An Extraordinary Dromedary

Friday morning I was greeted my a great surprise when I got out of the shower...my package with my debit card had finally arrived!!!

The weekend has been slow-going. Friday morning I met my professor at school to pay my deposit for the flight to Mardin. In the afternoon we were supposed to be going with some of the Turkish students to get our transit passes, but something came up and they cancelled. I spent the rest of the day around the apartment. I tried to understand my Architecture in Cultural Context assignment, vacuumed, and did a sketch of some of the furniture from Koleksiyon then began to watercolor it. Cameron was amazing and cleaned our bathrooms and got the drain to our shower unclogged. By the end of our showers we had been half-calf-deep in cloudy water. It was quite a treat to shower without wading around this morning.

Friday night Me, Cameron, Christine, Jamie, and Jamie's Polish friend (who lives here) went to a couple of bars. The first was the one I'd been to before, we sat one floor lower than last time which is more of a "sit-and-talk floor" than the top "dance" floor. We moved to the second bar after a bit, which turned out to be not-as-great as we had expected. It was extremely crowded, lots of shattered glasses on the floor, and pretty stuffy. I think they had to pay 6 lira for a beer too- moderate, but not cheap.

My fingers and toes have been tingly and numb all day today.

Right now I'm listening to Simon and Garfunkel's "I Am a Rock". It makes me want to see Garden State, the movie that introduced me to the soothing songs of Simon and Garfunkel.

Today Christine and I went to Kanyon mall. First thing, I went to get the camel bracelet I had seen. I love it! He is adorable. At 31 lira, it is pricy, but wasn't as much as I had thought it would be; definitely worth it!

We went to Starbucks where they spelled my name on my cup "Sera". I used to want to change the spelling of my name to that when I was younger to be different. 'A's have an "ah" sound in Turkish, so when I say "Sarah" the first 'A' has more of an 'E' (eh) sound in Turkish. My name would be pronounced "Sah-rah" here. Magdalena, an Auburn studio professor from Croatia, asked me when I was in her class how I wanted her to pronounce my name: the American way or the Croatian way (the same as it would be pronounced in Turkish, with long 'A's). I told her definitely the Croatian way; I love the way it sounds with the long 'A's, especially with a foreign accent.

After we got back and had lunch, Christine and I went to school to do some work in studio. We still don't have keys to our studio and couldn't find someone to let us in. We thought we could go home and borrow a key from someone in Tarik's studio then enter ours through the connecting door between the two, but as we left we found out the building closes at 7:00 pm on the weekends (it was already 5:30 pm), so we decided to wait until tomorrow.

After tortellini pasta for dinner from the grocery store, I fell asleep on the couch while waiting for Ugly Betty to come on. Now it's just after midnight and I don't feel tired...time to do some Rosetta Stone! The monotony of the same words being repeated over and over always puts me in the mood for sleep!