Yesterday I talked to my parents. One month from yesterday I will be back at home. Interesting thinking about that. I know I have mentioned that several times before but it is a weird feeling being away from home for nearly 28 months and then heading back home because at this point, its not really my home anymore since I had been away for that long. I am excited to go through the transition though. I’m glad we are slowly making our way back. I think going from Armenia straight back to the US would have jolted me pretty good.
The last couple days in Turkey have been pretty relaxed. Nothing we have to see. It is 1:30pm as I write this and it is nice knowing that we saw all the touristy things and more. We went to the Dolmabache which is where Ataturk died. From the front a very modest looking structure. You go in it and it stretches what seems to be three football fields. It is huge. There was one room where just the Taj Mahal, took my breathe away. They don’t allow photographs to be taken inside but it was amazing. There were paintings all over the place. Some to make the room look even bigger but it was absolutely stunning. It is weird standing next to a bed where a ruler took his last breath.
We went to the Bazaar but since it was Sunday, it was closed. We got some food in the area and then came back. Later on in the night we went to get some dinner, at 9pm. We met up with Pepe’s friends from Australia and walked around going to eat stuffed clams and fried mussels from this place. Really cheap since it is just street food. I didn’t realize how much seafood is here.
Honestly, we haven’t been doing much. I finished my Michigan secondary yesterday so that made me feel good and a large weight off my shoulders. However, this secondary I actually have to mail in. Every other school has been electronic. It is a bit annoying that I am send this one in by mail, hoping that it gets to where it needs to go.
Tomorrow we leave in the morning to Riga, Latvia to meet up with Cormac. Cormac is one of my buddies from way back when. I met his older brother who is my age when I was in the second grade. We worked together at scout camp. Cormac worked there too and that is where I met him the first time, but it wasn’t until we met at University that we became friends. We also went to Sweden together four years ago. Hard to believe that much time has gone by. Looking forward to seeing him tomorrow. We will be traveling from Latvia through Estonia up to Finland where he is getting his masters.
Mike and I are going to make egg rolls for our hosts and guests tonight, hang out a bit, pack, and say goodbye to a wonderful country, Turkey. I met and became friends with some really cool people.
(A couple days later)
Before leaving Turkey, we decided that we were going to make eggrolls for the other guests and our hosts. Yagmur and Ryan walked around Istanbul and finally found cabbage. However, we needed some kind of flat bread similar to that of lavash. Ryan and Mike went out and visited about four stores before they found some. I was at home chopping everything up. So after several hours of cooking it was finally finished and we enjoyed dinner together. I however, forgot to put the eggs in the eggrolls…. It was fine. I also put in cumin instead of black pepper into the mix. Still turned out alright.
We just stayed in and hung out. Mike and I didn’t have anything else to do and since we were out the night before, no sense in going out again.
The next morning, we took our time getting up, packing and heating up the left over egg rolls from the previous night. We ran out of lavash. There was left over pasta noodles so after adding a little bit of soy sauce, we had stir-fry for breakfast. I added the eggs this time. No major difference.
We said our goodbyes to our friends and walked down the hill to the tram. Although it took us about 90 minutes to get to the airport, it ended up costing us about 4 lira each or $2.20. We grabbed lunch and then got on the plane. The flight was 2 hours and 40 minutes. Not too bad.
Turkey was great, but I was excited to see Latvia.
Until next time…
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