May 22, I woke up at 5:30, and got ready to leave for Istanbul. It is now 10:39 p.m. on May 23, 2010 and I am getting ready to sleep.  My trip started out normal, but I had to drive from York, PA to JKF airport in New York. I decided to leave at 8 a.m., thinking that would be plenty of time to get to New York for my 4:45 flight. However, I was wrong.  In New York I got into heavy traffic, and I ended up missing the boarding of the plane I was supposed to get on. It took about 6 hours instead of the 3 and a half it was supposed to take to get there. After some conversation with the woman at the ticket counter, I was able to get a flight that took me from JFK to Paris, France then from Paris to Istanbul.

I have to say for my first time flying, this was definitely and experience. However, I loved it. It wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be.  The delay between my flight to Paris and my flight to Istanbul was about two hours, which gave me plenty of time to depart from the first plane, find the gate for my next flight, and board my flight that took me to Istanbul. I am going to say, that for the first part of my trip I was a nervous wreck. I had never flown before and here I am taking a non-direct flight.  Instead of Turkish Air, I flew Air France.  I was fed pretty tasty meals (my first flight had dinner and breakfast and my second flight had lunch).  I arrived in Istanbul around 2:30 p.m. and went through the lines for passports and grabbed my baggage. I had no idea what most people at the airport were  saying, and it was hard to understand where to go. I happened to run into a college student about my age that was studying abroad in the United States (he actually missed the same flight to Istanbul that I missed), who helped me make a call on a pay phone.I then went to find the place where we were to meet up with the rest of the group members.

After several students and the professor and grad student were assembled, we headed to the hotel. After a little time unpacking and resting, we ate dinner, and afterward we went out to walk to an open air market that is close to where we are staying in Istanbul. We have a Turkish tour guide, and he would point things out as we walked. When we got to the market he said good bye, and we started walking toward taksim square.  As we were walking I noticed how hard it is to drive without people walking in front of the cars. We even saw an emergency vehicle that had to yell at people to get out of the way. 

As it is getting late, I am going to head off to bed now. I have to get up early after only having a few hours of sleep on the plane to hold me over until now.

Location: Grand Hotel Halic Refik Saydam Street 37 Tepebaşı 34430 Istanbul / Turkey