Messin’ with Texas

Current Mood: EsctaticSo yeah, I had the best weekend ever. Izzy and I went with a few exchange students from Koc University (where Izzy studies) to a rock climbing festival in Olympos outside of Antalya in the south of Turkey. If you want to skip right to the pictures here is the link:
Olympos Climbing Festival
For [...]

This week we have a visitor from Tunis. Yes it is the same person I visited some months ago. If you like, and you speak French you can read about how my previous visit went (at the bare minimum you can look at the pictures):
La Tunisie
Now the Tunisien, Kamel, is here in Istanbul to meet [...]

Current Mood: AlarmedFor those of you that have forgotten, I received a warning from the US State Department last week. You can reread the warning by clicking here.
This week, the PKK in the east of Turkey killed 17 Turkish soldiers in an attack. Since then the country has been on edge, and the belief is [...]

Current Mood: AngryYou can read the other traffic entries by following each of these links:
Traffic
Traffic part II
Every Thursday I drive into the city to have dinner and play games with my friends. I typically try to leave at 6pm sharp. That way if traffic is bad, I can still be there before our scheduled meeting [...]

The newest addition to my company has got to be the cutest pair of legs to walk through our doors since I have been here, and I think everyone would agree. Pasha is a huge hit with everyone. Many of the company’s employees – male and female alike – spend their breaks playing stupid little [...]

I meet a lot of people. For work, when I am out, through other friends, I am meeting people all the time. Regardless of who they are or where they are from, they start with more or less the same question: What are you doing in Turkey?
There is always a hint of surprise, or disbelief [...]

 I had one heck of a weekend. Since Ramadan ended, I had a four day weekend. Thursday Izzy and I went rock climbing; we were the only ones there. Then Thursday night we took a 14 hour bus ride to the south of Turkey to a charming little diving town called Kas. The three days [...]

In an effort to make my apartment less bleak, I bought a bunch of new plant stuff! Yeah! I bought some new vine plants that I am going to cut and try and make into several vine plants and scatter them around my flat. They grow pretty easily indoors and will hopefully add some [...]

Last night I recieved the following email:
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
CONSULATE GENERAL OF
THE UNITED STATES
Istanbul, Turkey
WARDEN MESSAGE 2007, Number 9
October 9, 2007
This important message was sent out a few minutes ago to all of the
volunteer wardens who assist the Consulate in passing important messages
to American citizens in the Istanbul region. To help speed up the
process we are also [...]

This entry will be mostly pictures.Well I had a busy weekend. On Friday, I got up at 6am to take a bus to Ankara where I had a meeting with one of our suppliers. After my meeting, I met with a friend of Parisa’s (one of my friends), whom lives there. I spent Friday night [...]