You keep sending me angels...

Cultural differences. They can be pretty visible, especially for someone coming from Sweden to Turkey.

As I wrote yesterday, one of the first things you see in Turkey is a face. A man that is everywhere. Statues, posters, on souvenirs, he has got avenues and schools named after him.
If you scroll down to the my last post there's a picture of him. It's Atatürk. So I made some research in order to become a more enlighten person, and I see no purpose in not sharing this information. Like that if you ever come here to Ankara you will know who he was, instead of walking around for two weeks wondering, like I did.

"Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (indeterminate, 1881–10 November 1938) was a Turkish army officer, revolutionary statesman, and founder of the Republic of Turkey as well as its first President.

Atatürk became known as an extremely capable military officer by being the only undefeated Ottoman commander during World War I. Following the defeat of the Ottoman Empire, he led the Turkish national movement in the Turkish War of Independence. Having established a provisional government in Ankara, he defeated the forces sent by the Allies. His successful military campaigns led to the liberation of the country and to the establishment of Turkey. During his presidency, Atatürk embarked upon a program of political, economic, and cultural reforms. An admirer of the Age of Enlightenment, he sought to transform the former Ottoman Empire into a modern, democratic, and secular nation-state. The principles of Atatürk's reforms, upon which modern Turkey was established, are referred to as Kemalism." (Wikipedia)

Now you know... and I! Haha, since today was the first time I actually took time to look into who he actually was.
He died at age 57, if I remember correctly (closed the wikipedia tab, and have no energy to go back).

Tomatoes are another interesting thing here in Turkey. They are tasteless!! We've tried to buy them in packs or per kilo... no difference.

Oh well, enough about that today!

Just got back from a night out with the parents. We went to the "pool pub". We, as you might tell by the name, played pool, had an unhealthy dinner and had some drinks. A really nice place I have to say. In the summer I'm sure it's even better. They had an outside part in the back where they had a bar, rock chairs and a huge TV. Too cold and rainy for that today thou, well tonight.

Because this morning the weather was really nice. Clear blue sky and sunny. Pretty warm too, almost 10!!
I know this because I took a walk this morning, had to find the bus stop that I need to take my bus at tomorrow morning. And since I don't want to wake up extra early just to look for it tomorrow I did it today.

Otherwise my day consisted of studying Micro economics and Spanish. Am really stressed out that the level of Micro and Macro will be too advanced for me. Hopefully it isn't thou. What I read today was pretty ok.

In addition to all that I had a pretty nice "surprise" on fb this morning. Haven't decided what I think about being this excited about it... or excited might be the wrong word, maybe just the fact that I feel something...

Anywho... I have some other things I really wanted to write about too, like the prejudices people have towards Turkey and the Turkish people and also about breathing (!!!!!). But all that will be talked about some other day. Don't want you to get bored, even thou the wikipedia paragraph about Atatürk most likely made half of you return to where you came from(0:

Sending Me Angels en Yahoo! Video

I like this song... it's cute!

Now I'm gonna watch a movie, more precisely: Did you hear about the Morgans? . Hopefully it's better than "The princess and the frog" which I saw earlier today, it wasn't bad but not good either.

Off to bed now, to the night routine... Skype, movie, sleep...

Puss på er alla.

Memories!

This always makes me think about you! (0;

I miss it, us and everything. But it's awesome here and I don't regret coming here at all. New experiences makes you grow as a person, and I need to grow! (0;



Btw, in the car today, on our way to the restaurant I remembered a few things I wanted to bring up...
Of course I forgot most of them now... all of them actually, except that I wanted to explain the Turkish obsession with Atatürk.

More about that in the morning, since I don't know much about him except that he's extremely loved and appreciated here, which I've noticed throu the numerous posters, statues and souvenirs that are up and around the country.
Anyways, I blame the wine and the champagne for making me forget the rest. Maybe I'll remember tomorrow! I'll try to write it down somewhere, maybe in my new Atatürk agenda(?!), when I think about it.

Also, I just managed to break my camera! DISASTER!!! I'm addicted to taking photos! Hopefully it's fixable, time (and money) will tell I suppose.

A plus... et bonne nuit!

When I say jump...

First day of classes yesterday.
Started out with Spanish 1 at 8.40... we are 6 people in the class, little me and 5 Turkish students. The teacher is a 60ish year old Peruvian lady. Since it's a basic Spanish class we started out with "Hola, buenos dias" and "como te llamas?". I am not a pro in Spanish but that was a bit too easy for me. We then went on to the alphabet in order to be able to spell out our names in Spanish.
Oh well, hopefully we will advance fast.
One small "irritation moment" in the class is that she explains everything in Turkish and I have to wait until the end of the class to get an explanation in Spanish, which she usually sticks to for about 5 min then she switches to Turkish until I gather enough courage to tell her that, even thou she thinks she might be speaking Spanish, she isn't, and that she has to switch back... this happened about 5 times in 15min!

After an hour of basic basic Spanish we were done.
I went out on a mission to find a café to get my daily big cup of çay (tea) at starbucks, which is located in the Management faculty building. Took me a while to find my way there, went around a bit, had to turn around a couple of times, but finally got there, completely frozen, remember I talked about the snow!?
Anywho, my next project was to find the library.
Oh lord!!!
IMPOSSIBLE.

Went around campus, passing by the same people several times. After 10 min I gave up. Went to the international office instead. Had to ask them how the hell I could get back home without having to grab a cab (€5 everyday is a bit unnecessary).
Now it's fixed. Thank god they're helpful there!!
So now I've figured out how to get to and from school!!

In the morning I will take the bus from HOŞDERE, the street just 5 min walk from the house. It only leaves at 7.21 or 8.37 so yeah... sucks but well, what can you do.
To come back I will take the shuttle bus from school to Tunus, and from there a local bus that will take me up the hill to Park Vadi!
Have to mention the fact that all busses to and from school are free!! Yaii, awesome.
Imagine if buses to and from Råslätt would b free!?

Anywho, after having been at the international office, finished my huge tea, I started walking back towards the main campus.
In my search for the library I bumped into the book store and bought myself a note book and a coke. I still haven't seen any vending machines around. I know there's one in the art building, but where is that?! I don't remember.
Oh well. I managed to find the library. But not where they keep the books, only the magazine/paper department. I don't care, I'm happy I found something. (0:
Did my Spanish homework. Or at least what I think it is. She forgot to tell me in Spanish what it was. I just assume that it's the first chapter. But to be on the safe side I continued for 18 pages.

The afternoon held a HUGE surprise for me. The Micro and Macro classes that I have are not intermediate or, as I hoped basic. They are advanced!!!
I, who got and E in Macro and had 2 re-exams in Micro, am supposed to take advanced classes?! Haha.. had a small panic attack when I realized.
Seems as if thou I can keep up thou. So instead of wasting time on trying to change the learning agreement I'm gonna stay and see what happens.
As the Micro teacher put it. The only way to fail is to NOT show up for the weekly quizzes and exams. I think I can manage that at least!

Was supposed to go out yesterday with the rest of the exchange students. But since I woke up at 6.30, was in school until 5ish or 4 maybe, anyways, only to come home and google all those things we were supposed to already know in Macro, I was pretty exhausted. Fell asleep like a baby. Slept for 10 almost 11 hours. Must have been tried.

Today is my fathers birthday. We had lunch in the big living room, went to the mall and carrefour where I was looking for an agenda. The only one I found in the size I wanted was one in memory of Ataturk... haha... Will put up a picture of it some day!
Assume we will be off to eat soon.
Bettina and I also bought a cake... and I saw the champagne in the fridge! (0:

Enjoy your saturday nights!

Puss

******

Back from dinner now!

We went to "Paper Room" I think it was. A very very nice Italian place. On last floor of a building, nice view. Very good service. Ate some good food and drank some good wine.
Got back and drank some even better Champagne and ate some cake.
Introduced the parents to Spotify which they very much enjoyed, even thou my dad thought that the speakers of my computer sucked. We danced, sang and enjoyed the end of the night!
Now I'm in bed listening to Arde el Cielo (Maná) again... amazing, and will definitely enjoy my sunday... will gather some energy for the week and try to find my way to the bus stop!

Sleep tight!

*****

Paper Moon!!!!!!... not Paper Room... haha

And off I am...

Tomorrow it all starts again. No more vacation.
I have to admit, I'm a huge fan of vacations. Already looking forward to the ones in april when I, hopefully will be going back to Sweden;
see my mom, sister and the cats
my friends
and my awesome bf!!
Will be amazing!

Anywho, tomorrow classes start. I have Spanish 1 at 8.40 in the morning! Have to take the bus from the center at 7.50 meaning I will need to wake up at 6.30!!! WTF happened there!! Oh well, I LOVE languages so hopefully it will be nice!
I also have Macro theory II tomorrow afternoon.
Received the course syllabus for Micro II today... took me a bit by surprise I have to admit...
We will have weekly quizzes, 2 midterms as well as a final exam. And on top of that we're graded on a curve, meaning that as long as you go to class, do the exams n so on u pass, but if you do good etc and everyone else does it, it does not imply you get an A, even thou u might have 90%... if i understood right!! hmhm... not sure I like that!!
We'll see how that goes!

Btw, today it was chaos going to school. There were like 10cm of snow on the ground here, and since they don't take care of it, my dad had some problems driving me!!! They might wanna fix that...

Well, it's already 11 here, so I really need to sleep now... Gonna continue listen to Maná; Arde de Cielo album... it's awesome!

Sleep tight!

PUSS

Like a walk in the park...

I love snow, I love snow the first two or three weeks of snow... after that it gets boring, cold and wet... pretty unnecessary!
My point is that I came from Sweden, where there had been snow for maybe a month or so when I left, to Turkey, which in the beginning had no snow...
Then we went to Istanbul... there they had snow... A LOT of snow. Even a snow storm. Making traffic impossible, delaying flights, you name any problem related to snow we experienced it this past weekend!


But they're excused, because from what I could see through the snow storm, Istanbul was a very beautiful city. I really want to go back. They had nice shopping and the city in it self was incredible, with the different styles of architecture mixing, it's cultural heritage... amazing. So we will definitely return when the weather conditions are a bit more favorable!

We got back to Ankara around 8 p.m, 2h later than expected, and had to go directly to Bilkent, my uni, in order for me to register as an exchange student. It was dark and cold and we were tired since we'd been at the airport in Istanbul for like 4h, doing nothing, only waiting. Either of us had ever been there before, and were extremely surprised when we noticed how big the campus is.
It's like a small city, with a bus service, stores, restaurants, a high school, kindergarten and a lot of apartment buildings.


Well, I got myself registered and was given a schedule for the week. We were supposed to go to museums and get information about different things. Since many of those things didn't really apply to me, accommodation etc. I pretty much decided not to go to those things. I went for some information about the computer system as well as the information and help they gave for getting the residents permit. Actually I'm meeting up with them tomorrow for that again, we're going to the police station to get everything done. I'm sure that will not be very exciting, usually immigration things take time, but we'll see, maybe Turkey will happily surprise me and be effective and organized!

On Thursday I have to be in school at 9 a.m to register for classes. I've chosen pretty easy (hopefully)and random classes;

*Innovation Management
*Cross-Cultural Management (I wanted Project Management, but it wasn't offered)0:
*Micro theory II
*Macro theory II
*Spanish 1 (which hopefully can be change to Spanish 2 if I can do a test)

I already know my schedule, and for sure Mondays will not be my favorite day, classes from 8.40 a.m until 5.40 p.m; not my cup of the, as some people would put it!
I'm not a morning person as most of my friends and family knows, but well... I'll wake up n go there... it's their problem if they put classes that early in the morning! (0;

Since today was my last really free day I decided to use it wisely;

I took a walk in park vadi (i think), which is just below our house.... but it's in a valley, aparently vadi (or whatever it is) means valley... which implies a lot of stairs... too many for my taste to be honest... luckily I discovered an elevator while trying not to faint because of oxygen shortage on my way back up! Next time (0:
A pretty funny feature of the park, or Ankara and Turkey as a whole, are the free outdoor gyms that are strategically put out throughout the city, I have to admit it is a pretty thought through idea in order to make the citizens move their cute little asses from time to time, thou mostly you see older people using them... have never seen anyone under 50 on them.


Oh well! Now I'm gonna start goin to bed, since I need to wake up at 8 tomorrow! )0:

Enjoy, Puss

So very different

Bettina and I have been out and about for the past two days.
We've been shopping.

Firstly she took me to a very turkish place, a bazaar. It was awesome. Cheap nice stuff in a very very different environment.
We went crazy in there, bought myself some UGG's (some might think they look like crap, but I don't give a shit cus they're comfortable!!), more boots, shirts... and nothing cost more than €25.

We then went on to some other malls, because people in Ankara loves malls. They even love it so much that they build so many huge ones there aren't enough people to go there, they're empty.
In the malls I notice that turkish people LOVES corn. Instead of i
ce cream places they will sell small cups of corn, and as a garnish... bbq sauce?! Didn't taste, since I'm not sure it's very delicious.

Other things I've noticed is that they don't care about traffic rules; red lights are passed as if they didn't exist and speed limits ignored, but not with a few km/h as normally, they're driving twice as fast as allowed!

This morning I had an amazing experience. I went to the hairdresser.
It looked like a nice place, in the building next to ours, so we figured it had some "class". None of the hairdressers knew english. And when we went in last night to book a time, the 10 employees gathered around us in order to "work together" to understand us.
Well, we managed to book a time, decide a price and well... got there this morning. The man was so happy. A first difference to Sweden is that only men were cutting or dying the hair. The 2 women there were receptionists. The second difference was that, there was the star hairdresser that combed my hair, but when it came to anything BUT cutting, combing or actually putting my color on my hair, there was an assistant; he held the hair dryer, gave the guy the aliminimum folio, because holding the dryer urself while working or reaching for the folio would be too tiring!

Oh well... they're cute! They try to please us everywhere we go.

Tomorrow we're off to Istanbul. It will be awesome.

Found out that I will be off to Guadalajara in Mexico next semster. Will be amazing, this is what I've wanted to whole time.
Already talk to my sister and Bettina about maybe goin to Panama in july, since it's quite close to there.... Would also be nice to go there in december, but we'll see!

Oh and btw... this morning we woke up with a thin layer of snow on the ground... and I who had hoped there wouldn't be anymore snow for me this year!

Ankara, Turkey

New City and different life...

I'm sure it will be awesome.

So far I've just settled into my new room, done laundry and listened to the prayers that are put on loud speakers through out the city 5 times a day! Haha, pretty interesting. As long as the one at 5ish doesn't wake me up I'm happy.

Anywho, finally ate some Burger King yesterday. Incredible! My dad really knows me, the first thing we did when they picked me up was to go the the airport food court! Couldn't be better.

Tomorrow Bettina and I will be off to the supermarket, I LOVE supermarkets! Apparently they eat a lot of popcorn here so hopefully I'll find some corn-thingies so I can use my popcorn machine that's been collecting dust in London over the past 2½ years!
My dad is leaving for Hungry so we'll be all alone until Friday when we will join him in Istanbul. Heard it's a cool city so I'm very much looking forward to that!

Enjoy now!

Puss