I can't believe that my time here is already about halfway finished. Three weeks from today I'll be flying home to North Carolina. I had expected my time here to go by rather quickly, but I had no idea that it would escape me the way it has.
This week has been a lot less structured than the last few weeks. We've been able to sleep in a little later this week, which allowed us to be more refreshed when we woke up. Tuesday afternoon we went to the Spice Bazaar so people could buy some souvenirs. The place was crowded with so many people shopping and bargaining, and I'm still not used to having so many people around me all the time, but we had a nice time. Later we tried out this small Turkish restaurant in the town where we're staying, and it was pretty good. It tasted just like all the other Turkish food that I've had here, but it wasn't bad. Later that night we just explored the town and observed the many people and interactions that we saw.
Wednesday evening two team members and I had our second mentor dinner. The family prepared us a meal of breakfast casserole, French toast, and fruit salad. I really like it when my mom fixes breakfast casserole, so I really enjoyed this meal. We had a great evening just hanging out with and learning from the family. We were able to ask them questions about their journeys to this point and about daily life here in Asia as compared to life in America. After dinner they took us a short tour of the area they live in, and we got to take some good pictures and found some potential places that we could visit, where many college students and young adults seemed to be hanging out. The end of the night was exciting as well, because at our last bus stop, we were able to meet someone and made a new friend. It was cool how we met him. As we approached the bus stop, the bus we were supposed to get on was nowhere in site, which was strange because it is always waiting in the same place for people to board. In extremely broken Turkish, we asked someone if our bus was coming, and he nodded his head, so we breathed a sigh of relief and walked away to find somewhere to wait. All of a sudden, the young man, who later said that he is twenty-one years old, grabbed my shoulder and said in English, "Where are you from?" I told him that we were from America, and we began talking. Before we knew it, we were sitting by him on the bus making plans for breakfast next week. He said that he's planning on being a doctor, and he works nights at a hospital so was difficult for him to find some free time that works for all of us, but we settled on a time and day and we'll see what happens. We were really thankful, though, to be able to meet this guy and we definitely hope to see him again soon.
Last night we attended an English class that some Turkish people attend, and we tried to help teach the Turkish people with assistance from the instructor. This was a fun time of speaking with people and learning about the different lives of these people. Probably the funniest part of the night was when the instructor decided to play Tim McGraw's "Live Like You Were Dying" as an attempt to get the students thinking and hopefully understanding the different parts of the song. One of the Turkish men even said, in his own words, "This song fires me up!" I was amazed at how well these students of different ages know English and how willing they were to learn. It was a fun, encouraging night.
And that's about all I have for now. Tonight some of the guys are planning on going to a barbecue that our new Turkish friends invited us to, so we're extremely excited about that. Anyways, I hope you all have a fantastic Friday, and I'll talk to you soon.
No comments:
Post a Comment