Thoughts from Istanbul

11/2/13
Here I sit, about four hours left to go of my eight hour layover in Istanbul, Turkey.  The girls I traveled here with should be in the air by now?? There is Kara and Kaitlin from Chicago, Stephanie from Indianapolis, and Erica from Nashville.  Great girls, and considering I might not be getting an orientation week (we will get to that later) I am very fortunate to have met them all and to have shared several hours goofing off with them in this foreign land. That eleven hour flight was a killer, literally... my ass is dead. I am sure I could find a wifi connection here that is secure and reliable, but, not knowing the language, everything looks sketchy. And I might be a little naive, but handing out my credit card info over to a non-secure wifi connection just so I can log onto facebook and "check-in" seems a little bit ridiculous.  I have to wait several more hours before I can even find out what gate to wait at.  Until then, I found a somewhat dark lounge where I noticed several people sprawled out catching some zzz's.  So I did the same for a few minutes, Bon Iver playing in my left ear drum.  I missed tracks 6-8 so I know I caught some shut eye. But then I noticed the gate was starting to get busy, and I felt a little guilty taking up so much space at a gate that isn't even for my flight. Its dark here, and I think its around 8:30pm here, but its only 1:30pm at home. I would really like to be able to let everyone know how things are going so far, but I am fairly certain that they will all trust I am okay. They know I am not an idiot, right??  I tried some turkish ice cream and just a sip of some turkish coffee. Both are quite unique. The coffee puts a new spin on the word "strong." And the ice cream is very rich, and almost taffy like in its consistency. I did purchase some Turkish Lirra, but I didn't get much and I already spent what I had. Turns out they take USD here anyway... The coins would have been cool to give the girls, but I spent them on a can of coke. haha!

Okay, so here's some deets on the actual reason I am here. Obviously I am heading to Thailand to teach. The program I went with was mainly selected because I could elect to go for only a semester and decide later if i wanted to stay longer. That was important to me.  Along with the program, I was supposed to have a week long orientation at a beach resort, where we would all get to know one another, learn about the culture and customs of the people, take a cooking class, go ride and feed some elephants, eat some super fresh pineapple... you know, fun stuff. Well........I got an email that was followed up by a skype call with the director of Xplore Asia. And he has a school in Lampang (northern Thailand, SE of Chiang Mai) that would like to hire me to start as early as Tuesday or Wednesday next week!!!!!!!! AHHHHHH!!! I'm told this area is very much matching the description of what I wanted, and to top it off, I would be teaching high schoolers.  That excites me because I think I will have better luck engaging them into actual conversations.  I guess I can get reimbursed for the orientation and I can even decide to take it at a later date if I want, but holy cow, right?! Just jump in head first, why don't ya! No need to get acclimated or sleep off the jet lag. To be fair, I moved to Thailand to take life by the balls and LIVE IT. So I told him that I am open to whatever, and if I need to skip orientation, so be it.  Turns out one of the girls I flew with, who I ended up sitting with, who had the exact same glasses as me (LOLZ) is also in a very similar boat and is even looking at moving to a similar region of the country.  And we have all started making plans to meet for Thanksgiving/Christmas/New Year's/any other breaks... so in a way I already got what I needed to get out of orientation, right?  What a crazy life I am leading these days.

Since I don't have an internet connection, this probably won't be posted until tomorrow from my hotel room in Bangkok, but I think its a good idea to keep up with all the craziness as it unfolds.  More later! Peace Love Happiness!