First Days In istanbul

Hello Bloggers!

My name is Jasmine. I am a junior at Beloit College. My major is international relations. This semester I will be studying abroad in Istanbul at Marmara University on the Asian side in Goztepe (which is a neighborhood in Istanbul). I’m writing on an English keyboard so I don’t have the ability to type the correct spelling for cities in Turkish. I have been in Istanbul for two weeks now and I am a weekend away from picking classes. We came early to participate in a Turkish survival course and I feel pretty satisfied that I know enough Turkish to get by. Lots of people in the university speak English; however outside the university it’s hard to find people who speak English on the Asian side. I came four days before the program started to stay on the European side and get a feel for where I will be staying for the next 5 months. While I was on the European side it seemed that everyone spoke a second language whether it was German, English, Spanish, French, or Italian.
Everything is so beautiful here. The architecture is very unique and the buildings are all high rises. It is like New York City. The guest house where I am staying is 9 stories tall. There are three other Beloit students studying abroad with me. The 3 girls live together and the one boy has a single. The Guest House is like a hotel. The rooms are huge and we have a refrigerator and a laundry room in the basement that we can use to wash our clothes free of charge.
The food is very good and rich. We usually can’t finish our plates. We eat in the cafeteria on the weekdays for lunch and dinner. The meals are so big that there is no way anyone can go hungry. We eat a Turkish style breakfast on the weekdays at a restaurant just across the street from the campus. A Turkish style breakfast is cheese, bread, olives, tomatoes, and sometimes a hard boiled egg with lots of tea and coffee. On the weekends we eat a café called the Kantinn. Everyone is really friendly there and the owner has made a deal with us to teach us more Turkish if we teach him English. People get so excited when you try to speak Turkish.
I am really enjoying Istanbul so far and look forward to writing more about my experiences. Right now I am in my room. Yesterday we went shopping in the city center of Kadikoy and tonight we are hanging out with some of our new Turkish friends. For the first time the university decided to give us a host student named Beyza. She is super nice and friendly. She has also introduced us to other students and we have become quick friends.