Ankara!

I made it to Ankara! Unfortunately we cannot make my host familys internet work on my computer, so the post I wrote late last night in the throes of jet lag will have to wait to be posted, and I will have to make do with a keyboard on which I cannot for the life of me locate the apostrophe key. (That is why there are no contractions in this post.) My host family is super nice so far, although very unimpressed with my level of Turkish (they keep asking if I am sure that I will be taking intermediate Turkish and not beginner... but that is understandable, since speaking and oral comprehension are my worst skills, and the jet lag made me forget how to say pretty much everything I knew). But they seem to like me, especially the mom, who calls me tatlım, kızım, and canım (my sweet, my girl, my soul).

I have not seen much of Ankara yet, but it seems hot, dry, and hilly, and also very new-looking. My dichotomy for foreign cities seems to be "looks like Western Europe" vs "looks like Russia," and so far Ankara is much more on the Western Europe side of things. I am definitely ok with that.