Turkey! Istanbul! The journey and destination

I drew a line
so you could see
That our destination
was near the sea (Black Sea)

Here is our troupe. Nils, Peter, Emily and Myself.
Nils and Emily are my closest friends in PC and they also live really close to me (2 hours travel 1 way). Peter is studying in Germany and he's there to visit his brother Nils.

So of the 7 nights of traveling: 4 nights sleeper trains, 2 nights same hostel, 1 night hotel.
Pros of sleeper trains: cheap to travel and sleep at the same time and saves time.
Pros of hostels and hotels: showers.

The first room we got had 6 beds: 3 per wall. But others we stayed in had 3 beds on the one wall and a sink and a ladder on the other wall.

Getting up on the bunk beds (the topmost level) was a bit of work...specially when people like Nils is trying to pull you down.

Here we are suffocating, until we combined the power of 4: Pete's (short for Peter) foot, Emily and Nils' combined body weight, and my right bicep and my leatherman ; to open the window.
Nils then went around rescuing other suffering passengers after we won.
He abolished 4 close windows that trip.

We left at 12 noon. We arrived to the boarder of Bulgaria and Turkey at 1am? (at some point there was a Bulgaria and Romania boarder, but that's a boring story).
---We got a knock on the door. --We handed over all our passports. --Went back to bed. --Got a knock later and our passports handed back to us. --Went back to bed. --Arrived at the other border. --Got a knock on the door. --Was told to go outside and buy a visa and have passport stamped. --Walked outside in PJs in search of visa buying window. --Paid 15 Euro. --Got stamped. --Went back into train. --Put passport in my marsupial pouch (my security pouch I wore the whole trip), and passed out til our 10am landing.
Oh, and they give us clean bedding; we got them every train ride.

I saw Turkish flag in the morning.

Here is the local currency: LIRA. Which is about 2 LIRA = 1 Euro.
So like 1.5 LIRA = $1.

Look at this happy couple. Anyway, they have all their luggage in those two backpacks. His backpack was the "backpacking" "travel" backpack other tourists were using too.

I had my stuff in this backpack =)
But I had a warm jacket in a plastic bag too, which I never used on this trip.
Turkey, Greece, and Bulgaria are warm now, but not Romania yet (burrrr)
Guess what I saw...

Exciting things were happening while we where there, AND WE DIDN'T EVEN KNOW!
Tour of Turkey!

and Festival of Lilies!
Here's a map of Istanbul which I thought was pretty. We were on the European side (the most tourist side) and we went on the Asian side too (more on this later).

SO, sights to see in Istanbul!

We did see lots of old things, look at this wall of dirt for example: OLD. And actually the smaller streets were cool too. They were very clean cause tourists basically crawl through everything around here, but still holds a certain charm.

Here is an experience of Prayer. The Muslims living here pray 5 times a day, but I only managed to hear 4 prayers a day. I am probably unconscious for the 5th, so I can't tell you if it goes on mornings or nights. This is the after 4pm one.

I'm not sure what's in the left picture, something about...yeah, it's in the Lonely Planet: Turkey guidebook, and the right picture is an old public fountain I believe.
It was funny to see how many Lonely Planet guidebooks were being used, and in ALL sorts of languages!! Japanese, German, Italian, French. There were all sorts of tourists there!
AND after having the book for Turkey, and not for Greece and Bulgaria, I'm not a 100% devotee, but I am a believe.

Flag picture, with cute puppy who wants to play outside.

Okay, more to come!!

The Day of my Birth (September 10th)

Oh this special occasion, alas, I did Not feel the normal urging need to take lots of pictures since most of the day was spent riding cars. However, it was still an eventful Day =)

The day before, I had celebrated my birthday in the village by handing out candy to little kids I saw and I brought a large package of cookies to the Mayor's office and shared it with my co-workers (as is traditional on one's birthday here).

On the actual day, it started with Emily and I waking up and taking a bus ride to meet our Program Manager (the boss of our sector). Oana had visited my site the day before, for about 2 hours. She talked to my counterpart, my neighbor and made sure that any problems I was having or that the organization was having was addressed. She told me she was happy with me and my site and our relationships. I have a Crazy Strong American-Romanian accent, but I was able to understand what was being said around me generally and I was able to communicate back in Romanian. *hangs head* I don't like my thick accent, but Oana said she likes accents...I said as long as I have an "Irish-American or European-American" kind of accent and not an "Middle Eastern or Chinese-American" accent then I'm okay. Unfortunately....I think I have the latter =(

The night before we all went out to dinner to celebrate my b-day. 4 volunteers and a staff member of Peace Corps at a Romanian restaurant next to the Danube. Here we were taking a coffee break before we went our separate ways. Time with other volunteers and staff are very often very short lived.

I spent the majority of my day in a car, which was Great because it was a FREE ride and I had good company on my ride.

I was dropped off at a train station (in Ro it's called a Gara [Gah-Rah] and I took a SKETCHY train to my next stop. Trains here are ranked from P ->A ->R ->IC normally, and there's a 1st class and a 2nd class. Due to the timing, I took a P 2nd class, the ticket being about $2 equivalent for a 1 1/2 hour ride (not bad at all in US standards), but I had to cling to my stuff, and I was super paranoid: sit with old people, never alone, hold on to all items.

I sat with old people, who later begged me for money, and asked what I had in each of my bags and compartments of my bags. BUT I wasn't molested! (I've heard too many horror stories about cheap train rides)

Despite all my traveling, I got to the site with the Red Cross too late to travel to two more cities. So the Red Cross let me sleep in their building overnight. They had internet!!! It all worked out for the best.

I wasn't left totally alone.

For some reason...I was never ever scared on any bit of this trip, or worried. *shrug*

Since I was ill prepared for camping things in Ro, Emily let me borrow her Pumpkin. It's cute, and I want my own (not sure a Romanian or an American breed).


Birthday dinner:
It may look like a sad meal, but it's actually special cause every item was special.
The Beef Jerky was from cousin Irene, the Oreos were from Mom and Amelia, the Africana chocolate bar was a birthday gift from Emily and Nils, the Cheese sticks were from Oana in case I got hungry on the road, and the rest I gave as a gift to myself. I did get all my food groups.

I thenforth spent the rest of the night snacking and being online. THANKS FOR ALL THE BIRTHDAY WISHES!! On the whole, that's my favorite part of my birthday, all sorts of people, family, long lost friends, and aquaintances, and bosses remembering you and taking the time to say "happy birthday."


And for the ones who are really close, them making the extra effort to doing something a little more special =)
Let's see: I got attempts at text messages from best friend, attempts at phone calls from mom, a DNA molecular kit...and assortment from college buddies, clothes from the godmother, and a sweet card from my sis with US family pictures and me cropped into them, and perfume and candy from Em and Nils.

I'm loved =)

On the road pictures

These pictures were shot either from the road, or its about "the road."

Here is how Beer is grown in the area. I have never seen this before, so beer may be grown the same way in the US.
Without beer plants and with beer plants.


Here is a trash system I saw, that my village doesn't practice, they burn their trash mostly here. I want to share this picture with my village.

This is the ride we had on our Thursday - Sunday trip. Large silver van and we had plenty of snacks on our long drives. Trip back on Sunday was 7 hours!! and we still had time to see some new places.

We had to patch a tire cause we found a metal nail in it. Asta este [ah-sh-tah aiy-s-taiy] (that's the way it is)

San Diego Zoo then babysitting

Today I woke up to sound of little kids playing. We went to the San Diego Zoo to help the kids run out their energy before we babysat them.
One was grumpy the whole time, the middle one was cute and happy, the littlest one was having the time of his life!

He Loves animals; especially monkeys. You can see that he loves the flamingos too. At home he can name the 26 animals of the alphabet.
We ate cotton candy, saw the white polar bear, gorillas, pandas and more. We also took the air safari across the park.

After we came back from the zoo, our godmother took Amelia and I shopping. We went to a few outlets and we each got some new clothes. I hate shopping....or at least get really really frustrated with finding clothes. They don't fit and I don't have any fashion taste so all the styles confuse me. The one shirt I got Amelia had picked out for me. I also found a jacket I liked but it was $120, and I don't want to spend that much on a jacket- even though it was styling.

Our godmother then got us some quality take out food for dinner and now I'm here babysitting. The kids ate dinner with us and are watching Scooby Doo before bed. Bed is right after this episode. I'm going back to SJ tomorrow. *Woot woot* 8 hour drive back! I will need to stretch a few times on our way back.

On the Peace Corps note, I've joined a facebook group with 7 other people going to PC with me in Romania. I've talked to one person. I've also heard that my staging package has arrived, so I look forward to opening it when I get home. yay!

11pm is super late! Time for bed.

I realized that I forgot my retainers the first night of my road trip, and 2 nights later I had a nightmare where my teeth were totally crooked and there were missing gaps, it was horrible! I was relieved the next morning to not see any significant gaps between the teeth- all looks normal. My college late nights were 3am, so 11pm is pretty early, but I find myself just as tired. Being a kid is tiring, but a great work out! I tried the monkey bars today, failed, but it's a start after....it's been...er, 10 years? When we got tested for PE in jr. high was the last time I was on those bars.

Anyway, I must make sure to take my retainers to PC, and today I was making a list of stuff I should buy before I go. I've read though that I can buy most of the things I need in Romania, and I may get it cheaper and better fit (maybe tailored), once I get there.
I joined the facebook group: "Peace Corps Romania group 24" today and added everyone in that group as my friend, so hopefully they'll except and I can look at their profile and get to know them better.
I've also noticed all the language training tools in my peace corps toolkit, so I'll start on that soon.

All in all, I still need to work on my senior project, but I figure I'll concentrate on that a LOT when I'm back in SJ. Meanwhile I'll enjoy my time with my god-siblings and god-parents because I don't get to see them very often and they're very much worth every second I spend in SD- besides Amelia my sister of course.
Oh! Amelia is coming tomorrow for the god-brother's 7th birthday! It Star Wars themed so we're going to watch "The Return of the Jedi," Star Wars IV.
Here's a pic of the three cuties!! They're older pictures, but they're the best I have at the moment. The baby now has brown hair and hazel eyes and he talks and repeats everything like a little parrot.