Missing

Well, it seems I tried to send some news here via email, but it didn't work. This last week has just flown by.
This weekend is Turkey's republic celebrations. İt' quıte a bıg deal here. Most people have flags flying from their balconies, and the government buildıngs have huge Turkish flags displayed. They're really patriotic!

Next week we'll only have 2 days of school. The rest of the days will be holidays. Should be real fun!

Apart from that there's not much to report. I'm still waiting for my ADSL!

Seasick on land

So this weekend I had a strange experience. A feeling I can only describe as seasickness....on land. We had so many aftershocks (somebody mentioned about 300 on friday) that it felt like the earth was always moving. This gave us all a dose of motion sickness. It seems though that the worst is over. Of course, who knows!

It's weekend

It's the weekend. Time to sleep late and relax again.

On Friday morning at about 1am we were woken up by another earth tremor. This one was 5.9 again and lasted for about 10-15 seconds. It's not a very nice way to wake up. Pretty hard to sleep again too, what all the neighbours spending the rest of the night on the street. Again there was no major damage here, but there was more damage closer to the epicenter, which was some distance from where I stay.

So, yesterday I didn't feel so well. Could have been the lack of sleep, could have been a bit of a bug. It put me out of commission for the rest of the day. Today though looks much better.

Not much news today

Not much to report today. A good day at school. I'm actually starting to understand some of it. Still a long way to go though. The weekend's just around the corner...

A day off

So Tuesday they closed the schools. There was a lot of concern that there might be a more severe quake on the way. But the day went by without incident. There were a few small after shocks late in the evening. But nothing severe. A few buildings were damaged in areas close to the epicenter. All in all, not too bad.

It was interesting though for me, being my first experience. I now have given some real thought to what I must do in the event of another quake. I now keep a bottle of water next to my bed and have a little survival pack there too. Some of that Rescue training kicking in. You never know...

Today things were back to normal. I did receive my residents permit yesterday so now I can look into setting up an ADSL connection. Hooray!

Shaking all day

So Monday started with an earhtquake. 5.7 on the Richter scale. I was waiting for the bus. I could actually see the pavement ripple. Later, at lunch, we had another one. This prompted the teachers at the University to send us home. Tomorrow has also been declared a holiday as they are worried about further after-shocks. No major damage was caused to day.

Coming from a country that does not have earthquakes it's a real interesting experience. You can see that the people here have first hand experience of how devastating an earthquake can be. The fear on their faces is truly visible. They also all run outside at the first hint of shaking. Us foreigners don't have the same instincts.

We'll seehow things go tomorrow.

Day of rest?

Normally my Sunday's are a day of rest. Not here though. Sunday is a very active day. Church is obviously the main focus. Church starts late in the morning so at least I get a chance to sleep in. Once we get going though the day goes on.

Church starts at 11 and runs until well after lunch. After the service we have a social time where we sit and drink tea and eat biscuits. Those that want then get together for a late lunch. Usually this is the single guys. This then often turns into an evening affair where we watch some movies.

Today however I had to cut the social part short as I had HOMEWORK! Well, back to the homework for me.

Phew!

Well after a hard first week at school I am starting my second. Right now it feels as if I have no time at all. I just seem to be inundated with Turkish!. This week started off better than last week did though. I think I'm finally starting to aclimatize. The weather is cooling down too, which is a good thing.

This week I'm home alone, as my roomate as gone of travelling. Not that it makes much difference since I'm hardly ever home at the moment anyway.

Laters!

School Starts

Well, that was a bit of a longer break than I had planned. It's pretty easy to lose track of the days.

Last week I spent 3 days in Bursa, which was fun! It's quite a lot colder there than where I stay. I didn't realise this so I didn't take any jersey or warm top. Guess who was freezing most of the time... Fortunately a kind soul loaned me a jacket for the duration of my visit.

Yesterday I started my university course. It's just as hard as I imagined. Learning Turkish is going to be tough. We have course from 10:00 till 16:30 on most days with homework for the evenings. Today was my second day learning Turkish and for homework I have to write half a page about what I did this evening! It's real tough!

Hopefully though I will start to make progress.

Now you all have to keep hoping I can get to update this more regularly.