Traveling and Arriving in Turkey

Somnolent

[som-nuh-luhnt]

Sleepy drowsy.

Well hello from Turkey. It's been a simultaneously very hectic and very relaxing few days since my last post. So I'll fill you in about the goings on.

The trip to Turkey was....long. Long, long, long. And a little crazy. On the flight from LA to London the wrong plane arrived (wtf United Air?!) so people's seats were all messed up. Which meant my nice aisle seat turned into a not so nice middle seat. And the guy at the ticket desk who was doling out new tickets was super rude. The plus side? I got upgraded to Economy Plus, which I think meant my seat was 5 inches larger. Not much but...the seat still felt small, so I can't imagine what sitting in a seat that was 5 inches smaller would have felt like. Plus I had a nice chat with the family who was sitting next to me. They were off to Denmark to visit their son who was studying abroad there.

Somehow I actually managed to fall asleep, if briefly on the flight (something I never manage to do) but I still felt pretty off when I arrived to London.

Oh London! I really wanted to get out of the airport just to take in more of the English splendor, but just being in the airport was still nice, as (of course) it was chalk full of British people and just fell very very British. I even got a delicious pre-packed sandwich.

So I was there for four hours, got onto my Turkish Air flight and then proceeded to sit on the runway for an hour plus. I was pretty ok with that though; Turkish Air had some very good movies, so I just sat back and watched the Owl of...something (you know that beautifully animated film about owls?) which was very cute. But people were freaking out about missing connecting flights.

Anyhow, I arrived to Istanbul safe, sound and very tired. Going through customs was way easy and the drive back with my family's driver was peaceful.

So...the family! They are incredibly nice and sweet. Like really, really kind. I've been a bit jet lagged and just all around tired from not sleeping for almost 30 hours or so so they've let me take it easy and just adjust. Dilara still has school and Barkan is in this tennis tournament this week, so we won't really be on a normal schedule until next week. So I've just been getting to know the kids and trying to speak some English with them. Dilara has been very warm and friendly. Her English is very very good and she loves to talk and tell stories. Barkan is a little more reluctant (understandably so) and likes to just shake his head yes or no when I ask him a question. But when he's with Dilara he opens up more. Or when I ask him about tennis (he was excited to hear that I was at Wimbledon last year!).

Their neighborhood is very beautiful too. They live in Kemer Country, a gated community of all very nice houses. But the houses here are so colorful, which is really refreshing.

And this is my family's house:

Well I think that's about all for now. In an hour or so I'm going to watch Barkan's tennis game. And later tonight Brandon arrives. Hopefully I'll see him either tonight or tomorrow.

Bye for now!