Marhaba from Istanbul!

Marhaba (Hello) is my first Turkish word, and it has been very helpful over the past 24 hours... But let's back up, and start from the very beginning.

After taking Cyrus out for what turned out to be a very slow breakfast, with a very confused waitress, I headed home to finish packing and head to the airport. It was at this point that we had the packing emergency mentioned in my last post. Don't worry, it was quickly solved! After a tearful goodbye to Julius (yes, our dog) the Sussmans headed to the airport. The man who checked me in totally overlooked the fact that each of my suitcases were horribly over the weight limit, and let me through. After taking a quick break with my family, I was headed to the gate.

The flight to Dulles was rather uneventful, as I anticipated it would be. It was so reminiscent of heading back to school, that I was worried that I would forget to get on the plane to London! After a short stint in the Dulles airport, I was in the plane, ready to head out of the US.

The flight to London was 7 hours long, and left Sunday night, US time, and arrived very early Monday morning, London time. Since I made friends with the British lady working the counter for British Airways, she moved me to an end seat with no one next to me. This was fantastic! While everyone else on the plane slept, I watched two movies (The Nanny Diaries and For Your Love) and fussed around. About half-way through the flight, a man collapsed right next to me, on the floor of the plane. We all rushed over to see if he was okay, and the flight attendants came over to check him out. He was okay eventually, just had a moment of exhaustion and dehydration. After we landed, they kept us in the plane for over a half hour due to the fog. It was incredible. I looked out the window, and you really couldn't see anything....

Once we finally got off the plane, we had to walk down this long corridor, and split off into different lines for each terminal for our connecting flights. I waited in the hallway for about 10 minutes, and suddenly, Brittany Schell and Amanda Kisner walked down the other side of the hallway. I knew that they would be arriving at around the same time, but I wasn't sure if we would get to see each other. They are both going to Paris for the semester, and had flown out of BWI. After a quick hello, we went our separate ways. I took a bus to the proper terminal, went through security again, and proceeded to try and locate my gate. However, in London, the gates are only posted shortly before your flight. So, I sat around for a while, and then they announced that my flight would be delayed 30, then 50 minutes. (Side note: For those of you who understand, I had a Wes Peskin look-alike sighting... It was really really funny) Long story short, we finally boarded the plane, and proceeded to sit on the tarmac for another hour. Instead of leaving at the scheduled 9:40am, we left at noon. I sat next to a nice Turkish guy, who was really excited about returning to Turkey. We finally landed at 5:15 (Turkish time) which was more than an hour and a half late.

From there, I went to customs, got myself stamped, went to currency exchange, got myself some lyra, and went to baggage claim, and got myself some baggage. Since I was so late, I figured that my Turkish mentor had given up, and that I would have to take a cab to school by myself. Just as I was about to give up, I noticed that there was someone with a sign that said "Koc University, Sabrina Sanam Sussman". They had picked up another exchange student, so he, I, and one of the Turkish students headed out to the car. A man from the university was driving us back to Koc. After a struggle with my suitcases (they didn't fit in the small Turkish car) we headed out. It look us about 45 minutes to get to the university, because we hit traffic coming out of the city. I wont even begin to describe the driving... It was incredible... But, I made it to the university safe and sound, and began the process of settling in.

This has been really long already, so I am going to stop for now, and get ready to meet the other students and my mentor. I will post about my first night in Turkey later today! Look forward to tales of supermarkets, McDonalds, my roommate and hail!