself i would rather have
half the happiness and twice
the longevity

but at the same time i wish
there was something i wanted
as badly as he wanted to fry himself

-Don Marquis

Now I realize this isn't 100% relevant with study abroad (it is, but in a more morbid degree), but I absolutely love this poem. I shows how much passion just for...happiness this moth has, and how he'd rather live his life to the fullest than live in fear.  It's one of the many reasons that I want a tattoo of a moth.  Not even one of the pretty colored variety, merely a simple miller moth that I used to fear so much as a child.

-Olivia

I love these guys <3  I'm actually learning the Ballad of Mona Lisa on piano.  Quite an accomplishment for me.

Brief History of a Market Economy...

In the mid-eighteenth century, a new era of philosophy known as the Enlightenment developed in Europe. New theories about religion, science, government, and economics dominated this era. Adam Smith was a well-known Scottish philosopher during the Enlightenment...


Oh, I'm sorry, let me hit my head against the wall a few times to wake my brain up.  As I'm sure I've mentioned before, I'm taking multiple online classes over the summer.  Today, I'm focusing on Economics.  Hearing a teacher talk about it in class and making it interesting is one thing, but reading it online for hours on end is dreadfully boring.  No offense to my beloved social studies teachers who read my blog.


Now that I think about it, I'm going on a government sponsored program.  I should probably learn as much about this as possible.  Make me look smart.  


Anyway.  The days are strolling along.  The sun is beating down rather furiously, with the occasional respite by way of a gusty thunderstorm.  During these storms, I protect myself by hiding under my bed. I've never been a fan.  Classmates post pictures of bikini-clad bodies and wonderfully refreshing looking pools.  I sit on my computer taking classes and eat all the food in the house.  Of course, I go out occasionally.  Yesterday, I went out on our boat to hang out with the family and have a barbecue.  I fought off a hoard of invading red ants and grumbled as my step-dad pelted me with marble sized rocks while I was reading a book.  Later that night, I attended my cousin's ballet performance, and was awed by the dancers' effortless grace and flexibility.  For those of you who know me, I have the dancing ability of a brick.


Saturday, I bleached my roots, but didn't have time to actually put the dye in.  I walked around with a hat the rest of the day, refusing to let anyone see me as a blonde.  It isn't pretty.  Thankfully I was able to dye my hair today, and it came out like this:

Purple and dark blue!  The blue almost looks black though.

On the exchange front, I got my National Pre-Departure Orientation flight details today!  I leave at the chipper hour of 7:24 AM.  Luckily I get a window seat, so I can ogle at the sights below and rock out to some of my favorite music (Of Mice & Men is really growing on me).  I am traveling with the lovely Sarah Bibbey who is going to Ghana.  She gets the window seat on the way back though.  I may have to bribe her with a sheet of my dinosaur stickers so I don't hyperventilate for three and a half hours in the middle seat.  

I have my Local Pre-Departure Orientation this Saturday (so many orientations, I love it), so I shall take plenty of pictures (I document everything.  It gets annoying) and write a detailed blog post for you all afterwards.

-Olivia